Understanding Terrorism: A Psychological and Political Perspective

Terrorism has been climbing the charts as a more popular, and more deadly, idea of a political statement. But terrorism differs from ordinary crime in two ways. First, the terrorist’s purpose is psychological, and intended to provoke fear in the community. Second, the objectives of terrorism, are political, including but not limited to the repression of dissent, revolution, national liberation, and forcing people to choose sides between the terrorists and the government. Throughout the years, terrorism has existed, both foreign and domestically. Starting in the year 1865, terrorism has been a change and continuity in time because it continued to be domestic with organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, Japanese Internment Camps, communists,

The Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War, was a period of fear for African Americans. With the formation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867, terror and havoc had been wreaked upon African Americans, along with the strengthening of stereotypes. Being one of the oldest terrorist groups in the world, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used fear as their real objective. This Klan preserved the white supremacy seen in the south, even to the present day. Although most people don’t see the Klan as a group of terrorism, they qualify to the basic standards because their violence is systematic and the objective is political – to maintain supremacy of one group over another. Multiple examples of their violence can be seen throughout time, along with the effects it had on the African American population. One example is in 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a part of the Klan killed a Civil Rights Protestor, a woman. This woman was shot to death while returning from delivering a carload of Civil Rights workers who

Forced internment of these citizens was the result of fear of terrorism, although not labelled as such. However, since most of these citizens had their own communities and businesses, they suffered from economic loss and hardship. Later on, after the internment camps had passed, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed, although the immigration of Asians was still complex as the Japanese were considered undesirable because of their enemy status during World War II. This caused an increase in racism and systematic inferiority of the Japanese race to their counterparts, such as the Chinese, the White man, and the African Americans