A ‘Historical Turn’ in Terrorism Studies?

Donatella della Porta, Clandestine Political Violence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013; xvi, 326 pp.; US$39.99 pbk; ISBN 9780521146166

Gilles Ferragu, Histoire du terrorisme, Paris, Perrin, 2014; 488 pp.; €23.50 pbk; ISBN 9782262033460

Roger Griffin, Terrorist’s Creed. Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; x, 270 pp.; £25.00 hbk; ISBN 9780230241299

Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Bernhard Blumenau (eds), An International History of Terrorism: Western and Non-Western Experiences, Abingdon, Routledge, 2013; xiii, 318 pp.; £32.99 pbk; ISBN 9780415635417

Martin A. Miller, The Foundations of Modern Terrorism. State, Society and the Dynamics of Political Violence, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013; xii, 293 pp.; US$29.99 pbk; ISBN 9781107621084

After 9/11, interest in terrorism-related research has ‘increased enormously’, resulting in a huge rise in non-fiction books, journal articles, academic courses, and symposia on the subject. ¹ Predictably, the attacks in New York and Washington had also a very deep impact ‘both in terms of how research’ on terrorism ‘was carried out and in terms of what it was focused on’. ² Indeed, there was a significant shift in research, with an extraordinarily ‘lopsided’ focus on topics such as suicide tactics, CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) terrorism and, above all, al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. ³ In other words, the importance and magnitude of the 9/11 attacks redirected the attention of the field almost entirely ‘on the here and now’. ⁴ It is easy to imagine the flipside of this trend: in the debate following the tragic events of 9/11, historical research found (almost) no place in terrorism studies, which were dominated by a ‘de-historicized’ ⁵ approach and a tendency towards ‘a-historicity’. ⁶ Conditioned by the belief that the world was up against a ‘new’ form of terrorism that was different from that of the past and that this ‘new terrorism’ had actually ‘wiped the slate clean of the conventional wisdom on terrorists and terrorism’, ⁷ especially in the period immediately following 9/11, most publications considered knowledge of ‘old’ terrorism and the historical approach ‘irrelevant at best, and obsolete and anachronistic, even harmful, at worst’. ⁸

Actually, this was not a completely unprecedented trend. In fact, since its take-off in the 1970s, the field has been dominated by a social and political sciences perspective. Meanwhile, the contribution to the debate by historians has been scarce, with historical studies mostly absent in terrorism research. That said, there is no doubt that the role of historical scholarship on terrorism became even more marginal in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: between 2002 and 2004 nearly 99 per cent of the articles published in the field’s two most important journals – an analysis of which provides us with a sketch of the general debate – dealt with current events, while only 1.7 per cent had a historical focus. ⁹ Even when historical cases were employed in analyses and publications, they were merely ‘decorative examples’ or were ‘(ab)-used to suit the predetermined needs of experts’. In both cases the specifics of historical approach and methodology were barely met. ¹⁰

However, subsequent surveys of the field have indicated a turnabout and ‘an increased interest in historical cases’ already beginning in 2005–7, both as a reaction to the exclusive focus on the here and now and in an attempt to recuperate valuable lessons from the past. ¹¹ The most recent developments in studies on terrorism seem to affirm this new trend, revealing that the number of historically oriented studies is ever increasing. It seems fair to say that we are possibly entering a new age in terrorism studies. The books and contributions analysed in this article – most of which were written by historians – cannot be properly understood without taking into consideration this new context and tendency. Indeed, in all of them, there is a clear effort to approach both terrorism and counter-terrorism from a historical perspective. Underlining both ruptures and continuities with the past, they also seek to challenge the widely held belief that the world is facing a ‘new’ – unprecedented, unique and peculiarly evil and irrational – form of terrorism that falls outside the confines of previous and established paradigms. In addition, many of them draw on primary sources and/or on fieldwork.

It would have been highly interesting to examine in detail the individual topics presented in the publications. The authors do provide us with a long overdue historical perspective on a series of important topics such as the crucial matter of suicide terrorism; the concept and the dynamics of radicalization; and the complex question of the connection between religion and terrorism (with a particular focus on Islamist terrorism). This article, however, has chosen to focus on the key topics that lay at the core of all of the contributions, namely the definitional dilemma and the relationship between terrorism and modernity. In my opinion, in fact, these two issues are crucial: they constitute the framework which must support any analysis of terrorism, and without which it is impossible to really understand what terrorism is and to grasp its nature.

Most books on terrorism, and especially those with an academic focus, begin with a discussion of what terrorism is and how to define it. Or, more specifically, they discuss the ‘peculiar and long-running failure to reach an agreed definition’. ¹² Though the contributions under review are certainly no exception, they seek to move beyond this failure, by understanding the reasons and origins of such a long-standing deadlock. They provide readers with new ideas and explanatory tools to reflect on the multifaceted definitional dilemma. Some of the authors historically contextualize the definitional debate, producing a very interesting reconstruction of the on-going attempts to reach a workable shared definition of terrorism over the course of the last century, both within academic circles and at the political-institutional-legal level, nationally and above all internationally.

With regard to the academic debate, some contributors persuasively challenge the widespread (often implicit) belief that the term ‘terrorism’ constitutes a sort of conceptual anomaly, noting that similar difficulties are encountered when dealing with ‘any generic “ism” that captures the interest of the human sciences’, like fascism or modernism for example (Griffin, p. 9). Nevertheless, terrorism does present ‘additional complicating factors that make this fish particularly slippery for conceptual nets’ (Griffin, p. 10). With regard to this, the authors thoroughly analyse those elements that in the debate are generally considered to be the most serious obstacles to a definition of terrorism, especially focusing on the following five factors: (1) the emotional weight of the term; (2) the extraordinary heterogeneity of the phenomenon; (3) the problem of value-neutrality, namely the notion that terrorism is an exclusively subjective concept inevitably implying a moral judgment and a ‘double-standard’ approach – a notion perfectly summed up by the often quoted phrase ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’; (4) the observation that definitions of terrorism are often produced by those who aim at constructing counter-terrorist policies; (5) the ‘profoundly pejorative’, stigmatizing and ‘demonizing’, connotations of the word, which also accounts for the ‘reluctance of most terrorists to adopt the label’ (Griffin, p. 10). Faced with these complexities, the authors draw different conclusions. For instance, della Porta opts to abandon the term ‘terrorism’ in favour of the less contested concept of ‘political violence’. Other authors, on the contrary, though acknowledging the challenges posed by the term, choose to adopt it. Among them, with an approach that seems to be the best way forward, some contributors, most notably Griffin, not only use the term, but also advocate the ‘need’ for a ‘definition’ and provide their own version of it.

In fact, in spite of this array of complicating factors, in my opinion, terrorism remains the most suitable concept for describing and denoting the phenomenon in question; and for distinguishing it from other contiguous (and sometimes very similar) phenomena, such as guerrilla warfare or insurgency. Working from the stimulating reflections in the books under review, two general elements emerge as the essential building blocks for a definition of terrorism. Firstly, as Laqueur correctly pointed out several years ago, it seems crucial to adopt a ‘broad’ and, out of necessity, ‘vague’ definition of terrorism. ¹³ In other words, a ‘minimal’ definition that would only include the core elements shared by all different cases of terrorism, excluding the variable and contingent characteristics. ¹⁴ Only this way, can a one-size-fits-all definition emerge, that is, a definition applicable to and capable of describing a plurality of historical cases, without reducing the diversity and complexity of the phenomenon and, at the same time, allowing scholars to investigate the peculiarities of each specific case. Such a broad definition could help overcome divergences of opinion among scholars and allow for a consensus on the basic conceptual framework to be employed.

Secondly, it is crucial that we radically shift our perspective from the actors to the actions and begin considering terrorism as ‘a method, a tactic’. ¹⁵ Rather than labelling and defining people or groups as terrorist(s), as M.L.R. Smith wrote in this same journal some years ago, we should label and define acts as terrorist. In other words, terrorism is something someone does, it is ‘one possible means to an end that can be employed by any social agent in any context’ to attain political objectives ‘through the intentional creation of fear’. ¹⁶ Such an approach to the definitional dilemma would help resolve long-running, problematic questions related to the category of terrorism. It would greatly aid scholars in avoiding moral (an issue also addressed in Miller’s and Ferragu’s books) or subjective connotations. As a tactic, terrorism can be used for what may be judged as either good or bad purposes and can be seen as a justified or unjustified option, a moral or immoral choice. The pivotal point is that, scientifically speaking, any sort of moral or ethical evaluation of an act (or of the agent carrying it out) does not change or obliterate in any way the eventual terroristic nature of that act itself (in this sense, also violence we potentially approve of or judge as moral must be considered to be, in case, heuristically, a form of terrorism). What should be clear is that ‘deciding what constitutes a morally good or bad purpose’, and evaluating whether or not terrorism is justified, are ‘wholly separate’ intellectual activities from analysing a tactic and scientifically defining an act as terroristic – in other words, the conflation of ‘an attempt at description with a moral judgment’ undoubtedly represents a ‘category mistake’. Consequently, if we adopt this perspective, the idea that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ becomes ‘meaningless, because if one thinks about it, clearly one person can be both’. ¹⁷

In addition, adopting this overall approach to the definition of terrorism would help solve another traditionally vexed question: can acts of terrorism also be committed by the state and ‘agents of a State’ (Miller, p. 198)? Or on the contrary, is terrorism circumscribed to acts carried out by sub-state actors? On this point, all of the authors agree that various forms of terrorism can also be inflicted by the state and, in fact, ‘terrorism originally referred to what is now called “state terror”’ (Griffin, p. 10). Their argument is extremely convincing, demonstrating how the aforementioned approach to the definitional dilemma allows us to ‘bring the state back in to the analysis of terrorism’ (Miller, p. 252). The key problem is no longer whether or not a state can be defined terrorist, but rather to insist on the fact that terrorism is a tactic which can be employed by any social agent, meaning that also states – every kind of state, whether democratic or undemocratic – may resort (and actually in the past some have) to this tactic in order to achieve their objectives.

The other key topic addressed in the books reviewed here is the relationship between terrorism and modernity. The contributions express different opinions about how to interpret earlier forms of political violence. Those scholars who advance the thesis of an ‘eternal’ terrorism refer to earlier forms of political violence as ‘premodern’ terrorism. Others suggest, more convincingly, that employing the term ‘terrorism’ in such earlier cases would be unfair, as it would ‘impose’ an ‘artificial coherence’ on ‘men and facts’, ‘from the Zealots in the first century AD up to al Qaeda’ (Ferragu, p. 11). In any case, all the contributions persuasively agree that terrorism (‘modern terrorism’ in the case of scholars supporting the notion of eternal terrorism) is a phenomenon essentially linked to modernity and fundamentally rooted in modern culture. It was, in fact, exactly between the end of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century that the term came into being; that ‘terror was conceptualized’ (Miller, p. 37); that ‘the initial example of self-proclaimed state terror’ occurred with the ‘Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety’; that the first insurgent organizations were born and some individuals started to proudly proclaim themselves ‘terrorists’; and that several texts and theories explicitly advocating and justifying the use of terror were published and widely circulated (Miller, p. 57).

As the books under review insightfully illuminate, the relationship between terrorism and modernity can be analysed from a variety of perspectives. First of all, terrorism can be seen as a reaction, a response to modernity. Griffin’s book masterly deals with this fundamental question. By ‘applying to the phenomenon of terrorism the understanding of the dynamics of Fascism and Nazism’, Griffin identifies the deep ‘roots of fanaticism in the human need for a sacred canopy’, for a ‘nomos’, and in the consequent ‘instinctive, visceral fear of anything that threatens the coherence, vitality, or self-evidence of the nomos’ (pp. 88–9, 195). Elaborating on this premise, Griffin interprets terrorism as a ‘response’ to modernity, defined as a ‘denomizing’, ‘secularizing’, and ‘nomocidal’ force that threatens ‘the human need for a nomos and a heroic narrative arc to imbue life with significance’ (pp. 195, 48, 66, 29). For Griffin, modernity ‘breaks down cultural cohesion’, and ‘gradually brings about an existential situation of irresolvable ambivalence and liquefaction’ (pp. 8, 52). He proposes two distinct ideal types of terrorism, to be understood as two basic alternative types of solutions to the nomic crisis posed by modernity: Zealotic terrorism seeks to defend ‘an existing traditional nomos’ from destruction, to preserve and restore a ‘beleaguered tradition’; while Modernist terrorism seeks to create a new nomos, to ‘renomize the world’, ‘to establish an alternative modernity purged of the iniquities of the present, or to reinstate values and norms which can only be conserved by going forward in time to an entirely new age’ (pp. 21, 30, 61). Griffin concludes, however, that in practice the nomos-creating and the nomos-defending forms of terrorism very frequently blend with one another in a ‘hybridization process’ in which violence is aimed at ‘defending an existing nomos by recreating it as a new one within which it is subsumed’ (a complex hybrid exemplified by Islamism, according to Griffin).

In my opinion, however, terrorism can be interpreted not only as a response to modernity, but also a result, a product of modernity itself. As Rapoport convincingly shows in his well-known analysis of the four waves of terror (published for the first time in 2001 and now republished, in a revised version, in Hanhimäki and Blumenau, pp. 282–310) modernity and modernization provided terrorism with several fundamental technological developments, namely the transformations in transportation, weapons and communication patterns which took place during the nineteenth century. Above all, terrorism should be seen as a product of ‘political modernity’, as a phenomenon essentially linked to the effects of modernity in the political sphere – ‘one of the major features of political modernization’ (Ferragu, pp. 18, 439). The contributions under review cast new light on this crucial topic by outlining several of the specific aspects of political modernity that made terrorism possible. As Miller rightly points out (pp. 21–33), it is also necessary to consider some important processes already underway in the period prior to the French revolution, including: the first stages of secularization; the centralization of the state; and the rise of both the notion of absolute monarchical government and of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. Yet, there is no doubt that terrorism is ‘only intelligible within the broader context of a new style of politics whose advent was symbolized by the French revolution in 1789’; ¹⁸ that it is, indeed, a ‘product’ of the French revolution, the pivotal event of a ‘paradigm-changing era’ (Miller, p. 255).

A series of epochal changes and transformations in the nature of politics related to the French (and American) revolution – and, more generally, to the advent of modernity and to the emergence of mass politics and society – are crucial for understanding terrorism, its genesis, nature, and essential features, as well as its stark divergence from earlier forms of political violence such as tyrannicide. These transformations comprised the emergence of new forms of state legitimacy and the shift in the source of political authority-sovereignty from heaven to earth; ¹⁹ the advent of the doctrine of popular sovereignty and the spread of (modern) democratic ideas; the rise of ideological politics, of ‘isms’, ‘this-worldly nomoi’ (Griffin, p. 49); the appearance of the belief that, as History ‘belongs no more to God’ but to man, it lies within the will power of men to remake it, to establish a completely new political order (Ferragu, pp. 14, 20–1), and even to mould human nature itself; the consequent triumph – across different political cultures – of a myth of revolution, to be intended as a palingenetic transformation; the development and increasing importance of public opinion; the beginnings of the process of sacralization of politics, that is, ‘by taking over the religious dimension and acquiring a sacred nature, politics [goes] so far as to claim for itself the prerogative to determine the meaning and fundamental aim of human existence for individuals and the collectivity, at least on this earth’ ²⁰ (a process which is decisive for a better understanding of both secular and religious terrorism, as it may help us grasp the ‘sacred’ dimension that almost always characterizes terrorism); and finally the development of the parallel process of politicization (and ideologization) of religion, ²¹ which provides the overall framework within which it is really possible to understand the relationship between religion and terrorism.

Some years ago, one of the founding fathers of research on terrorism, Walter Laqueur, wrote: ‘the history of terrorism remains an essential key to understanding the phenomenon’. ²² The works reviewed here confirm this assertion and reaffirm that history is indeed crucial to a proper knowledge of the phenomenon. In concluding, based on some suggestions emerging from the books analysed, I would like to propose a few methodological directions as guidelines for a possible agenda for historical research on terrorism. In my opinion, only an approach which aims at ‘demystify[ing]’ terrorism, at dealing with it as an ‘intelligible, analysable, reconstructible’ phenomenon, at making ‘terrorists more comprehensible, less alien, less demonized, and certainly more human to the vast majority who live outside the charmed but cursed orbit of their fanaticism’ (Griffin, p. 6) allows us to fully understand the complexity of the phenomenon. Marc Bloch, in his well-known Apologie pour l’histoire wrote: ‘Un mot, pour tout dire, domine et illumine nos études: “comprendre”’. ²³ To attempt comprehension – which, needless to say, does not at all imply ‘a level of sympathy and acceptance of what has been done and of who has done it’ ²⁴ – should be the task of the historian also when he deals with terrorism, as many historians have done (and still do) when analysing other dramatic and seemingly irrational and unintelligible phenomena such as totalitarianism or the Holocaust. In other words, when studying terrorism, the chief, albeit complicated and hard task of the historian should be – following the lesson of George L. Mosse – to regain the ‘primacy’ of the ‘narrative of history’ and of the rational understanding ‘over the apparently irrational forces driving fanatical violence’ (Griffin, pp. 22–3). A more complete and rational understanding of terrorism as a historical phenomenon can be reached in several ways. The ‘humanistic’ approach that Griffin adopts in his book – that is, the deployment of the faculty of ‘methodological empathy with the mindset and value-system of the perpetrators’ of the attacks – is without question one of the most valuable and effective. In other words, terrorism can only really become intelligible if ‘understood … in terms of its own goals and values’, if terrorists’ acts and ideas are first of all viewed from the terrorists’ point of view. And this perspective can be extremely helpful also in countering terrorism.

However, such emphasis on the subjective world of terrorists should not lead historians to commit the simplistic (culturalist) ‘fallacy of reducing the causes of terrorism to metapolitical creeds’ (Griffin, pp. 10, 15–16, 196), and of explaining terrorism by only taking into consideration the terrorists’ beliefs and states of mind. As a complex phenomenon, terrorism requires a complex approach, one which, as della Porta’s work suggests, should integrate and bridge the macro, meso, and micro levels, namely environmental/contextual conditions, organizational perspectives and group dynamics, as well as individual motivations. Following such a method – and keeping in mind Bloch’s call for the historian to be like ‘l’ogre de la legend. Là où il flair la chair humaine, il sait que là est son gibier’ ²⁵ –, it is possible to reaffirm an interpretation of terrorism essentially in terms of human choice. At the same time, we must interpret this choice (not always premeditated and not always irreversible) as the result of complex processes that are highly conditioned by and contingent on a series of objective circumstances, subjective factors and dynamics, as well as (neither planned nor foreseen) ‘perverse effects’ (della Porta, pp. 291–2). Finally, historians can make an important contribution to rethinking the ‘role of the sacred in terrorism’ (Griffin, p. 198), both in terms of the sacralization of politics and the politicization of religion.

As the books reviewed here clearly demonstrate, only by historicizing and contextualizing terrorism, identifying both its continuities and ruptures, we can have a more adequate and in-depth understanding of this complex phenomenon. Even more importantly, situating terrorism in broader history allows for a more exhaustive understanding of modernity and the last 250 years of history, of which terrorism has certainly been a constant and prominent feature. Until recently ‘the foundations of terrorism studies in historical research’ had not been ‘very deep’ (Mohamedou in Hanhimäki and Blumenau, p. 240). However, the works analysed in this review and the recent developments in the scholarship on terrorism – both dealing with the overall phenomenon and with some national cases ²⁶ – seem to point to a new phase (possibly a ‘historical turn’) in terrorism studies, a phase in which for the first time history has begun to play a major role. Are we finally entering ‘the age of the history of terrorism’? It is certainly overdue, though it is perhaps too early to say. Several years ago, Laqueur wrote: ‘terrorism is dangerous ground for simplificateurs and généralisateurs’. ²⁷ Historical research can definitely help avoid such pitfalls by dealing in a complex fashion with one the most complex phenomena in recent history.