La frustración terrorista - EL PAÍS La frustración terrorista - EL PAÍS, IGNACIO SÁNCHEZ-CUENCA, 26/08/2008
The "propaganda of facts": a summary of "La frustración terrorista" in English on www.eurotopics.net
Spanish sociologist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca analyses in the daily El País the motivations of past terrorist organisations in Europe and draws a parallel with terrorist groups active in Europe today: "In our societies the prevalent view is that terrorism is born of poverty and oppression. But anyone who approaches the subject scientifically knows that many terrorist groups emerged in developed democracies. ... It is easy to confirm that terrorism possesses an almost universal quality. It results from a sense of frustration. ... The inventors of modern terrorism, the anarchists of the late 19th century, chose the 'propaganda of facts' when they realised that the masses did not possess the revolutionary consciousness they had hoped for. ... The Russian Nihilists encountered the same problem in their times. ... The wave of left-wing revolutionary terrorist groups in the 1970s can be seen to some extent as the answer of the most radical to a weakening in ... the mass protests revolving around May 1968. ... They wanted to compensate for the lack of social support for their own position with armed violence. ... Even in the case of al-Qaeda, a group the peculiarities of which have made its allocation to an existing category impossible, you find the same basic scheme. Al-Qaeda emerged as the result of failed attempts to establish Islamist governments."