The Banality of State Terror: The Paradox of Governing Through Fear
By Sam Cooper
Governments have long turned to violence not simply to defeat opponents, but to frighten entire populations into changing their behaviour. Torture, disappearances, executions and proxy warfare can all serve the same political purpose: making the costs of dissent appear unbearable.
But fear is not the same thing as durable political control. A comparison of French counterinsurgency in Algeria, US support for the Nicaraguan Contras and Argentina’s Dirty War suggests a recurring paradox. State terror can produce immediate compliance while simultaneously undermining the legitimacy and stability needed for lasting political success.
The first problem is conceptual. “State terrorism” is often treated as a broad synonym for repression. Yet its defining feature is its instrumental use of violence to induce fear in a wider audience. As Blakeley argues, state terror involves illegal targeting by actors acting on behalf of or alongside the state, with the intention of creating fear and encouraging behavioural change. This makes terror a political instrument rather than simply an act of brutality.
Its effectiveness should therefore be judged on two levels. Instrumentally, does it achieve immediate objectives such as suppressing opposition or disrupting an adversary? Strategically, does it produce lasting political order, security, regime survival or other long-term goals? The distinction matters because a campaign can succeed at one while failing at the other.
Algeria: when brutality becomes counterproductive
France’s war in Algeria illustrates the problem of overt terror. During the 1957 Battle of Algiers and the wider counterinsurgency campaign, French forces used torture, mass arrests, disappearances, internment and collective punishment. The visibility of this violence was part of its logic: demonstrating the state’s coercive capacity was intended to deter Algerian nationalism and restore order.
In the short term, the strategy achieved significant results. The FLN’s networks in Algiers were disrupted and French authorities temporarily restored control. But the same spectacular violence generated profound political costs. Reports of abuses fuelled international criticism, damaged French legitimacy and helped strengthen Algerian nationalist mobilisation.
Rather than securing the continued existence of French colonial rule, the campaign contributed to the political conditions under which that objective ultimately collapsed. France's experience demonstrates the central dilemma of overt terror: the violence that makes it capable of producing immediate compliance can simultaneously make the political order it is intended to preserve increasingly difficult to sustain.
Nicaragua: outsourcing terror
Nicaragua demonstrates a different model: terror by proxy.
After the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, Washington supported the Contra rebels with funding, equipment and training. The delegation of violence allowed the United States to exert pressure while maintaining distance from the atrocities committed by its partners, including assassinations, torture, kidnappings and sexual violence.
Again, the immediate effects were real. Contra forces expanded their operations and placed military and administrative pressure on the Sandinista government. But proxy warfare created problems of control and credibility.
The Contras remained concentrated largely in northern Nicaragua and did not achieve the nationwide political transformation Washington sought. Their abuses also damaged the credibility of US claims to be supporting democracy. The Iran-Contra affair further exposed the political and legal costs of the policy, and US aid was terminated in 1988.
Most importantly, the Sandinista government survived. It remained in power until its electoral defeat in 1990, meaning that the coercive strategy had produced pressure without delivering Washington’s wider political objective.
Argentina: the power (and limits) of secrecy
Argentina’s Dirty War presents perhaps the clearest example of terror achieving short-term coercive success.
Following the 1976 military coup, the junta constructed a highly bureaucratised system of clandestine repression. More than 300 clandestine detention centres operated across the country, while kidnappings and disappearances created a pervasive atmosphere of uncertainty. The secrecy was deliberate: the regime could deny responsibility while ensuring that society understood the potential consequences of opposition.
Instrumentally, this system was devastatingly effective. Left-wing guerrilla organisations were largely dismantled within months, while fear penetrated civilian life.
Yet the regime’s success contained the seeds of its eventual failure. Its definition of the threat expanded far beyond the actual capacity of guerrilla groups, encouraging repression against a much wider population. Even after the insurgent threat had largely disappeared, the machinery of terror continued.
That created a coercive spiral. Continued disappearances and other abuses generated survivor testimonies and growing opposition, while the regime’s legitimacy deteriorated. By 1983, following mounting pressure and political crisis, Argentina returned to democracy.
The paradox of governing through fear
These cases point to a common pattern. Overt terror relies on shock and visibility; proxy terror on delegation and deniability; covert terror on secrecy and bureaucratic organisation. Their mechanisms differ, but their political trajectory is strikingly similar.
Fear can substitute for legitimacy in the short term. It can make people comply, weaken opposition and give governments room to manoeuvre. But that substitution is inherently unstable. The mechanisms that make terror effective immediately—its brutality, secrecy or deniability—can also generate resistance, reputational damage, institutional weakness and political backlash.
This does not mean state terror never “works”. If success is defined narrowly as the rapid suppression of an opponent, the evidence from these cases shows that it sometimes does. The deeper question is what happens afterwards.
Terror can dismantle an organisation without creating a sustainable political order; it can weaken a government without achieving regime change; and it can suppress dissent without producing legitimate authority.
The paradox is therefore straightforward: governments may turn to terror because conventional forms of political control have failed, but terror’s apparent effectiveness can deepen the very conditions that make durable governance difficult.
The history of Algeria, Nicaragua and Argentina suggests that governing through fear may win battles. It is far harder to build a stable political order on what follows.
Today, many states commit similar acts which breach United Nations definitions of state terror, namely the Israeli government with its prolonged genocide of the Palestinian people, and the White House with its designs to inflict fear amongst non-US born citizens through its use of ICE to kidnap and detainment of those deemed 'unamerican' in ways that remind me of the Gestapo and its operations within the Third Reich. No government or politician will ever admit to undertaking acts of state terror, but history tells us that it is a practice that will persist in all its terrifying forms.
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