Abstract
When it first entered political discourse, the word ‘terrorism’ was used with reference to the reign of terror imposed by the Jacobin regime — that is, to describe a case of state terrorism. Historians of the French Revolution have analyzed and discussed that case in great detail. There are also quite a few historical studies of some other instances of state terrorism, most notably of the period of ‘the Great Terror’ in the Soviet Union.
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Notes
R. Woddis, ‘Ethics for Everyman,’ quoted in C.A.J. Coady, The Morality of Terrorism,’ Philosophy 60 (1985), p. 52.
W. Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1987), p. 146.
For a sample of social science research illustrating a different approach, see M. Stohl and G. A. Lopez (eds.), The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984).
See J. Glover, ‘State Terrorism’ and A. Ryan, ‘State and Private; Red and White,’ in R.G. Frey and C.W. Morris (eds.), Violence, Terrorism and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
P. Gilbert, Terrorism, Security and Nationality (London: Routledge, 1994), chapter 9
R. B. Ashmore, ‘State Terrorism and its Sponsors,’ in T. Kapitan (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997)
C.J. Friedrich and Z.K. Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Democracy, second edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 169–70.
Salman Rushdie, ‘How to Defeat Terrorism,’ The Age, October 4, 2001, p. 15.
See M. Middlebrook, The Battle of Hamburg (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), chapter 15.
A. Kolnai, ‘Erroneous Conscience,’ Ethics, Value and Reality (London: Athlone Press, 1977), pp. 14–22.
See M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, third edition (New York: Basic Books, 2000), chapter 16.
J. Friedrich, Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940–1945 (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2002), and the accompanying volume of photographs
J. Friedrich, Brandstätten. Der Anblick des Bombenkriegs (Munich: Propyläen Verlag, 2003)
S.A. Garrett, Ethics and Airpower in World War II: The British Bombing of German Cities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
See N. Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Politics of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ (College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1995), chapter 5.
See e.g. G. Kavka, ‘Some Paradoxes of Deterrence,’ Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978).
See, e.g., R. Dworkin, ‘The Threat to Patriotism,’ The New York Review of Books, February 28, 2002; ‘The Trouble with the Tribunals,’ The New York Review of Books, April 25, 2002; ‘Terror and the Attack on Civil Liberties,’ The New York Review of Books, November 6, 2003.
G. Alcorn, ‘News of Afghan Dead is Buried,’ The Age, January 12, 2002, p. 17.
An earlier, shorter version of the first three sections of this chapter was read at the workshop ‘Terrorism and Justice’ at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne, on November 2, 2001, and published in T. Coady and M. O’Keefe (eds.), Terrorism and Justice (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002). The present version has benefited from the discussion at the conference on ‘Ethics of Terrorism and Counterterrorism,’ held at the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung (ZiF), University of Bielefeld, on October 28–30, 2002, and from correspondence with Stephen Nathanson.
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© 2004 Igor Primoratz
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Primoratz, I. (2004). State Terrorism and Counter-terrorism. In: Primoratz, I. (eds) Terrorism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204546_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230204546_9
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