Left-Wing Extremist Terrorism
Seger, K. A (2001) Extremism runs in cycles. Leftist extremists are continually active for a
decade or more, and as they, right-wing extremists become active. During the late 1960s to the
middle 1980s, leftist extremism was the most significant threat in the United States. From the
mid-1980s to the present, the primary threat of domestic terrorism has been from right-wing
extremists. If the cycle theory is correct, then left-wing terrorism will increase within the next
few years (p. 5)
In the past thirty twenty years, America has seen an increase in domestic terrorist groups'
membership growth. It holds especially true in the past twelve years with the election of former
President United States Barrack H. Obama. During his presidency, these groups were especially
active but remained mostly underground and on the internet, chat rooms, and web sites. Their
hate and vial for the country's first black President remained and covered by the First
amendment.
As the White House's current occupant took office, the membership into these groups and
their sympathizers grew exponentially. Right-wing terrorism has become such a severe issue in
the United States that on September 24, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
United States Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director Christopher Wray wrote a report and testified in a congressional hearing. The testified
informing the United States Senate that Cuccinelli (2020) White Supremacists were responsible
for the most ideologically inspired extremist homicides in rent years, overtaking Salafist and
jihadist killing the United States. (Wall Street Journal September 24, 2020)
With the entire Federal law enforcement apparatus focusing on the latest white nationalist
groups that have emerged from the dark corners of America's garbage can like the Boogaloo
boy's and the Proud Boys, it has taken the spotlight off the other national domestic threat within
the borders of the United States left-wing extremism. In recent years as the ring-wing terrorist
groups have been standing up for all to see, left-wing groups have been lurking in the newly
created shadows allowing them to plot and commit crimes with minimal scrutiny from federal
law enforcement.
Unlike right-wing terrorist groups whose racial superiority ideology is founded on, mixed
with Christian thought, the left-wing extremist ideology has always followed Marxist-Leninist
thinking. Left-wing terrorism is defined differently from right-wing extremists. According to
Jones, S. G (2018), left-wing terrorist refers to the use or threat of violence by sub-national or
non-state entities that oppose capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism; focus on environmental
or animal rights issues; espouse pro-communist or pro-socialist beliefs, or support a
decentralized sociopolitical system like anarchism (p. 1). These groups have established to
oppose what they believed was the deprived class difference between those that do not have and
those that have
too much.
The middle of the twentieth century saw a propagation of socialist ideology throughout the
world and taking hold with groups like West Germany's Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof
Group), Italy's Red Army Brigades (Brigate Rosse), and Cuba's July 26 Movement (MR-26-7)
Argentina's People's Revolutionary Army. The writings of individuals like Ernesto "Che"
Guevara, Franz Fanon, and Carlos Marighella inspired thousands to take up arms against the
government.
The Marxist-Leninist ideology was not only happening in Europe and its cities. The United
States Groups, like the Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and Fuerzas
Armadas De Liberacion Nacional (FALN), were most active during this time.
According to Seger, K. A (2001) left-wing extremist continues, indeed, to be a potential threat
to the United States government agencies. The challenge in responding to this threat is to ensure
that individuals' rights to form and express their own beliefs are required to provide security and
protection against terrorism and espionage that may be committed by the most extreme members
of these movements (p. iv).
Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front is an ecological revolutionary group established from the more
radical branch of the Earth First, Green Peace, and Sea Shepherds that were the leaders in the
1970s and 1980's environmentalist movement. These groups believed in biocentrism and deep
ecology. Earth First, Green Peace, and Sea Shepherds created a peaceful protest doctrine to
protect the Earth's environment.
The group's founding principle was to become a strict environmental group that put the
Earth's needs and natural before humans. According Parson. S (2008), the Earth Liberation Front
(ELF), supported the philosophy of deep ecology and radicalized the environmental movement
by promoting non-violent direction action, civil disobedience, and ecotage (ecological sabotage)
as legitimate political tactics in defending the Earth (p. 51). For many, their intention was never
to overthrow the governments of its political foundations.
In the early years, ecological sabotage was the calling card for many of these groups. Parson,
S. (2008); ecotage ranged from the monkeywrenching (most often illegal sabotage for the means
of slowing down, or making it counter-effective to continue with a particular activity), or
sabotaging, to spiking trees in order to destroy saw blades of logging equipment its intended goal
was not to alter radically, but instead to allow individuals to protect the forests actively. The
wilderness they visited from the encroachment of corporate and other poachers (p. 51).
For the more radical members of the group monkeywrenching, and spiking trees were not
enough. What they wanted was a more direct-action approach to get their message across to the
masses. ELF, like many other terrorist groups, want attention to their plight, not deaths. The
attention was to bring attention to their cause.
As an organization, Earth Liberation Front is a decentralized leaderless cell-driven movement
along the same line as Al Qaeda and many other transnational terrorist groups. The decentralized
leaderless cell modality allows for ELF members to stay anonymous while conducting
surveillance, intelligence gathering, and criminal/terrorist acts without the fear of being
identified by law enforcement. This model allows for small cells with up to five members to act
freely in the movement's name.
The representative actions of the Earth Liberation Front are criminal conducted clandestinely
by individual and small groups to further their cause of protecting the ecological system and the
Earth from further human transgressions.
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a decentralized left-wing global terrorist group that
operates both in the United States and overseas. ALF branched off from Earth First, Green Peace,
and Sea Shepherds. They have founded in England whose roots originate from a nineteenth-
century organization, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals their focus was to stop Sport hunting in
England.
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF), as a group, is a zoological revolutionary group whose
focus is to protect all animals' rights to freedom. ALF's operating philosophy is to liberate all
animals of every form of slavery that binds them to humans. Animal Liberation Front was from
the more radical members of Earth First, Green Peace, and Sea Shepherds in the 1970s and
1980s.
According to Best, S & Norcella, A ( 2005), The goal of ALF and animal rights is not merely to
liberate individual animals here and there; it is to free all animals from every form of slavery that
binds them to their human oppressor. The ALF and animal rights movement attacks the entire
institutional framework of animal exploitation and the human species' absolute values, mindset,
identities, and worldviews (p. 5). The Animal Liberation Fronts tactics and notoriety gained
them the number one domestic terrorist threat to the United States, according to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation's (FBI).
One of ALF's core beliefs is change through direct action. Like America's founding fathers, they
feel that protest, civil disobedience, destruction of private property is the American way in the
name of freedom. Every major struggle in United States history included direct action. The
Direct-Action tactics were evident in protests of the 1960s and 1970s with the Vietnam war and
the Women's liberation movement.
Right-wing Extremism
The Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, where Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicholas
carried out a planned to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in response to the raid by
the Federal Marshal Service (USMS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) standoff three
years earlier at Ruby Ridge, Idaho on August 21, 1992. The execution of a warrant and arrest of
Randy Weaver. The standoff lasted for 11 days, and as a result, three people died during the
siege. The siege at Ruby Ridge services as a rallying cry for the vanilla ISIS movement that the
federal government was coming after them and their way of life.
Right-wing terrorist groups nationwide have been preparing to wage a silent theoretical race
war against the rest of the non-White Angelo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) America. These
disorganized, decentralized, and leaderless resistant movement rear their ugly hate with every
republican administration. This administration, unlike any other, has openly courted assistance to
these groups.
According to Dr. Bruce Hoffman (2016) of Georgetown University, Right-wing Terrorism
commonly refers to the use of threat of violence by sub-national or non-state entities whose goals
may include racial, ethnic, or religious supremacy; opposition to a government authority (p. 1).
In the past four years, these anti-government, white nationalist groups have stepped out from the
dark shadows; and into the glory of the light provided by the 45th presidents of the United States.
Recently a vanilla Isis group plotted to kidnap and put on trial and possibly murder the
democratically elected Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and Governor Ralph Northam.
The thirteen members of the group are in Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) custody awaiting a
bond hearing. Six of the group's thirteen members face federal charges, and the remaining seven
face state crimes. The reason given The Wolverine Watchmen is a White Nationalist group
affiliated with the Proud Boys movement, another white nationalist group.
KU KLUX KLAN (Circle of the family)
The oldest of the right-wing extremist groups in the United States is the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK), the grandfather of white nationalist terrorist groups. The Ku Klux Klan has been around
in different iterations since the Civil War in 1865 and the reconstruction period. The name Ku
Klux Klan derives from a combination of words from Greek and Scottish backgrounds. Broken
down Ku is a Greek word for circle Klux is a club, and Klan is Scottish for a family. The Ku
Klux Klan's trademark signature, the hooded white sheet, and a flaming torch gave them a
purposeful ghostly appearance while keeping the enhance their ghostly appearance. The ghostly
appearance was effective against the black population since they were especially superstitions.
Later interaction of the superstitious wardrobe included the Celtic cross they call the MIOAK
(Mystic Insignia of a Klansman), Blood drop cross, or Odin's cross. The Celtic cross is one of
many unifying symbols found among white supremacist groups worldwide. The symbol signifies
pure white blood and white racial supremacy.
According to Davis, S.L (1924), James R. Crowe suggested making it more mysterious that a
customer is adopted. They then made a raid upon Mrs. Martin's closet and robed themselves pillowcases,
as masquerading as a popular form of entertainment those days. Wishing to make an impression, they
borrowed some horses from a near-by stable and disguised them with sheets. They mounted and rode
through the darkness calling at the homes of their mothers and sweethearts without speaking a word.
They rode slowly through the streets of Pulaski waving to the people and making grotesque gestures,
which created merriment to the unsuperstitious, and the superstitious, great fear (p. 8).
Christian Identity Movement
One of the most obvious and yet one of the least paid attention to issue(s) is the intersection of
racial hate, religion, and government. For many Americans, the thought of Euro-American
churches preaching hate cannot be further from their minds. In those dark corners, one's mind
lives religious terrorism. Jone, S, Doxsee, C, Harrington, N, Wwang, & Suber, K (2020) defines
religious terrorism as violence in support of a faith-based belief system, such as Islam, Judaism,
Christianity, or Hinduism.
The primary threat from religious terrorists in the United States comes from Salafi-jihadists
inspired by the Islamic States and al-Qaeda. Ethnonationalist terrorism refers to violence in
support of ethnic or nationalist goals, often including struggles of self-determination and
separatism along ethnic or nationalist lines (p. 2).
The Christian Identity Movement services as the religious inspiration and is also the founder
of such groups as the Aryan Nations. The Christian Identity Church has been in the United States
since the 1930s in several locations with their current location in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. The
central penance of the movement is that of every other white supremacy group with one
noticeable exception; is they have a central place of worship for racial hate. The hate of all non-
whites
According to Baliey, J (2002), nineteenth-century proslavery advocates justified their position by
referencing God's "marking" of Cain before his expulsion from the Garden of Eden as a curse of dark
skin bestowed upon him and his descendants, African Americans. Genesis9:20-27 describes Noah's
cursing of his son Ham because he had seen his father naked: Cursed Be Canaan the lowest of slaves will
he be to his brother. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and
may Canaan be his slave." Many slavery advocates preached that this passage destined Ham and his
African American progeny to be servants to his brothers, who constituted the white race. However,
Christians supported American slavery in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can be dismissed as a
moral failing of the past" (p. 56).
In the past thirty years, the United States has seen an explosion of white nationalism has
become a growing threat to governments worldwide. In the United States, white nationalism and
right-wing extremism is the number one threat within its boards. Paramilitary militia groups in
states like Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin, are a present clear danger.
Christian Identity Movement occupies the nexus of white nationalism and religion. The
Christian Identity movement has been central in the justification behind many of the country's
white supremacy ideology. Members of the Christian Identity church believe in the racial purity
of their White Angelo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) linage. Church members, a linage dates to
Europe when all the white people on the continent belonged to a single tribe of warriors.
The Christian Identity as a movement did not appear as a movement until the nineteenth
century until John Wilson started to get attention for his claims that the British people directly
descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel. According to Bailey, J. H (2010), John Wilson,
through lectures and writings such as Lectures on Our Israelitish Origin (1840), titillated a broad
audience with claims that he had discovered the long-forgotten and buried origins of the
countries of northern Europe. Drawing primarily on linguistic similarities, Wilson made the case
that the lost tribes had migrated to Europe in ancient times, placing all Europeans with the linage
(p. 58).
At the same time that Wilson was preaching, writing, and lecturing, another believer was of
the connection between the lost Israelis tribe and the European continent Edward Hine was
pointing out to those that would listen that the lost tribe of Israel had no connection with all of
Europe just the British. He also started to intermingle the toxic mix of religious beliefs and
nationalism.
One of the more prominent believers of the racial superiority theory was C.A. L. Totten
penned a periodical Our Race: Its Origins and Destiny. Totten started to form the foundation of
the new church belief system. In 1930 under the leadership of Howard B. Rand, the organization
hand a new name and a new home in Detroit, Michigan. The new name for the movement was
the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America. The movement was so popular that they opened
branches in California, Oregon, Illinois, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, all within two
years of opening its doors for the first time. Shortly after World War II, the Angelo-Saxon
Christian Congregation renamed itself the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, completing the
transformation into a White Supremacist quasi-religious political organization. The movement
created the Aryan Nation in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in 1973.
Numerous acts of violence are associated with the Christian Identity Movement; according to
Bailey, J. H (2010), In July 1999, Mathew Williams and his brother Tyler connected to Christian
Identity, was charged in the firebombing of three synagogues in Sacramento and the killing of a
gay couple, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, in Redding. California. In August of the same
year, Identity follower Buford O. Furrow Jr. killed a post worker and wounded five others after
opening fire on a Jewish daycare center in Los Angeles (p. 60).
California Anti-immigrant fervor Proposition 187
The Southwest region, particularly California and Arizona, served as the focus for the United
States' anti-immigrant movement. Many residents along the United States-Mexico border viewed
undocumented immigrates' movements to and from the United States as a regular part of life. In
the 1990s, racial animists started to take hold in border states like California, Arizona, New
Mexico, and Texas, where the majority population is Mexican and Central American diaspora.
The white populations of the region saw themselves as being outnumbered by non-English
speaking brown people. Many white Americans in the southwest region feared that foreigners
were invading their land.
According to Campbell, K. M (2015), The changing racial demographics of the United States
indicate that by 2044, whites will be a minority of the overall population and a significant factor
in the recent explosion of hate groups in the last several decades. Latino immigrants' fear and
loathing have decades, which has seen a resurgence due to the humanitarian refugee crisis on the
United States-Mexico border in 2014 (p. 5).
The anti-immigrant sentiment among white Americans exploded throughout the Southwest
and California. States like Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico became magnets for the white
supremacist movement worldwide to live train and confront the growing influx of undocumented
immigrates coming north from Central America and Mexico. In inspiring the explosion of the
far-right white nationalist and domestic terrorist groups and their sympathizers.
In the mid-1990s, domestic Terrorist Timothy McVeigh and his acquaintances Michael Fortier
and Terry Nicholas planted and exploded an ammonium nitrate and nitromethane mixed bomb,
destroying Alford P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The three assailants
killed 168 men, women, children, and more than 500 were injured. Like many homegrown
terrorists and hate groups, Timothy McVeigh was motivated by the white supremacist manifesto
The Turner Diaries. This publication has been a must-read for all white supremacists since its
publication in 1978.
The anti-immigration fervor influenced policy in several states. In 1994, California's
proposition 187 was on the ballot for the first time. This legislation prohibited individuals
without legal immigration status to receive any public services, including health care and
education. The Republican Governor of California Pete Wilson championed proposition 187
Campbell, K (2014); Governor Wilson was one the strongest proponents of the law, claiming that
California's recession subsisted by the state's large population of undocumented immigrants and
the revenue expended on providing them social services (p. 1087).
By the mid-2000s, the southwestern states saw an upsurge in white vigilantes hate groups.
The most significant increase of hate groups and sympathizers within its borders was Arizona's.
In the area along the United States-Mexico border, a crusade of hate and chaos taking place. The
U.S.-Mexico border was the new racial battleground, where one side was running away from
violence, intolerance, and destitute. The other side fighting to keep their self-proclaimed land
violent, white, and intolerant. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) became concerned with
increasing white nationalist groups colluding and gathering along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Campbell, K (2014) states that Extremist groups along the Arizona-Mexico border use radical
tactics, including armed vigilante action, to promote an extreme anti-immigrant agenda. In
addition to openly inviting people to patrol, the borders are forming, and activity overall is
expanding. Several members belonging to active vigilante groups, including their leadership,
have been arrested on weapons charges, and white supremacist and anti-government groups
continue to express interest and take part in organized patrols of the border (p. 1092-1093)
The United States' southern border became the fantasy training ground for paramilitary white
extremist groups to hunt human prey with little rules.
Arizona's S.B 1070 (Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) Anti-
immigrant Hate
The border states of California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona became the favorite location
among far-right groups; more individuals joined the established vigilante militia groups
patrolling the border. Groups like Civil Homeland Defense and the Minuteman Project joined
forces in patrolling the hundreds of miles of the Arizona side U.S.-Mexican border detaining
illegal immigrants entering the United States. These groups served as a recruiting model for
those who wanted to join their ranks to keep the United States immigrant free.
According to Coll (2015), Perhaps due to its proximity to Mexico, Arizona has also been a
hotbed of nativist and racist activity of late and being the center of the state and local attrition
through enforcement immigration law movement (p. 1098). In 2010 Governor Jan Brewer
signed and passed a series of what many believe were racist anti-immigration amendments in the
Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act (S.B. 1070). Along with the S.B.
1070 was Proposition 100, the denial of in-state tuition at Arizona state colleges and university
for students without lawful immigration status. Proposition 200 the denied bail to persons in
criminal cases who alleged to be undocumented.
Along with the growing white supremacy extremist (WSEs) problem within its borders,
Arizona statehouse members pursued an anti-immigrant sentiment incorporating it into the
policies they put forth. One openly anti-immigrant member was Senator Russell Pearce. This
lawmaker had connections to the white supreme extremist (WSEs) groups in Phoenix and Mesa's
cities.
Senator Pearce and others in the Arizona statehouse pushed for an extreme anti-immigration
policy that inflicts as much pain on all immigrants regardless of age and sex. As Campbell, C
(2015) supported Nuremberg-style legislation that would prohibit a hospital from issuing birth
certificates to children born of documented immigrants and a law that would not allow people to
marry without providing proof of U.S. citizenship and social security numbers…Pearce also
wants to eliminate the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, he supported the bill that has
eliminated ethnic studies in Arizona public schools and colleges and universities (p. 1099).
The anti-immigration rhetoric by politicians in the southwest provided a silent approval to the
Ku Klux Klan. Several Arizona chapters of the Ku Klux Klan joined forces with the paramilitary
groups down on the border in their war to keep America white. In their eyes, they feel that
America is suffocating in brown people. The politics of immigration provided fuel for the hate
and the lawlessness found among the hate groups congregating and patrolling the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Groups like the Minutemen Project feel that somehow, they are assisting the United States
Border Patrol in collecting and undocumented detention aliens. For many Border Patrol agents,
any assistance from white hate groups was not welcomed nor encouraged. Many members of
these hate groups found themselves arrested by Border Patrol Agents for crimes ranging from
kidnapping to capital murder.
The magnitude of hate expressed by both politicians and white supremacist extremist groups
against undocumented aliens throughout the southwest spread like a virus. It infected all those
with the disease of hate and intolerance—the intolerance and hate for all non-English immigrants
but predominantly brown-skinned people from the south. border.
California's anti-immigration policy proposition 187 and Arizona's S.B. 1070 both policies
were written to take away as many rights from immigration as possible.
Conclusion
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines domestic terrorism as acts perpetrated by
individuals and groups inspired by or associated with the primarily United States-based
movements that espouse extremist ideologies of a political, religious, social, racial, or
environmental nature. The FBI'S definition of terrorism has not been as relevant as in the past
thirty years in the United States.
Since the 1990s, the United States has seen a series of homegrown terrorist attacks that have
announced to the world that white supremacy is a clear and present danger to the country. The
bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the massacres at synagogues in California,
Pittsburgh, Shieke Temple in Wisconsin, and, most recently, the plot to kidnap and murder the
Governors of Michigan and Virginia.
The white nationalist groups have shown little regard for law enforcement at the federal, state,
or local levels. The boldness exhibited among white supremacy extremist (WSEs) groups since
the 1920s when the Ku Klax Klan was at its pinnacle of influence. Then as today, government
policy was influenced by racial indifference. Destroying the social contract for generations, the
United States took pride in and exported the ideology to the world.
The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in conjunction with the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), designated the number one threat to the United States
are from white supremacist extremist groups. The law enforcement apparatus views white
nationalist extremist groups like Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, and old ones like the Aryan
Nation, a clear and present danger to this country.
According to Jones, S (2020), In 2020 alone, sixty-seven percent of terror plots can be
contributable to white supremacist extremists (WSEs). Since 2008, there has been a twelve
percent increase from eight percent in the 2019 year to twenty percent in domestic terror
incidents contributing to extremist groups. The extremist groups from around the country have
grown in numbers, visibility, and audacity.
On October 10, 2020, a Michigan-based paramilitary group called Wolverine Watchmen's
plotted to kidnap and execute on national television the sitting Governor of Michigan Gretchen
Whitmer. The Governor angered this white nationalist paramilitary group by closing the state and
implementing a mask order. This group was also involved in an armed protest in which they
entered the Michigan state legislature armed with long guns in full view of the national audience.
Domestic terrorism has been part of the United States since the birth of this nation. White
men have terrorized every group they encountered since 1492. The first nation's people were the
initial
victims, followed by the Africans brought to this country as slaves, then every group or
individual that was not white than White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. White ethnocentrism and fear
have been at the center of this five-hundred-year odyssey of fear and hate. White supremacy in
all its iterations has created an undoubtedly danger in the homeland.
