The Differences Between Terrorism And Organized Crime

Although terrorism and organized crime may share some similarities, they are very different. On the one hand, organized crime is a way of committing crimes. These crimes require a certain level of planning and coordinated participation from several people.

On the other hand, terrorism is characterized by extremely violent incidents. Terrorism uses violence as a means of attacking civilians and eliciting a political response. Thus, terrorism seeks to confuse, intimidate or irritate citizens and / or their government. Terror seeks international and public attention, to cast doubt on a political regime, to provoke internal conflicts in threatened societies, and to support and mobilize supporters.

Terrorism and organized crime

Above all, organized crime seeks profit. Criminal organizations want money – the more money, the better. Terrorism, on the other hand, seeks to change systems, gain independence, or gain some form of religious or political advantage.

However, these two also have certain similarities. Terrorist organizations need money to finance themselves. For example, they will have to have money to buy weapons, organize recruitment and produce various forms of propaganda. They must also prepare for attacks and actually carry them out. All this costs a lot of money.

Organized crime wants to exploit, but not change, the systems that are already established in society. Terrorism wants to transform or destabilize existing institutions or force their representatives to adopt measures that go against their principles and interests, but which will at the same time promote the message or changes the terrorist group will get through.

The frequency of criminal activity

In short, both terrorism and organized crime seek to gain economic benefits and to have an influence on political activities. The big difference is that while profit is the ultimate goal of organized crime, terrorism has more political goals. Despite these differences, they both use and participate in various forms of criminal activity.

However, the frequency of criminal acts is more frequent in organized crime than in terrorism. This means that crimes are more likely to be committed by criminal organizations than terrorist groups. This is because organized crime is more willing to sacrifice security to get more funding. In contrast, it is very rare for an act of terrorism to lead to profit. Rather rake the opposite. Therefore, terrorist groups often prefer security.

Use of violence

One last but significant difference between terrorism and organized crime is the way they use violence. The effectiveness of a terrorist attack depends on its influence. A terrorist organization can attack a small group of people to intimidate many. Therefore, the more serious and extravagant the attack, the greater the response of fear and therefore also the media coverage. However, the attack can be counterproductive if many people die as a result. If that happens, they will not have as many supporters, and in order to have political influence, they must have people.

In stark contrast , organized crime seeks anonymity.  They do not want us to know about them or what they are doing. They commit their crimes in secret to avoid endangering their organization. For this reason, organized crime tends to avoid all forms of publicity and works hard to avoid the spotlight.

Finally, although terrorism and organized crime have some things in common, they are vastly different in many areas. Organized crime wants to increase its revenues, they want profits, while terrorism wants political change. In addition, organized crime is usually very anonymous, while the violent attacks of terrorism are designed to attract attention.