Opinion
The problem isn’t the definition of terrorism, it’s that the label determines our response
Waleed Aly
Columnist, co-host of Ten's The Project and academicIt might be hard to believe, but “terrorist” began as a term of pride: a label terrorists gave themselves to legitimise and explain their violence, to distinguish themselves from garden variety criminals and thugs.
The terrorists in question were Russian anarchists in the late 19th century, who most historians say set modern terrorism in motion when they killed Tsar Alexander II by bombing in 1881. By calling it terrorism, they wanted to convey that their violence was strategic and served a grand cause.
Terrorism is now evolving – perhaps even devolving – into something that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from ordinary crime.Credit: Illustration: Simon Letch
Political assassinations were not new, but this was different because the point wasn’t to kill Alexander personally. The aim wasn’t to replace a bad tsar with a better one. It was to abolish tsars altogether, to start a revolution. It was to use terror as a political tool by performing this violence for everyone to see. This was, in the anarchists’ famous phrase, “propaganda by deed”.
All this is worth remembering in this galling week, defined as it was by two stabbings that make you shudder. One in a shopping centre in Bondi Junction, and one in a church in the Sydney suburb of Wakeley. One causing mass fatalities, and one causing serious injuries. One police have designated an act of terrorism, and one not.
That differential treatment has caused much consternation in two main circles, each of which sees double standards at play. First, among domestic violence campaigners enraged that an attack of the Bondi Junction stabbings’ brutality, which police acknowledge was specifically targeting women, is not declared terrorism. And second, among some Muslim community groups who suspect that a Muslim perpetrator will be deemed a terrorist, and a non-Muslim one won’t even if they’re doing the same thing.
There’s good reason to raise such objections. At the same time, I think they are straightforwardly incorrect. That’s because they tend to work backwards. They don’t start with a definition of terrorism and then consider whether the facts of each case fit within it. They start with a sense of injustice, with a set of social and political criticisms and commitments, and use them to decide what should count as terrorism. Here, they reveal a certain truth: that terrorism has become such a loaded term in our culture that it inflames passions in a way other violence does not. But they do so by stretching the term beyond what is analytically convincing.
So, definitions. While there are endless varying definitions of terrorism – one academic effort managed to gather 260 – the anarchist example of 19th century Russia captures two main features on which there is broad scholarly agreement. First, that terrorism’s violence must be in the service of a political cause. Second, that it seeks to inspire fear beyond its immediate victims, and in an audience watching on. In this way, we can begin to see how terrorism is distinct from other violent crime, and even hate crime.
The Port Arthur massacre was an act of mass violence, but it was not terrorism because it lacked a political cause. A racist who comes across a black man in a park and proceeds to assault him is almost certainly guilty of a hate crime. But his crime is unlikely to be deemed terrorism if the violence isn’t intended for an audience. However, the Ku Klux Klan is a terrorist group because it launched violent campaigns of racial intimidation seeking particular political outcomes.
These distinctions work especially well for what we might call classical terrorism: groups and networks with clear political aims carrying out targeted, organised plots. It even works for most “lone wolves” who carry out attacks more or less alone. But these sorts of terrorists – like the Unabomber or the Christchurch terrorist – often make their political motives very clear by writing letters or publishing manifestos.
Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley.Credit: Oscar Colman
The problem is that terrorism is now evolving – perhaps even devolving – into something that is increasingly difficult to distinguish from ordinary crime. Increasingly, the spectacular and theatrical is giving way to the small-scale and crude. Motives are not clear in manifestos, but have to be gleaned.
That’s the difficulty with this week’s stabbings. The church stabbing has several characteristics of terrorism that the Bondi attack doesn’t. It was done at a livestreamed event. A video shows the alleged perpetrator explaining in Arabic that “if [the bishop] hadn’t spoken about my prophet, I wouldn’t have come here”, thereby revealing a particular cause. It’s possible this attack was entirely personal – confined to the clergy he allegedly attacked – but it’s reasonable to presume this was simultaneously a warning to others who might do the same.
In the case of Bondi Junction, the perpetrator gave no reasons. There’s no sense he was trying to publicise his attack for an audience. We might infer misogyny from his focus on women, which makes his victims representative in the way terrorism’s victims often are. But this doesn’t seem attached to some broader political project he would articulate. To find one, we’d have to foist it upon him by some theoretical analysis. And, of course, we’d have to consider his schizophrenia. If he was amid a psychotic episode, for example, if his grip on reality was very low, we’d need to know what kind of ideological commitment it was possible for him to have.
And yet, I well understand the objections. Each is anchored in bitter experience, and seeks to tell a certain truth. The Bondi attack crystallises the sense, indeed the terror, shared by countless women for decades that violence against them is constant, everywhere and downplayed. And similarly, Muslims have spent this century enduring flatly incorrect canards from politicians and pundits such as “not every Muslim is a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim”. Every Muslim is familiar with the ritual of public figures declaring attacks to be Islamist based on no information, and then turning out to be wrong. It happened with Bondi Junction (a privilege lamentably extended on this occasion to Jews as well).
But the real problem isn’t the definition of terrorism. It’s in the fact that the label over-determines our response. That it looms so large in our cultural imagination that it eclipses so much else. What happened at Bondi Junction isn’t made any less horrific if we conclude it isn’t terrorism. The victims are no less dead, and their deaths are no less tragic. The problem of violence against women isn’t any less serious. And if the Wakeley church attack is an act of terrorism, that doesn’t suddenly make it worse than the Port Arthur massacre.
Terrorism is an atrocity, but it is not the only one. We shouldn’t need to apply that label to register our outrage or demonstrate our moral seriousness. We should be capable of being serious enough without it. And if not, that’s something to which we really should object.
Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author, academic and regular columnist. He is a lecturer in politics at Monash University and co-host of Channel Ten’s The Project.
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