Revolutionary Peacemaking: Using a Critical Pedagogy Approach for Peacemaking with Terrorists

The current global political atmosphere is steeped in fear of, and intense rhetoric about, political violence and terrorism. Amidst this turbulent environment, it is clear that scholars and practitioners need to get beyond the manufactured fear and the hysterical rhetoric, peddled by what we call the corporate-state-military-media complex (or simply, the power complex ), and instead seek a deeper understanding of political groups that defend or deploy the tactics of economic sabotage (property destruction) or armed struggle in order to change repressive and violent social structures (Best and Nocella 2004; Best and Nocella 2006). Such understanding is important to slow down and reverse the current trend among legislative and policy-making bodies and political leaders who increasingly marginalize, demonize, and exclude radical opposition groups from arenas of debate