TerrorismUnderstanding the Threat

Course Text:

Martin, Gus (2006). Understanding Terrorism.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Chapter #11• The Role of the Media

– Tension between media’s professional duty and terrorists’ desire to use media to promote their cause

• Propaganda– Any systematic, widespread, deliberate

indoctrination or plan . . .

Evaluating the Media’s Role• Publicizing terrorists’ cause

– Selection based on likelihood of priority• Mass Communication & Message

– Convey information to large numbers• Efficiently• Timely

• Mass Communication & New Media– Talk shows, tabloids, News Magazines

• Reporting of Terrorism– Understand euphemisms & labeling

Commonly used Media Technologies• Print Media• Radio• Television• The Internet

Participants in a Terrorist Environment• The Terrorist• The Supporter• The Victim• The Target• The Onlooker• The Analyst

Chapter #12• Terrorism in the United States

– Focus on political violence occurring after WWII– American Left

• Labor Activism• People’s Rights• Single Issue

– American Right• Racial• Mystical• Conspiracy Theorists

– International Terrorism– Cults

Background - Left• Civil Rights Movement

(not Violent or Terrorist movements)– 1950s – NAACP

• End legal segregation public transportation• M. L. King – collective nonviolence

– Black Power• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

– Stokely Carmichael

– New Left• Antiwar, civil rights• Revisited orthodox Marxism• Counterculture

                       

                          

Died 1998 – Guinea“Kwame Ture”

Killed Apr. 4, 1968 Lorraine Motel

Background – Right• Christian Right

– Traditional, anti-abortion. Anti-homosexual values• Antigovernment Patriots

– Ruby Ridge – Randy Weaver– Waco – Branch Davidians– Black Helicopters from United Nations

• Racial Supremacy– From Slavery to removal of Native Americans– KKK, Neo-Nazi, Racist Skinheads

• Turner Diaries• Fourteen Words -

Left Wing• Weatherman/Weather Underground• Symbionese Liberation Army• Black Liberation Army• Puerto Rican Independencistas• FALN (Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation

- Fuerzas Armadas Liberacion Nacional Puertoriquena)

Black Panthers

Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. NewtonSherman Forte, Bobby Seale, Reggie Forte Little Bobby Hutton

• Influenced by the teachings of Malcolm X • called for the restructuring of American

society to achieve social, political, and economic equality, based on principles of socialism.

Weatherman/Weather Underground• This group described itself as a

revolutionary organization of communist, mostly white, educated, middle-class men and women.

• They committed at least 40 bombings, including– Pentagon– Harvard war research center– Gulf Oil– Police stations– National Guard facilities– ROTC buildings

• They freed Timothy Leary and praised Charles Manson

Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Mark Rudd

Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)• "Death to the fascist insect

that preys upon the life of the people."

– Berkeley radicals led by Donald DeFreeze (Cinque Mtumi), an escaped convict

– Embraced "urban propaganda" • called for selected violence• assassinations, kidnappings, bank

robbery, etc.– Rebirth 1975 – bank robberies and bombings

as New World Liberation Front• “Soccer mom” Kathy Soliah, AKA Sara Jane

Olson was caught/convicted in Minnesota - 1999 for plotting to blow up police cars in LA. arrested after the FBI offered a $20,000 reward and showed her photograph on an episode of "America's Most Wanted".

Black Liberation Army• Included Black Panthers and

Vietnam Veterans• Inspired by film Battle of Algiers

– Autonomous cells waging urban guerilla warfare

– Considered a prototypical example of cell-based irregular and asymmetrical warfare

• Network successfully penetrated by FBI

• Symbolic Leader – Assata Shakur– Tried & convicted 1977– Freed in 1979 by M19CO and went to

Cuba

Assata Shakur

Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation (FALN) AKA: Macheteros

• First contact: October 26, 1974• 72 actual bombings, 40 incendiary attacks, 8

attempted bombings and 10 bomb threats, 5 deaths, 83 injuries, over $3 million in property damage.

• In January 1981 they infiltrated a Puerto Rican Air National Guard base and blew up 11 planes, causing approximately $45 million in damages

• August 11, 1999: President Clinton extended clemency to sixteen terrorists incarcerated in federal prison.

William Morales, lost both hands and an eye while

making a bomb in N.Y. in 1978. Arrested in Mexico in May 1983. Fugitive in Cuba.

Leftist Hard Cores• May 19 Communist Organization

– Named from the birthdays of Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh

– Bank/armored car robberies, bombings– Freed Assata Shakur (BLA) in 1979

• to Cuba

– Freed William Morales (FALN) in 1979 • to Mexico, then to Cuba

• New African Freedom Fighters– Included former BLA and Black Panthers

Left Single Issue• Animal Liberation Front

• Earth Liberation Front

Right Wing• Ku Klux Klan

– Five eras• Neo Nazis

– Includes Christian Identity, Creativity, and Ásatrú

• Patriot Movement

Ku Klux Klan

Neo Nazis/White Supremacists– Aryan Republican Army

• Midwest 1994-1996, robbed 22 banks in 11 states• Inspired by IRA – finance racial supremacist causes• Some were Phineas Priests• Links to McVeigh & Nichols – OK City Bombing

– Christian Identity• American Nazi Party; Aryan Nations; Church of Jesus

Christ Christian; Confederate Hammerskins; National Association for the Advancement of White People; The Order; Posse Comitatus; White Aryan Resistance (WAR)

– Creativity Movement (formerly World Church of the Creator)• Founded: 1973 by Ben Klassen• Published The White Man's Bible • Matt Hale assumed leadership in 1996

– Ásatrú/Odenism

Patriot Movement• The Patriot antigovernment movement

represents a newly formed broad coalition of previously autonomous and loosely related social and political ideologies.

• 1992 – former Klansman Louis Beam advocated leaderless resistance

• Patriots and Neo-Nazis implemented the notion, believing it would prevent Federal agents from infiltrating their ranks.

Leaderless ResistanceAn Essay by Louis Beam

The concept of leaderless resistance is nothing less than a fundamental departure in theories of organization. The orthodox scheme of organization is diagrammatically represented by the pyramid, with the mass at the bottom and the leader at the top.

The Constitution of the United States, in the wisdom of the Founders, tried to sublimate the essential dictatorial nature pyramidal organization by dividing authority into three: executive, legislative, and judicial. But the pyramid remains essentially untouched.

This scheme of organization, the pyramid, is not only useless, but extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement against state tyranny.

In the pyramid form of organization, an infiltrator can destroy anything which is beneath his level of infiltration, and often those above him as well. If the traitor has infiltrated at the top, then the entire organization from the top down is compromised and may be traduced at will.

A recent example of the cell system taken from the left wing of politics are the Communists. The Communists, in order to get around the obvious problems involved in pyramidal organization, developed to an art the cell system. They had numerous independent cells which operated completely isolated from one another and particularly with no knowledge of each other, but were orchestrated together by a central headquarters.

Jewish Defense League• Founded 1968 in New York by Rabbi

Meir Kahane to defend the Jewish community

• November 5, 1990: El-Sayid Nosair fired one round from a chrome-plated .357 magnum from inside his jacket. The bullet ripped through Kahane's neck and exited through his cheek.

• On December 21, 1992, a Manhattan jury acquitted Nosair of second-degree murder charges, convicting him instead on charges of assault and illegal weapons possession.

• Klanfrontation on Jerry Springer

                   

                     

                           

                          

               

                         

• 1993 World Trade Center Attack: Islamic terrorists detonated a truck bomb under the towers killing six and damaging the building.                                                                                                                                                                                         

                                                             

TIMOTHY McVEIGH

Sentenced to DEATH on August 14, 1997

Sentenced to prison for "the duration of his life"

TERRY NICHOLS

Murrah Building

Centennial Olympic Park bombing on 26 July 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1996 Summer Olympics. One killed, 100+ injured

9/11/01

END

TerrorismUnderstanding the Threat

Class #16

Final Examination