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Terrorism And Terrorism : The Definitions Of Terrorism

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1. Terrorism is a word that brings up many emotions, but no one agrees on a singular definition for it. Chernotsky and Hobbs, define terrorism as “The threat or use of violence to change an existing political order” (Chernotsky and Hobbs 2013: 107). The UN has a similar definition with, “acts of violence that targets civilians in the pursuit of political or ideological aims” (UN Factsheet No 32: 5-6). Both of these definitions agree that terror attacks target civilians with the goal of changing something. They disagree in what terrorists change with Chernotsky and Hobbs say its purely political and the UN says it could also be ideological. The FBI has very specific definitions for terrorism with different definitions for international and domestic terrorism. It has even more reasons why a terror attack may occur with, “Appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping”(VOX, “How do we define terrorism?”). With these varying definitions of terrorism, it is hard to determine what is and is not terrorism. One person’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. In an interview with the Atlantic Martha Crenshaw describes some of the many reasons as to why it is hard to define terrorism such as a person’s view on whether or not a person is a terrorist. Crenshaw states that terrorism is

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