NCJ Number
191302
Date Published
1998
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines conditions likely to inspire terrorism.
Abstract
Terrorist actions are never the product of any one motive. Terrorism offers meaning and excitement to rootless, unemployed, and unskilled young people without hope of opportunity in legitimate occupations. Terrorism has always been a source of power, a means of ego reinforcement, and an outlet for a propensity of violence. Public disregard for the motives of the terrorist is apparent. Terrorism has often been defined as “theater” in which attention is directed to the cause or grievance of the terrorist. The sovereign state has an ultimate degree of moral authority to which the subnational group cannot aspire. In pursuit of its national interests, a sovereign state is justified in using violence in ways not tolerable in subnational groups. Related to complaints of unequal treatment are feelings on the part of militias and Islamic militants that they are invisible, powerless, subject to ridicule, and do not count. They dramatize their anger in the demolition of symbols of power. Diversity can be the root of further problems. It is viewed as a freedom not to have to accommodate to the views of others, not to accept the traditional compromise of majority rule on the basis of common standards. But there is no greater excuse to take the law into one’s own hands. Groups representing the increasing number of the world’s poor, aware through improved communications of how much better off the industrialized countries are, and better able to bond with one another, may try to raise the consciousness of the world by using terrorist acts.