Terrorism between Social Movements, the State and Media Societies

Abstract

Research on terrorism and on social movements both mainly originate in the turbulent 1960s, when social movements, student protests, urban riots and acts of political violence gained massive public attention. Political violence labelled as terrorism is a phenomenon which is inseparable from a complex process of communication between the terrorist militants, state institutions and media (societies). The following overview focuses on five overlapping historical phases of sub-state terrorism and its repertoires of violent action since the late nineteenth century, and discusses the relation of terrorism to social movements, to the state and to media-based communication. Moreover, it will be enquired how (urban) militants labeled as ‘terrorists’ communicated with supportive social milieu, how these militant activists became radicalized and how terrorism could be pacified. Terrorist violence is rarely the tool of fully-developed social movements but something which emerges at a time when the strategies and aims of these movements remain vague or when these movements are on the demise. The geographical focus of this article will mainly be on Europe, Africa, Latin America and the USA.