i dont recall the dictionary definition of the term "terrorist" ever being in question. but ok...if you want to play this game, at least use a decent dictionary.
this from the oed:
Quote:
1. As a political term: a. Applied to the Jacobins and their agents and partisans in the French Revolution, esp. to those connected with the Revolutionary tribunals during the ?Reign of Terror?.
1795 Hist. in Ann. Reg. 169 The terrorists, as they were justly denominated, from the cruel and impolitic maxim of keeping the people in implicit subjection by a merciless severity. 1795 BURKE Regic. Peace iv. Wks. IX. 75 Thousands of those Hell-hounds called Terrorists..are let loose on the people. 1818 HERVE Beauties of Paris II. 296 (Jod.) He assisted La Fayette in endeavouring to defend the king from the terrorists. 1877 MORLEY Crit. Misc. Ser. II. 83 That pithy chapter in Machiavelli's ?Prince? which treats of cruelty and clemency..anticipates the defence of the Terrorists.
b. Any one who attempts to further his views by a system of coercive intimidation.
In early use also applied spec. to members of one of the extreme revolutionary societies in Russia. The term now usually refers to a member of a clandestine or expatriate organization aiming to coerce an established government by acts of violence against it or its subjects.
1866 FITZPATRICK Sham Sqr. 180 Miss G, the daughter of a Wexford terrorist, directed many of the tortures which were so extensively practised. 1883 Harper's Mag. Jan. 315/2 To [Russian] Terrorists it guarantees..security on condition of a..pledge to abandon.. the revolutionary party. 1905 Westm. Gaz. 20 Sept. 2/1 Several notables are believed to be more or less implicated in the actions of the Terrorists. 1947 Ann. Reg. 1946 60 The latest and worst of the outrages committed by the Jewish terrorists in Palestinethe blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 1956 H. NICOLSON Diary 29 Oct. (1968) 311 When people rise against foreign oppression, they are hailed as patriots and heroes; but the Greeks whom we are shooting and hanging in Cyprus are dismissed as terrorists. What cant! 1969 E. J. HOBSBAWM Bandits viii. 101 The war between police and terrorists is one of nerves as well as of guns. Whoever is more frightened has lost the initiative. 1977 P. JOHNSON Enemies of Society xviii. 240 The Baader-Meinhof gang of ultra-Left terrorists. 1979 Spectator 20 Oct. 20/1 (Advt.), In this enthralling autobiography the author of Maquis..retravels the course of his life from his childhood to his war-time exploits as a terrorist in the Resistance.
2. Dyslogistically: One who entertains, professes, or tries to awaken or spread a feeling of terror or alarm; an alarmist, a scaremonger.
1803 SYD. SMITH Wks. (1859) I. 26/1 The terrorists of this country are so extremely alarmed at the power of Bonaparte. 1805 W. TAYLOR in Monthly Mag. XIX. 570 Some book of the religious terrorists, which tended to infuse the alarm of foul perdition. 1861 GEN. P. THOMPSON Audi Alt. Part. III. clxxv. 209 What becomes of the pretended terrorists at home who affect to be alarmed for the condition of every white female in the Antilles?
3. attrib.
1801 HEL. M. WILLIAMS Fr. Rep. I. xi. 113 The defeat of the terrorist-party. Ibid. xvi. 194 Under the terrorist government of France. 1856 GOLDW. SMITH in Oxford Ess. 295 An advanced and slightly terrorist school of philanthropists. 1884 in Pall Mall G. 11 Sept. 7/2 In the struggle we are engaged in with the terrorist and autocratic Governments of Europe, and especially with that of Russia. 1937 KOESTLER Spanish Testament vi. 132 The civilian population...whose sympathies they could but alienate by terrorist acts. 1955 Britannia Bk. of Year 263/2, 756 Africans executed..incl. 219 for Mau Mau murders and 508 for other terrorist crimes. 1979 R. PERRY Bishop's Pawn viii. 130 We weren't dealing with ordinary kidnappers. We were faced by a relatively sophisticated terrorist organization. 1983 Listener 19 May 8/1 Terrorist theory..says that the brigades should be subdivided into tight terrorist cells.
Hence terroristic, -ristical adjs., characterized by or practising terrorism; also terroristically.
1850 Bentley's Miscell. XXVIII. 407 This was the Government styled ?terroristical? by the Austrians! 1875 POSTE Gaius I. Comm. (ed. 2) 81 This terroristic law..was not abrogated till the time of Justinian. 1884 STEPNIAK in Contemp. Rev. Mar. 327 The gradual progress of the terroristic tendency under the influence of Government repression. 1887 Century Mag. Nov. 54 The leaders of the ?terroristic? or extreme revolutionary party. 1919 M. BEER Hist. Brit. Socialism I. II. ii. 103 The terroristic acts and wars into which that social earthquake had degenerated. 1945 R. HARGREAVES Enemy at Gate 308 The terroristic procedure associated in these days with Nazism, Fascism and Bolshevism. 1951 MCWHINEY & SIMKINS in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 590/2 The klansmen used the methods of violence as extensively as any of the other white terroristic organizations. 1972 Econ. & Polit. Weekly 1 Apr. 692/1 Consisting almost exclusively of guerilla squads, they [sc. the Naxals] moved secretively and acted terroristically. 1977 Time 26 Sept. 9/1 The background of terroristic acts is connected with a deep hatred of bourgeois society.
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a better defintion generates some surprises...
first the term has a long long history of being applied to people who work from the left. not necessarily from a left position that i would endorse (bader-meinhoff? i dont think so)--but it originated in bourgeois hysteria directed in particular at the left.
you could argue that the term is about bourgeois hysteria from the outset. and it remains so now.
maybe this is why the reagan administration made such extensive use of it--the term carries with it the illusion of continuity with previous formations that were feared and fought (often with extraordinary and self-righteous violence) by the bourgeois order. "terrorism" makes the post soviet world safe for the right, helping it to stabilize itself by enabling it to pretend it still operates in a bipolar world.
second: fearmongering is also defined as terrorism (definition 2)---this quite apart from tactics involving violence. if you take that one seriously, then the bush administration would in fact be terrorist in its usage of the term.
see the definitions slide around...assigning it to a (in this case more or less fictional to the extent that the idea of a unified movement is a fiction) movement is a political act. what was being discussed was the politics of that assignment, and the politics of its effects.
in the hands of the bush administration, the notion of terror functions to imply an adversary that is symmetrical with the united states. on equal footing logistically, a real and present danger--except that you are far more likely to be hit by a car than fall victim to an attack---except for the overwhelming organizational assymetry that seperates the united states from any series of small militant organizations--except for the reality the administration purports to describe by using the term, in short.
the term is used to structure fear.
it names nothing, it locates nothing, it helps nothing.
having dispensed a priori with any question of political motivation, it groups together actions by their surface features. it is analytically worthless.
"terrorism" is not descriptive: it is a mobilizing tool being played for every last drop of juice by the right: it is a politial weapon the primary target of which is the american people, the aim of which is to force support for otherwise unjustifiable policies, like the war in iraq.
it is the signifer around which the adminstration's politics of impunity has been legitimated.
it describes the world as this administration prefers to see it: what more could a reactionary administration like this one hope for than a reason for a state of emergency? what better culprit to pin the causes of a state of emergency on than one which is everywhere and nowhere, omnipotent (capable of striking anywhere, any time) and impotent (small groups scattered around the world...)
it is a militarized fantasy without a referent that is coherent--it refers to the phantom of alqaeda--it refers to all of islam--it refers to arbitrary "radical" sectors of islam---it refers to all and none--which makes it little more than license for racism (witness the many many posts from people on the right who make no coherent distinction amongst muslims when they get up in a righteous lather about their fear of death).