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PARTISAN REVIEW
context terrorism is rooted both in the jacobin and Communist tradi–
tions, on the one hand, and in the fascist and Nazi movements and
regimes, on the other. At all times and in all places in modern European
history, terrorism's many targets have always included a frontal attack
on the institutions and principles of liberal democracy-which rests on
the principle that all conflicts should be reso lved by discussion, debate,
and compromise. Terrorists, however, believe they are in possession of
absolute Truths, and thus have the right and obligation to kill those who
disagree and who stand in their way.
In
every instance, terrorists are per–
sons with an ideological rationale that facilitates murdering the inno–
cent with a clean conscience fueled by self-righteous indignation.
In
many cases their targets have been political leaders who sought com–
promise or nonviolent solutions to complex problems.
The emergence of terrorism during the French Revolution repre–
sented a regression to the normal practice of war during the wars of reli–
gion in the seventeenth century. During the Thirty Years War, Europeans
did not distinguish between combatants and civilians but between
believers and apostates, Protestants and Catholics. The resulting devas–
tation led to efforts to codify rules of war that would establish such dis–
tinctions, put limits on war and political violence, and establish in the
Treaty of Westphalia of
I648
the principle that peace required tolera–
tion of differing religious beliefs. The American Constitution rests in
part on the bitter European recognition that civil peace required the sep–
aration of religion from the state. By inventing the new category of
"enemy of the people" during the French revolution, the jacobins again
blurred the distinction of combatant and noncombatant and gave
renewed justification to murder as a political weapon. Since the
jacobins, terror remained an important component of European history
when Left/Right and nationalist tensions reached a boiling point.
Terrorism in modern Europe has been the practice of those who
believe that reform and diplomacy are undesirable. As Georges Sorel
argued in his
Reflections on Violence
(a work that influenced the sub–
sequent apostle of the virtues of violence, Frantz Fanon), violence has
an extra-political dimension in supposed ly invigorating otherwise sleep–
ing oppressed classes and in shattering the complacency of bourgeois
society. Apologists for terrorism suggest that it is the result of conditions
of social injustice. Violence in the Sorel ian tradition is a response to the
growing success of working-class integration in Europe and the popu–
larity of peaceful reformism as opposed
to
revolutionary sentiment
within the working classes. Terrorists have repeatedly attacked those
who seek to find negotiated and non-catastrophic solutions to difficult
