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May 1, 2009
Anarchists have a Long and Nasty History
The great historian Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), the expert on how World War I erupted, wrote another book: The Proud Tower, (1966) in which she closely examined the players and events between 1890 and 1914, when the war broke out. We forget how much terrorism, assassination, and mayhem there was during a time we think of as a long peace. It is worthwhile to explore the similarities between that period and our own (the 1980s to maybe 2014).
Anarchists. Throughout the 19th century, a fringe group called “Anarchists” terrorized Western society. The group’s intellectuals, who predicted a golden age only after we dismantled all governments and laws (people would just want to be good, they said), gave rise to wooly-headed activists prepared to kill and destroy. It didn’t take long before the Anarchists realized that they would need force – governance of their own. Human virtue was not enough, they found.
During this era, anarchists murdered six heads of state – none of them tyrants – in France, Spain (twice), Austria, Italy, and the US (President McKinley). Before that period of carnage, they murdered Tsar Alexander II of Russia, and when they murdered the Austro-Hungarian Archduke and his wife in 1914, World War I began. Later in our century, ideologues murdered heads of state in India (three times), the US (Kennedy), and Italy (Aldo Moro).
Islamists. The modern version of anarchists are the various Islamist cults – the most clever being al Qaeda. They too believe in a brave new world that will emerge when they destabilize the power structures of the rest of the world. They think, like the Anarchists, that with global rule of a Caliph (world dictator), people will just want to be Muslim – or be snuffed out if they don’t. They too assassinate, the latest being Benazir Bhutto, who would have led Pakistan.
Not that the official anarchist movement is dead. London got a taste during the G-20 meeting. There were activists against government, capitalism, global warming, abuse of animals, and abuse of land. They range from naïve ideologues to murderers, ready to kill and do whatever necessary to take down governments, science laboratories, or companies they dislike.
Tactics. The 19th century assassins had no difficulty in reaching their targets. Today, with better security, they prefer sheer terror aimed at civilians – hijacking airliners, the 9/11 attack, suicide bombings, truck bombings, decapitations on television, murder of athletes at the Olympic Games and rampant kidnappings. These are low tech methods, effective in sowing terror, but winning them nothing yet.
Asymmetric Warfare. Both anarchists and Islamists believe that they are powerless in conventional war with the world’s major powers. They pretend to be David fighting Goliath – and when Goliath slaps them down, they cry foul. The recent warfare in Gaza was such a case. The Israelis finally got tired of kidnappings, rains of missiles, and general mayhem and went in. The howl of world rage was hypocritical.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift gave us a gentle hero who was tied down by Liliputian people only a few inches tall. He could have smashed them but didn’t – to his regret later. They were small but nasty.
Asymmetric warfare tactics are growing in daring. Australia recently had a devastating province-wide fire that looked suspiciously like multiple arsons. Daniel Pipes notes that police and investigative reporters finger the arsonists as Islamists. Josh Gordon in Melbourne’s Age newspaper says: “a group of Islamic extremists [is] urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror” against Australia. Al Qaeda has congratulated the arsonists and cites it as a model for future action. Jihadi pyroterrorism has also been used in Israel, beginning in 1988. Other anarchist groups, Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts in the U.S., have also used arson in attacks. It’s cheap, easy, and lethal.
They are not David – and we had better not let them think we are Goliath. Goliath lost. We must not lose.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is an historian, lecturer, and author who also writes for the Santa Cruz Sentinel. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or http://www.globalthink.net/.
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