Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

LEADERSHIP • 381will post addresses and names of people or firms on websites and inturn autonomous volunteers will resort to vandalism or other formsof intimidation against these targets. It has also been claimed that partof the strategy of al Qa’eda is to recruit individual Islamic radicalsto form their own phantom cells to carry out attacks on those whomal Qa’eda deems to be legitimate targets. The videotaped messagesreleased by al Qa’eda then seek to incite these individuals or groupsinto action. This nonhierarchical pattern of organization is evident insuch groups as Hamas and in the newly emerging form of conflictknown as netwar, involving loosely coordinated violent and propagandaactions of like-minded activists.LEADERSHIP. The formation and perpetuation of terrorist groupsusually requires having a person, or a few people, with charismaticand/or entrepreneurial qualities that enable him or her to articulatethose political goals, hopes, and frustrations that are held inchoateamong a larger group of people susceptible to the message of theleader. The quality of charismatic leadership was identified by MaxWeber as an alternative source of authority, both to the traditionalform of authority embodied in ruling families and aristocratic or religiouselites, and to the legal-rational authority found in bureaucraticand legal forms in a modern liberal democracy. The charismaticleader convinces his followers that he has some special superhumangifts of wisdom, intellect, moral superiority, physical strength, orbeauty that give him the right to rebel against traditions or legal andconstitutional norms.The entrepreneurial leader is one who is able to create a “market”or “demand” for a social or political good among some group, whichthen is motivated to achieve that goal through nonviolent or violentmeans. A leadership principle and corresponding hierarchical organizationseem to be readily adopted by ethnonationalist organizationsor religious resurgence movements in which patrimonial or patriarchalnorms are already accepted by the followers. In anarchisticleftist groups, in which norms of equalitarianism and antielitismprevail among the followers, a charismatic leader may be no less necessarybut faces the difficult task of leading without appearing to bedomineering. While charismatic leadership may be necessary to drawtogether a following into an effective politically active group, it is notsufficient by itself but also requires entrepreneurial leadership.