>This seems right. Terrorism is an extreme form of individualist
>politics,
terrorism is a method, not a political philosophy, of course. but it's not clear to me that it is inherently individualist.
for instance, terrorism does not even need to use violence. i spent a good portion of my day yesterday helping reporters with queries about whether there is anything going on in the "hacker underground". i, frankly,know nothing about this because we don't monitor the hacker underground for that kind of thing. but there are people calling up reporters and leaving warnings that there are hackers out there who are interested in bringing down a major power grid or two, messing with the information systems associated with the stock market, screwing with the communications system, etc. (which is why ConEd went ballistic and should have, even though it sucked that it was so racist. all of our clients are on high security alert and especially at their backup locations where most of their important info is. they're not worried about their "storefront" locations, but about the Top Sekrit locations right now.)
Anyway, most of what i've seen are idiotic threats and i've spent time showing the reporters why they are idiotic. nonetheless, it's an example of the way in which such things _could_ terrorize if the goal is to disrupt people's lives and bring into bold relief just how dependent on technology, etc they really are. What does this accomplish? it gets the wider population to agitate for change in order to appease the terrorists.
i'm not sure if it is individualist--i don't know what you mean by that. but it is quite conceivable that leftists might use terrorist methods in order to bring about social change during a period of revolutionary violence that i think you've said is highly likely. leftists will unlikely ever have access to the weapons of war.
terrorism as a strategy emerges primarily in a technologically complex society under conditions in which we have, ostensibly, outlined rules for engaging in warfare. it is, in part, the use of complex technologies and bureaucratic rules _against_ those whose societies are dependent on those technologies and rules. it is a way for the "little guy" to harass the "big guy". as my son said, "oh like you mean in the movie Home Alone?"
it is the result of the fact that a person or group of people have a political goal and do not want to or cannot work within the system to achieve it. they cannot because they are less powerful than those who dominate the political system. they use a _method_ we call terrorism in order to achieve their ends. they do so because they want to influence wide swaths of people--get them to change their opinion. if you can terrorize them, make them feel that their lives will be continually and unpredictably disrupted, then you can get people to agitate for change within the system.
terrorism isn't only propaganda of the deed. consider for example the possibility that the concerns about chem or bio warfare. it may well be that our terrorists have no intention of actually doing anything of the sort. instead, consider that they simply inquired about crop dusters, etc. to scare us. easier and cheaper than actually _doing_ something and achieves a similar effect.
consider that this operation cost about $200,000. That's a low-rent operation compared to how much it would cost the US to incur the same amoutn of damage on an enemy.
kelley