This author attempts to clarify the meaning of the term ‘terrorism’ and argues that the tendency to treat terrorism as an ideology is the product of confusion and that once this is understood, we can see, in the light of a more definite analysis of terrorism, that the tendency to treat terrorism as always immoral raises issues of inconsistency and even hypocrisy. The author also makes tentative suggestions about what categories of target may be morally legitimate objects of revolutionary violence, and discusses some lines of objections to his overall approach.