Patterns of American Terrorism 1955-1998: An Historical Perspective on Terrorism-Related Fatalities

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 1-14

  Hewitt, Christopher ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE COUNTY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0034559183     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550008427546     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. See Washington Post, 2 January 1999.
2. See Newsweek, 8 March 1993 and Newsweek, 1 May 1995.
3. See Newsweek, 8 March 1993 and Newsweek, 1 May 1995.
4. The most recent example was the killing, during the Ruby Ridge siege in August 1992, of Vicki Weaver by an FBI sniper, while she was holding her baby daughter. Her 14-year old son, Sam, had been shot two days earlier. Her husband, Randy Weaver was awarded $3m after winning a wrongful death suit against the Justice Department.
5. In both figure 1 and figure 2, the Oklahoma deaths are not included in the calculations.
6. 'Land of the Loony Loners?' Washington Post, 28 July 1998: A6.
7. Edward Mickolus, Terrorism. 1988-1991: A Chronology of Events (Westport, CT: Greenwood 1993), in that it does not include attacks carried out by American terrorists on foreign targets. The only important example of such terrorism in the United States were the attacks on Soviet and Arab targets by the Jewish Defense League.
8. David Rieff, The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami (New York: Simon and Schuster 1993) p.85.
9. The Chilean regime of Pinochet organized the 1976 car bombing that killed Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC. A Chilean court convicted Manuel Contreras, the former chief of the Chilean secret police, of being involved in the murder plot. The Libyan government has been accused of being behind the assassination of Libyan dissidents.
10. Franklin killed at least 15 people in 10 separate attacks in the 1980s; Christopher shot and stabbed 13 blacks and Hispanics in Buffalo and New York City during a 100 day rampage in 1980; Spisak killed three blacks in separate incidents in Cleveland, and Long killed seven people in Dayton over a seven year period in the early 1970s.
11. See New York Times, 13 December 1993.
12. Political violence involving native Americans is a largely neglected topic. Because of the paucity of data, and the relatively isolated quality of AIM violence, little can be said about it.
13. In addition, the chronology in the Kerner Commission Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism (Washington DC: 1976) lists one fatality from the bombing, presumably by anti-war radicals, of a military base in Nevada on 6 May 1971, but no details could be found.
14. Bank guards are classified as police, and a ROTC cadet killed by Puerto Rican nationalists was classified as military. A black national guard colonel and a black deputy sheriff killed by Klansmen are not included in the law enforcement/military category since they were targeted because of their race rather than their occupations.
15. Leon Jordan, a black congressman was shot from a passing car in Kansas City, Missouri, under mysterious circumstances, with some claiming it was racially-motivated.
16. Both white and black racists killed women and children, as well as torturing and mutilating several of their victims. The theology of the Nation of Islam held that whites were created by the evil scientist Yakub.
17. The January 1975 bombing of the Fraunces Tavern in New York City was in retaliation for the bombing of a pro-independence rally in Puerto Rico two weeks earlier, which killed two people. The FALN communique stated that we 'warned the North American government that to terrorize and kill our people would mean retaliation by us.'
18. The murder of an alleged informer, Wilbert Jackson, and his girlfriend was originally claimed by the New World Liberation Front in a telephone call, but subsequently denied by them. Despite the uncertainty surrounding this incident, it is included in table 2.
19. Morris Dees, Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (New York: Harper Collins 1996); Kenneth Stem, A Force Upon the Plain: the American Militia Movement (New York: Harper Collins 1996)
20. Morris Dees, Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat (New York: Harper Collins 1996); Kenneth Stem, A Force Upon the Plain: the American Militia Movement (New York: Harper Collins 1996)
21. James Coates, Armed and Dangerous: The rise of the Survivalist Right (New York: Hill and Wang 1995).
22. Anti-Defamation League, Hate Groups in America (New York 1982).
23. James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1990); Michael Barkun, The Rise of the Racist Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1994).
24. James Aho, The Politics of Righteousness (Seattle: University of Washington Press 1990); Michael Barkun, The Rise of the Racist Right (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1994).
25. See John George and Laird Wilcox, American Extremists: Militias. Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists and Others on the Fringe (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books 1996) for a sceptical review of the previously cited estimates.
26. Jeffrey Kaplan 'Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force', Terrorism and Political Violence 7/3 (Autumn 1995) pp. 128-55.
27. For a description of attempts by white racists to do this, see Tricia Andryszewski, The Militia Movement in America (Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press 1997).
28. See Wyn Wade The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987); John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis Communists Klansmen and Others on the Fringe (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1996); Philip Heymann, Terrorism and America (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1998).
29. See Wyn Wade The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987); John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis Communists Klansmen and Others on the Fringe (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1996); Philip Heymann, Terrorism and America (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1998).
30. See Wyn Wade The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987); John George and Laird Wilcox, Nazis Communists Klansmen and Others on the Fringe (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books 1996); Philip Heymann, Terrorism and America (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 1998).
31. In the case of Randy Weaver, FBI agents solicited Weaver to procure a sawn-off shot gun -a criminal act; then used this in an attempt to get him to become an informer.
32. USA Today, 16 December 1998.
33. This article was submitted in January 1999. In the summer of 1999, a white racist in Chicago went on a shooting spree against blacks, Jews and Asians, killing two and wounding nine. Two gays were murdered in California by a pair of brothers belonging to Identity. A lone gunman wounded five in an attack on a Jewish community center and then killed an Asian mailman.