The Different Types of Terrorism

        The Different types of Terrorism        

Sheyanne Glorfield

MacMurray College

Author Notes

This paper was prepared for HSEC 202, Chapter 1-3, taught by Mark A. Lahr.

The Different types of Terrorism

        There are eight different types of terrorism in the world. When you think about terrorism you think of the major ones like Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group it is common in today society. These types commonly overlap because of each similarity these terrorist organization have but are useful in providing a way of telling us about these different groups.

1. State Terrorism
2. Religious Terrorism
3. Right Wing Terrorism
4. Left Wing Terrorism

For example, who they will target and what motivates them to target these places or group of people. Each of these types of Terrorism helps us with understanding and providing a game plan that is necessary for our counter terrorism responses.

State Terrorism

        In all honesty I did not know what State Terrorism meant so I looked it up. Several sources basically say the same thing, which is an act against a foreign power or its own people committed by the government, but it is all very controversial. There has been no doubt that throughout history there has been serval acts of terrorism that the state has committed. One of the most significant one and everyone still knows to this day is Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin’s rule.  According to Zalman (2017), “Military dictators have maintained power through terror… The authors of a book about Latin American stat terrorism have noted, can virtually paralyze a society through violence and its threats”. How it is controversial is because it involves fuzzy definitions and imperfect distinctions between the use of violence and intimidating the people of its own nation.

Religious Terrorism

        Terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, Klu Klux Klan, and Egyptian Islmaic jihad had one thing in common that was there religious ideologies. Some of these infamous terrorist groups like Al Qaeda use “all in” tactics like suicide bombings and are not afraid to sacrifice themselves for their ideologies. They did everything to assert dominance over there people by using their religious beliefs.

Right Wing Terrorism

        I didn’t really understand what this type of terrorism was. I looked the definition up every source I came to be said, “They are motivated by a variety of far-right ideologies and beliefs, including anti-communism, neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, racism, and opposition to immigration.” That got me thinking that all those groups have one thing in common and that’s being white supremacist thinking that them being white makes them better then whoever they targeted. Some of the major and most well-known right-wing terrorist groups are the Klu Klux Klan and Neo-Fascists. Both of those groups had a set ideology and they did everything in their power to get their ideology or beliefs out to the public. For example, Knight stated, “The Klan, which terrorized and killed African Americans throughout the South.”  So many of those groups are present not only in the U.S. but also in Germany, Russia, and other countries still terrorizing people to this day.

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