Post photo: Trump supporters shortly before storming the US Capitol | © Tyler Merbler - https://www.flickr.com/photos/37527185@N05/50812356151/
Massacres, attacks or assassinations are not always the same as terrorism. But even if one can actually speak of terrorism, there are different sides to the coin.
Already in the 1970s I learned that “After all, people who are terrorists to one nation might be ‘freedom fighters’ to another.“ (Brian M. Jenkins, International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare, June 1974).
A recent work on terrorism can be found at the State Center for Political Education in Thuringia, which is run by Lars Berger and Florian Weber although it was already written in 2008.
But it is probably more interesting to investigate why “ordinary” people become excessively violent, even so suddenly and seemingly completely unexpectedly.
Latent and “normal” violence is simply part of being human, but people have been weaned off it more or less successfully for centuries, or at least they have been given sufficient opportunities to compensate.
Very few people, if there are such specimens at all, are likely to be completely non-violent fellow human beings, once Jesus of Nazareth and maybe also Mahatma Gandhi apart.
In the next few days and weeks, we will certainly be able to hear one or two new interpretations of the topic — I am already looking forward to it.
[[https://iiics.org/h/20240715135700]]
"I think terrorism is a war of the poor and war is the terrorism of the rich."
Peter Ustinov, Interview with Bettina Krohn (The world, 22.4.2003)
