Heath-Kelly, Charlotte. (2012) Rethinking ‘Waves of Terrorism’ : globally situating the struggles of EOKA and the Italian militant left. Journal of International Relations Research, Vol.1 (No.1). pp. 55-70. ISSN 2050-1838

Abstract

This article interrogates the militant struggles of the Cypriot anti-colonial movement (1955 – 1959) and Italian leftist groups of the 1970s and 1980s. It uses the conflicts to suggest a reinterpretation of David Rapoport’s prominent thesis, which identifies four waves’ of ideologically driven terrorism. Rapoport’s thesis has generated much engagement within Terrorism Studies, but remains contested. This article selects conflicts from his ‘waves of terrorism’ to posit the contrasting importance of global antagonisms in the production of terrorism. The militancies of the EOKA organisation in Cyprus and Italy’s experience of left-wing political violence are selected from Rapoport’s second and third ‘waves’ respectively. This article uses historic investigation of the conflicts to suggest that attention should be focused on global forces rather than ideology, suggesting a different model of the ‘wave-like’ appearance of armed groups based upon antagonisms within global ordering. Rather than conceiving the organisations as actors following ideological prescriptions, the article conceives ‘waves of terrorism’as performing a reconsolidation function for global ordering– helping to perform the overcoming of antagonistic divisions between East and West, colonised and coloniser. The article does not analyse the individual or group level dynamicsinvolved in the production of terrorism then,butinstead posits an international dimension to the production of violence where ‘waves of terrorism’ function within the reordering of international politics.

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