RT Article
T1 Legitimating Extremism: A Taxonomy of Justifications for Political Violence
JF Terrorism and political violence
VO 33
IS 6
SP 1237
OP 1255
A1 VandenBerg, Robert J.
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1770925066
AB Terrorism is an inherently communicative enterprise in that it attempts to convey messages using violent means. Furthermore, the effective use of rhetoric is fundamental to the sustainment of militant campaigns. Nevertheless, the literature on terrorism currently lacks a comprehensive blueprint for analyzing terrorist discourse. This paper proposes a framework for classifying narrative frames that serve to justify acts of political violence. Drawing on the social movements literature, it utilizes the jihadist organizations Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State as primary examples to show how militants utilize defensive, moralistic, legalistic, imperialistic, and apocalyptic framing to legitimate acts of terrorism. It also demonstrates how these same categories can be applied to extremists animated by ideologies other than jihadism.
K1 Political Violence
K1 Jihadism
K1 Framing
K1 Extremism
K1 Apocalypticism
DO 10.1080/09546553.2019.1606800