Terrorist - The Word - The Origin

While watching the video here www.abovetopsecret.com... on what defines a terrorist, I was thinking, where did this word come from and why is it so prominent in my consciousness, I don't remember it always being like that. It seems that the word terrorist has been forced into the world's consciousness. It's used everyday in the news and on TV everyday now

After doing so research on it this is what I found....

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

pragmasynesi.wordpress.com...

MUCH as George W. Bush’s presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Mr. Bush’s presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st- century conservatism.

Soon after the storming of the Bastille, pro-Revolutionary elements came together to form an association that would become known as the Jacobin Club, an umbrella group of politicians, journalists and citizens dedicated to advancing the principles of the Revolution.

The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries — the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.

The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.

By 1792, France was confronting the hostility of neighboring countries, debating how to react. The Jacobins were divided. On one side stood the journalist and political leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who argued for war.

Brissot understood the war as preventive — “une guerre offensive,” he called it — to defeat the despotic powers of Europe before they could organize their counter-Revolutionary strike. It would not be a war of conquest, as Brissot saw it, but a war “between liberty and tyranny.”

Pro-war Jacobins believed theirs was a mission not for a single nation or even for a single continent. It was, in Brissot’s words, “a crusade for universal liberty.”

Brissot’s opponents were skeptical. “No one likes armed missionaries,” declared Robespierre, with words as apt then as they remain today. Not long after the invasion of Austria, the military tide turned quickly against France.

The United States, France’s “sister republic,” refused to enter the war on France’s side. It was an infuriating show of ingratitude, as the French saw it, coming from a fledgling nation they had magnanimously saved from foreign occupation in a previous war.

Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France — old Europe, they might have called it — the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror.

Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism — Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot’s newspaper — and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.

Even the Jacobins’ dress distinguished “true patriots”: those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.

Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 — “domicilary visits,” they were called — were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”

Robespierre — now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism — condemned the “treacherous insinuations” cast by those who questioned “the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest.” He warned his political opponents, “This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty.” Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation — indeed, to protect liberty itself.

If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.

On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.

Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

The word was used, as said above, to describe those who hate freedom. But now it's used all over and in different context and for means that don't make sense.

White House Calls Use of the Word ‘Terrorists’ to Describe Tea Partyers ‘Inappropriate’ and ‘the Product of An Emotional Discussion’

abcnews.go.com...

In his televised "Meet the Press" interview Feb. 8, President George W. Bush was never asked a question about "terrorism." Yet he used the word (or a variant) 22 times. The word explained, and justified, everything - past, present and future.

Few American politicians or commentators dare to question the conventional wisdom that "terrorism" is the greatest threat facing America and the world. If so, the real threat lies not in the behavior to which this word is applied but in the word itself.

It is no accident that there is no agreed definition of terrorism, since the word is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning. At the same time, the word is extremely dangerous, because people tend to believe that it does have meaning, and they use and abuse it by applying it to whatever they hate as a way of avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior.

www.commondreams.org...

A World Ensnared by a Word

You know the west thinks of a Terrorists as a Middle Eastern Extremist who wants to Kill Americans.

The reality is Terrorism is just a tactic anyone can use, using fear and terror to influence and control people.


That is why 9/11 is the most successful terrorist attack in history, regardless of what actually happened that day, People are STILL terrified.





I can tell you all one thing, that I know for sure. When you are at war with an idea, it is impossible to kill it with bullets. No amount of bombs, guns, or fire can kill an idea.

The only thing that can kill an idea, is Another Idea.
Truth in Fact.

reply to post by truthinfact


Exactly this word instills so much fear into people and now has no clear definition to "what a terrorist is." As said in other threads "if you support the founding fathers, your a terrorist" or "if you disagree with the US government, you are a terrorist" People that want to restore America to it's rightful ways, are terrorists even though they are fighting for freedom and human rights. You question if terrorism is the true threat to America, you might be a terrorist. A word that has taken control of everything, a word that has stripped away so many rights, a word that gets little kids searched and touched inappropriately in airports, a word that so many people have died over.

Originally posted by truthinfact
You know the west thinks of a Terrorists as a Middle Eastern Extremist who wants to Kill Americans.

The reality is Terrorism is just a tactic anyone can use, using fear and terror to influence and control people.


That is why 9/11 is the most successful terrorist attack in history, regardless of what actually happened that day, People are STILL terrified.





I can tell you all one thing, that I know for sure. When you are at war with an idea, it is impossible to kill it with bullets. No amount of bombs, guns, or fire can kill an idea.

The only thing that can kill an idea, is Another Idea.
Truth in Fact.

edit on 23-12-2011 by truthinfact because: (no reason given)

Few American politicians or commentators dare to question the conventional wisdom that "terrorism" is the greatest threat facing America and the world. If so, the real threat lies not in the behavior to which this word is applied but in the word itself. It is no accident that there is no agreed definition of terrorism, since the word is so subjective as to be devoid of any inherent meaning. At the same time, the word is extremely dangerous, because people tend to believe that it does have meaning, and they use and abuse it by applying it to whatever they hate as a way of avoiding rational thought and discussion and, frequently, excusing their own illegal and immoral behavior.

So they created an idea - terrorism. they created this idea to justify everything they do. Everything we do can be classed as terrorism, the idea folds its self round everything as the word its self has been taken from it original context. 9/11, whether the OS was true or not, it was a brilliant footstep to introduce the word terrorism, the word has wrapped it self round our society putting everybody in fear of them, or being one.

Thank you so much for sharing this. Star and Flag. i'll be watching this thread, it should generate some good conversation, thank you.

It might be useful to try and pin the most current connotations of the word, particularly as it is employed by the media.

From here:

...Large media outlets such as Newsweek play a significant role in how the term Terrorism is used and understood (they are not innocent bystanders, or mere “messengers,” as they tried to claim). What was most striking about Newsweek‘s three-day discussion of what is and is not Terrorism was that virtually nobody attempted to define what the term meant.

It is that lack of definition that is the source of most of the mischief. The reason no clear definition of Terrorism is ever settled upon is because it’s virtually impossible to embrace a definition without either (a) excluding behavior one wishes to demonize and thus include and/or (b) including behavior (including one’s own and those of one’s friends) which one desperately wants to exclude. As Brulin explains, this dilemma is often “resolved” by countries trying to create definitions that simply bar the possibility that they themselves could ever engage in Terrorism (as exemplified by the long-standing efforts of the U.S. to insist that Terrorism is, by definition, something that only non-state actors can engage in, even as it labels other governments “state sponsors of terrorism”).

This is gonna get ugly, quick should we fail to hash out a strong, sharp, legally codified consensus on what this word means, and how it should be used:

Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack’s worldview contained elements of the tea party’s anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with “the Left” (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America’s poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants). All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices...

Despite all that, The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of “terrorism,” even though — as Dave Neiwert ably documents — it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term. The issue isn’t whether Stack’s grievances are real or his responses just; it is that the act unquestionably comports with the official definition. But as NBC’s Pete Williams said of the official insistence that this was not an act of Terrorism: there are “a couple of reasons to say that . . . One is he’s an American citizen.” Fox News’ Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials: ”I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?,” to which Herridge replied: “they mean terrorism in that capital T way.”

reply to post by mileslong54

I can give you MY definition of a Terrorist, it is the losing side in any war. A freedom fighter is the side that wins. Noam Chomsky has some things to say about modern day terrorism that i personally found very interesting.