HLSS523Wk4

CE Information for Participants Please see front matter for Continuing Education Credit Details and Requirements.

Terrorism and Right-Wing Extremism: The Changing Face of Terrorism and Political Vio- lence in the 21st Century: The Virtual Community of Hatred, by Jerrold M. Post, M.D.

Estimated Time to Complete this Activity: 90 minutes

Learning Objectives: The reader will be able to: 1. Clarify that group psychology is the dominant expression of terrorist psychology. 2. Specify that there is no one individual terrorist profile. 3. Identify that terrorist organizations increasingly use the Internet to radicalize indi- viduals online.

Author Disclosure: Jerrold M. Post, Nothing to Disclose

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY, 65 (2) 2015

243

Jerrold M. Post, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychology, and International Affairs, and Director of the Political Psychology Program at the Elliott School of Interna- tional Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

POST TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM

Terrorism and Right-Wing Extremism: The Changing Face of Terrorism and Political Violence in the 21st Century: The Virtual Community of Hatred

JERROLD M. POST, M.D.

ABSTRACT

There are no psychological characteristics or psychopathology that separates ter- rorists from the general population. Rather it is group dynamics, with a partic- ular emphasis on collective identity that helps explain terrorist psychology. Just as there is a diverse spectrum of terrorisms, so too is there a spectrum of terrorist psychologies. Four waves of terrorism can be distinguished: the Anarchist wave, associated with labor violence in the United States in the late 19th century; the Anti-Colonial wave (nationalist-separatist), with minority groups seeking to be liberated from their colonial masters or from the majority in their country; the New Left wave (social revolutionary); and now the Religious wave. With the communications revolution, a new phenomenon is emerging which may pres- age a fifth wave: lone wolf terrorists who through the Internet are radicalized and feel they belong to the virtual community of hatred. A typology of lone wolf terrorism is proposed.

The group is the basic unit of political life. And this is particu- larly true of the world of political violence. A search to identify a unique individual terrorist profile has proved fruitless. Martha Crenshaw concluded that “the outstanding characteristic of ter-

244 POST

rorists is their normality” (Crenshaw, 1981). Similarly, a compre- hensive review of the social psychology of terrorism concluded that “the best documented generalization is negative; terrorists do not show any striking psychopathology” (McCauley & Segal, 1987).

Post first introduced consideration of the importance of terror- ist group dynamics at the World Congress of Psychiatry in 1983, and introduced this topic to the group psychotherapy literature in 1986 and to the terrorism literature in 1987 (Post, 1983, 1986, 1987a).1 In reflecting on the implications of the basic assump- tion states delineated by Wilfred Bion (1961), the dependency group, the fight-flight, and the pairing group, one can make a case that all three of these states contribute to understanding terrorist group dynamics (Post, 1987b). The hate-mongering group leader, especially in charismatic groups and organizations, such as al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden or the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) under Prabhakaran, are characterized by the followers subordinating their individual identity to the cause as articulated by the leader, and gaining a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves. What the leader says is moral and what he defines as evil is evil. They uncritically follow his leadership. It is the very essence of dependency psychology, especially with the underground group, with the group being idealized and the government being demonized. In terms of the “pairing” basic assumption group, there is often a sense that after the destruc- tion of current society an idealized new society will emerge with the new messiah. This was particularly true with the followers of Shoko Asahara, the guru of Aum Shinrikyo, who, inspired by the book of Revelations, were attempting to precipitate the apocalypse, with true believers being resurrected to follow Asa- hara who had promoted himself as a version of Christ. A fourth basic assumption, which has been suggested by Earl Hopper in his book The Social Unconscious is that merger as an escape from annihilation or incohesion is particularly appropriate for minori- ties threatened with annihilation by the dominant state, which I have characterized as identicide. This is exemplified by Ocalan’s

1. This drew on research that reviewed the group psychology of four models: religious cults, youth gangs, and organized crime, and resistance groups, supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 245

forming the PKK, the Kurdish separatist terrorist group, in the face of Ataturk’s attempts to deny the very existence of the Kurd- ish people and make it illegal to use the Kurdish language, or to even use the name of Kurds, instead using the derogatory term “mountain Turks.” It was a defensive intensification of national identity. The same dynamic was at the root of the attraction of the Basque people threatened with “identicide” by Franco to form the nationalist-separatist terrorist group Euskadi ta Akata- suna (ETA) (Basque Homeland and Freedom).

Among the identified characteristics of terrorist group psy- chology were a tendency toward polarization and externalization, summed up in a substance-free version of terrorist ideology, jus- tification, and motivation: “It’s not us; it’s them. They are respon- sible for our problems. And therefore striking out against them is not only not prohibited, it is morally justified, it is required.” And this is particularly true, when there is religious justification, if it is “killing in the name of God.”

It is important to emphasize the interaction between the politi- cal context and the ability of the hate-mongering leader to suc- cessfully emphasize the victim psychology of the minority and to mobilize defensive aggression against the majority. To external- ize in a compelling manner requires not only political skills but a political context in which minority rights are ignored. When the system is indeed attempting to destroy the identity of the minor- ity, it sets the conditions for development of a charismatic move- ment, in which the leader heightens the threat of annihilation by the dominant majority to destroy the identity of the minor- ity group and mobilizes defensive aggression, associated with a heightened sense of identity. Three prominent examples of what I have called “identicide” concern the origins of the Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Tamil Tigers (the LTTE) and the Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA) (Post, 2007).

In Turkey, seeking to consolidate a Turkic identity, the found- ing father of the Turkish nation, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, sought to eliminate Kurdish identity and culture and denied their rights to a homeland. This set the stage for Abdullah Ocalan, found- er of the PKK, to establish an organization devoted to Kurdish rights, heightening Kurdish national identity in the face of the

246 POST

campaign for “identicide” launched by Ataturk (Post, 2007). In his 1998 cease-fire declaration, Ocalan explained how Ataturk’s denial of Kurdish identity prompted the violence:

On the one hand, you say that the Kurds are as much owners of these lands as the Turks, that all their national and social rights will be recognized; on the other hand, even our name is denied. This is what led to the violence. We are surely the side that should be least responsible. We wanted our identity. We wanted our democracy. We wanted our culture. Can anybody live without cul- ture? Can anybody live without democracy? What do you expect us to do after even our name has been denied? (Post, 2007, p. 67)

Similarly, in Spain, Franco’s attempt to eliminate the Basque iden- tity, including prohibition of the Basque vernacular language, Euskera, heightened the sense of Basque identity (Post, 2007). An ETA prisoner, recalling Franco’s repression of the Basque people stated: “Franco made us nationalists by his persecution” (Woodworth, 2001, p. 5). Sabano Arana took up the banner of Basque nationalism and founded the Basque Nationalist Party. “My patriotism is founded in my love for God, and for which purpose I pursue to lead my brethren to God: my great family the Basque people” (History of Basque nationalism: Historical background, n.d.). Franco made it illegal to teach Basque history in schools. The aim of the Basque Nationalist Party (PV) was to teach Bizkainos “the history of their motherland” and to awaken his compatriots “who disgracefully ignored the language of their race” (Da Silva, 1975). Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the rights of the Tamil minority were ignored by the dominant Sinhala majority. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the charismatic founder of the Tamil Ti- gers, early on felt that:

It is the plight of the Tamil people that compelled me to take up arms…I felt that armed struggle is the only way to protect and lib- erate our people from a totalitarian Fascist state bent on destroy- ing an entire race of people. (Tamil National Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran’s Interview, 1986)

Given that the group ideology is anti-authority, committed to striking out at the establishment, it is remarkable how conformist

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 247

and authoritarian it is within the group. No doubt or questioning is permitted. As individuals with low self-esteem feel a sense of enhanced value in belonging to the group, anything which ques- tions the group’s justification is threatening. As individuals sub- ordinate their individuality to the group, this creates an environ- ment conducive to “groupthink,” where a group can make riskier decisions than any individual in the group might make alone. Reflecting the “risky shift” phenomenon, individual doubts are suppressed because of the group ethos of bravery and courage in pursuit of the cause.

As reflected in the consensus document of the Committee on the Psychology of Terrorism at the International Summit on De- mocracy, Terrorism and Security in Madrid, Spain, 2005, there is a broad consensus among terrorism scholars that “explanations at the level of individual psychology are insufficient” (Post, 2005). Indeed, it was stressed that terrorist groups regularly screen out mentally unstable individuals; they would, after all, be a secu- rity risk. There was a general consensus that it is not individual psychopathology but rather group psychology, with a particular emphasis on collective identity, that is the most important lens through which to look at the psychology of terrorism (Post, 2005). Emphasizing the importance of group dynamics, Horgan, in his book The Psychology of Terrorism (2005), stresses that there are no psychological characteristics that distinguish terrorists from the general population. In The Mind of the Terrorist, Post singles out- group dynamics as being of central significance in understanding terrorist psychology (Post, 2007).

In reviewing the history of terrorism, one is struck by the di- versity of causes pursued. It would be unreasonable to suppose that such diversity is governed by a singular psychology. Rather, we should be talking of terrorisms, plural, and terrorist psycholo- gies, plural. Each terrorism must be understood in its unique cultural, historical, and political context. But within this diversity, there are broad underlying themes in common. And the particu- larity of violence in America reflects the themes played out inter- nationally in the area of terrorism and political violence.

248 POST

THE FOUR WAVES OF MODERN TERRORISM

In a seminal article summarizing the history of modern terror- ism, Rapoport delineated four waves: the Anarchist wave, which began in Russia in the 1880s and spread to Europe, Asia, and the Americas and was associated with labor violence; the Anti-Colo- nial wave (nationalist-separatist), with minority groups seeking to be liberated from their colonial masters or from the majority in their country; the New Left wave (social revolutionary); and now the Religious wave, punctuated by the Iran hostage crisis and the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon attack (Rapoport, 2004).

The First Wave: The Anarchist Wave

Setting the stage for the wave of anarchic violence, in 1847 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto, which both stressed the international dimensions of oppression of the working men by the ruling classes and declared the re- quirement for “working men of all countries [to] unite”:

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The pro- letarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite! (Marx & Engels, 1848)

The labor violence in America of the late 19th century was em- boldened by the anarchic violence in Russia and Europe. While idealizing the plight of the working man, “the labor movement reveals... [a] mixture of glorious ends with inglorious means” (Gurr, 1989, p. 46), dramatically represented by the Haymarket riot of 1886. Labor militants were demonstrating for an eight- hour work day in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. When police in- tervened, a bomb was thrown, leading to the deaths of seven police officers and four demonstrators in the explosion and riot that followed. The organizers were called anarchists, with eight convicted and four hanged, on the basis of tenuous evidence (Gurr, 1989). As the strike became a major tactic of unions at- tempting to organize, violence commonly accompanied the union efforts, leading Louis Adamic sardonically to character- ize the period of the late 1800s to the early 1900s as “the dy- namite era” in American labor relations (Adamic, 1934). This

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 249

was well captured in the slogan of the anarchist newspaper, Frei- heit (Freedom), which was published in New York. “Freiheit, five cents a copy, dynamite, fifty cents a pound. Read one. Use the other.”

The Second Wave: The Anti-colonial Wave

The second wave, which Rapoport identified as the post-colonial wave, occurred in the wake of World War I, lasted through World War II, and saw the establishment of a number of independent nations as colonial empires of France, Great Britain, Nether- lands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal contracted and dissolved. Thus, as represented in Figure 1, these nationalist-separatist ter- rorists show the following characteristics:

• They are carrying on the mission of their parents; • Their acts of terrorism are acts of retaliation for hurts

done to their parents and grandparents by society; and

Figure 1. This generational pathways-to-terrorism matrix demon- strates the generational provenance of the second and third waves of terrorism. National-separatists constituting the second, or “anti-co- lonial,” wave are loyal to parents and grandparents who are disloyal and dissidents to the regime. Social revolutionaries who characterize the third, or “new left,” wave, were rebelling against the generation

of their parents who were loyal to the regime

250 POST

• They are loyal to parents damaged by, dissident to, the regime.

Be it in the pubs of Northern Ireland or the coffee houses on the West Bank and Jordan, they have heard their fathers talk about what “they” have done to them, depriving them of social and economic justice. And they are acting to redress their grievances.

The Third Wave: The New Left Wave

The revolution in information technology increasingly dissolved boundaries. While the island continent of North and South Amer- ica was not as swept by revolutionary fervor as Europe, there was a broad awareness of, and influence by, the international envi- ronment. This was particularly so for the third wave, the social revolutionary wave. Through electronic media during the Viet- nam War, students were simultaneously at the barricades in Paris, Berlin, Rome, San Francisco, and New York. The student protest movements were stimulated by each other, emulated each other, and felt a sense of common purpose. This can be considered large group psychology. Anti-fascist and anti-capitalist in their rheto- ric, they shared an idealized version of Marxist-Leninism, and in their study groups justified striking out against the establishment. Just as the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy split off from the largely peaceful student movement in Western Europe—becoming what Dennis Pluchinsky has called “fighting communist organizations” (Yonah and Pluchinsky, 1992)—in the United States, the Weather Underground split off from the Students for a Democratic Society. Impatient with the pace of change through peaceful protests, they came to believe that violence was necessary to sensitize the masses. In the words of the Bob Dylan song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” which became emblematic for the group, “You don’t need a weather- man to know which way the wind blows.” The generational prov- enance of the social revolutionary groups can be identified as rebelling against the generation of their parents, identified with the regime, as reflected in Figure 1.

In their manifesto, which was couched in Marxist-Leninist terms, the Weather Underground declared their goal to be: The destruction of U.S. imperialism and the achievement of a class-

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 251

less world: world communism...Someone not for revolution is not actually for defeating imperialism either…Long live the Victory of People’s War (Asbley et al., 1969).

Exulting in their underground guerilla identity, echoing the anarchist rhetoric of the Russian anarchists of the 1880s, in 1970, the Weather Underground published a 150-page creed, Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, defining their goals. Their spokeswoman and one of the principal leaders, Ber- nadine Dohrn, declared in 1970:

We are a guerilla organization. We are communist women and men, underground in the United States for more than four years. We are deeply affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against U.S. imperialism… . Our intention is to disrupt the empire, to incapacitate it, to put pressure on the cracks to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from the in- side… . Our intention is to engage the enemy, to wear away at him, to isolate him to expose every weakness… .

Without mass struggle, there can be no revolution. Without armed struggle, there can be no victory. (Weather Underground Organi- zation, 1974, p. 30)

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent implosion of the Soviet Union marked the end of the third wave, the social revolutionary wave.

The Fourth Wave: The Religious Extremist Wave

Overlapping with the end of the third wave, the event that marks the beginning of the fourth wave, the religious extremist wave, is the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, by Shiite Iranian mujahedeen in 1979. The religious terrorism wave continues to be the dominant form of terrorism.

Although Muslim fundamentalist terrorism played a major role, terrorism with religious motivations was found in the other Abrahamic religions as well. Thus, Yigal Amir, the assassin of Is- raeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was a Jewish fundamentalist religious student inspired by the radical rabbinate in Israel that

252 POST

“the judgment of the pursuer” had been fastened to Rabin, draw- ing on the book of Leviticus, 19:16: “Thou shall not stand idly by the brother’s innocent blood.” Amir’s stated motivation for his assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister in 1995 was that by entering the Oslo negotiations, Rabin was placing a group of murderous terrorists on the borders of Israel, endangering his in- nocent Israeli brethren. The violence in the United States toward abortion clinics and murders of health care providers in these clinics can be seen as a form of Christian fundamentalist terror- ism. Former Roman Catholic priest David C. Trosch called such actions “justifiable homicide.” He had likened doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers in clinics performing abortions to per- petrators of the Holocaust during World War II, for a holocaust was being committed against the unborn children of this nation:

“Defending innocent human life is not murder... . You’re compar- ing the lives of morally guilty persons against the lives of mani- festly innocent persons... . That’s like trying to compare the lives of the Jews in the incinerators in Nazi Germany or Poland…with the lives of the Gestapo.” (Niebuhr, 1994, p. 12)

Aum Shinrikyo’s 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways was justified by the peculiar theology of Aum Supreme Truth and its guru Shoko Asahara. He was seeking to precipitate an apocalyp- tic struggle, from which he and his true believer followers would be resurrected as the Christ and his followers (Post, 2007).

Islamic Fundamentalism

The dominant form of religious terrorism in the fourth religious wave, however, is that perpetrated by Islamist extremists. The Ko- ran specifically prohibits suicide. But radical interpretations of the Koran have led to employing suicide terrorism, justifying this as defensive aggression, rationalizing that this is not suicide but martyrdom, which is rewarded with a higher place in paradise (Ali & Post, 2008). Rapoport dates the beginning of this wave to 1979, when Shiite Muslim militants, screaming “Death to the Great Satan,” seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held the occupants hostage for 444 days, not releasing them until the inau- guration of President Ronald Regan in January 1981. A dramatic

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 253

event in the early years of this wave was the truck bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in October 1983, in which 241 U.S. military personnel were killed. At the same time, a sui- cide bomber driving a pickup truck laden with explosives drove into a building housing French paratroopers, killing 58. The at- tacks, carried out by Hezbollah, the militant Shiite Lebanese Is- lamic terrorist group, and sponsored by Iran, were justified by their spiritual mentor, Sheikh Fadlallah, who indicated that the prohibition against suicide was overridden by the special times and justified the martyrdom action of the militants (Kramer, 1998). Thus the prohibited act of suicide was reframed as the re- vered act of martyrdom (Ali & Post, 2008). This act transformed the role of the United States in the Middle East as honest bro- ker. Ayatollah Khomeini was impressed by the innovative tactic of the Hezbollah terrorists, and suicide terrorism was to become a staple of militant Islamist terrorists.

While Ayatollah Khomeini was a Shiite Muslim, Osama bin Laden, a Wahhabi Sunni Muslim, used the same justification for the terrorist violence of his group, al-Qaeda (the base). Despite the substantial aid the United States provided to the Muslim mili- tants in their ultimately victorious struggle to expel the Soviet Union, which had invaded the Muslim state of Afghanistan, bin Laden was accorded near God-like status after his victory over the Soviet superpower. He next turned his attention to the remain- ing superpower, the United States, whose troops still remained on bases in Saudi Arabia, “the land of the two cities” (Mecca and Medina), after the first Gulf War that was precipitated by the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in July 1990. Initial fatwas focused on the need to expel U.S. military from the bases in Saudi Arabia.

In February 1993, the first World Trade Center bombing oc- curred. A van with a 1,336-pound fertilizer bomb was detonated in the underground garage of the North Tower. Had the van been parked in a position in the underground garage some 100 yards from where it was placed, the plan to have the North Tower collapse against the South Tower, killing tens of thousands, would have succeeded.

While only six were killed, there were more than a thousand in- jured. A massive task force was able to identify the perpetrators.

254 POST

Evidence established that the plot was carried out by a group of Islamist terrorists headed by Ramzi Yousef, an electrical engineer ultimately captured in Pakistan. A plan to explode 12 airliners bound for the United States from Asia was found in encrypted form on Yousef’s computer. While al-Qaeda never claimed re- sponsibility for the bombing, the attack was financed by Yousef’s uncle, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Khalid Sheik Mo- hammed was to become the chief of operations of al-Qaeda. No longer was the United States immune from international terror- ism; yet quickly Americans forgot and basked in their customary sense of invulnerability.

In 1996, in what was to be the second largest terrorist attack since the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, a truck bomb was detonated in a U.S. military housing com- pound, Khobar Towers, in Saudi Arabia, killing 19. Hundreds of thousands of the U.S. military were now based in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, incensing Muslim extremists against this invasion of the holy land by infidels. In 1998, in a coordinated twin city attack, al-Qaeda–supported terrorists detonated massive truck bombs against U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Sa- laam, Tanzania, leading to hundreds of deaths and massive dam- age. This resulted in the FBI putting Osama bin Laden, identified as the mastermind behind this plot, on its ten most wanted list. In October 2000, the USS Cole, a Navy frigate, was attacked by a small craft laden with 300–700 pounds of explosives during a routine refueling stop in Aden, Yemen. The craft hit the port side of the frigate; the resulting explosion led to 19 deaths and 37 casualties. An al-Qaeda operation, this success and the success in the Khobar Towers attacks against U.S. military and against the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania only added to the luster of bin Laden’s heroic reputation. He was on a roll.

In February 1998, confirming the United States as a potential target, an important fatwa, “The Jihad Against Jews and Crusad- ers,” was issued that signaled a broader purpose and target than earlier religious declarations.

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 255

any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, “and fight the pagans all togeth- er as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.”

We—with God’s help—call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it. (as cited in Post, 2004, p. 8)

Take note of the phrase: “The ruling [was] to kill the Ameri- cans…—civilians and military—…in any country in which it is pos- sible to do it.” No longer was the struggle to expel U.S. military from Saudi Arabia. Now the gloves were off, but when the at- tacks of 9/11 occurred, it was a devastating blow to the American psyche.

The coordinated twin city attack in which hijacked U.S. airlin- ers crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with 3,000 casualties transformed the international landscape. In a television posting after the devastating attack, bin Laden warned pious Muslims not to live or work in high rise buildings or fly, be- cause there were thousands of Muslims committed to martyrdom who would kill the weak Americans clinging to life. Betraying his narcissistic preoccupation with his heroic image, in a home video bin Laden wondered how the event had played in Jiddah and in- dicated that the results had exceeded his expectations.

The victory in Afghanistan against the Soviet superpower be- came the basis of bin Laden’s charismatic leader-follower rela- tionship with his followers. He had preached during the ten-year struggle that Allah favored the underdog, and when bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs succeeded in expelling the Soviet forces from Afghanistan, this confirmed that he was an all-knowing, all- powerful leader. But with success, bin Laden had lost his enemy. The presence of the U.S. military in Muslim lands provided him with the rationale to shift his attention to the United States, the last remaining superpower. Initially, attacks were targeted against the U.S. military in the Middle East. The magnitude of the 2001

256 POST

attacks in New York and Washington, the most devastating ter- rorist attack in history, confirmed for bin Laden and his follow- ers that they had a historic role to play in the struggle to liberate Islam from Western domination and its corrupt influences. The architect of the twin towers attacks was instantly promoted to in- ternational stardom, the greatest terrorist of all time, a hero to alienated Muslim youth who were empowered by his dramatic act and flocked to al-Qaeda recruitment offices.

This attack on the U.S. homeland led President George W. Bush to declare a war on terror and within a few weeks to begin mobilizing for a military strike against al-Qaeda central, which was based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This was not state- supported terrorism, but rather wealthy al-Qaeda led by wealthy Osama bin Laden supporting the failed state of Afghanistan. For the first 20 years of the fourth wave, the religious extremist phase, the first wavelet concerned the growth and international expan- sion of religious extremist terrorism, especially Islamist extrem- ism under his charismatic leadership of al-Qaeda. Concomitantly, Shiite terrorism, supported by Iran, with the growth of Hamas and Hezbollah, continued apace.

Pseudo-Christian Ideology

In the mid 1990s, reflecting a pseudo-Christian ideology, an act of domestic terrorism within the United States occurred when the right wing extremist Timothy McVeigh, consumed by hatred of the United States government, carried out a major attack on the Alfred P. Murah federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the largest domestic terrorism attack to date, until the later attacks of 9/11. One hundred sixty-eight people were killed in the massive explosion, timed to create “maximal body count,” and more than 680 were injured. Within a 16-block radius, 324 buildings were destroyed or damaged, with an estimated prop- erty loss of $652 million. The date of the attack is significant as it was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the conflagra- tion at Ranch Apocalypse, the Branch Davidian headquarters in Waco, Texas, in which David Koresh and 75 of his true believer followers perished during the FBI siege of their headquarters.

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 257

The paranoid right in the United States had delegitimized the federal government, developed a pseudo-Christian ideology to provide a rationale for their fear and distrust of Washington, and formed the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian. Why “Jesus Christ, Christian”? Because for these intensely racist anti-Semitic indi- viduals, it was unthinkable that Christ could have been a Jew. The outlines of their creative theology, the basis of the Christian Identity movement, can be summarized as follows:

In the Garden of Eden, Eve mated with two: Adam, who was blond haired and blue eyed, from whom the true chosen people descended, the Adamic line, the Aryan nation. Abel was first of the Adamic line. She also mated with the serpent who was the devil in disguise, from whom the Jews, the spawn of the devil descended. Cain was the first of this line. The Garden of Eden was God’s second attempt at creation. The first attempt failed, from which a group of sub-humans emerged, the “mud people,” blacks and people of color. When Cain slew Abel, it was the prototype of the genocide of the whites, the true chosen people, by the spawn of the devil, the Jews, who controlled and manipulated the “mud people.” The apocalypse is approaching, the final battle will be between the true chosen people, the Aryan nations, the forces of good, and the Jews, the forces of evil. It is the God-given task of the Aryans to warn of the dangers represented by the Jews in league with “the mud people,” and to prepare for the final battle and destroy them. The Aryan Nation is the action arm of the Christian Identity movement.2

The creedal statement of the Aryan Nations and the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian, to which new members swear on joining, embodies this ideology:

We believe that there are literal children of Satan in the world to- day. These children are the descendants of Cain, who was a result of Eve’s original sin, her physical seduction by Satan…There is a battle and a natural enmity between the children of Satan and the children of the Most High God…We believe there is a battle being

2. For an extensive discussion of the origins of the Christian Identity movement and its justification of violence against Jews and people of color, see Robins and Post (1997, pp. 182-187).

258 POST

fought this day between the children of darkness (known today as Jews) and the children of light (God), the Aryan race, the true Israel of the Bible. (as cited in Barkun, 1994, p. 131)

Thus, the extremists in the militia movement, which achieved great prominence in the 1990s, are not weekend warriors but are preparing for this final battle. While this extremist sentiment has not been the basis for violent actions in the United States in recent years, these sentiments are related to the radical right in Europe, which has carried out violent actions against Muslim émigrés. A recent example was Anders Breivik who killed 77 in a rampage in Norway in 2011, first killing 8 in a bombing of government buildings in Oslo, then killing 69, mostly teenagers, in a mass shooting at a labor youth camp on the island of Utoya. Breivik characterized himself as “the point of the spear,” seeking to warn of the danger of Muslim “mongrelization” of Christian Europe. He has been convicted of mass murder and is now serv- ing a life sentence in a Norwegian prison.

As noted earlier, the second phase of the wave of religious ter- rorism was precipitated by the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with the subsequent dec- laration of a war on terror by President George W. Bush and the initiation of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001, as the first battle of that continuing war. That led to the destruction of al-Qaeda central in Afghanistan and the flight of al-Qaeda leadership. From a place of hiding in the mountainous region of Pakistan, bin Laden sent out a communiqué instructing his fran- chised groups that it was now up to them to plan and fund opera- tions previously planned and funded by al-Qaeda central, under the leadership of bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. A decision to decentralize was an adaptive response now that al-Qaeda leadership was on the run. It was up to such organiza- tions as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and other affiliates to continue the struggle against the West, but the leaders would continue to provide guidance. The West mounted a strategy of decapitation of al-Qaeda, relying on sophisticated re- motely piloted aircraft (drones). This program, while producing a major outcry of invasion of sovereignty by Pakistan, was quite successful in killing a significant number of senior al-Qaeda lead- ers and placing al-Qaeda on the defensive.

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 259

This phase of the wave of religious extremist terrorism was concluded with the successful raid on bin Laden’s headquarters in Abbottabad, Pakistan, conducted from Afghanistan by a joint CIA/Navy Special Forces (U.S. SEALs) operation in which bin Laden was killed. The identification of bin Laden’s refuge in Pak- istan was the result of a massive intelligence effort.

With this punctuation mark, the third phase of the wave com- menced. Now, however, the al-Qaeda elements, such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, pursued nationalistic objectives, although still attacking the West in the name of radical Islam. A good example of this was the Sep- tember 2013 attack which killed 72 people in an upscale shop- ping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, carried out by the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, in revenge for Kenya’s support for the Somali government.

A NEW PHASE: THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITY OF HATRED AND LONE WOLF TERRORISM3

Another phase is emerging, a reflection of the communication revolution, which is increasingly evident. Indeed, it would be de- meaning to consider this just another “wavelet.” Rather, it may prove to be a tsunami. While it is difficult in the midst of a his- torical process to have the perspective to identify this as the be- ginning of a fifth wave, the social media revolution may indeed prove to be the next one.

The wave of social protest that swept the Middle East, popu- larly known as the Arab Spring, began in December 2010, cata- lyzed by a cell phone photo of a vegetable peddler in Tunis who set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his cart and the humiliation by public officials. The image went viral, leading to widespread protests, forcing then President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled Tunisia for 23 years, to step down after 23 days of protest. The success of the social media–inspired revolu- tion in Tunisia also inspired citizens throughout the Middle East, leading to the overthrow of the authoritarian leaders of Egypt, Libya, and Yemen and sparking the civilian rebellion in Syria. A

3. This section of the paper draws significantly on a paper on lone wolf psychology (Mc- Ginnis, Moody, & Post, 2013).

260 POST

major slogan of the protesters throughout the Arab world was: “The people want to bring down the regime.” Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt with an iron fist for 30 years, was forced to step down after only 18 days of protest, in what came to be called the cell phone revolution.

In fact, a year and a half earlier, it was the bloody image of a young Iranian woman, Neda Agha-Soltan—who was shot in the chest while speaking on her cell phone during a political protest in June 2009—that demonstrated the power of the new media. The image, captured on a bystander’s cell phone, went viral and led to widespread protests in Iran against the election results. The image of Neda bleeding to death was posted on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter and was widely shown on the Internet and television. It became the spark that precipitated the short-lived wave of political protests, until government security ruthlessly suppressed them. With every citizen potentially a photojournal- ist, no longer could dictatorial regimes control the media and suppress news of popular expressions of protest.

While the initial sentiment facilitated by the Internet and so- cial media was that of the people of oppressed societies yearning to be free, the overthrow of these regimes did not produce a yield of budding democracies. It powerfully demonstrated, however, the power of the new media. And in the world of terrorism and political violence, it has been a power that has been exploited to create a virtual community of hatred.

The Psychology of the Lone Wolf and Wolf Packs

No longer is the threat just from abroad, as was the case with the attacks of September 11, 2001; the threat is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology to plan and execute attacks where they live. —U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 2008

During the past decade, there has been an increasing incidence of violent terrorist actions carried out by individuals unaffiliated with al-Qaeda central or its affiliates. This appears to be due to

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 261

the fact that al-Qaeda’s new strategy is “to empower and moti- vate individuals to commit acts of violence completely outside any terrorist chain of command” (Hoffman cited in Thompson, 2009). Homegrown terrorism, or for the purposes of this paper, lone wolf terrorism, has been defined as “radicalized groups and individuals that are not regularly affiliated with, but draw clear inspiration and occasional guidance from, al-Qaeda core or af- filiated movements” (Nelson & Sanderson, 2011, p. vii). While new research continues to surface on this particular topic, there still remains a surprising lack of research on identifiable psycho- logical commonalities and patterns of lone wolves that can help combat the threat of the lone, violent jihadist.

There has been some preliminary work on virtual group dy- namics with reference to hacking groups. In research on the dan- gerous IT insider, consideration was given to how a seemingly mild introverted individual can become very aggressive online. Accordingly, the group dynamics of virtual groups in the hack- ing world tend to be unstable, with a shifting leadership. There is characteristically a competition for leadership, with the bolder hackers temporarily dominating. This puts a premium on bolder and more aggressive schemes, and cautionary criticism is rare. For the virtual radical group online, aggressive language and dangerous plans can be rewarded in this competitive informa- tion space, and ideas can lead to dangerous actions, pushing the isolated individual online to ever more aggressive plans, seeking the admiration of their fellow online radicals. For these isolated individuals, there is a premium on belonging, and that in turn can lead fantasy to become reality, as exemplified by several of the “wolf packs” to be discussed.

The lone wolf terrorist phenomenon is very diverse. In Europe, many extremists have come from impoverished and isolated com- munities (Leiken, 2005; Pregulman & Burke, 2012). However, in the United States, homegrown terrorists come from a diverse group of educational, socioeconomic, ethnic, and family back- grounds. Some have criminal backgrounds, while others are high- ly educated. They vary in levels of operational ability, training and access to financing. Their plots require varying degrees of planning, and the likelihood of success tends to be rather limited, with plots often thwarted prior to any real threat. But as is dem-

262 POST

onstrated by the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings, even the simplest of plots can create devastating consequences.

Osama bin Laden was acutely aware of the importance of stra- tegic communication. Indeed, on an al-Qaeda website, a specific Internet strategy was spelled out.

Due to the advances of modern technology, it is easy to spread news, information, articles and other information over the Inter- net. We strongly urge Muslim Internet professionals to spread and disseminate news and information about the Jihad through e-mail lists, discussion groups, and their own websites. If you fail to do this, and our site closes down before you have done this, we may hold you to account before Allah on the Day of Judgment…This way, even if our sites are closed down, the material will live on with the Grace of Allah. (Weimann, 2006, p. 66)

First in the United States and then internationally, the Ameri- can-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who became known as “the bin Laden of the Internet,” played a lead role in advancing al-Qae- da’s cause and perspective through the Internet. His eloquent sermons reflect three themes:

• Muslims are victims. Their economic and social difficulties are caused by their enemies.

• They, the enemy out to humiliate and defeat Muslims, are the West, especially the United States, Great Britain, and Israel.

• Therefore, jihad is required by all Muslims to defend Islam, which is under attack, against them. It is justified defensive jihad.

Three dramatic cases in recent years suggest the psychological qualities of individuals particularly attracted to this virtual com- munity of hatred. And there are suggestions of a generational provenance as well. All three had contact with al-Awlaki. Major Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist responsible for the massacre at Fort Hood, was impressed by al-Awlaki’s sermons, which he heard in Northern Virginia. He contacted Imam al-Awlaki by e- mail when he was stationed in Fort Hood, indicating he was lone- ly and sought friends. They exchanged some 20 e-mails. In one,

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 263

he asked al-Awlaki, “Is it OK for a Muslim to kill soldiers if their mission is to kill Muslims?” He was told, “Yes.” Indeed, he was told it was an obligation. In effect, it was explained that this was consistent with defensive jihad. After the November 5, 2009, Fort Hood massacre, in which Major Hasan killed 13 and wounded 32, al-Awlaki praised Major Hasan as a hero. Hasan, who offered no defense, was sentenced to death by an Army court martial.

In considering the psychodynamics of the social revolutionary terrorists of the third wave, it has been suggested that they were rebelling against the generation of their parents, which was iden- tified with the regime.

• The goal of the group is to destroy the world of their fa- thers.

• Their acts of terrorism are acts of retaliation for real and imagined hurts against the society of their parents.

• They are symbolically dissenting against parents loyal to the regime.

These are the generational dynamics of Osama bin Laden. When he criticized the Saudi ruling class from Yemen for hosting the U.S. military in the “land of the two cities,” he was rebelling against the older generation of his family, which is strongly iden- tified with the Saudi regime that enriched them. For his trouble, bin Laden was stripped of his Saudi passport, and his family turned against him. Thus, bin Laden was not merely a Muslim fundamentalist terrorist leader; he also displayed the psychologi- cal characteristics of a social revolutionary. And these are the dynamics of Anwar al-Awlaki. His father was cosmopolitan, had served as minister of agriculture and was chancellor at two Ye- meni universities. He was not especially religious. From his youth onward, al-Awlaki was an ardent Muslim preacher, who increas- ingly blamed the West, and saw Muslims as victims.

Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, “the underwear bomber,” showed the same generational provenance. The son of a wealthy cosmopolitan Nigerian banker who was not particularly pious, Abdulmatallab became increasingly religious and intolerant in the several years preceding his attempted martyrdom attack on the Detroit-bound aircraft by trying to detonate explosives in his underwear. He complained that his father ate meat that was “ha-

264 POST

ram” (forbidden); he would not eat with his family and became increasingly distant.

Faisal Shahzad, the “Times Square bomber,” also displayed the same generational dynamics. He was the son of a prominent cos- mopolitan senior Pakistani military officer who was not particu- larly pious. Shahzad became increasingly religious and intolerant in the several years preceding his attempted car bomb attack in Times Square. He stopped drinking and tried to get his father and friends to stop drinking. He also tried to force his wife to wear the hijab. He broke contact with his family.

To be sure, the pattern of pious sons of prominent secular fa- thers associated with the regime rebelling against their fathers’ world as they became increasingly pious and consumed by the world of radical Islam is merely suggestive. But this is not just self- radicalization. Rather, there is trolling of social networking sites by radicalizers like al-Awlaki, seeking lonely, alienated individuals to whom they give a sense of belonging and significance. Major Hasan, Abdulmatallab, and Shahzad were lonely and isolated, found in the language on the radical Islamist web sites that they were not alone, and received comfort in feeling they belonged to the virtual community of hatred. Their difficulties were not of their making; rather, they were victims of oppression by the West. Therefore, striking out violently at their oppressors was not only justified, it was required. Gabi Weimann, author of Terror on the Internet, estimates there are more than 7,000 radical Islamist web sites at the present time (2006). Although there may be only a handful of radicalizers, like al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in December 2011, the radical sermons and mes- sages spread rapidly from site to site, as emphasized in the al- Qaeda Internet strategy quoted above.

To summarize, it is suggested that the lone wolves are isolat- ed loners and “losers,” with fractured relations with family. In search of belonging, they found the virtual community of hatred an attractive environment, with its repetitive messages of oppres- sion which reinforced their view of themselves as victims. Some showed compensatory grandiosity, as demonstrated by this mes- sage from Hosam Maher Husein Smadi: “‘We shall attack them in their very own homes,’ he wrote on March 29, speaking about Americans. ‘Brother, by God, we shall attack them in a manner

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 265

that hurts, an attack that shakes the world’” (McKinley, 2009, p. A12).

Seeking recognition, some sought to go out in a “blaze of glo- ry.” Not all were immediately consumed by the quest for mar- tyrdom but were persuaded to strike in such a manner that they could survive. This was the case with Antonio Martinez, who was persuaded that by using a car bomb he could avoid a shootout and live to fight another day. In reviewing the demographics of U.S. lone wolves, there was a wide spectrum of countries of ori- gin. Many of the U.S.–born lone wolves were prison converts. They demonstrated a wide age range from teenage to late 60s.

On the basis of a review of 28 U.S. lone wolves, McGinnis, Moody, and Post (2013) developed a typology with four types of lone wolves. These types overlap extensively, but they reflect some of the variance within the lone wolf population. The four types are: glory seekers, hero worshippers, naïve romantics, and radical altruists).

The glory seekers were “losers” who demonstrated a pattern of personal failure. Through an act of terrorism, they were seek- ing fame and a sense of significance in their otherwise empty lives. Examples of glory seekers are: Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif (aka Joseph Anthony Davis) and Walli Mujahidh (aka Frederick Domingue, Jr.). Latif and Mujahidh plotted to attack a Seattle military entrance processing station using machine guns and grenades they had purchased from undercover law enforcement officers. Demonstrating the magnitude of their quest for glory, Latif stated: “We’re trying to send a message. We’re trying to get something that’s gonna be on CNN and all over the world” (Es- posito & Ryan, 2011).

The hero worshippers feel empty, and they seek to emulate an idealized other seen as embodying all they would like to be. They fall under the charismatic influence of others like Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Anwar al-Awlaki. Major Nidal Hasan, who has already been discussed, and Naser Jason Abdo are both examples. Nidal Hasan was inspired by al-Awlaki. Hasan had been impressed by the sermons of the charismatic al-Awla- ki he had heard in northern Virginia, and sought his guidance online. Naser Jason Abdo in turn was inspired by Nidal Hasan. Abdo was a U.S. Army soldier who went AWOL and traveled to

266 POST

a town near Fort Hood, where he planned to carry out an attack on a crowded restaurant using bombs made from pressure cook- ers. The restaurant was popular with soldiers from the nearby base. At his trial, Abdo referred to Nidal Hasan as “my brother,” and he stated that he lived in Hasan’s shadow despite “efforts to outdo him.”

The naïve romantics are notable for their psychological imma- turity. As “wannabe” terrorists, they struggle with self-identity. They have a romanticized notion of “revolution.” They are so naïve as individuals that they might not have been able to plot effectively without the assistance of the undercover agents car- rying out the sting. Antonio Martinez is an example of the naïve romantic. He emigrated from Nicaragua with his mother and sib- lings, did not graduate from high school, and was arrested at age 16 for armed robbery. He then decided to become a Christian and was baptized but converted to Islam a year later. Martinez posted radical messages on a jihad social networking site about joining the mujahedeen, which drew the attention of the FBI. He was arrested in an undercover FBI operation after attempting to detonate a fake car bomb outside a military recruiting center. He chose the recruiting center because he had considered enlisting in the Army before converting to Islam. He stated that his dream was to join the ranks of the mujahedeen, but admitted to the FBI informant that he did not know how to build a bomb and had suggested stuffing socks up exhaust pipes to kill soldiers.

The radical altruists subordinate their individuality to the group cause. They act “for the sake of my people.” They have been per- suaded that martyrdom is necessary for the greater good of be- sieged Muslims everywhere and will win them a higher place in paradise. The psychology of the radical altruist is well conveyed by these words of Leila Khaled, an early example of the radical altruist:

I knew that I had a role to play. I realized that my historic mission was as a warrior in the inevitable battle between oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited. I decided to become a revolu- tionary in order to liberate my people and myself. (Post, 2007, p. 24)

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 267

Faisal Shahzad, the “Times Square bomber” discussed earlier, is an example of a contemporary radical altruist. He had come to believe it was his duty to carry out an act of violent jihad. Refer- ring to himself as a “Muslim soldier,” he believed he was acting for the greater good of all Muslims, to ease their suffering and to fight back against the oppressor. “‘It’s a war. I am part of the an- swer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people,’ he said. ‘On behalf of that, I’m revenging the attack.’” (Shifrel & Martinez, 2010).

Lone Wolf Packs

Examples of lone wolf packs include the Lackawanna Six, Fort Dix Six, and the northern Virginia Five. They show powerful group dynamics, demonstrating that groups can make more dan- gerous decisions than individuals acting on their own. Reflecting “groupthink,” they both reinforce their sense of superiority and suppress dissent.

The Fort Dix Six is an interesting example. The three Duka brothers from former Yugoslavia and their friends plotted to at- tack Fort Dix with firearms and grenade launchers. The members were not well-adjusted in their roles in American life and dis- played signs of antisocial traits. They had a “gangster attitude.” The group became more extreme in religious beliefs as time went on, and their evolving radicalization provided a deeper sense of belonging. They continually fed off each other, marshaling their resolve but not giving voice to their doubts.

Another prominent example of a quite large wolf pack, a ro- manticized brotherhood of alienated diasporans, is well repre- sented by more than forty youths in the Somali diaspora in the Minneapolis area. They came to the United States seeking refuge from the political violence in Somalia but were rebuffed by the host society. Defensively, they sought “brotherhood,” and formed a wolf pack of what was initially a fantasized organization. Failing to assimilate in the United States, they were sold a romanticized version of al-Shabaab and came to idealize this Somali terrorist group. They sought altruistically to join the struggle in Somalia, traveling there to become fighters.

268 POST

With the rapid technological changes of the communications revolution, we have moved into dangerous and uncharted waters. Reflecting the communication revolution, frustrated, alienated individuals and small groups can be stimulated through the In- ternet and social media to become radicalized and to feel they belong to the virtual community of hatred. This is not merely “homegrown” terrorism but represents a deliberate strategy of radical Islamic terrorist organizations. Countering this online strategy is a daunting counter-terrorist challenge, requiring great care that in the name of security, privacy and civil liberties not be abused. How to inject countering arguments into this multicen- tric information space is extremely challenging; for individuals exposed to radicalizing messages will be resistant and ready to reject Western-sponsored web sites as propaganda. A healthy de- mocracy must be able to tolerate dissent. One cannot eliminate terrorism without eliminating democracy. What is technological- ly possible, as witnessed by the degree of electronic surveillance conducted within the United States by the National Security Agency, and as revealed by the Snowden leaks, does not mean it can be done without violating the sense of privacy and civil liber- ties that are at the heart of robust democracy. And that would mean becoming a terror state.

REFERENCES

Adamic, L. (1934). Dynamite: The story of class violence in America. New York, NY: Viking.

Ali, F., & Post, J. (2008). The history and evolution of martyrdom in the service of defensive jihad: An analysis of suicide bombers in current conflicts. Social Research, 75(2), 615-654.

Asbley, K., Ayers, B., Dohrn, B., Jacobs, J., Jones, J., Long, G., et al. (1969). You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. New Left Notes. Retrieved from http://archive.org/stream/ YouDontNeedAWeathermanToKnowWhichWayTheWindBlows/ weather_djvu.txt

Barkun, M. (1994). Religion and the racist right. Chapel Hill, NC: Univer- sity of North Carolina Press.

Bion, W. R. (1961). Experiences in groups: and other papers. New York, NY: Routledge.

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 269

Crenshaw, M. (1981). The causes of terrorism. Comparative Politics, 13(4), 379-399.

Da Silva, M. (1975). Modernization and ethnic conflict: The case of the Basques. Comparative Politics, 7(2), 227-251.

Dylan, R. (1965). Subterranean homesick blues. On Bringing it all back home [Record]. New York, NY: Columbia Records.

Esposito, R., & Ryan, J. (2011, June 23). Feds: Converts to Islam planned Ft. Hood-style assault in Seattle. ABC News. Retrieved from http:// abcnews.go.com/Blotter/prison-converts-extremist-islam-planned- ft-hood-style/story?id=13915159

Gurr, T. R. (Ed.). (1989). Violence in America, Volume 2, Protest, rebellion, reform. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

History of Basque nationalism: Historical background. (n.d.). Euskal Herria Journal. Retrieved from www.ehjnavarre.org/navarre/na_hi- story_pnv.html

Hopper, E. (2003). The social unconscious. London: Jessica Kingsley. Horgan, J. (2005). The psychology of terrorism. New York, NY: Routledge. Kramer, M. (1998). The moral logic of Hizballah. In W. Reich (Ed.), Ori-

gins of terrorism: Psychologies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind. (pp. 131-157). Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Leiken, R. S. (2005). Europe’s angry Muslims. Foreign Affairs, 84(4). Re- trieved from http://www.foreignaffairs.com

Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848). The Communist manifesto. London: The Communist League.

McCauley, C., & Segal, M. (1987). Social psychology of terrorist groups. In C. Hendrick (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (pp. 231-256). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

McGinnis, C., Moody, K., & Post, J. (2013, July). The psychology of lone wolf and lone wolf pack terrorists: Joining the virtual community of hatred. Paper presented at the annual scientific meeting of the Internatio- nal Society of Political Psychology, Herzliya, Israel.

McKinley, J. C. (2009, September 27). Friends’ portrait of Texas bomb plot suspect at odds with F.B.I. New York Times. Retrie- ved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/us/28texas. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Neibuhr, G. (1994, August 24). To church’s dismay, priest talks of “ju- stifiable homicide” of abortion doctors. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/24/us/to-church-sdis- may-priest-talks-of-justifiable-homicide-of-abortion-doctors.html

Nelson, R., & Sanderson, T. (2011). A growing terrorist threat? Asses- sing “homegrown” extremism in the United States. Center for Strate- gic and International Studies, 3. Retrieved from

270 POST

http://csis.org/files/publication/110203_Nelson_AThreatTransfor- med_web.pdf

Post, J. M. (1983, July). Individual and group dynamics of terrorist behavior. Paper presented at the 7th World Congress of Psychiatry, Vienna, Austria. In P. Pichot, P. Berner, & K. Thau (Eds.), (1985), Drug de- pendence and alcoholism, forensic psychiatry, military psychiatry (pp. 381-386). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Post, J. (1986). Individual, group, and organizational psychology of political terrorism. Paper presented at the 9th annual meeting of the Interna- tional Society of Political Psychology, Amsterdam.

Post, J. M. (1987a). Terrorist psycho-logic: Terrorist behavior as a product of psychological forces. Paper presented at the international conference on Psychological Dimensions of Terrorism, sponsored by the Woo- drow Wilson Center for International Scholars, The Smithsonian Institution. In W. Reich, (Ed.), (1990), Origins of terrorism: Psycho- logies, ideologies, theologies, states of mind (pp. 25-40). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson In- ternational Center for Scholars.

Post, J. M. (1987b). “It’s us against them”: The basic assumptions of political terrorists. In J. Kranz (Ed.), Irrationality in social and organi- zational life (pp. 68–75). Washington, DC: A.K. Rice Institute Press.

Post, J. M. (2004). Leaders and their followers in a dangerous world: The psychology of political behavior. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Post, J. M. (2005). Psychology. In the Club de Madrid Series on Democracy and Terrorism, Volume 1, Addressing the causes of terrorism (pp. 7-12). Madrid, Spain: Club de Madrid. http://safe-democracy.org/docs/ CdM-Series-on-Terrorism-Vol-1.pdf

Post, J. M. (2007). The mind of the terrorist: The psychology of terrorism from the IRA to Al Qaeda. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pregulman, A., & Burke, E. (2012). Homegrown terrorism. AQAM Futu- res Project Case Study Series Case Study Number 7. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies. http://csis.org/ files/publication/120425_Pregulman_AQAMCaseStudy7_web.pdf

Rapoport, D. C. (2004). The four waves of modern terrorism. In A. K. Cronin & J. Ludes (Eds.), Attacking terrorism: Elements of a grand strategy (pp. 46–73). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Robins, R. S., & Post, J. M. (1997). Political paranoia: The psychopolitics of hatred. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Shifrel, S., & Martinez, J. (2010, June 21). Times Square terror suspect Faisal Shahzad admits plot to use weapon of mass destruction. New York Daily News. Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/ news/crime/times-square-terror-suspect-faisal-shahzad admits-plot- weapon-mass-destruction-article-1.181711

TERRORISM AND RIGHT-WING EXTREMISM 271

Tamil National Leader Velupillai Pirapaharan’s Interview. (1986, March). The Week. Retrieved from www.eelam.com/interviews/lea- der_march_86.html

Thompson, M. (2009, November 11). Fort Hood highlights a threat of homegrown jihad. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/ time/nation/article/0,8599,1937912,00.html.

Weather Underground Organization. (1974). Prairie fire: The politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism: Political statement of the Weather Under- ground. n.p.: Weather Underground.

Weimann, G. (2006). Terror on the Internet: The new arena, the new challen- ges. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.

Woodworth, P. (2001). Why do they kill? The Basque conflict in Spain. World Policy Journal, 18(1), 1-12.

Yonah, A., & Pluchinsky, D. (Eds.). (1992). Europe’s last Red terrorists: The fighting Communist organizations. Washington, DC: Frank Cass.

Elliott School of International Affairs The George Washington University Washington, DC 20052 E-mail: [email protected]

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.