The history of
terrorism is as old as humans. Terrorism
is best thought of as a modern phenomenon.
Its success depends on the existence of a mass media to create an aura
of terror among many people.
Religiously motivated terrorism is considered
the most alarming terrorist threat today. Groups that justify their violence on
Islamic grounds- Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah—come to mind first. But
Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and other religions have given rise to their
own forms of militant extremism.
Domestic terrorism in
the United States can often be explained as a violent claim over what or who is
authentically American. Although
the Boston Tea Party does not necessarily come to mind as an act of terrorism,
the staged rebellion by colonists was meant to threaten the British into
changing its policy of taxing colonist tea importers' imports, while offering a
tariff-free trade to its East India Tea Company. Putting the Boston Tea Party
in the category of terrorism can be a useful exercise for comparing the goals
and tactics of different national liberation groups, which is what the
Americans--once upon a time--were.
The first and
arguably most entrenched terrorist in the United States is based in an ideology
called "white supremacy," which holds that white Protestant
Christians are superior to other ethnicities and races and that public life
should reflect this purported hierarchy.
In the period before the Civil War, American social organization did in
fact reflect a presumed white supremacy, since slavery was legal. It was only
after the Civil War, when Congress and the Union military began to enforce
equality between the races that white supremacy emerged. The Ku Klux Klan grew
out of this period, using a variety of means to terrorize and harm
African-Americans and sympathetic whites. In 1871, they were outlawed by
Congress as a terrorist group, but they have had several violent incarnations
since then.
The 1920s were also a
period of upsurge in KKK violence, carried out not only against
African-Americans but also against Jews, Catholics and immigrants. The "roaring twenties," a period of
tremendous wealth building by American "robber barons" provided a
useful background for agitators against inequality. One of the first cases of
terrorism to be investigated by the FBI was the 1920 bombing on Wall Street by
suspected anarchists. At noon on
September 16, 1920, a horse drawn buggy loaded with 100 pounds of dynamite and
500 pounds of cast- iron slugs exploded across the street from the J.P. Morgan
bank headquarters in downtown Manhattan, New York. The explosion blew out
windows for blocks around, killed 30 immediately, injured hundreds of others
and completely destroyed the interior of the Morgan building. Those responsible
were never found, but evidence—in the form of a warning note received at a
nearby office building—suggested anarchists.
One of the most
affluent all-black communities in America, a mini Beverly Hills, was bombed
from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. The dollar
circulated 36 to 100 times, sometimes taking a year for currency to leave the
community. The mainstay of the community
was to educate every child. In a period
spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving black business district in
northern Tulsa lay smoldering. The night’s
carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead and over 600 successful businesses
lost. The impetus behind it all was the
infamous Ku Klux Klan.
Dozens of unsolved
bombings and police killings terrorized the black community since World War II.
James Meredith tried to become the first African American to
attend the University of Mississippi.
His fight marked the beginning of the fight for civil rights.
Rosa Louise McCauley
Parks called “the first lady of civil rights,” and “the mother of the freedom
movement.” On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama,
Parks refused to obey bus driver James F Blake’s order that she give up her
seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was
filled. Parks' act of
defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became
important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement.
In the spring of 1963, stores in
downtown Birmingham had been desegregated and schools in Birmingham had been
ordered by a federal court to integrate.
Many Klansmen would not accept this decision nor would they accept the
successes the civil rights cause seemed to be making. The influence of the KKK was such that
children’s books that showed black and white rabbits together were banned from
sale in book shops in the city. On
September 15th, 1963, a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama killing 4 young girls and injuring many others.
In the 70’s terrorism
in the United States also emerged. Groups such as the Weathermen grew out of the non-violent group
Students for a Democratic Society. They turned to violent tactics, from rioting
to setting off bombs, to protest the Vietnam War.
In the 1980s, white
supremacist and neo-Nazi groups such as Aryan Nation saw a resurgence - often
among working class white males, who perceived themselves as displaced by
women, African Americans, Jews, and immigrants who benefited from new civil
rights legislation. Radical
groups and individuals committed to violent action to stop abortion were among
the most visible. Michael Bray, head of a group called the Army of God spent
four years in prison for his abortion clinic bombings in the 1980s.
Rodney Glen King was an African-American construction worker who became well known after being
beaten harshly on March 3, 1991. Four police officers from the LAPD took part
in the incident. Three of the
police officers were acquitted, and the jury failed to reach a verdict
regarding the fourth police officer. The acquittals are generally considered to
have triggered the 1992 Los Angeles riots, in which 53 people were
killed, and over two thousand were injured .
On
April 19, 1993, the standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidian cult (led
by David Koresh) at the Davidian compound in Waco, Texas ended in a fiery
tragedy. When the FBI tried to end the
standoff by gassing the complex, the entire compound went up in fire, claiming
the lives of 75 followers, including many young children. The death toll was
high and many people blamed the U.S. government for the tragedy. One such
person was Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh,
angered by the Waco tragedy, decided to enact retribution to those he felt
responsible -- the federal government, especially the FBI and the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). In downtown Oklahoma City, the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building held numerous federal agency offices, including those
of the ATF.
In 1999, the most lethal act of domestic
violence to date occurred when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah
building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Those responsible for what
became known as the Oklahoma City Bombing were home-grown terrorists, Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols. McVeigh's
stated motivation--revenge against a federal government that he viewed as
intrusive and oppressive, was an extreme version of more mainstream desire
among many for a smaller government.
Dean Harvey Hicks, a
citizen angry over his taxes, for example, created the one-man terrorist group
"Up the IRS, Inc." and tried to bomb IRS locations.
Tim McVeigh was a
Christian. Do we start hating all
Christians? Disgruntled people in
America respond the same as those in Egypt when they “feel” violated.
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