notion of state terrorism recollect the origins of the term in 18th Century France when the government carried out its ‘reign of terror’. 62 Terrorism has, therefore, historically been seen as a potential strategy for both state and non-state actors. Evidence of state terrorism can be seen in the events of Stalin’s USSR during the 1930s, in which the state enforced repression upon the population. 63 The emergence of the Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) school can be seen as having encouraged debate as to the reliability of such a belief. These scholars argue against such a conception. Colin Wight, for example, suggests that the “state’s claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force” allows it to lawfully employ acts of violence and evade the labelling of a ‘terrorist organisation’. 64 This attempt to reject the notion of state terrorism can be said to symbolise an attempt to view terrorism through a more contemporary lens. One of the more recent developments within terrorism studies has been the notion that the post-Cold War environment has seen a fundamental change in the operations of terrorist organisations. These arguments range from assumptions of their heightened lethality and risk to their transitioning to more decentralised organisational structures. 65 Statistical evidence does indeed suggest that terrorism is 62 O’Kane, pp. 9–11. 63 Paul Rogers, 'Terrorism', in Security Studies: An Introduction , ed. by Paul D. Williams (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 221–234, p. 224. 64 Colin Wight, 'State terrorism: who needs it?', in Contemporary Debates on Terrorism , ed. by Richard Jackson and Samuel J. Sinclair (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012), pp. 50–57, p. 54. 65 Matthew J. Morgan, 'The Origins of the New Terrorism', Parameters , 34.1 (2004), 29–43.
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