Response to Reshetnikov

Reshetnikov's paper, ‘Visions of the future: social processes and terrorism in Europe’, raises many important questions about our understanding of terrorism and the emergence of what he calls a ‘terrorist worldview’. I would like to respond with a few points that I believe are central to our thinking about terrorism.

Reshetnikov states, ‘Our democratic values are largely outdated and no longer have the power to attract or inspire our youth but we seem not to realize that we have lost our faith and ideals’. I do not know what group or nationality the ‘we’ in this sentence refers to, but I find this statement both disturbing and contrary to my own political experience. At this moment, democratic ideals are permeating the American presidential elections and they are most certainly not outdated. While there are instances that we can all cite of democracies that are imposed on other countries in a less than democratic way, this does not mean that democratic ideals are passé but merely that, like any social organization or belief system, they can be distorted and perverted through the misuse of power.

Terrorism is not new; it has been around since time immemorial, and although Reshetnikov emphasizes that we must be aware of history, he does not refer to the history of terrorism. A study of the history of terrorist activity quickly reveals that it is a mistake to treat all forms of terrorism as being the same in an attempt to establish or search for a comprehensive cause or motivation. While various forms of terrorism may share certain characteristics, the context in which it arises, the objectives that different terrorist activities espouse, the psychology behind these objectives and the socio-political meaning of the consequences of terrorism differ widely and need to be understood accordingly.

Reshetnikov refers to the ‘kinship myth’ as a factor influencing terrorism. Freud first wrote about the ‘narcissism of minor differences’ and the paranoid mental state that marks nar