ABSTRACT
This essay discusses terrorism motivated by the politics of the extreme Right and Left. While they are examined together here, their ideological foundations and sometimes targets, if not their tactics, are very different. Despite this polar distinction, the two ideological motivations for political terrorism are appropriately dealt with in this manner, as the contrast between the two motivations is illustrative at a number of points. Traditionally, left-wing terrorists have attacked with the intent of changing the controlling political structures of a country and the assumption is that right-wing terrorists are similar. While, historically, Leftist groups may have made propaganda statements to that effect, there were often more discrete goals being advanced than those which the propaganda suggested. On the Right, the propaganda has rarely equalled the actual goals, which are generally far less nationally directed than the propaganda would suggest. The exception to this is found when some theologically based groups take on the right-wing agenda and regard themselves as engaged in an ultimate and eschatological struggle. Where an ethno-nationalist organization might actually hope to achieve its asserted goal of a homeland, neither left-nor right-wing terrorists are ever likely to succeed in altering the political climate to the extent that they would wish. It is certainly true of terrorist groups, as of many types of extremism, that
ideological motivations and political agendas do not always follow an unbroken chain of logical or rational thought. Rather, what may be found is a group, belief structure or movement that is identified broadly with a particular political persuasion but has ongoing and perhaps important interaction or cross-fertilization with groups or ideological beliefs that might be argued to be counter to the group’s basic political foundation, be it either the Left or the Right. There have been some examples of this dichotomy recently within US right-wing organizations, such as the neo-Nazi/Christian Identity group, The Aryan Nations, whose leader, August Kries, recently called for a link with the Salafist Islamic organization al-Qa’ida (Schuster, 2005). Defining terrorist organizations as simply politically Left or Right in their
motivation for terrorist action can be problematic. For example, an organization such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is fundamentally left-leaning in its political foundations, but is at the same time an ethno-nationalist movement attempting to establish a homeland for a particular ethnicity of people-not a people based on socialist principles. Similarly, the Basque Fatherland and Liberty
Group (ETA), founded in 1959 on left-wing ideologies, is socialist in its political foundations but is apparently driven to terrorist acts because of ethnic rather than purely socialist motivations. This essay outlines the fundamental ideological underpinnings for both left-
and right-wing terrorist organizations. It discusses the tactics and targeting of groups from both the Right and Left and how they were influenced by their ideological positions. The essay cites examples from throughout the modern terror period (Hoffman, 1998), showing the rise and decline of various segments of the extreme political Left and Right. Additionally, the essay touches on groups on the extreme Right that utilize other forms of motivation-such as religion-to organize and recruit membership while remaining an extreme rightwing rather than merely a religious group. Similarly, the essay discusses some manifestations of politically-focused extremist groups, which are sometimes still categorized as the ‘New Left’ or, more recently, the ‘New-New Left.’ These have perhaps been most appropriately identified in this volume by David Rapoport as the ‘fourth wave’.
