The earliest blind attacks in the late nineteenth century marked a transition from older forms of terrorism to modern forms based on the definition of an objective enemy and the distinction between the victim and the target: public opinion. This article seeks to explain how society reacts to this new kind of political violence, how the figure of the contemporary terrorist is constructed as an agent of political violence, between criminal, madman, monster, and activist, and how the analytical frameworks for analyzing terrorist attacks are put in place by the media.