Lecture 3 → antecedents to modern terrorism
Case study framework
- Socio political context → context in which it emerges
- Group’s ideology → distinct motivations, some even in contrast between each other
- Key tactics and events→ how they changed nature of the violence they used, key events,
- Outcomes → what happened to them? success, unsuccess, political repression, large political
changes,
- Wider significance
3 forms of political violence
- Reading → using term of terrorism
and applying it retroactively can be
very problematic
- Violence itself is meaningful in period o
time and context,
comparison are problematic
- Antecedent to modern terrorism
- Elements that can be seen in modern
terrorism without necessary fitting the
current definition
State violence – terrorism
Tyrannicide → important
Terrorism
Chronological order though with jumps btween forms
State terrorism in Assyria → Earliest form of violence
Shadder illusion → humans are inherently violent creatures, programmed in social interactions
- Earlierst form of intraspecies violence 430 thousands years ago (human bones w distinctive
evidence)
organized warfare →mass amount of bones 15 thousands yrs ago, organization in tribes-society, but also in
committing mass murder and violence
- beginning of efforts in engaging in warfare
- Emergin depiction of violence → picture showed archers engaging in warfare
- 43 hundredds yrs before common era → organized crime, beginning in efforts,
o Psychological warfare
Neo Assyrian empire → not the violence, but the psychological violence as efficient way to engage → much
easier to use terror as a tool of political expediency over political violence
Noe Assyrian empire
- Lots of evidences
- 10 century BCE → most highly militarized society of its day
o Conflict was a means of securing economic benefits, and to fuel the Assyrian war machine
- Conflict → parallels between Assyrian and third Reich → growth of economy
o Argument by modern scholars → nazi empire needed to continue conquests to conquer
more land (=desire) -- > continueing war machine
- Continue expanding → robbing neibhours
- Engage in colonization → conquered area, take population as subjects, force them into its military
o Larger base, more soldiers, food → bigger and bigger
New military hardware → civilians and
Arose in the 10th century BCE, as the most highly militarized society of its day:
, • Conflict was a means of securing economic benefit, and to fuel the Assyrian war machine.
• Colonization was employed to establish a loyal power base; taxes, food and troops;
• Conquer →
• A standing army was introduced. → distinction = clear distinction between civialns and
professional soldiers ( introduction of uniforms)
• Foreign soldiers where integrated.
• New military hardware were developed →
- Advance in technology →
- The Assyrians began to utilize mass-deportation as a punishment for rebellions as early as 13th
century BC. → when ppl wowuld conquer -> taking population and breaking them up, broke down
existing social order among those folks, no mean in creating a proper rebellion
o Ripped apart from culture, family, to live in a new community → not able to create a good
rebellion
- The purposes of deportation included:
- • Psychological warfare; → if they are conquered by Syrians, this is what’s gonna happen, once u
removed from your village and sent to new community, you have to assimilate → previous identity
is going away,
o Economical contribution → dead ppl cannot join, murdering was unpractical
o see evidence in ruins of mass deportations → camels
• Integration;
• Preservation of human resources.
'State Terror’ in Ancient Assyria
Assyrian kings brutally crushed rebellions and enforced great punishments on the rebellious vassals:
“I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword. I carried off prisoners, possessions, oxen, [and] cattle
from them. I burnt many captives from them. I captured many troops alive: from some I cut off their arms
[and] hands; from others I cut off their noses, ears, [and] extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many
troops. I made one pile of the living (and) one of heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city, I burnt
their adolescent boys [and] girls. I razed, destroyed, burnt, [and] consumed the city.” —Ashurnasirpal II
Clear written evidence of how violent they are and how violence is part of their system
, - Violence → not only on the ground but also visualized
o U can use visualization
o If u asked to bring tributes to the palace, u start lookin on the walls → see what happened
to ppl that didn’t listen, more keen to not rebel
Assyrian kingdom. = practice of violence in a calculated fashinated way _-> economic growth, by displayin u
able to save resources, u don’t always need to use violence if ppl are terrified of your ruling → one of the
first parallelism in modern terrorism
- Violence itself inherently communitive
Ancient Hebrews and tyrannicide (roman historians and religious texts)
Biblical judges served as temporary leaders of ancient Jews.
The stories of Biblical judges in the Book of Judges follow a pattern:
• Israel "does evil in the eyes of God” – the jews ppl do something that upset their god
• The people are given into the hands of their enemies and cry out to God,
• God raises up leader to liberate from enemy, manage to defeat
• The "spirit of God " comes upon the leader,
• The leader manages to defeat the enemy, and
• Peace is regained.
Political violence → seen as educational. They do well and apologize and they liberated from conquest
→ empirical
- Major evidence from religious rtexts, roman and historians
- Book of judges = 6 separate books -→ all follow a similar storiac
o Biblical judges served as temporary leaders of ancient jews
o Same stories happen → they do something evil in the eyes of god
o Conceptuqlization that jews people do something that upset their god, in orde to punish
them god deliver an eenemy
▪ asSyrians, romans
▪ after suffiicen tamountof tiem, they cry and apologiy to god, he emobdie a leader
that manages to defeat the enemy, and than all is well → peace regained
o
political violence seen as education = punished to be conquered, they do well, apologies than liberated
Empirical concepts → book of Judith (his favorite) (important w reformations in England and France in 15
hundreds)
▪ Not part of judges but more compelling story
▪ Judah is invaded by Assyrians.
• Judith is appointed by god to liberate Judith, he does so by seducisng
Holofernes → gets him drunk, pass out, cut his head, than head in town
• Ppl encouraged by the act, able to destroy Assyrian army
• In 15hundreds yr is important → moral justification for killing rotests or
catholic kings
Tyrannicide and ancient hebrews
, - Tyrannicide synonym of redemption
o To be good w god
- Violence is metaphorical and educational
Tyrannicide in Ancient Greece
- Conceptualize it
- Tyrant = morally neutral. In terms of archaic Greek is neither a bad or good
o Today = authoracric, bad jusgjcemt
- Tyrant= Simply someone who had seized power and ruled outside of a state's constitutional law.
They can do actually good things for the people, but if he gains power outside of the mechanism
than he can be seen as a tyrant
o Ex. the lion king → act of killing
▪ Dad and killing of scar afterwords.
Harmodious and aristogeiton
The story → 514 BC, how two individiuals are seen as liberators and tyrannicides
- Motivation not important,
- Start having word coming in
- Sculpures → earliest statues that portrait humans
Historical source → Historical sources:
• Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War
• Aristotle’s The Constitution of the Athenians Harmodius and Aristogeiton assassinated
the tyrant, Hipparchus, in 514 BC.
Harmodius and Aristogeiton are later viewed as martyrs and known as "the Liberators" (eleutherioi) and
"the Tyrannicides" (tyrannophonoi).
Plato = tyrants are mentally disordered → he gives a moral judgement, morally debauched= a tyrant is
inherently a bad person
