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Political Terrorism : The Use Of Terrorism In South Africa

Decent Essays

The use of terror is a worldwide phenomenon. The historical record has seen its use for many reasons. One of these reasons is to establish and protect a political ideology and have that ideology recognised by other states. But what then can we define as terrorism? The term itself is one that has been adopted in Western societies to identify the types of actions that cannot be defined as justifiable in any sense. However, evident in this essay is the practice of terrorism as much more than just a random radical happenstance and more of a political instrument. This is evident in all three examples list above. Syria used terrorism to crush political enemies, Zedong’s radical movement allowed him to seize power through terror and the South African government assisted terrorists to help them both defeat their political oppositions. It can be argued that there are even Western societies that can be accused of using terrorist tactics against their own citizens. While their actions aren’t always labelled as terrorism, their tactics are similar in the form of their capability to terrorise. Weber’s contributions to the field of politics might help to develop the framework for ‘political terrorism’. In his essay, ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (Weber 1958, p. 77), Weber describes how politics is “not limited to the policies and questions of the day, but rather how the hypothetical parties in question attempt to attain political power and keep that power, their ‘physical force’. Tilley builds

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