One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter/Today's terrorist is just tomorrow's state leader

Résumé du document

The famous example of the General De Gaulle can corroborate this claim. After his radio address in June 1940 exhorting the French people to resist Nazi occupation, he organized the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in England and led the interior resistance which used terrorism including bombings and Nazi officers' assassination. After the Third Reich's defeat, he led the provisory government until his resignation and later founded the Fifth Republic. From the Nazi point of view, the Free French Forces were considered as a terrorist organization whereas from the French point of view, they were assimilated to the Resistance. Consequently, both points of view perfectly show that it's not so easy to define what terrorism is. It implies to question your values. Which kind of so-called terrorist action can be considered as legitimate? Is fighting for freedom legitimate enough?

Extraits

[...] Their common aim is to collapse the State either in order to liberate people from its oppressing cogs for the anarchists or in order to change society and hasten the social and political change for the Marxists or Neo-Marxists. Finally, Townshend defines another type of terrorism: the nationalist terrorism. This terrorism merged with the spread of the idea of the State-Nation at the middle of the 19th century. It demands the independence, tries to preserve the national identity[3] and fights against a foreign or imperialist government which leads the territory. The assassination of the Archiduc François-Ferdinand by a Serb nationalist in Sarajevo in June 1914 remains the most emblematic nationalist terrorist act. [...]

[...] One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter / Today's terrorist is just tomorrow's state leader The famous example of the General De Gaulle can corroborate this claim. After his radio address in June 1940 exhorting the French people to resist Nazi occupation, he organized the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in England and led the interior resistance which used terrorism including bombings and Nazi officers' assassination. After the Third Reich's defeat, he led the provisory government until his resignation and later founded the Fifth Republic. [...]

[...] Even if the Marxist or Neo-Marxist terrorism is ideologically close to the Communist Party, especially during the Cold War. For instance, ETA targets members of the Guardia Civil and high ranking officers (assassination of the admiral Carrero Blanco in 1973 and of the military governors of Madrid and Guipuzcoa in 1979) and the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica (FLNC), created in 1976, killed only once a representant of the State, the préfet Claude Erignac on February 6th For instance, FLNC's attacks are mostly aimed at public buildings, touristic infrastructure or military buildings and other symbols of French control. [...]

[...] The movie Battle of Algiers” constitutes an interesting cinematographic interpretation of the War of independence. The particularity of the Palestinian nationalist terrorism is that it mainly targets civilians in contradiction with most of the other nationalist terrorisms. The case of Algeria is interesting because, even if the political contacts between the Algerian and the French governments were rather cold until the presidency of Jacques Chirac, the economic exchanges between the two countries was always very important especially because of the Algerian natural resources. [...]

[...] Nonetheless, the Palestinian situation is very complex because Arafat, became Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, didn't control the other terrorist movements (Hamas and Al-Aqsa Martyrs'Brigades) that's why the peace process is interrupted and the terrorist attacks keeps killing Israeli civilians. To conclude, in 1798, the French Academy defined terrorism as the system of terror in reference to the terrible reign of Robespierre. At this time, the academicians didn't realize yet that terrorism was not homogeneous. The terrorist movement, or the so-called terrorist nebulous, is composed of many different movements focused on various claims but they have in common to use the same methods and they have contacts between them in spite of their ideological divergences sometimes. [...]