Democracy, Revolution and Terrorism

The roots of modern terrorism are deep and can be found in the slow emergence of state power, the ideology of democracy and the conception of the individual. Early European writers, such as St Augustine (d.

The French Revolution (1789-94) was the real watershed moment in the intertwined histories of terrorism, state terror, democracy, nationalism and individualism. Revolutionaries introduced a new language of both individual and collective rights, as well as justifications for state power based on them. Meanwhile, attacks on symbols of royal and aristocratic power grew in number and intensity and resonated powerfully among revolutionaries and the broader population. As the Revolution grew more radical, its proponents carried out even more displays of symbolic violence, such as attacks on Church property and aristocratic reactionaries. The coming of war in 1792 between France and its conservative neighbours drew a European-wide battle line between popular and monarchical sovereignty. When the moderate Charlotte Corday assassinated the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat in the summer of 1793, revolutionaries interpreted it as a violent act meant to intimidate supporters of the new French republic.

When the Bourbon dynasty and European conservative elites were restored after Napoleon’s defeat, sub-state, conspiratorial groups became the principal users of what today we would recognise as terrorism. One example was the Carbonari, who plotted terrorist actions that they hoped would spark popular revolutions against the monarchies of France and Italy. Carbonari plans included prison breaks, assassinations, and coordinated efforts to sow chaos. In the end, Carbonari cells, which were active in the 1810s and early 1820s, did little beyond recruiting members, hatching plots, and engaging in Masonic- inspired oaths and rituals that were awash in symbolism and revolved around bloodthirsty denunciations of the Catholic Church and monarchical tyranny.

The more important point is that groups such as the Carbonari represent the transition from terrorism as a state to a sub-state phenomenon.

The conservative powers of Restoration Europe - the most significant of which were France, Prussia, and the Russian and Habsburg empires - identi­fied themselves as opponents of revolution and protectors of the traditional pillars of society: monarchy, nobility and the church. These governments used the military as well as traditional legal, economic and social privileges to preserve their holds on power, but they also increasingly turned to new, even ‘liberal’ forces to preserve their position. Chief among these forces was industrialisation. Conservative states co-opted or aligned themselves with emerging capitalists through contracts, favourable tax policies, the provision of critical infrastructure (roads, canals, ports and eventually railroads), and the use of law and force to quell labour disturbances.

The Industrial Revolution encouraged and was accompanied by other ‘revolutions' that led to the growth of the size, reach and effectiveness of bureaucracies, militaries and security forces - in short, the growth of state power. This bureaucratic expansion took many forms, including the growth of the means to surveil, tax and conscript citizens, as well as to shape lives and dominate spaces through the development of infrastructure, public works and public health.^[929] Another manifestation of urbanisation and bureaucratisa- tion was the establishment in the second quarter of the nineteenth century of permanent, uniformed police forces which could be used, on the one hand, to combat crime and ensure a minimal level of safety and, on the other, to suppress labour gatherings and disturbances as well as public protests for more rights and freedoms.

Meanwhile, during the mid nineteenth century the intellectual framework for terrorism developed despite the lack of terrorist acts per se. The crucial figure was Karl Heinzen, a Prussian radical democrat who participated in the upheavals of 1848-9 in his homeland. Shortly thereafter he published a series of articles entitled ‘Murder', in which he stated that although killing is always immoral, in practice the state praises its soldiers for killing during war, its patriots for acts of tyrannicide during ‘proper' revolutions, and its hangmen for executing criminals. Meanwhile, the state denounces those who fight for democracy, liberty and the people's rights. Heinzen argued that states are themselves simply the expression of the interests of the wealthy and that the concepts of morality and justice are relative. Therefore, governments should not be able to reference those standards when violently oppressing their opponents. Moreover, true freedom fighters should not shrink from using violence. ‘Let us, then, be practical', he wrote. ‘Let us call ourselves mur­derers as our enemies do, let us take the moral horror out of this great historical tool.' The dilemma that freedom fighters faced was that states possessed more than just the faux moral and legal standing to suppress democratic movements; modern states also had the economic, logistic and demographic ability to overwhelm those who would take up arms against them. The answer, Heinzen said, was for revolutionaries and democrats to fight against well-armed states by using terror, conspiratorial organisation and destructive new technologies - in a word, terrorism (although he did not use it). In the end, he drew the Machiavellian conclusion: ‘the path to Humanity' could pass successfully ‘through the zenith of Barbarity'.^[930] In doing so, Heinzen appropriated the moral arguments of the Enlightenment concerning civil rights, democracy, liberty and emancipation, but used them to justify terror, violence, even mass murder. These rhetorical devices were later used by many movements and individuals - which, of course, were unlikely ever to have heard of his name - that have used terrorism.