support of including Blacks into mainstream America with all of the same rights as Southern Whites. The Klan declined during the Great Depression and resurged with a vengeance in the late 1950’ and early 1960’s. However, by the late 1960’s domestic terrorism activities changed. Now, a new form of extremism and terrorism emerged with new context of radical politics, protest movements, and revolutionary ideologies. (White, 2012).
By the mid-1960s, separatist Black religious cults ( e.g.
Black Muslims, the Death Angels) and Black nationalists, such as the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army ( BLA), wreaked violence against Blacks, Whites, and police officers who represented the repressive establishment spreading their ideological messages of terrorism. Additionally, leftist terrorist groups such as the independent Puerto Rican extremist groups Fuerza Armadas de Liberacion National (Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN), and the Macherteros also wanting to send their “message” began bombing military installations and large corporate targets, desiring independence from the United States. Joining in these extremists efforts were members of the Jewish Defense League and its splinter groups (e.g., Jewish Armed Resistance, Thunder of Zion) which primarily targeted Soviet diplomatic targets, Arab embassies, Arab-American organizations, and alleged Nazi war criminals.(White,2012)
Key Learning Point: The social context, in large part, defines the particular causes, beliefs, and ideologies, both political and religious, that extremists and terrorists
manifest.
In 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that the number of hate groups had reached over 1000. The number of antigovernment patriot militia groups topped 800, the largest figures ever recorded since the organization began counting such groups in the 1980s. The new Black Panther party (NBPP) is voicing support for radical Islam causes as well as providing legal advice to infamous terrorists such as Zacarias Moussaoui (the alleged 20th 9/11 hijacker). The bizarre subculture known as the Sovereign Citizens Movement has increased significantly since the late 2000’s. This extremist group, rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, harbor complex antigovernment beliefs such as deciding which laws to obey or ignore, and refusing to pay taxes of any kind.
As left-wing extremism waned, single-issue extremist and terrorist groups such as anti-abortionists emerged and began the bombing and burning of abortion clinics in the mid-1970s and in recent years, antiabortionists have become increasingly violent and deadly. The abortion issue continues to polarize public opinion in America. Radical ecology and anti-animal liberation movements, such as Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) have demonstrated adeptness in implementing a leaderless resistance approach to terrorism c877ommitting acts of vandalism and sometimes terrorism without direction from a central command or organization. Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, although the FBI once identified violent eco extremists and radical animal liberation activists as the most serious domestic terrorism threat in the country they have now been eclipsed by radical right wing extremists and homegrown radicalized transnational Islamist terrorists. A significant proportion of terrorist acts are committed by unaffiliated individuals rather than members of terrorist organizations linked to either specific religious or political ideologies, as well as wire social movements. A striking feature of the post-1978 violence is the role played by serial racist killers.(Hewitt, C. (2014).
Indubitably, the landscape for the various terrorist groups in America will continue to evolve. The most serious threats emerging in the early 1990’s, was the emergence of homegrown and transnational terrorist, as evidenced by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; the September 11, 2000 attack in New York, New York. In the fall of 2001, according to Podhoretz, (2015), a terrorist attack using letters laced with anthrax infected over twenty people killing five. Followers of Allah claimed responsibility. Radicalization of homegrown terrorists and transnational Islamic extremists continues to grow at an alarming rate. Some experts claim that underemployment, alienation, and loneliness necessitating the need to “belong” to some group contributed significantly to their radicalization. With the ubiquitous social media and other Internet medium, added to encryption techniques, Islamists have exploited these vulnerabilities to a fine art, as demonstrated by a radicalized husband and wife team who terrorized, murdered and wounded innocent people attending a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California on December of 2015. They were radicalized and used encrypted communications. What has changed most with the current and future domestic threats is that there appears to be a greater potential for cross-fertilization among the different movements today than in the past. (Hewitt, C. (2014).