ABSTRACT
The term terrorism has acquired a pejorative connotation, not only as governments use it but also as revolutionaries or nationalists use it, although this negative usage has not always been the case. 3 The word has become a political label rather than an analytical concept, used to condemn one's enemies rather than to specify what terrorism is and what it is not. Terrorism is irreversibly linked to questions of legitimacy in international as well as domestic politics. Although it is theoretically possible to consider terrorism solely as a method or strategy of opposition, in practice the condemnation of terrorism as a means is often interpreted as an implicit disavowal of the ends it serves. Whatever the intended meaning, in asserting that an action in question is terrorism, one is understood as communicating opposition to its objectives. Emotional associations are unavoidable in using the terms of ordinary political discourse, such as aggression, imperialism, racism or terrorism. It would be naive to pretend that terrorism is an innocuous term. But ends must be separated from means in politics.
