I’m trying to find a historical perspective from which to view the current crisis, and the nearest parallel I can find is in the series of assassinations committed by Anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th century. To quote from the “Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives”:
While the circumstances and scale of these events are not terribly similar, the appearance of a decentralized attack on the existing structure of nation-states seems similar, Also similar are the national expressions of sorrow, anger, fear and vengeance. My native Massachusetts resorted to what some feel was an Anarchist witch-hunt in the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. While the circumstances surrounding the arrent and trial of these admitted Anarchists are open to question, the actions of some members of this movement, as illustrated in the chronology in the link above, can perhaps be compared to those of modern day terrorists.
I guess the question here is whether the parallels I’ve mentioned above are valid, and if so, what possible insight toward future events can we gather from this?
Hey, if you’re looking for historical parallels, probably the closest example is the 1920 bombing outside the House of Morgan on Wall Street. Though the crime – which killed and injured dozens – was never solved, the prevailing theory is/was that Anorchists were responsible. The attack on the nation’s center of capitalism – as opposed to a political figurehead – more closely resembles the recent WTC disaster, IMHO.
Incidentally, modern reevaluations of the evidence point to the likelihood that Sacco was, in fact guilty of the crime; Vanzetti was probably not.
There is a difference between the anarchists and the present -day terrorists. First of all, anarchists did not have a centralized organization (like Al-Qaedea) that sponsored them. They were pretty much on their own for figuring out how to accomplish their “propaganda of the deed”. Leon Cz. was operating very much independent of the rest of the anarchists in the world, though many were proud of his acheivement in bringing down a representative of one of the establishment pillars.
Anarchists were successful in assaisinating nearly a dozen heads-of-state across the world… but there was no organization to it (they were anarchists, of course). Generally, call to arms was believed as a necessary action and was acted upon by hot-blooded, angry folk who were convinced the answer to societal ills was get rid of governmental power, industrial power, and religious power.
Now, Al-Qaedea has a lot of similarities, but they are far more organized as a group than the anarchists ever were (and far more sophisticated).
Although there are of course some significant differences between the two groups, I had also been thinking that, as the OP states, the closest example to the current terror campaign is in fact the anarchist bombings and assassinations of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The idea of the WTC attack as “Our Generation’s Pearl Harbor” is a more compelling and stirring than “Our Generation’s House of Morgan Bombing”, but I believe the latter is much more comparable in terms of tactics and goals, even if 99% of Americans have probably never heard of it.