Keyword

Axes

Upper Left Quadrant Details Upper Right Quadrant Details Lower Left Quadrant Details Lower Right Quadrant Details Details

Quadrants

Outline

The upper left quadrant incorporates the repressive type of terrorism, through penetration of each and every individual with the norms of the system and through control of conduct by mechanisms of fear and anxiety, the ingredients of terror. The URQ is best characterized as counterinsurgent (BBB), oriented toward maintenance of the regime through power by employing mercenary groups, voluntary goon squads, and eventually more formalized but freely operating groups, such as the Brown Shirts, the Black Shirts -- to cow individuals, groups and neighborhoods whenever necessary to atomize the population. The LLQ perhaps best epitomizes the common sense of terrorism, an individual act of extreme symbolic violence - the assassination of a monarch or president, the blasting of the World Trade Center. Yet anarchist dissolution of authority seldom is an isolated enterprise. It is more often connected to a tightly organized group, with a wider community basis - be it bound by religion, class, or nationalism - and a strategy for conquering power. In fact, the combination of individual sacrifice and community values may well be the factor turning contemporary terrorism into an outright politcal actor. [Flavia Carassini]