The Old Terrorists

[Draggingtree]

The Old Terrorists

09.01.15 - 12:00 AM | by Harvey Klehr

 

Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence

 

By Bryan Burrough Penguin, 610 pages

For 20 years now, from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to the 2013 Boston Marathon massacre, domestic-terrorism concerns have centered almost exclusively on right-wing fanatics and Muslim extremists. We have forgotten that the most active and long-lived domestic terrorists in American history were driven by an entirely different set of ideas and ideology. They were left-wing radicals who bombed buildings, robbed banks, and murdered dozens of people from the late 1960s into the 1980s. As the investigative reporter Bryan Burrough recounts in his fine new history, Days of Rage, these terrorists, unlike today’s “lone wolves,” did not operate alone. Rather, they were functionaries and leaders in organizations with grand ambitions to overthrow the government of the United States.

 

In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1973, the FBI counted 2,500 domestic bombings, an average of five per day. The targets of these bombings were often police officers. The Black Liberation Army (BLA) executed seven policemen in a 10-month period from 1971 to 1972. A Puerto Rican separatist group, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-old-terrorists/