Having dealt with terrorism for a substantial part of my life, I have arrived at my own definition:
Terrorism is the art of winning an argument by making disagreement fatal. Through violence, blackmail, abduction or coercion, the terrorist persuades his fellow citizen to abandon his freedom of thought and subscribe to a borrowed ideology. Not because the argument is convincing, but because the alternative is worse.
The victim eventually becomes an accomplice, not through conversion but through self-preservation. The terrorist calls it “ideological and historical commitment;” the victim calls it, ” just another day”.
It is, after all, a remarkable philosophy: the less persuasive your ideas, the more ammunition you require. Debate is replaced by intimidation, consent by survival instinct, and public support is measured by how few people dare to object.
The final achievement is a society in which everyone agrees, nobody believes, and the man with the gun congratulates himself on having won the argument.
Terrorism, in short, is the triumph of a weak argument backed by a strong weapon—and the extraordinary vanity of mistaking fear for respect.
