THE HISTORY AND EMERGENCE OF MODERN TERRORISM
According to an old Latin saying, “Historia magistra vitae,” history is the teacher of life. Historians know that each historical situation is unique. Just because something happens in one instance it does not mean that it will happen again—circumstances are never quite the same. Historians do not believe in historic laws. They are no more qualified to predict the future than other mortals. History remains important in understanding and assessing current affairs but only with the awareness of its limits as an instrument of understanding these events. This applies as much to understanding terrorism as any other political or cultural developments.
The origins of terrorism go further back than organized warfare, but attacks by small bands of individuals on other groups, large or small, go back to times immemorial. Terrorism has arrested the attention of generations. Yet it remains a challenge to explain and elusive to define. Both the captivation it exerts and the challenge it imposes on interpretation come from the same source: a sudden, shocking, and ostentatious character. While even the outcome of war is shaped by agreed-upon rules and institutions, terrorism uniquely exploits and actively violates established norms, often by evading attribution through anonymity.
Terrorism has also catalyzed violent emotions throughout history. It conjures strikingly opposed figures: the age-old caricature of the mustachioed menace with a snide smile, a fanatic without logic or reason; but also, on the flip side of the same coin, the freedom fighter compelled to play the reluctant hero. To many, the latter image is a wanton distortion. Yet, short of the unequivocal embrace of peaceful means, all political violence bares some hypocrisy.
Killing No Murder, observed Titus, Sexby, and Allen in 1657. Or put more simply, killing and murder are not the same. Similarly, the nature of combat does not predispose armed resistance to align with some gentleman’s code. As Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell declared, “Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht”: no, tyranny does have a limit. Wilhelm Tell’s refrain continues: “if the oppressed cannot anywhere find reprieve, as a last remedy, if nothing else, the sword.” His chilling declaration has been employed by many a freedom fighter, a justification to their resistant cause. Yet, many self-appointed Wilhelm Tells have impetuously invoked the sword, rhetorically clamoring for freedom from tyranny, but inwardly fanatical—they adorn their cause with the façade of self-defense while eagerly using the sword as though it were the answer to all problems of power.
For generations, many criminals have, as a last resort, attempted to advance their illicit activities by associating them with the ideal of patriotism—an attempt not unlike that of modern terrorists who route funds through charitable organizations to launder (or cleanse) money of its illicit origins. Thus, the struggle for freedom has found itself obfuscated by those who, like horse thieves, avoid the hangman’s noose by fabricating a backstory to blur the line between what is illegal and what is political. The study of terrorism and political violence has been further obstructed by the fact that the actors who use political violence to advance their interests are rarely ever either simple patriots in the vein of Wilhelm Tell or opportunistic horse-thief criminals, but both at once.
Edmund Burke’s over-two-hundred-year-old Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796) was, by many accounts, responsible for introducing the word terrorist to the English language. Burke wrote, “Scratch any ideology and beneath it you will find a terrorist.” Yet the relationship does not follow in the inverse—that is, simply scratching a terrorist will not always reveal an ideologue underneath.
Understanding terrorism remains a challenge for a variety of reasons. In the past hundred years alone, the character and purpose of terrorism itself has changed drastically. The actors who have elected to pursue terrorism, the means they have employed, the ends they have sought to achieve, have all in one way or another changed significantly over this period of time. Sofia Perovskaya and Emma Goldman are not as far removed from the likes of Ulrike Meinhof or Patty Hearst in years, but they could not be further apart when it comes to their moral and intellectual foundations. The difference in time serves us but little in anticipating and understanding the gulf in thinking. Another great challenge to understanding terrorism is structural. Terrorism is not an ideology like Marxism. Terrorism is a means. It is the instrument of the insurrectionist and the politician alike. Its employment is found across the political spectrum. Yet the employment of terrorism is not merely a tactic. Those who wield it have something in common. Whether they emerge from the extremes of the right or the left, whether they are nationalists or populists or even internationalists, they nonetheless have, as evidenced by their actions, reached the conclusion that, for them, an act of terror is the best idea they can think of to achieve their goals. Moreover, even if they have nothing else in common, terrorists are frequently more connected to other terrorists than they are willing or able to confess to themselves. Further, since terrorism and the decision to employ it can be conducted by anyone, its attraction supersedes the capacity of sovereign states to regulate thought, and thus transverses the borders of physical and political doctrines. It is, like Raymond Aron’s “banal formula—the difference in quantity creates a difference in quality,” a terrible ratio, an asymmetry of cost to consequence.
Still, terrorism is not a subcategory of revolutionary warfare as some might suppose. The terrorist, despite what may appear to be similarities of circumstance, is not a guerrilla. While the “urban guerrilla” may reside in the heart of the modern metropolis, it is certainly not a “guerrilla.” The distinction lies in character more than semantics.
Many, for example, subscribe to the notion that terrorism is altogether novel. Since their argument is limited to those cases of contemporary relevance, history has little if any useful lessons to inform their views. Likewise, many falsely conclude that terrorism is either the greatest existential threat to society or one of the most precarious challenges facing the world today. Such notions might be the result of availability bias, the tendency to believe whatever solution first springs to mind when evaluating a problem. Others see terrorism as the consequence of injustice or cruelty. Their argument presupposes that freedom from civil disorder would result in the absence of terrorism. Such conclusions can be as naïve as they are misdirected. Proponents of these arguments might determine, for example, that by resolving grievances and addressing what are perceived to be the underlying problems that caused a terrorist response, the incidents of terrorism would also decrease. Some mistakenly believe that terrorists are fanatics consumed by ideology and compelled by cruel circumstance. Another fallacy in this list of widely held but poorly founded notions about terrorism is the notion that terrorism can occur anywhere at any time. The purpose here is not to systematically reject common misconceptions but to stimulate a fresh view on the subject of terrorism.
Of course, some methodological challenges arise, prime among them the availability of data on terrorism. Some groups such as the Baader-Meinhof movement, or the Symbionese Liberation Army, or even the Narodnaya Volya, have been well documented. Interestingly, because of the fascination among the public these movements kindled (because they were able to attract a great deal of attention through their activities), they sparked the creation of books, articles, and nuanced studies on each. Other terrorist groups have meanwhile gone unnoticed, failing in their pursuits to exploit the public’s attention. Some have never achieved notoriety outside of their region, while others still have long since been forgotten. A general theory on terrorism cannot exclude outliers. The focus here is on the main stages of the development of terrorism; its waves, its phases, and the essential characteristics of the doctrines that motivate terrorism; and its principal problems.
The term terrorism, as noted earlier, is fairly new. In 1796, the British Edmund Burke published his Letters on a Regicide Peace where he mentions the “object of terror,” and just one year prior, in 1795, he described “thousands of those hellhounds called terrorists.” While the “reign of terror” generally refers to the period between March 1793 and July 1794 during the French Revolution, by 1796, the Jacobins accustomed themselves to the self-referential title with pride. The definition of terrorism is first ascribed to a 1798 supplement to the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, where it was referenced as a “systeme, regime de la terreur.” Not until after the ninth of Thermidor (i.e., the fall of Robespierre) did terrorist take on a derogatory meaning, and then typically with an association to crime.
After its wider circulation, a terrorist generally denoted those who advanced their ideology by coercion or intimidation. In most recent times, the term terrorism has been applied so widely and to such drastically different actors that its current circulation has nearly devolved into a meaningless label applicable to any arbitrary act of violence whether political or not. Some even argue against the study of terrorism and political violence, citing frequently the greater number of deaths due to violence from above (i.e., drone war, aerial bombing, misplaced artillery fire, and other atrocities committed by governments) than those killed by violence from below (i.e., as the result of actions taken by terrorists). The present study concerns itself with the specific phenomenon of terrorism as one of the many manifestations of political violence in the world. Further, even as narrow as that approach may be, nonetheless, a single unifying definition of terrorism addressing the nuance and variety of its occurrence remains as elusive as it is improbable.
Terrorism is constrained little by established institutions. Cases of terrorism can be found in a wide array of different situations: smaller disputes between the labor and management classes, wars of independence and revolution, civil wars and wars for national survival, resistance movements to counter foreign occupation—all can have terrorist components. Yet, in the majority of these cases, terrorism is a subordinate factor to the aggregate conflict. There are many cases where terrorism is simply one tactic among many others, selected for its momentary feasibility. The concern in the present study is with groups that have employed terrorism as their primary weapon and in a systematic way.
Many regard systematic political violence and terrorism as a novel phenomenon, or at least a recent one, emerging only in the past century. While the “philosophy of the bomb” appears new, it has been implemented since the earliest days of recorded history. The Russian tsars had foes real and imagined. The Roman emperors likewise. The Ottoman sultans eliminated foes only to seemingly clear the way for the next competitors hungry enough to seize a seat of power. Terrorism from “below” manifested itself in a variety of forms and fashions and with a broad range of motivations, from religious protests movements, to social uprisings and labor movements, to outright political revolts.
Perhaps one of the earliest terrorist movements was the Sicarii. The Sicarii was a religiously zealous, well-organized male sect that participated in the early struggle for Palestine from AD 66 to AD 73. Much that is written about the Sicarii is unclear or contradictory, but some of the more consistent accounts, such as those written by first-century scholar Josephus, maintain that the Sicarii employed a mixture of unconventional and outright criminal tactics. They sometimes attacked on holidays or during the daytime. They would conceal a sica (i.e., a short sword) underneath their coats. They trashed public archives, ruined palaces, and destroyed bonds from moneylenders in an effort to prevent debt repayments. They would also avoid apprehension by hiding within densely populated urban areas. In David Morrell’s historical novel Murder as a Fine Art, the expert in De Quincy’s club describes this best, stating, “Just considering that the great crowds are in themselves a sort of darkness by means of the dense pressure, and the impossibility of finding out who it was that gave the blow, they mingled with crowds everywhere … and when it was asked, who was the murderer and where he was—why, then it was answered ‘Non est inventus.’”1 These Sicarii, mentioned by Tacitus as well, were vehemently anti-Roman nationalists whose targets included Palestinian and Egyptian moderates who aligned with the Jewish peace party, which was composed mainly of high priests, Pharisees, and followers of Herod.
The intellectual underpinning of the Sicarii was the Fourth Philosophy. This doctrine regarded God as the one and only Lord. In this movement, the “earthly power” of the clergy eschewed political involvement; priests could no longer be mediators between God and man. Critics viewed the Sicarii antics as a protest of the rich. Josephus portrayed them as bandits disguised by ideological patriotism. However, even he acknowledged the pressure to be always outwardly religious, even to the point of glorifying martyrdom. He was unable to accept their belief that the Romans would be delivered unto glory by God after the fall of Jerusalem.
Similarly, in the eleventh century, an Ismaili splinter called the Assassins formed their doctrine as a mixture of messianic message and political terror. Suppressed only by the Mongols in the thirteenth century, the Assassins spread from Persia to Syria, targeting politicians, government officials, and caliphs. The leader of the Assassins, a man named Hassan Sibai, quickly realized their inability to succeed in open battle and elected to challenge others through a systematic, long-term campaign of terror consisting of the accumulation of small but decisive acts of violence by his disciplined political force. The Assassins always cloaked their behavior in secrecy, and fighters (fidaiin) even disguised themselves as Christians. Like the Sicarii, they used a small sacramental dagger, maintained ascetic discipline, and firmly believed in a new millennium in their preoccupation with martyrdom. Their primary aim was to defend their religious autonomy and way of life against Seljuk suppression. Yet while they initially garnered widespread notoriety (legends of the Old Man of the Mountain settled deeply into the popular imagination of generations), theirs was ultimately a fruitless attempt. The Assassins held beliefs akin to the Sicarii, enacting a blend of religious aspiration and political intervention. This branch of the Ismaili was extant for two centuries, overtaken in the thirteenth century by the Mongols.
Similar secret societies existed in India and even farther east for centuries. Secret societies in China typically had their own “enforcers,” and while some only engaged in extortion, many were paid assassins who auctioned their services to the highest bidder. China’s secret societies organized gambling houses and small smuggling rings. Many had political aspirations and shared a disdain for foreigners and Manchu. These were among those that helped Sun Yat-sen in the 1920s and early days of his Red Spears, who were behind the Boxer Rebellion. Not dissimilar to the counterculture of the 1960s, they combined politics with alternative practices like deep breathing exercises and magic formulas.2 They shared perhaps more characteristics with the modern Mafia than with contemporary political terrorist movements. Politics was but one of many of their preferred activities, which included illicit trade.
Secret societies were not exclusive to the Old World. The Ku Klux Klan is an example. The Ku Klux Klan’s interest in politics was even deeper than either the Red Spears or the Assassins. Still, the KKK was not a mainstream terrorist movement. Many forget that there was not a single, consolidated Klan that persisted through the decades, but three or more. The first Klan was a secret society that emerged during the post–Civil War Reconstruction period and targeted emancipated black people, often employing rape, murder, and mutilation. The second Klan (1915–1944), preoccupied with ritualistic ceremony and the “great wizard,” maintained the violent behavior and ideology of white supremacy as they permeated Southern politics at the state and local level and became a legal business, incorporating as a society and trading in emulsified asphalt for road construction. It was their business activities that ended the second era. In April 1944, a federal suit for over $685,000 in delinquent income tax resulted in the termination of their charter and their going out of business. The Klan rose from the grave for its third era, fighting civil rights and the liberalism of the 1960s.
The Sicarii, the Assassins, the Red Spears, and the various iterations of the Ku Klux Klan all engaged in illicit activities, yet when compared to modern terrorist groups, these seem like a different type of organizational behavior altogether. Certainly, they share characteristics with the modern breed of terrorists, such as the manipulation of fear to achieve some religious or political goal or asymmetric tactics. Theirs were parochial interests, though, and lacked the revolutionary character of the terrorism most people imagine. Ultimately, they were conservative and orthodox groups interested in maintaining the status quo, whether political or religious. They were not interested in reverting society back to some imagined halcyon past, nor did they have the utopianism that characterizes contemporary terrorism. Rather, they were the ultimate conservatives, lacking faith in violence’s ability to social-engineer an ideal. Therefore, for this study, we must return to the Wilhelm Tell syndrome.
In the era of absolutism, political assassinations were relatively less frequent. Regardless of personal differences between monarchs, including competing interests and familial clashes, still, there was a measure of solidarity. Warring factions rarely attempted to kill rivals or order the assassination of other monarchs; the frequency of regicide declined until it was virtually nonexistent. The French Revolution and the rise of nationalism in Europe changed this. Previously, political murders occurred between rival groups or as military coups, as the actions of fanatics, and less frequently during dynastic quarrels and clashes. But in the latter half of the nineteenth century, systematic terrorism emerged with distinct characteristics.
From 1878 to 1881, revolutionaries fought the autocratic Russian government. Then again, in the beginning of the twentieth century, revolutionaries in Russia fought their government. Among the Irish, Macedonian, Serbians, and Armenians emerged radical, nationalist groups that used terrorist methods in their campaigns for autonomy. During the 1890s in Europe, among the anarchists in France, Italy, Spain, and even across the ocean in the United States, arose the “propaganda by the deed” (or in French, propagande par le fait). Propaganda by the deed meant to commit a political action, such as assassination, that was intended to serve as a catalyst for others to emulate toward the realization of a political goal. The relatively few assassinations in Europe that did occur captivated enormous attention. While assassinations effectively commanded widespread publicity, they were not altogether part of a systematic strategy. Spain and the United States were exceptional cases where terrorism garnered the support of specific populations. For instance, in the United States, working-class terrorism was practiced by the Molly Maguires and the Western Federation of Miners. Similarly, terrorism plagued Spain’s agrarian and industrial centers. In hindsight, terrorism appears with a variety of aims and in the context of widely divergent political circumstances. Yet one can argue that modern terrorism, in its various manifestations and despite widely different aims and circumstances, has a shared origin. Indeed, the different manifestations of terrorism share more in common with each other than with other forms of violence.
In brief, modern terrorism has a common origin—all manifestations of terrorism are connected with the rise of democracy and nationalism. Grievances certainly existed before, but with the allure of nationalism and the proliferation of ideas from the Enlightenment, what once was tolerable now became unacceptable. Autocracy had dominated government. Empires had denied smaller nations and colonies their independence. Minorities had suffered, had compromised, and had been suppressed. Still, armed protestors only had a shot at success if given the willingness (or acquiescence) of those in power to accommodate the new institutions along with the rules and enforcement of the law. This, more than not, obstructed violent repression. Thus, terrorist movements only stood a small chance at taking on nonterrorist governments. The same paradox applies, a fortiori, to totalitarian systems that emerged in the twentieth century—the first wave of modern terrorism.
The Narodnaya Volya (National Will) of Russia, whose activities lasted only briefly from early 1878 to spring 1881, was one such important terrorist movement. They began their armed struggle when a member of an antecedent organization, Ivan Martynovich Kovalski, resisted arrest in 1878 during a raid by the tsarist police in January of that year. He was later hanged in August, sparking furor among the revolutionaries in Russia. They continued their operations later that same year with Vera Zasulich’s attempted assassination of the governor general of Saint Petersburg. Then, in August 1878, they assassinated the head of the tsarist political police (the Third Section), one General Mezentsev. By early 1879, friends of these individuals coalesced into the Nardodnaya Volya, and that April, a member, Alexander Soloviev, tried and failed to assassinate the Russian tsar Alexander II. The following September, the revolutionary tribunal of the Narodnaya Volya ostensibly “sentenced” the tsar to death. More failures followed. On one occasion the Narodnaya Volya failed to blow up the tsar’s train. On another, they blew up a mine in the Winter Palace while the tsar was incidentally away. They persisted. By early 1881, police had nearly apprehended most of the movement’s members. On March 1, two of Narodnaya Volya’s younger members each threw separate bombs at the tsar’s caravan. The first landed under the tsar’s carriage. It failed to kill him but forced him to evacuate the caravan—which allowed his attackers to throw a second bomb at his feet, resulting in his death.
The second wave of modern terrorism was also concentrated in political assassinations. One of the most important groups of the second wave was the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia. In 1901, a young man of the nobility, Mikhail Karpovich, shot and killed the Russian minister of education, Nikolai Bogolepov. The next year, they murdered the minister of the interior, Dmitry Sipyagin. Three additional attacks occurred in the following two years resulting in the 1902 botched assassination attempt against Ivan Mikhailovic Obolensky, the governor of Kharkov, and the death of N. M. Bogdanovich, the governor of Ufa, in 1903. The following year, two more assassinations occurred, including the minister of the interior, Vyacheslav von Plehve, known as a “strong man” in the regime. In 1905, the number rose to fifty-four, including the Grand Duke Serge Aleksandrovich. The Socialist Revolutionary Party then intensified their campaign of assassinations, and in 1906, the group killed eighty-two. The following year, they killed an additional seventy-one. Operations subsequently decreased to one in 1908, three in 1909, and two in 1910. Apart from minor incidents, the group appears to have ceased its operations against individuals after 1911. This was largely a factor of the controversy terrorism elicited within the group. The matter of assassination led to the group splintering, as discussed later.
Prior to World War I, terrorism was frequently assumed to be a tool of the left wing. Paradoxically, the targeting of individuals associated with this period of terrorist acts did not align with the ideological foundations of the early left. None of the groups emerged as socialist or anarchist. A third wave of modern terrorism emerged in Russia with the Bolshevik coup in 1917. Aimed primarily at Communist leaders such as Lenin and Volodarski (the first was wounded and the latter was killed), the third wave also aimed to undermine negotiations between Russia and Germany by targeting German military leaders and diplomats.
During this same period, Irish terrorism emerged. While their accomplishments may be less dramatic than the Bolshevik coup, they lasted much longer. The Society of United Irishmen emerged in part due to agrarian unrest in 1791. Roughly seventy years later, they initiated an ill-fated policy of open force. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Invincibles achieved notoriety with the Phoenix Park murders and then fell into relative obscurity until renewed surges in 1916, 1919, and 1921. Their operations again fell out of public view, perhaps aggregated into World War II, later reemerging in the 1970s.
Armenian terrorism emerged in the 1890s against the backdrop of Turkish oppression and quickly flickered out. Unlike the Irish, the Armenians opposed an impulsive enemy. Still, political assassinations of select Turkish leaders occurred in 1918, targeting individuals involved in massacres during World War I. This practice continued in the region, including assassinations of Turkish ambassadors in Vienna, in Paris, and the assassination of the first secretary of the Turkish embassy in Istanbul.
As the Armenian terrorists spread, another separatist group, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), also appeared, aimed at the Turkish leaders as well. Led by one Damyan Gruev, the IMRO began as an underground propagandist society among civilians that quickly evolved into a militant group ready to foment mass insurrection and acts of terrorism. Their initial attempts at mass insurrection were catastrophic failures. Adding to their ignominy, Macedonia was divvied up among the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbians in 1912 and 1913. Directing its attacks against Yugoslavia from 1924 to 1934, the IMRO suffered more losses than it inflicted. By the mid-1930s, when a new Bulgarian government managed to suppress their activities, the IMRO had changed so much that it no longer resembled what it had been under Gruev.
Polish and Indian nationalist-oriented terrorist groups also emerged before the war. In each case, terrorism persisted after national independence was secured. There is little doubt, for example, that terrorism plagued relations between communities, contributing to the Indian partition in 1947. Similarly, Polish terrorist groups persisted well beyond World War I among the western Ukrainians when their demands for independence were rejected by the Warsaw government.
By the 1890s, the primary tactic of terrorism in western Europe was “propaganda by the deed,” propagated by anarchists such as Ravachol, Émile Henry, and Auguste Vaillant between the years 1892 and 1894. The impact was dramatic and captivating. Europe became enamored with the concept of a giant international conspiracy driven by anarchist propaganda and individual bomb throwers. But such a supranational organization never existed. Ravachol was more a criminal than a systematic terrorist. He likely would have murdered and plundered without the anarchist movement in Europe. Henry’s behavior might best be explained as the exploits of a high-strung youth. And Vaillant was really just a bohemian.
The increased urbanization due to industrial changes in late-nineteenth-century France explains public uncertainty but does not account for the motives of the terrorist movements. Europe was captivated with the mysterious anarchists, but their views aggregated all nonconformists, including socialists, nihilists, and radicals, so that they all seemed to spring from one group. Official accounts took few pains to correct this misperception.
From the 1880s and through the early 1900s, many assassination attempts were orchestrated against leading European and American officials. U.S. presidents Garfield and McKinley, for example, were both victims of the deed, as was French president Marie François Sadi Carnot. In 1897, the Spanish prime minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was assassinated. The Austrian empress Elisabeth was murdered in 1898, and the Italian king Umberto in 1900. During this period, the majority of assassinations were committed by anarchists. Yet none of these were part of a broader, more systematic approach. In each case, anarchists acted alone. At the time, this was a significant departure from years prior. For example, assassination attempts against Napoleon and Napoleon III were plotted by conspirators. These individuals had plans to fill the power vacuum post-regicide themselves. But these were concerted efforts, not plots by individuals as increasingly became the case. In this sense, they are a historical approximation of the modern concept of lone-wolf terrorism. One historian even observed that “it is difficult to assign to them any participation in the various outrages, notably the assassination of rulers.” What our observer meant was that the anarchists were of a different mind from that of the regicidal assassins of not many years prior.
In the United States, violence concentrated on addressing economic factors played a more prominent role than in Europe. Even from the early 1870s, the Molly Maguires represented a transplantation of Irish terrorism more violent than in Europe. Feeling disaffected, exploited, and discriminated against, the Molly Maguires fought mine owners and foreign nationals like Welsh and German workers. In 1886, the Haymarket Square bombing pitted militant miners and steelworkers against factory police, resulting in a bloody escalation. Similarly, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), acknowledging inspiration from the “Russian struggle,” assassinated Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, in 1905. In 1910, the McNamara brothers bombed the LA Times building. Terrorism in the United States, for all its violence, was narrowly focused. There was never an underlying agenda to spark a revolution, instigate a coup, or even overthrow local government.
Spain was different. The emergence of a working-class movement, inspired to some extent by the Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, engaged in a great deal of violence and spread terrorism across trade unions. Unlike terrorism in the United States, the systematic terrorism in Spain galvanized around political change. While rural violence in southern Spain constantly simmered, the most militant force, in fact, was the Iberian Anarchist Federation (Federación Anarquista Ibérica, or FAI). “We are not afraid of ruins,” declared one of their leaders. Terrorism resurged again and again, from 1904 to 1909, during World War I, and compounded the events of 1936–1939. Terrorism plagued Catalonia even during the Spanish Civil War, and inside the left wing, the impact contributed to constant infighting. Toward the end of the Franco regime, the regional concentration of attacks shifted to the Basque region. Once there, separatism and ethnic ideology were the principle catalysts of terrorism. At times, terrorist acts were even perpetrated under the banner of Marxism.
Following World War I, terrorism was frequently sponsored by nationalistic, right-wing groups. Many groups were simultaneously right-wing and separatist. One such group existed in Croatia’s Ustacha, which was supported by fascists in Hungary and Italy. The Croatians sought autonomy, and they were little concerned about the origins of outside support. Emerging fascist movements that traced their origins to the Freikorps of Germany or the Iron Guard of Romania fostered an environment from which systematic terrorism grew in the 1920s. While some governments opposed terrorism, and in fact the League of Nations intervened with resolutions targeting international terrorism, the fact is that many governments still favored any means of securing their interests, thereby undermining both international and local coalitions against terrorism.
Interestingly, outside of Europe, terrorism was much less frequent. In Egypt in 1910, Prime Minister Boutros Ghali Pasha was murdered. Another Egyptian as well—the commander in chief of the Egyptian Army, Sir Lee Stack—was assassinated in 1924. But from the 1930s to the 1950s, individual acts of terror were abandoned for more systematic terrorism. One possible explanation is that the Muslim Brotherhood, Young Egypt, and a host of other right-wing radicals embraced this type of mass terrorism. These developments of course later played a major role in exacerbating the current terrorism problem. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, first joined the Muslim Brotherhood.
Perhaps one pronounced exception was Palestine. In then Mandatory Palestine, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi), and others adopted individual terrorism. Lord Moyne was the victim of assassination. While the Irgun discontinued their anti-British operations by 1939, the Lehi movement continued unabated. In India too, anti-British activities spread. Downplaying terrorism, Jawaharlal Nehru contended that terrorism was simply their revolutionary urges in their infancy. In his view, India had nearly outgrown terrorism by the 1920s. Nehru’s wishful thinking may come across as naïve today, but he continued to denounce terrorism in a campaign in which he argued that the appeal of terrorism held little value more than a detective story.
Initially, many of the groups we might now categorize as terrorists—the Irish, Macedonian, Armenian, and Bengali “freedom fighters”—were neither socialist nor anarchist. In fact, even the Black Hundred was motivated less by socialism and fought primarily to withstand the Russian Revolution and remove opponents of tsarism (typically liberal democrats). The Black Hundred also supported anti-Jewish pogroms, and while they emerged from the right wing of domestic Russian politics, initially at least they had the support of the police as well. As the tsar’s government began redistributing property and labor, members of the once-supportive group began to voice their discontent at what they saw as exploitation. The very organization that emerged to support the monarchy turned against it, concluding that the absence of government altogether would be preferable to the tsar. Some even darkly reminisced about past occurrences in Serbia—a reference to the Serbian regicides.