‘Terrorism’ first entered the English lexicon with Edmund Burke’s anti-democratic fears of the French Revolution. Burke (1790, 1791) characterized the Jacobin ascendancy as a reign of terror. The origin of the word reveals its affinity with a fear of popular uprisings and revolutionary governments. Historical and contemporary surveys of terrorism emphasize its political character. ‘Terrorism’ and ‘terrorists’ were and are value laden epithets used by established elites. Only when the political right, the Girondins, gained control of the revolutionary French government July 27, 1794 (Thermidor) did the democratic leaders, Louis Saint-Just and Maximilien Robespierre find themselves criminalized and executed by a second, reactionary terror.