JPIL Vol 2 Issue 1 2007 - A3

Petar Bojanić

Centre for Modern Thought, University of Aberdeen (UK)

 

 

 

TERRORISM: TERROR AND EXPLOSION

importance of fire and the construction of bombs[1]

 

More than five years ago the explosions which occurred in New York represented the beginning of the war on terrorism, which is still ongoing. In the meantime many events, in different parts of the world, characterized by more or less destructive explosions, with larger or smaller numbers of victims, have been labelled, without any reservation, as terrorist acts, actions or attacks. Is it possible to explain terrorism by analyzing the relationship between the words terror and explosion (the phrase bomb attacks can be the explosion of an airplane as a bomb, as well as the explosion of a suicide bomber who activated a bomb on himself)? 



[1]  essencial assinalar a importância dos incêndios  da construção de bombas incendiárias como bombas de gasolina na técnica de terrorismo revolucionário. Carlos Marighella, Manual do guerrilheiro urbano (Minimanual of the Urban Guerilla), 1969. The Brazilian revolutionary defines terrorism as: Terrorism is an action, usually involving the placement of an explosive or firebomb of great destructive power, which is capable of effecting irreparable loss against the enemy /O terrorismo é uma ação, usualmente envolvendo a colocação de uma bomba ou uma bomba de fogo de grande poder destrutivo, o qual é capaz de influir perdas irreparáveis ao inimigo/.

Lenin, in his  text From the Defensive to the Offensive (Ot oboroni k napadeniju) published in September 1905,  speaks of the passing from individual terror to military operations, together with the people. The bomb has ceased to be the weapon of the solitary bomb thrower /odinocki bombista/, and is becoming an essential weapon of the people. ( Bombs can be manufactured anywhere and everywhere. They are now being produced in Russia on a far larger scale than any of us know. ) Matters in Russia are obviously heading towards that. Consider reports in the legal newspapers about bombs found in the baggage of peaceful steamer passengers. Lenin Collected Works, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1972, volume 9, pp. 284-285.

 


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