The events of 11 September 2001 confirmed the existence of a new type of terrorism, inaugurating an era that is fundamentally different from pre-9/11. An academic definition of terrorism would be a violent act committed by individuals or a group, not during a war, in order to achieve a political goal. Modern forms of political terrorism became popular during the end of the 19th century. Terrorism was a powerful political tool in Europe when used by the two major ideological political parties (fascism and communism) during the 1920s and 1930s and even before that in the Tsar's Russia. When the term "modern terrorism" is used it generally refers to the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, when terror organizations became more militant and developed more effective attack methods, mostly manifested by brutal armed acts such as the Red Brigades in Italy. Furthermore, in the 1970s the sophistication of terror organizations grew as they attacked more sensitive civilian targets in order to impose the highest political pressure possible upon governments and political processes from which terrorist or put-side groups were generally excluded.
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