What is state terrorism? How would it be possible to differ it from authoritarian policies of states to enforce law and order?

Résumé du document

The term state terrorism is of topical interest since the 1970s. Originally, it was used by the USSR during the Cold War era to describe the Operation Condor in South America. This strategy of massive repression of left-winged insurrectionary movements, led by the most authoritarian regimes of the region, involved a wide-spread use of intelligence services, assassinations and torture. The origins of state terrorism go back centuries ago. The French Revolution and the period of terror that followed from June 1793 to July 1794, initially with Maximilien Robespierre, gave birth to the word terrorism. Although quite marked by its context, his definition of the revolutionary process gives many clues concerning any terrorist's intellectual path: "If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible...?

Extraits

[...] Extreme-left parties often denounce the disproportionate mediation of the terrorist threat as it distracts the attention of the population from economic, social and political realities. When a form of terrorism responds to another . Bibliography Internet sources http://www.icj- cij.org/icjwww/icases/inus/inus_isummaries/inus_isummary_19860627.htm http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/348/90/IMG/NR034890.pdf http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/CIA Human Res Exploit H0- L17.pdf http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorisme_d%27%C3%89tat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarianism http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_madres_de_la_plaza_de_Mayo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_state_terrorism_by_United_Stat es_of_America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KUBARK_Counterintelligence_Interrogation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Americas http://stanislaskazal.canalblog.com/archives/histoire_du_black_panthers_pa rty/index.html Books, publications, videos Le Monde, 02/07/96, Réprimer partout le terrorisme, Alain Marsaud Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers Volume 44, page 127. Gérard Chaliand and Arnaud Blin, Histoire du Terrorisme pages 215- 227 Maximilien Robespierre, On the Principles of Political Morality, February 1794 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison page 62. [...]

[...] That is terror not only makes a revolution possible, it also makes a revolutionary State viable and capable of achieving its sacred goal, democracy here. Still, the concept of terror must not limit itself to young and ebullient States, focused both on their political and philosophical survival, and can also apply to solid States with solid institutions. Forty years before the French Revolution, on 1 March 1757, Damiens the regicide was condemned to public execution in the Place de Grève in Paris. [...]

[...] The existence of precedent similar behaviors (infiltration of CIA agents in Huey Newton's entourage - Black Panthers president, and the assassination of Fred Hampton with his pregnant wife while sleeping for instance), which can directly be compared with typical state terrorism methods, let a reasonable and legitimate space for doubt. To conclude, we can say that state terrorism differs from authoritarian practices by nature (it is not a form a political power nor political organization), but also on its means and goals. Terrorism is indeed to be seen as a pre-emptive and destructive strike, not as a source of redemption as would often argue authoritarian states. [...]

[...] Then, just as state terrorism, previously described as plural and changing, authoritarianism needs to be gradually analyzed. Almost every kind of government shows authoritarian practices, resulting in a great variety of possible behaviors: absolute monarchies are of course almost always authoritarian; as well as dictatorships, despotisms, theocracies and “militarchies”. Indeed, their governments and the few who gathers all the powers do not acquire legitimacy from their people. They self-attribute it to themselves. Democracy is, on its part, a bit more hybrid. [...]

[...] This is, in my opinion, strongly different from authoritarianism and represents sometimes just a new form of populism, sometimes of conservatism. Authoritarianism is, in this case, not seen as autonomous: a power that only acts by imitating the people's common opinions. Originally, I would say that authoritarianism is, on the contrary, so autonomous that it even carries its own definition of the Good and the Bad. And it is precisely when it usurps this mission that authoritarianism reveals its true nature, become dangerous, and thus comparable to terrorism. [...]