terrorism

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Systematic violence in the furtherance of political aims, often by small guerrilla groups.

Types of terrorism
Terrorist groups include those dedicated to a political programme for their country, usually involving the overthrow of the ruling regime: communist and fascist terrorists fall into this category. Terrorism may also be directed by an ethnic majority against a minority ruling group or against an occupying colonial force. Another motivation behind terrorism can be religious fanaticism, linked with left wing, conservative, nationalist, pan-nationalist, or millenarian ideologies. Systematic violence used to press a single-issue, such as anti-abortionism or animal rights, cause can also be seen as terrorism. In many instances of terrorist actions these motivations overlap.

The resort to terror represents a rejection of the democratic political process, so that terrorist groups are typically clandestine and separate from sympathetic political parties, as is the case with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Sinn Fein party in Northern Ireland.

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