ter World War II terrorism referred to anticolonialist nationalist groups, and from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s it generally designated left-wing and nationalist groups. Beginning in the 1980s, terrorism was identified with so-called "rogue regimes" (White, 2003, p. 5). By the turn of the 21st century, terrorism was most strongly linked to nonstate actors, chiefly religious fanatics or nonreligious, cause-specific fanatics.
History is only one context in which terrorism is defined. Terrorism arises in the context of wars, which themselves vary as to type; in political contexts, whereby the politically powerful control the labeling of terrorists; in the context of repression, which may involve governments in terrorist-like violence; in media contexts, wherein media outlets throw the term around rather loosely; in contexts of crime, although distinguishing terrorism from crime is controversial; in the context of religion, which becomes a rationale for terrorism; and in regard to a "specific form" (p. 7) of terrorism, such as technological terrorism, ecoterrorism, cyberterrorism, or narcoterrorism.
In reviewing common definitions of terrorism, White also points up competing academic theories of the term and how to define it. Some theorists favor a very simple and general definition that comes down to the use of force against innocent people to achieve a political objective. More specific and elaborate definitions, however, suffer by their partiality. That is why White comes down on the side of a more simplified definition of terrorism, though he admits that defining the term is a vexed problem.
White cites one modern theory that terrorism is "warfare on the cheap" and another that uses the test of political illegitimacy and attacks on the innocent. Some adhere to the view that government repression = terrorism, while White wants to distinguish between repression and terrorism. There is also a view that terrorism is violence d...