Talk:Domestic terrorism in the United States
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[edit] Possible areas
- Oklahoma City,
- the Klan,
- abolitionists,
- I thought to include both the Sacking of Lawrence and the Pottawatomie Massacre, but it looks to me like they were nearer to open guerilla warfare than terrorism.
- tar-and-feathering loyalists during the Revolution.
- massacres of Native Americans
- Native American raiding parties
- 1890-1900 anarchists
- left-wing 1960's
- Puerto Rican separatists
- radical environmentalists
- 80's right-wing militants
- animal rights
- anti-globalization anarchists
[edit] Possible topics
- leaderless resistance
- counterterrorism
- media coverage
- morality in historiography
I think we need to agree on a definition of terrorism and verify that any act fits that definition. Otherwise, we should be careful to say who says it's terrorism. I imagine we'd all like to avoid making another 'some say/it has been alleged' innuendo page. If any facts are in dispute we'll want to present a baanced account. I think this could be a very good page. Tom Harrison (talk) 17:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
- I agree that a definition is needed. For more recent times, I think it is safe to operate under the rules laid out by the Department of Justice or, where applicable, in statutory law. I think that's fairly reasonable, no matter how distasteful I find the source. (Patriot Act. Ergh.)
- Quoting the FBI, it's “the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or its territories without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
- This is an invaluable primary source for the past twenty years. There is also a fair bit of valuable material from the Close Up Foundation, which is pretty reliably non-partisan. (A lot of it is at a middle-school level, as well, which can be helpful in an encyclopedia article.)
- Historically, that's a bit harder. Perhaps looking through journal articles would be of value? If we can find a basic academic consensus on what events in American history are considered acts of domestic terrorism, we'd be one step closer.
- Here are a few events that I would consider members of this category:
- The assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley. (Overt political motivations are known for these acts. Kennedy? Not so much.)
- Unabomber is a given.
- Racial violence outside the Klan should be examined. All sorts of resources here. And, of course, the SPLC Intelligence Project.
- The Beltway snipers. There were political motives behind the shootings.
- Various actions of the Puerto Rican nationalist movement. (JFK bombing, et cetera).
- The midwestern pipe-bomb scare of a few years ago. (Right-wing anti-government types.)
- I guess we should start with "now" and move backwards, maybe. Tom Lillis 00:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] immigration and the development of "know how" attitudes
Much prevalent and popular American literature which describes North American population encounters with explorers and colonists, as well as with modern immigrants, uses the word "Indians" to describe the native peoples and the word "how" as typical of speech interface. From this comes the interpersonal attitude, especially pronounced among some families, that they learn a lot from foreign visitors and immigrants -- but they still aren't those.
As example, the surname 'Keller' as a speech-sound is a short mental hop to the word 'killer'; and indeed specific indivi-duals and populations actively identify with 'Kellers' as a family who "knows how" to sing the passages in the 'Books of Kells' yet are not those composers/authors neither in ancestry nor culture [i.e., only in latitude]. The mental leap from 'Keller' to 'killer' is so short that active verbal terrorism often results from family adherents, exemplified by call-demand strategies which move directly from 'ask/request' mode of oral delivery to 'demand' type terrorism, and are quite frightening when first encountered [in modern times, usually through the telephone, directly into the inner ear]. Beadtot 01:38, 22 December 2005 (UTC) December 21, 2005 beadtot
[edit] Added Earth Liberation Front (ELF)
Info from the main ELF page
[edit] Added Army of God
with information from the main page.
