State terror came first

September 9, 2025

The Académie Française dictionary in 1798 defined terrorism as a “system, or regime of terror” and terrorist as “an agent or partisan of the Terror that arose through the abuse of revolutionary measures” ( The French Revolution and Early European Revolutionary Terrorism by Michael Rapport) In other words, state terror came first, preceding any other kind, the very first example being the revolutionary regime in France, 1793-1794.

Ample examples exist today: the US drone warfare over NW Pakistan 2004-2018; Saddam’s mukhabarat; Assad’s torturers and Israel’s war on Gaza. All these, it might be thought, represent state terrorism – which is a concept that some states are sometimes in a hurry to forget.

So when a state extends the meaning of “terrorism”, then seeks to apply this to sanction a direct action group like the UK’s Palestine Action, for which ordinary criminal law would appear to be sufficient, a group whose avowed aim is to damage or disrupt property linked to Israel’s arms industry or to splash paint on aircraft suspected of involvement in assisting the war on Gaza, it may be worth remembering that originally “terrorism” was a system instituted by a bloodthirsty state, not an individual.