I recently watched The Weather Underground, a 2002 documentary on the eponymous radical organisation active within the United States during the 1970s. The film may be of interest to those studying radicalisation, insurgency and political violence, as it effectively explores the rise, evolution and demise of a revolutionary organisation. It also raises some semantic/ethical questions about ‘who is a terrorist’.
Let us not forget that the Weather Underground Organisation (WUO) successfully attacked the Pentagon and the State Department, along with the Capitol building and a host of other targets, so a two-bit organisation it was not. That this happened in the United States makes it all the more interesting, because it illustrates that given a particular political climate – the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, student protests – even the most stable of polities can experience the incipient signs of insurgency. It also raises the question of whether it could happen again, given the right (or wrong) circumstances.
Radicalisation and the use of force
One of the more interesting parts of the film is the process by which some members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were ‘radicalised’. This may be an opportune moment to highlight my lack of knowledge about WUO – this post is based largely on this one documentary. With that caveat in mind, it would seem like radicalisation occurred because sections within SDS felt that all peaceful means of making the point had been exhausted. The Vietnam War looms large here, fuelling SDS’s membership and providing it with a central cause, which translated into frequent marches and demonstrations. Yet despite a rapidly growing membership, SDS actions had no effect on US policy or on the Vietnam War, which if anything intensified.
This triggered SDS’s splintering and the creation of the Weathermen. Amid a flurry of causes, this new group was outraged by US government policy in Vietnam and wanted to wake up American citizens to the actions carried out in their name. Perceiving peaceful means as futile, WUO rejected nonviolence as an operating principle. This shift to violence was interpreted in moral terms: failing to take a stand, or doing so in an ultimately ineffective way, would be to acquiesce with acts deemed grossly unjust. From their perspective, silence was another form of violence. So, somehow counterintuitively, they themselves turned to violence.
In October 1969, we witness WUO’s early experimentation with using force to make itself heard. The first attempt is the Days of Rage, an anarchic march of destruction through Chicago, with windows smashed and cars destroyed, which culminated in a brawl with the local police. This was far removed from SDS’s peaceful protests but as the WUO leadership soon realised, indiscriminate violence of this type only served to isolate the group, by scaring away the very people whom the organisation, through its acts, sought to mobilise. At worst, its intended audience flocked to traditional authorities instead, looking to the security forces for protection against this new threat.
This leads to a strategic shift in the use of force, which was henceforth calibrated to gain maximum attention without alienating. From around 1970 onward, what the Weather Underground did was to use carefully targeted attacks to broadcast its discontent with specific government policies. In other words, the group moved toward a radical form of ‘signal politics': following the killing of George Jackson by prison guards, the Weather Underground bombed the Department of Corrections in San Francisco and the Office of California Prisons in Sacramento; following the Kent State shootings, WUO hit the National Guard Association building in Washington DC; to protest against the US bombing of Laos, WUO bombed the US Capitol building; and in response to a raid over Hanoi, WUO attacked the Pentagon.
What is curious about these attacks is the effort that went into avoiding casualties. In some cases, the group would call the targeted building in advance, inform them that a bomb had been planted and have security forces evacuate the premises. The media would then take care of publicising the blast, which WUO would complement with a communiqué claiming responsibility and explaining the act. Through such high-profile yet carefully targeted violent acts, it was hoped the silent majority would be made aware of the cause and ‘self-radicalise’, rather than be scared off by any apparent excess in the use of force.
Were they terrorists?
The use of violence for political messaging may be viewed as ‘terrorism’, and this is typically how the Weather Underground is understood. But is this accurate? Terrorist groups deliberately target civilians to scare or terrorise wider populations into a certain political behaviour. The WUO refrained from such action: they used violence against buildings rather than people, to symbolise their discontent with specific policies and actions, but without killing those held responsible. It was ‘propaganda of the deed’, but without the bloodshed. Accordingly, none of WUO’s attacks resulted in casualties (the one exception has not been definitively linked to the group), and for this reason alone, it is difficult to call WUO a ‘terrorist’ organisation. [UPDATE: this refers to the period between Declaration of a State of War in 1970 to the demise of the group in 1976, i.e. after the ‘strategic shift in the use of force’ discussed above].
Given their zeal and evident organisational capabilities, it is actually quite astounding that the group never crossed the line into pure terrorism, into murdering or maiming American civilians, or even its security forces and appointed officials. From an ethical standpoint, the choice in targeting made the campaign a less obvious target for outright condemnation, which may have been one reason for the relative restraint. Or perhaps there was an uneasiness about killing ones own, or a realisation that ‘killing in the name of peace’ would have made the group the very thing they were struggling against.
Precedence?
For many reasons, WUO’s s approach to violence would appear to offer a more promising route for militant outfits than to attack human targets. Terrorism proper quickly results in blanket condemnation and justifies the harshest retaliatory acts by the powers that be. Intuitively, killing ones own also seems counterproductive, to the degree that these campaigns are competitions for popular appeal and support. By instead sticking to carefully defined rules of engagement, the group can be accused of sabotage, of naivety, of property destruction, but not of terorrism, lest we radically change the meaning of that term. Fewer dead victims, fewer wailing relatives but instead a consistent series of reminders that there is a conflict of interest out there, an alternative to the status quo and a serious and able organisation pushing to make that alternative heard.
This raises the question of why this does not happen more often? Why do virtually all subversive groups opt for terrorist tactics (the Animal Liberation Front is the one modern exception I can think of)? Is it the difficulty of avoiding casualties that discourages such precision, or a conviction among revolutionaries that to get the message across, it is not enough, or perhaps even helpful, to spare civilian lives. Certainly, doing so did nothing for the Weather Underground: it is difficult to see any way in which the organisation satisfied its aims or even affected political life in the United States. Would it have been different had it taken the terrorist route? In terms of avoiding the long arm of the law, its members faced certain jail terms regardless of any restraint in their M.O. (in the end FBI misconduct in investigating and pursuing the group prevented full prosecution). And the way the group is now remembered, it is most often as a terrorist organisation. So perhaps there is simply no incentive for restraint, which may explain why it is so rare. As the old Ibo proverb goes, ‘if you are going to eat a toad, make it a fat and juicy one’.
Briefly, original article off-line, but here is a cache of important information.
This is a pretty good list, but by all means not inclusive:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:hJCY7hXU2zAJ:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2069095/posts+Weather+underground+murders&ct=clnk
This webpage provides extensive links to article that document extensively the Weather Underground’s terrorist activities, and yes, murders.
They were bank robbers (killing guards and by-standers).
There were criminals and terrorists, both.
Jackson was “killed,” but it must be made clear he was killed when trying to escape. He used a weapon smuggled in by his lawyer and in the attempt six people were killed, including several guards. This was no “he was trying to escape” made-up scenario to execute him. No way.
Bad men, evil women, all engaged in murderous killings to advance their “peaceful” agenda.
Gunrunner,
Your link cites one deadly incident that occurred after WUO had ceased to exist. The culprits were former members: the first article in the linked-to site says so itself. That’s a pretty weak basis on which to call the group’s members ‘terrorists’. Criminals – oh yes, definitely, but then that wasn’t the point of this blog post.
More detials here, on their terrorist history and cold-blooded aims:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
And nothing at all about killings during the group’s existence. Great research, GR.
By the way, I assume that various crimes committed by ex-members of the US armed forces (murders and suchlike) are proof that the US armed forces are a terrorist group? Or will you be sticking with simply defining the US as the goodies, so that how an act is judged follows from who does it, not the act itself?
If one views terrorism as simply one mode of the use of violence in order to achieve political ends, i.e. warfare, then I think the Weather Underground still qualifies as a terrorist group. If the US Air Force drops a bomb on a building they believe to be unoccupied–and this has been known to happen–we understand that it is engaging in combat, the way that warfare manifests itself. I’d apply the same standard to the Weather Underground.
In short, the fact that the Weather Underground cared about collateral damage doesn’t mean that they weren’t terrorists.
Yes, but aren’t you conflating warfare with terrorism and combat, all at once. You seem to be saying that if a non-state actor uses violence in order to achieve political ends, then it is by definition terrorism. The USAF does it, it is combat; a non-state actor does it, it is terrorism. That seems a little too blurry for my liking.
I prefer the definition of terrorism as “any action, … that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act”. By that definition, I don’t think that WOU was a terrorist organisation.
The alternative is that we find another definition of terrorism that includes non-lethal acts, such as mass-disruption or cyber acts. Even then you’d need to intend to terrorise to make the grade. Also, I don’t think we should lose touch of the fact that these things come in different degrees of severity and should not be thoughtlessly lumped together into one.
I guess the definitional problem with terrorism is at the root of my comment. The scholarly community doesn’t agree, the US Government doesn’t agree, and the UN doesn’t agree on a definition. Yours is perfectly reasonable, of course, but not beyond challenge. Given the difficulties of defining terrorism, might we not be better simply to talk about different types of war, different types of combat, and different tactics?
Among the problems I have with your definition is that when Al Qaida strikes the USS Cole, that isn’t terrorism. Yet, when Al Qaida strikes other Americans whom it does not morally or legally distinguish from the uniformed military that IS terrorism.
Aside from the comparable morphology of those attacks, the deeper problem is that the terms “civilian” and “non-combatant” are contested, not objective. (AQ says “civilian” is not an Islamically-grounded term and that those who support those in combat are equivalent to combat.)
Back to the Weather Underground case specifically, I’m not sure that it’s a useful distinction to make between terrorizing a population by killing people and terrorizing a population by almost killing people.
So, I guess I’d conclude this by saying that terrorism implies war (though the converse is not true) but that neither, per se, implies lethality. And yes, I do believe that governments don’t do terrorism because they have a legal monopoly on force. (I know that’s controversial, but it seems to me to be the least definitionally problematic. Of course, governments can do all sorts of bad things, but I don’t think it’s helpful to think of them as “terrorism” per se.)
I agree with you 100% on your last point, which is too often missed (because it is an emotive issue). This is also the line taken by the UN High Level Panel, which is from where I stole the definition cited earlier. Part one of that definition (see page 51 here for the broader debate) reads:
“[The] definition of terrorism should include the following elements:
(a) recognition, in the preamble, that State use of force against civilians is regulated by the Geneva Conventions and other instruments, and, if of sufficient scale, constitutes a war crime by the persons concerned or a crime against humanity;”
i.e. just because genocide is bad it doesn’t have to be called ‘terrorism’.
Yes indeed. As you hint, there is a whole other (thoroughly unhelpful) discourse about “terrorism” in which they word simply gets hurled around as an epithet. For instance, Julian Assange–whom I find thoroughly loathsome–is not a “terrorist” by any reasonable definition, but that word gets used a lot in this country to describe him.
Um the Weather Underground blew up – literally – when bombs it’s members were preparing to blow up a dance at Ft. Dix detonated prematurely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village_townhouse_explosion
When you suggest that they “only targeted buildings” I think you’re a bit off-base, so to speak.
Marc
I tried to make the point in the post that the group’s approach to the use of force evolved. It was following the incident you describe that the M.O. described in the post was adopted. Sorry, should have made that clearer.
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I haven’t had a chance to read this article, but recently The Economist’s language blog, Johnson, featured a post on the labels of terrorist/murderer: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/01/political_labels
Interesting post, David. I have never seen this. Perhaps interesting to compare with BadderMeinhof.
I beg to differ with one of your premises, however. You write:
‘This raises the question of why this does not happen more often? Why do virtually all subversive groups opt for terrorist tactics…’
But that’s just the thing. All insurgencies are social movements; but not all social movements are insurgencies; in fact the vast majority are not. In terms of means of social mobilization, role of charismatic leadership, the importance of grievance and narrative, the use of ingroup bonding social capital and out group bridging social capital they are exactly the same. Insurgents decide to add one more element to their tool kit that’s all. Most don’t
That’s a very good point. I wish I could draw a Venn diagram here – Thomas, help us out! … In the absence of such gadgetry, if we concentrate on only those subversive groups who reject non-violence as an operating principle (an admittedly odd sample space), then my understanding is that the vast majority of these groups go on to use violence against people: to kill and to maim. The more restrained use of violence is what strikes me as puzzlingly rare.
If instead of looking from the violent end of the spectrum down to the Weather Underground and wondering why it looks so remarkably peaceful why not do the opposite? Look from the non-violent end of the spectrum UP to the Weather Underground and ask how it became so violent.
Lots of subversive groups engage in low level violence: they break things and vandalize stuff. They scuffle with police, throw rocks, and inflict economic losses (boycotts, blocking traffic, etc.). Some even hurl the occasional feckless Molotov Cocktail, but few actually blow things up with bombs as the Weather Underground did.
Exactly.
Yeah I think that would also be an interesting area of inquiry. On why WUO chose the path it did, I think it was the realisation that peaceful means had no effect and that the scuffling, fighting with police, Molotov cocktails was having the wrong effect. I think there was an urge to be more precise in the use of force, presumably to come across as a more worthy adversary. As to exact ‘radicalising’ moments, the WUO Declaration of War mentions various shooting by security forces, including the Kent States ones you (DB) mentioned above. Later Fred Hampton’s name was also brought up. These events, to the organisation, led them to view ‘revolutionary violence [as] the only way… Now we are adapting the classic guerrilla strategy of the Vietcong and urban guerrilla strategy of the Tupamoros to our own situation here in the most technically advance country in the world’. Well, not quite, but you get the point.
My line of inquiry was fuelled by a different concern: are there not operational and strategic benefits that come with greater discrimination and, if so, why do not more groups position themselves at that point in the spectrum, above the scuffling Molotov-throwers, but below out-and-out terrorists?
I think the Rubicon is the use of violence full stop. Once you cross that you go from being a bog standard social movement to the category of insurgent or terror group. Sure there can be some modulation of the level of violence, and there remains another strategic calculation on the part of the group whether they target uniforms only (i.e., attempt to preserve some idea of combatant status) or go the whole hog. Such groups need to keep a wary eye on what their constituencies will accept but that can be shifted too in the course of time as you get attack followed by repressive response over and over. I believe there is a strongly escalatory dynamic to insurgent violence once they’ve crossed to the ‘other side’. There’s a lot of literature on this. My guess: they were a bit feckless. They took it to just the first step of the next level. But if they’d had their run they’d have got more ambitious–note the increase after Kent State which would seem to confirm the escalatory dynamic. Hard to tell though with just one group which is why I think they need to be considered alongside the RAF and the RAF and other 70s-80s ‘terror chic’ groups etc.
First, terrorism implies fear, a psychological/emotion dynamic. Terrorist use fear (terror) to induce behavior and/or changes in behavior. Causing casualties certainly goes a long way toward inducing fear, but it is not necessary. Threat of force is often sufficient to induce fear, and is therefore terrorism.
Terrorism is not confined to warfare. Mafias/cartels use terrorism very effectively to keep locals from informing on them. Yet, this is not war. War implies a political end, whereas mafias/cartels are criminals.
In the final analysis, the WUO were terrorists, just really poor ones. Blowing up buildings induces too little fear to be effective, yet, to escalate into full-on killings of civilians would have called down the proverbial hammer. WUO simply chose a strategy which had little chance for success given the inherent constrains on a violent political movement in the US.
I would say that they were close enough to terrorism, even if they attempted to be more moral than most modern ones.
Also, this doesn’t seem to be the first time that terrorist groups have varied so greatly. I recall reading a mention (possibly in Bruce Hoffman’s book) of a Russian terrorist in the 19th century who shot a politician dead and remained at the scene, allowing herself to be arrested. It strikes me that she probably lived at roughly the same time as the some of the Serbs who would start the First World War when they shot Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, along with injuring many from the bombs they threw.
Aside from all that, what did the U.K think of this? Were they too busy with the Irish issue?
David, I think you’re romanticizing them quite a bit.
The reality is that the praxis of violence was attractive to a lot of middle-class radicals, but the step to actually doing it (as opposed to posturing) was socially or psychologically too hard for them to overcome. The era was rife with criminals-turned revolutionaries (Baader-Meinhof, Black Panthers, and SLA) and then – as now – those figures were attractive, especially when they could wrap their actions in a semicoherent ideology.
As to why it’s not more common, the answer is simple – in much of Western society, the violent acts are rejected, and the revolutionary message gets pushed away as the population pushes away the messenger. It hasn’t worked.
And the ability to generate a critical mass of violence that actually threatens the state requires a far larger recruiting pool than these groups typically have available.
Marc
David, looking upthread, I notice your comment that “peaceful means had no effect.” I’ll suggest that’s historically incorrect, and anecdotally – as someone who lived through that era – there was substantial dialog within the antiwar community about the impact (generally negative) of the violent Weathermen and their clones.
I’m curious here – do you genuinely believe that peaceful protests in the 60’s has no impact?
Marc
Marc, I was presenting their perspective: their realisation that peaceful means were not having an effect on the course or prosecution of Vietnam War.
Now, did the peaceful protests in fact have an impact? I actually don’t know. On the one hand I am sure they may have informed policy-making and perhaps fuelled attempts to get out, but on the other hand, if a tactic (in this case peaceful demonstrations) requires 10 odd years of war, 58,000 dead American servicemen and however many hundreds of thousands Vietnamese dead to ‘work’, perhaps it could equally be said to have been rather ineffective, if not without effect altogether. What do you think? Given that you lived through it, you may have a closer appreciation for how events unfolded.
Hard to say. Looking at African-American political activism in the same time period it seems that nonviolent organizations like the NAACP had more of an effect than the Black Panthers*. Indeed, looking at labor movements, gender rights movements and calls for political inclusion have had more sway than violence in liberal democracies.
Speaking with my parents (one a Quaker and the other a teacher) it was interesting to hear that they feared the country would break down into far-left and far-right terrorism.
*Though I will admit that there is the possibility that the actions of the Black Panthers frightened middle America enough to prefer to deal with the NAACP, and by extension this might (only might mind you) also apply to other movements.
I think FG’s last point is accurate. Malcolm X said “If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. [Martin Luther] King.” Quite deliberately setting himself up as the foil to MLK. It may indeed be the case that government’s are more willing to work with moderates if violent (or violent sounding) extremists are out there making themselves heard. I don’t know enough about this, but could a similar parallel be drawn in Northern Ireland?
With regards David’s last point about the ALF – the ALF has been involved in violence, no? They have a selection of names that they use, but certainly the group or members of affiliated groups have indulged in property destruction and so on. Does that not make them similar to the WUO and others? Or am I misreading your bracket about them?
On a broader point, I think it is dangerous to say that it is the death’s of individuals which elevates a group from being just a bunch of passionate individuals to a terrorist group. The start down the path to violence is something which can lead to death, even if only by accident, and once that rubicon is crossed then who knows. Maybe the WUO failed to go down this path because they were so limited in their capacity – and anyway, their driving issue (the Vietnam War) seems to have come about at around the time that they were moving towards the more violent end of the scale, maybe had it gone on they could have gone more violent (though this is a what if).
Does this mean that we should not classify them as terrorist groups? It seems that in turbulent times, we tend to a have community of radical groups that will exist in a sort of radical cauldron – so during the 1970s there was a spectrum of groups who were broadly left-leaning and anti-establishment from those like the WUO who did not try to kill people to groups like the RAF or Revolutionary Cells in Germany or the Brigate Rosse in Italy who quite actively did. These operated in an environment where there was a communist bloc of nations who supported some of them, while there was also a variety of separatist organizations active as well – ETA, IRA, the PFLP and a whole array of Palestinian groups, and (maybe?) the Black Panthers. The lines between some of these became blurred as they helped or trained each other (or received government support), so it is hard to necessarily know which ones should be classified as terrorists and which not. It seems easy to classify leftist groups like RAF, Brigate Rosse or Revolutionary Cells as terrorists because of their murderous history, but WUO less so.
Why do some of them turn violent and others not? I think it is a combination of reaction to events, the environment in which they are existing and individual personalities in the group. Andreas Baader was clearly a bit of a psychopath with a propensity for violence, so he elevated the RAF in a violent direction, setting a marker out which his comrades then followed. With the Brigate Rosse and the many other Italian groups, personalities probably played a role, but also bombings by right-wing groups which were blamed initially on anarchist/left-wing groups and resulted in a harsh government reaction which angered the groups further. For BR in particular, their first deaths were accidental, but later ones not, supporting my earlier point. The fact that these groups were broadly of a similar stripe in political leanings means they probably had an influence on each other as well (free travel around Europe helped this too of course): Action Directe in France and RAF in Germany certainly carried out “actions” together. Later, Carlos the Jackal interacted between Palestinian factions and elements of the European left – creating a violent hybrid which resulted in much carnage (and again his personality was probably behind a certain shift in violence). Maybe as an American group, the literal sea between the WUO and their more violent European counterparts meant they were not able to interact in a similar way and thus did not go down this path. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the US extreme left at the time to be able to go on with this comparison.
Your definitional point about who to tag as “terrorist” is a difficult one. I think the traditional definition of those who usurp the state’s monopoly of violence might be the most useful one, though it does run the risk of elevating criminals to terrorists (and thus giving them some sort of political motive, when they are only driven by filthy lucre), and of turning individuals who do have political aims into ordinary criminals (thus ignoring what might actually be motivating them and thus overreacting or under-reacting to their action). And of course, none of this is to go into the thorny question of who to call a terrorist and who to call a freedom fighter.
Raff, thanks for your lengthy response to the post. Just a few comments:
1) My point was exactly to put ALF and WUO in the same category. Yes, both use violence, but at the same time, neither sought to cause casualties (again, WRT WUO, within the time period I see as most relevant, between the shift in M.O. to demise of group)
2) The foil issue is very interesting in this regard, particularly WRT ALF, as they, sotto voce, are the extremist wing to various animal-welfare groups. No, there are no formal ties or operational relation – the animal right and animal welfare groups even openly disagree with one another as to method. But in another sense, in the larger scale of things, you could also say they benefit from each others respective approach to this issue. This is a hypothesis: I have no evidence.
3) WUO did have operational ties with a bunch of dodgy and terrorist outfits, in Europe and elsewhere. That in itself does not make them a terrorist group.
4) On what makes them terrorist, this is indeed a thorny one, one that I sought to explore in my post. Even if you want to include non-lethal groups in the category, the question remains: what operational benefits accrue to a group by positioning themselves at this point of the spectrum and why exactly did WUO do so? I would be interested in a first-hand account by one of the former members, but so far my attempts at finding contact details have been in vain.
With regards (3), connections do not necessarily make terrorist, but it can have a catalytic effect. I suspect it is again the personal contacts that might help drive them.
With regards (4), the operational benefits I would suppose are a higher profile. If you are occupying a crowded ideological space you need to create a stronger and more pronounced identity and violence is one way to do that. It draws media and people to you, both of which advance your cause. For what the WUO think about it, here is an interesting quote from an interview I just came across:
“To us, nonviolence was “wimpy,” while “picking up the gun” had a virile, macho cachet. Twenty-year-old boys need to prove themselves. So did a few young women. Vanguardism was also a way to avoid the long hard work of mass political organizing. I used to say in my public speeches, “organizing is another word for going slow.” What I forgot is that there’s no other way, you’ve got to “do the work.””
http://afpprinceton.com/2010/12/interview-with-mark-rudd-former-member-of-weather-underground/
Given the WUO leaders roles now as profs, it is probably quite easy to track them down and get them to talk about things.
David: I hope I haven’t come too late to this fascinating discussion–I’ve just come across your post and the resulting commentary. Among other things, you’ve stirred up a very useful debate about definitions (the “analytical box without a bottom,” as Martha Crenshaw said somewhere).
More important (from my perspective) is the fact that you’ve re-introduced (or for some of your readers, introduced) the WUO as a subject for fresh inquiry by students of political violence. As Adam Roberts and others have rightly complained, post-9/11 analysts of terrorism have stripped it of its history.
This problem is particularly acute in the United States, where salafist-jihadists (yes, I know the term is contested, but hey, I’ve run out of suitable alternatives!) are effectively the alpha and omega of terrorism. An obvious consequence is a failure to consider how earlier campaigns against armed groups (in the United States and Western Europe, in particular) could usefully inform current approaches to counterterrorism.
Self-radicalisation, ideology, propaganda, group dynamics, and the belief that there was “no other way out”—we’ve been here before, it seems to me. “Homegrown” violent extremism in the United States has hardly been confined to Muslim communities. (Additionally, in this single-minded, ahistorical focus on salafist-jihadists, we have managed to overlook “white nationalists” who have had a long violent presence on the American political landscape).
Moreover, a deeper understanding of groups like WUO and their European counterparts (to include, in addition to RAF and Brigate Rosse, Marxisant “groupuscles” like Action directe) can contribute to the “new terrorism” debate, which has so far lacked the historical grounding required to make informed judgments about how truly “new” it is.
Finally, for those who are interested in learning more about the WUO (and its violent offshoots), may I recommend Dan Berger’s Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (2005). Berger had access to many of the participants and is particularly good (if occasionally a bit elliptical) on WUO offshoots. Also, for a superb comparative study, see Jeremy Varon’s Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (2004). The Amazon blurb puts it far better than I can: “Bringing the War Home is a fascinating account of why violence develops within social movements, how states can respond to radical dissent and forms of terror, how the rational and irrational can combine in political movements, and finally how moral outrage and militancy can play both constructive and destructive roles in efforts at social change.”
Bill – great to hear from you and to get your informed input on this topic. For me, the fascination grew out of the possibility of transposing the terms and concepts that have (re)emerged since 9/11 onto an earlier, American backdrop. As you say, there is more in common here than implied by this curious distinction of ‘old’ and ‘new’ terrorism. Bringing these two into closer proximity analytically, as you suggest, would bring up all sorts of lines of inquiry — perhaps something for a future blog post. In the meantime, thanks for weighing in!
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