Resisting terror: civil action and non-violent resistance to terrorism in Basque country

This book on civil action and nonviolent resistance to terrorism in Basque Country explains the impact of collective action on the decline and end of the separatist armed group ETA. It reflects on how activism by the peace movement helped to delegitimize in society the use of terrorism to achieve political goals by diffusing democratic and nonviolence norms. It explores how civil society actors created new discourses that challenged ETA’s political project. It describes how civil resistance to the armed group undermined the prestige of militants within the community and helped to limit the social reach of violent extremist narratives. It depicts the efforts by social movement organizations to protect the fabric of society from the effects of political violence. It details how peacebuilding efforts by civil society groups were instrumental in building pressure from ETA’s own political movement to leave the armed struggle behind and later facilitate ETA’s disarmament and disbandment. And it indicates how the findings from this study can be extrapolated to go beyond this case and inform terrorism studies, civil resistance, peace and conflict, and social movements scholarship more widely.