Barometer | 9 July 2015

Naming terror

David Cameron and the BBC argued over what to call the terror group most papers refer to as Isis — with the PM preferring Isil and the BBC continuing to call it Islamic State. Two more terror groups whose names caused problems in Britain:
— The Red Army Faction was a German terror group which existed between 1970 and 1998, when it declared itself dissolved. Faced with the acronym RAF, British media preferred to call the group by its nickname the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
— In the 1970s Italy was terrorised by a group known as the Red Brigades, most notorious for kidnapping and murdering the former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. In Britain it was seldom known by its Italian acronym, BR (for Brigate Rosse), because of the conflict with Britain’s nationalised railway system.

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