Bulgarian Resistance Movement during World War II

By their actions, the PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (PLO) and the Provisional Wing of the IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY are terrorist organizations. But one would not use the term to describe the Polish and French underground resistance movements of World War II. When governments engage in illegal and clandestine kidnapping and murder to intimidate their people--as in the case of the Nazis in Germany and the Argentine military junta in power from 1976 to 1983--the term "state terrorism" is appropriate. One important characteristic of modern terrorism is its quest for spectacular horror effects in order to attract media coverage. Terrorist atrocities like the PLO's midair destruction of civilian airliners and murder of helpless athletes at the 1972 Olympics and school children were perpetrated to publicize a cause. Most of the victims of the Italian Red Brigades and the German Baader-Meinhof gang were selected for symbolic reasons. Another characteristic of modern terrorism is its international dimension--the ability of terrorists to slip across national frontiers, the support given to certain terrorist groups by a few countries dedicated to revolutionary change, and logistical ties that exist between terrorist groups of widely divergent ideologies and objectives ...»