1. Political
terrorism involves an overall, overarching moral philosophy that is used to
justify acts of terrorism, while criminal terrorism generally involves personal
greed and selfishness. This is a very
important point. There is a moral
justification for the use of political terrorism, an ends justifies the means
notion because we are going to yield a better overall social state. There is no such reasoning in the criminal
terrorist.
2. Political
terrorism can involve activities to obtain money, but those dollars are used for
political ends. Generally speaking,
criminal terrorism has an economic basis.
3. Political
terrorists' targets tend to be almost indiscriminate and unpredictable. Usually no one person is particularly the
target, therefore no one is safe.
Criminal terrorists targets on the other hand tend to be more logical -
a bank, an armored car - and the targets tend to be specific people, the bank
official, the driver of the car.
4. Political
terrorists desire to create a long term atmosphere of fear, coercion and
intimidation in the community. Criminal terrorists want to create a short term
fear – scare the banker, get the money and get out of there.
5. Political
terroristic acts tend to be more savage - almost a shotgun philosophy - car
bombs, nail bombs, double bombs all resulting in mass murder. The criminal terrorist tends to be more
oriented to a specific target. Blow up
this bank, hijack this plane.
6. Neither political
terrorism nor criminal terrorism abide by any rules or conventions of war.
7. Often political
terrorists are willing to die for the cause, while seldom do we see criminal
terrorists planning on dying.
8. Political terrorism
differs from criminal terrorism in that political terrorism usually involves
efforts to influence an audience.
Generally speaking, the criminal terrorist does not want a big
audience.
Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism and the Liberal State, London: Macmillan, l986.
Source: https://www.unl.edu/
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