Left Wing Terrorists in the USA

[salm]

i was wondering if there is now or was in the past a signifcant left wing terrorist organisation in the USA. i googled but couldn´t find anything.

by left wing terror i mean something like the the RAF in germany, the brigate rosse in italy or the action directe in france.

[Big Phil]

i was wondering if there is now or was in the past a signifcant left wing terrorist organisation in the USA. i googled but couldn´t find anything.

by left wing terror i mean something like the the RAF in germany, the brigate rosse in italy or the action directe in france.

You mean like all the wacky eco-terrorists who burn down housing developments, let animals in testing facilities out of their labs, send bombs to scientists, and protest/riot during free-trade events?

[Bertie Wooster]

Symbionese Liberation Army is the first left-wing terrorist group that comes to mind. They were active in '70s.

[salm]

You mean like all the wacky eco-terrorists who burn down housing developments, let animals in testing facilities out of their labs, send bombs to scientists, and protest/riot during free-trade events?

no. i mean real leftist terror organisations like the RAF who fight capitalism, take coorporation bosses hostage and then shoot them, hijack airplanes and assassinate politicians. stuff like that.

[Stormbringer]

Symbionese Liberation Army is the first left-wing terrorist group that comes to mind. They were active in '70s.

Black Panthers also come to mind. There were also some other fringe groups that just kind of went bonkers like the Manson family.


Nowdays it's most eco-nut work with things like burning down developments, car dealerships, and instegating riots. Though the last is also the MO of a number of leftist fringe movements like anti-globalization and the fringe socialist and communist groups.

[salm]

hmm... according to wikpedia the Symbionese Liberation Army was considered a farce by other leftists. they committed two murders (one of them which went against what they were fighting for) and a couple of bank robberies.

the Black Panthers had racial motives more than anti-capitalist motives and even though they used marxist-leninist rhetoric they were considered black-nationalists. or am i wrong on that one?

[Stormbringer]

hmm... according to wikpedia the Symbionese Liberation Army was considered a farce by other leftists. they committed two murders (one of them which went against what they were fighting for) and a couple of bank robberies.

Yeah, they were not particularly effective. But then again neither were a lot of the European groups either. Most made a few nasty splashes and were squashed or spent their time planning for "the revolution" that never came.

The US has quite simply never developed the sort of political or religious terrorism on a mass scale that Europe has.

the Black Panthers had racial motives more than anti-capitalist motives and even though they used marxist-leninist rhetoric they were considered black-nationalists. or am i wrong on that one?

They were a whole nutball package but race was one of their big issues. Of course they engaged and supposedly were involved with a fair amount of far-left radicalism. So it's hard to say if they'd be properly leftist or just nut balls leaning that way.

[salm]

the european groups, sadly werde pretty effective. the RAF killed 34 people among them high ranking politicians and managers, they blew up US Baracks and the european HQ of the us army and a whole bunch of other crimes.

same with the brigade rosse. they executed prominent political figures such as a former prime minister, senators, killed high ranking US-military people and the mayor of florence.

action directe killed among others a french general and the boss of renault.



i find it interesting that the us has never developed a leftist terror organisation of significance.
does anybody know of theories why this never has happened?

the usa is on a whole a step further to the right. from a purely subjective pov it seems to me that in a country that is further to the right, the radicalisation of the leftists would be even stronger than in countries that are more to the left. i mean if you have to fight an enemy who is further away from your ideals you´d have even more hate against him and therefore fight even fiercer.

[salm]

another reason i find it weird that the us never had problems with these fucks is that these leftist gangs are generally explicitly against the system, against the capitalist state and against "american imperialism".

[Tzeentch]

i was wondering if there is now or was in the past a signifcant left wing terrorist organisation in the USA. i googled but couldn´t find anything.

by left wing terror i mean something like the the RAF in germany, the brigate rosse in italy or the action directe in france.

How about the Weathermen? From Wikipedia

Weatherman, also known as the Weather Underground Organization, was a US-based, self-described "revolutionary organization of communist men and women" formed by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), splintering that organization in the process. The group was originally called the Revolutionary Youth Movement. The group advocated the overthrow of the government of the United States and capitalism, and toward that end, they carried out a campaign of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots. It was active from 1969 to 1976.

The name of the group derives from the Bob Dylan song "Subterranean Homesick Blues", which featured the lyrics, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows", quoted at the bottom of an influential essay in the SDS newspaper, New Left Notes.

In October 1969, they organized their first event, called the "Days of Rage" in Chicago. The opening salvo in the Days of Rage came on the night of October 6, when they blew up a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket Riot. They announced to an SDS convention that they supported Charles Manson. Although the October 8 rally failed to draw as many participants as they had anticipated, the estimated three hundred who did attend shocked police by leading a riot through Chicago's business district, smashing windows and cars. Six people were shot and seventy arrested. Two smaller violent conflicts with police followed the next two nights.

In 1970, following the shooting and murder by police of Black Panther Fred Hampton, the group issued a Declaration of War against the United States government, changing its name to the "weather underground organization", adopting fake identities, and pursuing covert activities only. These initially included preparations for a bombing of a US military noncommissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix. But when three Underground members died in an accidental explosion while preparing the bomb in a Greenwich Village, New York City safe house, other cells re-evaluated their plans and decided to pursue only non-lethal projects.

The group released a number of manifestos and declarations, while conducting a series of bombings. These attacked the U.S. Capitol, The Pentagon, police and prison buildings, and the rebuilt Haymarket statue again, among other targets. The group took (ultimately sucessful) measures to avoid any loss of life as a result of these bombings, issuing warnings to evacuate the building ahead of time via phone. They also took a $25,000 payment from a drugs group called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love to break LSD advocate Timothy Leary out of prison, transporting him to Algeria. They remained largely successful at avoiding the police and the FBI.

In the mid-to-late 1970s, the group began dissolving, as many members turned themselves in to the police, and others moved onto other armed revolutionary groups. Very few served prison sentences, since the evidence gathered against them, by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, was inadmissable in court, due to the illegal methods used to obtain it.

Famous members of the Weather Underground include Kathy Boudin, Mark Rudd, Terry Robbins, David Gilbert, and the still-married couple Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

Many former Weathermen have re-integrated into society, without necessarily repudiating their original intent. Bill Ayers, now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, said in a September 11, 2001 New York Times profile "I don't regret setting bombs [against non-human targets]. I believe we didn't do enough."

The organization was the subject of the Oscar-nominated 2002 documentary The Weather Underground by filmmakers Bill Siegel and Sam Green.

[Andrew J.]

another reason i find it weird that the us never had problems with these fucks is that these leftist gangs are generally explicitly against the system, against the capitalist state and against "american imperialism".

Why is that weird? Of course Europeans will have more problems with America than Americans do.

the usa is on a whole a step further to the right. from a purely subjective pov it seems to me that in a country that is further to the right, the radicalisation of the leftists would be even stronger than in countries that are more to the left. i mean if you have to fight an enemy who is further away from your ideals you´d have even more hate against him and therefore fight even fiercer.

A leftist country has an environment conducive to radicalism. America is just too conservative for any major radical groups to form.

[RedImperator]

Quite simply, we don't have enough radical leftists to generate radical leftist terrorists. On the other hand, we do have abortion clinic bombings and Timothy McVeigh.

At the turn of the 20th century, things were a little messier. Anarchists especially used terrorism, and one managed to kill President McKinley and another shot, but failed to kill, Theodore Roosevelt.

[Coyote]

Earth Liberation Front, a non-organized cell-type resistance group.

Animal Liberation Front, much the same.

The Unabomber was a one-man anti-capitalism/industry terrorist.

Most lefty terror groups in the US are primarily against development and have a strong environmentalism angle to them, more so than a "pro-Communist" or "tear down the Government" point of view.

[CJvR]

America is just too conservative for any major radical groups to form.

I suspect alot of the US crackpots get sucked up into the various milita & religous sects, they are by their nature more isolationist than revolutionary sparing the US the effort of having to exterminate them.