Should We Expect More Terrorism from the Radical Right?

 The Terrorism of the Weak

The short answer is, “Yes, we should expect more terrorism.” Terrorism is a tool adopted by people who feel that they have no other way to be heard or acknowledged by the political system under which they live. Terrorist acts are committed by people who feel that they face a political system of overwhelming strength that refuses to accept the legitimacy of their cause. The radical right feels that way as we can see from the popularity of the myth that last November’s election was fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump.

Terrorism may take various forms. One them is the assassination of political leaders.  The most famous political assassination in modern times is the surely the killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which touched off the First World War. A famous American example is the killing of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Terrorism may also include killing of journalists like the twelve who were killed at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015. Terrorism may also include the destruction of buildings or monuments or the killing of random people by bombings or shootings. The killing of more than 100 people at the Bataclan Theater in Paris in 2015 is a well-known example.

Elite Terrorism

An entirely different kind of terrorism may be used by members of an elite that is struggling to maintain its position. Such terrorism is different from the terrorism of the weak. Elite terrorism is better organized, more sustained and much more deadly. The terrorist campaign unleashed against black people in the South after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 is an example. The campaign went on for decades, and it included lynchings, burnings, rapes and whippings. It included actions by private individuals, by law enforcement agents and by mobs. It even involved the destruction of whole communities. Thousands of innocent black people were killed, and millions moved out of the South to northern cities.  I do not think that we will see this kind of terrorism in our country in the immediate future. Our elites are very secure. They will not feel the need to terrorize us.

The Terrorism of the Weak in America

The extreme right in America has frequently employed the terrorism of the weak in recent years. During the Civil Rights Movement, we had the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, and in 1995, we had  the Oklahoma City bombing. More recently, we saw the murder of children at a church in South Carolina,  the murder of Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and the murder of a black man in Kenosha only last year.

There Will be More Terrorism

Should we expect the use of this kind of terrorism to increase? I think that the answer is “Yes.” Today, the members of the radical right see themselves in a position of weakness in confrontation with a powerful system. The myth of the stolen election in 2020 tells them that our allegedly democratic elections are controlled by a shadowy elite, which is determined to use fraud to deny electoral victories to the political right.

Mass actions have also failed them. The recent invasion of the Capitol in Washington was dramatic but failed to produce any long-lasting result. The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 1916 was similarly ineffective. From the radical right’s point of view, it may have no alternative but terrorism.

So, we should prepare ourselves for a difficult time. The radical right is very well armed, and its members are desperate. The internet facilitates the organization of desperate acts. Our law enforcement agencies must prepare themselves for repeated acts of terrorism by the radical right. The lack of preparedness that we saw recently at the Capitol must not be repeated.