Terrorism is justified when it is used against an oppressive regime

The argument

While evaluating the moral justification of terrorism, one should consider the people whose political aims terrorists are trying to advance. In many cases, these individuals have long endured oppressive circumstances. They lack social and political capital. Hence, terrorism becomes a last-ditch effort for them to secure justice. Terrorism can therefore be justified on the grounds of distributive justice. According to philosopher Virginia Held, terrorism is justified when the protection of rights for one group depends upon rights violations being inflicted on others. For example, if both groups have a right to education but only one of the groups enjoys this right, then the group that lacks effective respect for this right may engage in terrorism to regain their rights. Therefore, a choice must be made between two morally bad outcomes. A transition to bring an end to rights violation is better than to subject one group to continued oppression. The power structure in international relations is another reason why terrorism can be justified. The analogy of a patriarchal family illustrates the situation in international relations. In such a family, the legitimate authority is the patriarch or his substitute. If women or younger members carry out a rebellion, the strongest and most public alliances lie with the patriarch. For example, in international relations, when a country faces minority rebellions in its territory, the world powers support that country rather than the minorities. Therefore, the use of terrorist attacks to have a dramatic international impact and recognition can be justified.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Terrorist acts targeted at privileged individuals are, in part, justified by their responsibility for the status quo. However, the status quo is not always the responsibility of all the group members, such as the children of the privileged group. The distributive justice of terrorism would endorse similar harms faced by the members of the oppressed group in the status quo upon the youngsters of the privileged group. This is also the case for the members of the privileged group who actively oppose the oppressive regime. Therefore, terrorism lacks to target the institutional causes of inequalities (such as the forms of government or the constitutional provisions) but rather results in innocent deaths by targeting the privileged groups as a whole. Equalizing rights violations through terrorism rather than by shaping an institutional order fails to promote institutional fairness. This is because institutional fairness cannot be promoted directly by individuals’ actions. It requires institutional modifications. Concerning the point on the international power structure, terrorists indeed play into the hands of their powerful opponents. States suffering from terrorism can win even more international support due to the human rights violations tied to terrorist acts. All publicity is not always good publicity.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Oppression and the absence of political capital establish that a grievance is real and that ordinary redress is blocked, not that this particular means becomes permitted. The premise asserts last resort rather than showing it, and 'last-ditch' is a claim about the exhaustion of alternatives — civil resistance, litigation, external pressure — that the argument never examines. [Rejecting P2] Held's condition concerns how unavoidable rights violations should be distributed, a narrower claim than the position takes from it, and the counter presses the obvious limit: those harmed by an attack are typically not the people responsible for the arrangement, including children and members of the advantaged group who oppose it. The strategic half of the premise also works against itself — if world powers reliably side with states, dramatic attacks reinforce that alignment rather than overcoming it, which the argument offers as a reason for the tactic.