“Terrorism should be defined in terms of the illegal use of violence for the purposes of influencing somebody’s behaviour, inflicting punishment, or taking revenge. … It has been practised on a larger scale, globally, both by governments and by private groups. Private groups fall into various categories. The political terrorist is only one category out of many others. …

For every lost by unofficial terrorism, a thousand have been lost by the official variety. … There was a rise of fascist governments in third-world countries, particularly throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. All these fascist governments – in Indonesia, Zaire, Iran, South Korea, and elsewhere – were fully supported by one or the other of the superpowers. They have committed a huge amount of terrorist violence, the source of which is the state …

Regarding the political private terrorists … there is … very little inquiry as to what they are about. If I had to identify a few factors explaining the roots of terrorism, I would say first of all the desire to be heard. … It’s normally undertaken by small helpless groupings that feel powerless. The Vietnamese never committed terror. The Algerians did not commit terror of this kind.

Secondly, terrorism is an expression of anger, of feeling helpless, angry, alone. you feel that you have to hit back. …

Another face is a sense of betrayal, which is connected to that tribal ethic of revenge. … Bin Laden … saw America as a friend; then he sees his country being occupied by the United States and feels betrayed …

Victims of violent abuse often become violent people. The only time when Jews produced terrorists in organised fashion was during and after the Holocaust. …

Finally, the absence of revolutionary ideology has been central to the spread of terror in our time. … The Marxists argued that the true revolutionary does not assassinate. … Social problems require social and political mobilization, and thus wars of independence are to be distinguished from terrorist organizations. The revolutionaries didn’t reject violence, but they rejected terror as a viable tactic of revolution. That revolutionary ideology has gone out of the movement. In the 1980s and 1990s, revolutionary ideology receded, giving in to the globalized individual. I’ve spoken in very general terms, but these are among the many forces that are behind modern terrorism.”

aus: Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire. Interviews with David Barsamian. Cambridge, Mass.: South End 2000, S.95-98.

Abb.: Elisabetta Benassi: Casse-pipe, 2016, im Internet.

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