Defining Terrorism

[ish mailian]

My apologies if this has been posted to the list before.

What is terrorism? Few words have so insidiously worked their way into our
everyday vocabulary. Like `Internet' -- another grossly over-used term that
has similarly become an indispensable part of the argot of the late
twentieth century -- most people have a vague idea or impression of what
terrorism is, but lack a more precise, concrete and truly explanatory
definition of the word. This imprecision has been abetted partly by the
modern media, whose efforts to communicate an often complex and convoluted
message in the briefest amount of airtime or print space possible have led
to the promiscuous labelling of a range of violent acts as `terrorism'.
Pick up a newspaper or turn on the television and -- even within the same
broadcast or on the same page -- one can find such disparate acts as the
bombing of a building, the assassination of a head of state, the massacre
of civilians by a military unit, the poisoning of produce on supermarket
shelves or the deliberate contamination of over-the-counter medication in a
chemist's shop all described as incidents of terrorism. Indeed, virtually
any especially abhorrent act of violence that is perceived as directed
against society -- whether it involves the activities of anti-government
dissidents or governments themselves, organized crime syndicates or common
criminals, rioting mobs or persons engaged in militant protest, individual
psychotics or lone extortionists -- is often labelled `terrorism'.

    Dictionary definitions are of little help. The pre-eminent authority on
the English language, the much-venerated *Oxford English Dictionary*,

https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-terrorism.html
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