“The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”

— Guy Debord, book The Society of the Spectacle

Source: The Society of the Spectacle

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Guy Debord29

French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding mem… 1931–1994

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“I believe that international terrorism is a modern form of warfare against liberal democracies. I believe that the ultimate but seldom stated goal of these terrorists is to destroy the very fabric of democracy. I believe that it is both wrong and foolhardy for any democratic state to consider international terrorism to be 'someone else's' problem…. Liberal democracies must acknowledge that international terrorism is a 'collective problem.”

Henry M. Jackson (1912–1983) American politician

(1979, Jerusalem) [Defending the 'Ancient Dream of Freedom', Paul, Wolfowitz, November 18, 2002, Jinsa.org, http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1366/documentid/1839/history/3,2359,2166,1366,1839]

“State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Tony Jones on Lateline, April 8, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020408.htm. <br class="br">Quotes 2000s, 2002 <br class="br">Context: [Q: do you think the Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters or terrorists? ] They're terrorists - they're both, actually. They're trying to fight for freedom, but doing it in a totally unacceptable immoral way. Of course they're terrorists. And there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it, I oppose it now. But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It's not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.

“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest non radii solis neque lucida tela diei discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

“But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“There is no comparison between the suicidal terrorism of the desperate and the reasoned terrorism of an overarmed state.”

Ilan Halevi (1943–2013) Jewish Palestinian journalist, politician

A History of the Jews (1987).

“There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Salon interview (1997)
Context: All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

“Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

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