Terrorism History

Terrorism History: The French Revolution to World War I

Introduction to Terrorism History

Until the French Revolution (1789-1799), religion provided the main justification for the use of terrorism. This situation changed, however, as nationalism, anarchism, Marxism (see Marx, Karl), and other secular political movements emerged during the 1800s to challenge divine rule by monarchs. Modern terrorism was initially antimonarchical, embraced by rebels and constitutionalists during the late stages of the French Revolution and in Russia by the People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) organization.

The People’s Will was active between 1878 and 1881. Its revolutionary, antigovernment orientation became the model for future terrorists. The group selected targets that represented the state’s oppressive instruments of power, and it embraced “propaganda by the deed,” using the terrorist act to instruct. It sought thereby to educate the public about the inequities imposed on them by the state and to rally support for revolution. Among the terrorists’ targets were the governor general of Saint Petersburg, the head of the tsarist secret police, and even the tsar himself. Tsar Alexander II was assassinated by a member of the People’s Will in March 1881.

The assassination of Alexander II, in particular, inspired a group of political radicals who met in London four months later, in July 1881, to discuss how to achieve revolution that was worldwide, not just national. Their idea was to create an Anarchist International, also called the Black International after the black flag they adopted, to coordinate and support a global terrorist campaign that would overthrow both monarchies and elected governments of democratic states, including the United States. Between 1881 and the first decade of the 20th century, anarchists assassinated an American president (William McKinley); the president of France and Spain’s prime minister; Empress Elisabeth of Austria and King Humbert I (Umberto I) of Italy.

Anarchist elements also became involved in, and were accused of fomenting, labor unrest in the United States. Sometimes these disputes turned bloody as a result of anarchist agitation. The most infamous incident was the 1886 Haymarket Square Riot in Chicago, where a bomb exploded in the midst of a demonstration by some 3,000 striking factory workers and their supporters. In the confusion that followed, both the police and armed demonstrators opened fire on one another. Seven policemen were killed and at least 60 others were wounded. At least four demonstrators also were killed, but no accurate tally of their death count exists.

An act of terrorism involving the assassination of a royal heir is credited with lighting the fuse that ignited World War I. On June 28, 1914, a young Bosnian Serb radical named Gavrilo Princip, seeking to free his country from Austrian rule, murdered Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand, who was on an official visit to Sarajevo, Bosnia. The militant student group to which Princip belonged had close ties to the intelligence service and military forces of Serbia, Austria’s archenemy in the Balkans. Like many contemporary state sponsors of terrorism, Serbia also provided arms, training, intelligence, and other assistance to a variety of revolutionary movements in neighboring nations. ” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Terrorism History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Terrorism History

Terrorism History: The Late 1960s and 1970s

Introduction to Terrorism History

During the late 1960s and 1970s terrorism assumed more clearly ideological motivations. Various disenfranchised or exiled nationalist minorities-as exemplified by the PLO-also embraced terrorism as a means to draw attention to their plight and generate international support for their cause. The PLO sought to create a state in what was historically known as Palestine: the land that became Israel in 1948 and the West Bank and Gaza Strip-territories occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967. A Palestinian group, in fact, was responsible for the incident that is considered to mark the beginning of the current era of international terrorism. On July 22, 1968, three armed Palestinians belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked an Israeli El Al commercial flight en route from Rome, Italy, to Tel Aviv, Israel. Although commercial planes had often been hijacked before, this was the first clearly political hijacking. The act was designed to create an international crisis and thereby generate publicity.

Two years later, the PFLP staged an even more dramatic international incident, when it hijacked three commercial airliners-two American and one Swiss-although an attempt to seize a fourth plane, a British aircraft, was foiled. The planes were flown to a remote airstrip in Jordan and blown up after the passengers were evacuated, as television cameras recorded the incident for a worldwide audience.

The murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games provides one of the most notorious examples of terrorists’ ability to bring their cause to world attention. Members of a Palestinian group called Black September seized the athletes at the Summer Games held in Munich, Germany. A global audience that had tuned in to watch the Olympics found themselves witnessing a grisly hostage situation that ended in a botched rescue attempt by German authorities in which both the terrorists and their captives were killed.

The PLO effectively exploited the publicity generated by the Munich hostage taking. In 1974 PLO leader Yasir Arafat received an invitation to address the UN General Assembly and the UN subsequently granted special observer status to the PLO. Within a decade, the PLO, an entity not attached to any state, had formal diplomatic relations with more countries (86) than did Israel (72)-the actual, established nation-state. The PLO would likely never have attained such recognition without the attention that its international terrorist campaign focused on the plight of Palestinians in refugee camps.

At a time of growing ethnic and nationalist awareness worldwide, other nationalist groups began to emulate the Palestinian example to increase recognition of their grievances. In Canada, for instance, a group of French-Canadian separatists kidnapped James Cross, the British trade commissioner to Québec, and Pierre LaPorte, Québec’s Minister of Labor, in October 1970. The group called itself the Front de Libération de Québec (FLQ), or Quebec Liberation Front. Although Cross was released unharmed, LaPorte was brutally murdered. Fearing more widespread unrest, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the country’s War Powers Act in Québec, which suspended civil liberties and accorded the army extraordinary powers to maintain order in the province and uproot the FLQ.

Also during the late 1960s and early 1970s, political extremists began to form terrorist groups that opposed American intervention in Vietnam (see Vietnam War) and what they claimed were the fundamental social and economic inequities of the modern capitalist liberal-democratic state. These extremists were drawn mostly from radical student organizations and left-wing movements then active in Latin America, Western Europe, and the United States. Terrorist groups such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy received training at Palestinian camps in the Middle East. Among Baader-Meinhof’s most famous acts was the 1977 kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, a wealthy Germany industrialist. The Red Brigades achieved their greatest notoriety for the kidnapping and execution of former Italian Premier Aldo Moro in 1978.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Terrorism History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Terrorism History

Terrorism History: The 1980s and 1990s

Introduction to Terrorism History

Right-wing, or neo-fascist and neo-Nazi, terrorism movements also arose in many Western European countries and the United States during the late 1970s in response to the violence perpetrated by left-wing organizations. However, the right-wing groups lacked both the numbers and popular support that their left-wing counterparts enjoyed. Thus the violence of these right-wing groups-while occasionally quite deadly-was mostly sporadic and short-lived. The three most serious incidents connected to right-wing terrorists occurred in Bologna, Italy; Munich, Germany; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In Bologna a 1980 bombing of a crowded rail station killed 84 people and wounded 180 others. The date of the bombing coincided with the opening of a trial in Bologna of right-wingers accused of a 1976 train bombing. Also in 1980 a bomb planted by a member of a neo-fascist group exploded at Munich’s Oktoberfest celebration, killing 14 and injuring 215 others. In 1995 white supremacists carried out a truck-bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which claimed the lives of 168 people.

Two of the most important developments in international terrorism during the 1980s were the rise in state-sponsored terrorism and the resurgence of religious terrorism. An example of an attack believed to be state sponsored was the attempted assassination in 1981 of Pope John Paul II by a Turkish citizen who allegedly was working for the Soviet and Bulgarian secret services. Other examples include the Iranian-backed car- and truck-bombings of the American embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983 and Libya’s role in the in-flight bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Religion was used to justify and legitimize, if not actually encourage, terrorist violence in the assassinations of Egypt’s president Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 by Islamic extremists and of Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 by a Jewish militant. In both cases the assassins considered it a religious duty to halt the peace efforts of their victims. Muslim terrorists carried out the bombing of New York City’s World Trade Center in 1993, and an obscure Japanese religious sect was behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization carried out simultaneous suicide bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; a suicide attack in 2000 on a U.S. navy warship in the harbor of Aden, Yemen; and the suicide attacks of September 11, 2001.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Terrorism History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Terrorism History