From Left-Democratic Extremes to the Republican Reaction

When very first used, the term “terrorism” described actions by government.

When very first used, the term “terrorism” described actions by government. The French Revolution in 1793-94 was denounced as “terroriste” under the Jacobin dictatorship of Maximilien Robespierre. For 13 months, Paris was governed by the Committee on Public Safety, which oversaw mass executions including 2,639 guillotined and more than 50,000 shot or dying in prisons.

Terrorism has been applied to the “red terror” conducted by the Bolsheviks after they overthrew Russia’s first democratically elected government; to Red China and communist regimes in Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, and North Korea; to Iran; and to many other governments. One cannot say that National Socialist (Nazi) Germany “used” terrorism; the Nazi government was terrorist by its very nature—root and branch.

In our era, however, actions by government no longer are characterized as “terrorism.” “Terrorism” now applies only to attacks on government. Each allegation of “terrorism” calls for a moral judgment. The “terrorism” of the African National Congress in South Africa, opposing the apartheid regime, was generally applauded. It was acknowledged as using terror for political ends, but widely viewed as justified. Since the 1960s, the term “terrorism” has been applied to groups such as the New Left U.S. Weathermen, the Northern Ireland conflict, the European Red Army Faction, the 9/11 attacks, and many more.

As applied to governments, the charge of “terrorism” is 100 percent negative. If a government, instituted to bring objective legal processes to the defense of human rights, turns its legitimate power to systematic violation of rights, then that beyond question is a reign of terror. The very institution of government created to defend human rights has become a rogue attacking instead of defending its citizens.

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” states the most crucial truth about “terrorism.” Those who attack a dictatorship (a “terrorist” government) are freedom fighters.

The famous statement “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” can be a relativistic throwaway line; but it also states the most crucial truth about “terrorism.” Those who attack a dictatorship (a “terrorist” government) are freedom fighters. Those who attack a legitimate government that protects human rights, including freedom of expression and honest elections, may be terrorists. Or they may be revolutionaries or guerillas. It has been said that terrorism is the resort of “the weakest of the weak” because armies can attack directly, guerillas although weaker have tactics to fight armies, but terrorists violently attack civilian populations by relying chiefly on psychology, not weaponry on a battlefield.

Governments today do not label other governments “terrorist” (or some equivalent). They accept as trade partners Russia and the People’s Republic of China.

Governments today do not label other governments “terrorist” (or some equivalent). They accept as trade partners Russia and the People’s Republic of China. They sanction the nightmare dictatorship in North Korea only because of its nuclear weapons. They accept as legitimate the governments of Cuba and Zimbabwe. And the fanatical regime in Iran is targeted for its nuclear weapons program. Whatever its policy, a government—because it is a government—will not be labeled “terrorist.” Its policies can be criticized, certainly. Its human rights record deplored and sanctions applied. But “terrorist”? No. The concept no longer applies. Just: please, try to do better.

In each instance, it is the government under attack that applies the label “terrorist.”

In each instance, it is the government under attack that applies the label “terrorist.” Palestinians who resort to violence to protest Israel’s refusal to create a Palestinian state on Palestinian terms are called “terrorists.” The government of China labels as “terrorists” the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority resisting Beijing’s dictatorship by demanding separation or greater autonomy.  China’s leaders rage at refusal of other nations to label the Uyghurs “terrorists.”

It has been pointed out that there are more than 100 identifiably distinct definitions of “terrorism.” What the definitions have in common is the designation of certain crimes as not merely criminal, certain violence not merely illegal, but as super-criminal or super-illegal because of the intention that drives them. What drives them, of course, is the intention to overthrow government or force policy changes resisted by that government. Certainly, their mode of operation is another defining characteristic. Terrorists conduct a campaign of attacks on civilian (“innocent”) populations to induce panic that will produce popular demand for changes in policy the terrorists seek.

For a government to create a new category of crime defined by opposition to that government, including peaceful opposition, and then to stigmatize it as super-crime—and to punish it accordingly—implies that obedience to government is legally paramount.

The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA) now in Congress seems to introduce yet another concept of “terrorism.” Not in the language of the act itself, but in its explanatory preface—and in the arguments put forward by its sponsors—DTPA conceives “terrorism” as crime that is racially motivated. Or, to be more specific, crime that is motivated by white racism or “white supremacism” or “white nationalism.” Some of the most leftist Representatives (a.k.a. “the Squad”) nevertheless oppose DTPA for fear it could be applied to Blacks as well as whites.

The essence of this version of terrorism is not an attack on government. Nor is it the deadliness of the violence employed. Born of the postmodernist philosophical outlook, which interprets all politics as “oppressor versus oppressed,” DTPA embeds the supposed ideology of the oppressors in the concept of “terrorism.” The oppressors, of course, are whites and the oppressed are “persons of color.”

The left media, academics, and politicians have campaigned to dub “white supremacism” as “systemic”—part of the American cultural fabric, education, government, business, and all other institutions and sectors. Thus, it turns out (doesn’t it?), that the ideological core of “terrorism” is also the dominant fact of the American social fabric.

Here, the postmodernist ideological delusions achieve a kind of reality. Because what postmodernists deem the greatest evil—white racism—is now to be viewed as inseparable from the greatest crime—terrorism.

Those determined to use anti-terrorism legislation to attack opponents of the leftist “progressive” agenda should remember that in France in late July 1794 the Thermidorian Reaction by Parliament crushed the terror. Robespierre and most of the Jacobins went to the guillotine. Its use having come full circle, it was forever retired.

The reaction (a term, like “terror,” originated in the French Revolution) not only swept away the terror, but all earlier gains of the French Revolution. Reaction turned the political clock back to a conservatism more thoroughgoing than even the conditions leading up to the Revolution. That is the nature of reaction when it finally is unleashed.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 must be understood as reactionary. “Make America Great Again” is a laudable slogan, but a reactionary one. To what was the U.S electorate reacting? To many things, but above all to the betrayal by the Left of the primary tenets of l960s liberalism:

1. The 1960s’ demand that equality under law apply equally to Black Americans and that Americans judge and deal with Blacks according to their character and merits became, by 2016, a demand for racial quotas favoring Blacks in higher education admissions and a demand for “reparations.”
2. The 1960s demand that the differing sexual preferences of all individuals be tolerated and that stigmatic references to sexual lifestyles be shamed, by 2016, had become the demand for legalizing same-sex marriage, even though equality in fact had already been secured at law via civil unions.
3. The 1960s’ demand that capitalism invest some of the incredible wealth it created in cleaning up water and air polluted in the drive for prosperity, by 2016, had become the demand that all industrial production be dispensable in the name of controlling projected global surface temperatures a century hence.
4. The 1960s’ demand to eliminate poverty and provide medical care to older Americans, by 2016, had become a demand for a socialist economy, including fully nationalized health care.

The French Revolution went from “man’s rights” and “liberty” to the terror. Liberalism in America did not abandon its principles; it transmuted them into their opposites. From equal treatment to preferential quotas. From toleration of different sexual preferences and lifestyles to demand no biological differences be considered different. From demand that the Industrial Revolution clean up after itself to dismantling the Industrial Revolution. From demands for “more humane” capitalism to demand for socialism.

Left-liberalism had earned the Trump reaction. We need a leader far more philosophically astute than Donald Trump to steer the explosive force of reaction.

Left-liberalism had earned the Trump reaction, the summons to make America great, again. When reaction came, in 2016, left-liberals literally went berserk with horror, fear, and rage—as though their valid principles of the 1960s were being reversed. But they had reversed those principles themselves.

Now, the leftist Democrats seek to smear the reaction that elected Trump “white supremacy,” “white nationalism,” and “racism”—and in turn to identify those with “terrorism.” All but a tiny fraction of the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump know that their votes had nothing to do with “white supremacy”—that the claim is one more ploy of “identity politics.”

They will recognize the vicious politics of DTPA, and the second impeachment of Donald Trump, as one more long stride away from remnants of 1960s liberal principles. When the next reaction comes, as it surely will come, it may sweep away what we all view as initial genuine progress of 1960s liberalism. And then, go much further. Because that is what political reactions do.

We need a leader far more philosophically astute than Donald Trump (whose virtues were his businessman’s commonsense and his appreciation of America), to steer the explosive force of reaction toward not the past but the future that embodies:

1. Consistent American individualism enshrined in law.
2. Consistent property rights and contract law.
3. Consistent Constitutionalism.
4. Radically limited government functions at all levels.
5. Surplus budgets and, thus, shrinking debt.
6. Sweeping deregulation, especially related to environmentalism.

If you have understood this article, however, you will realize that all those goals will be interpreted—and damned—as “white supremacism.” And intellectual rationalizations for terrorism. Leftist Democrats in government and the media do not intend to bother struggling against arguments for individualism, capitalism, and freedom. Their best attempts have been refuted again and again.

Now, they will argue only about “systemic racism,” “white supremacists,” “white nationalists,” “racially motivated” policy proposals—and, of course, the omnipresent threat of “domestic terrorism” conflated with racism.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.