Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

MINUTEMEN • 431evils that would precede the coming of the Mahdi. At the conclusionof his 17 September 2005 speech before the UN General Assembly,Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invoked the coming of theImam Mahdi, whom Twelve-Imam Shi’ites believe will be the IslamicMessiah, which in the context of Iran’s controversial uranium enrichmentprogram has led to nervous speculation both within Iran and inthe rest of the world that the Iranian leaders are linking their foreignpolicies to messianic and millennialist expectations.The idea of millennialism has been appropriated by other sectarianand secular ideologies as well. The Aum Shinrikyo sect believedthat releasing the sarin gas in the Tokyo subway attack would somehowtrigger a world war that would usher in the millennial kingdomunder the rule of their leader, Shoko Asahara. It is noteworthy thatAdolf Hitler and other Nazis often referred to their Third Reich as theTausendjähriges Reich, or “thousand-year empire,” which appearedto be a millennial and utopian aspiration.According to David C. Rapoport’s study “Messianic Sanctions forTerror” (Comparative Politics 20, no. 2 [1988]: 195–214), millennialistideas have great potential to unleash political violence becausethe believers usually hold that they must undertake some special actof faith to ensure the arrival of the millennium. These actions unfortunatelytend to lead either to conflict with authorities or to politicalviolence.MINUTEMEN. The name “Minutemen” has been used by two differentgroups in recent history, one being a paramilitary militia activein the 1960s and the other being the Minutemen Project consisting ofvigilantes seeking to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico intothe United States.1. Minutemen Militia: Founded in 1961 by Robert dePugh, a Missourimanufacturer of pet and livestock vitamins and food supplements,the Minutemen were the predecessors of the Posse Comitatusand other right-wing extremist groups that advocated or practicedterrorism against alleged Communists and traitors.While the name was taken from that of the Revolutionary Warmilitiamen, the group’s ideology, which stressed extreme anti-Communism and survivalism, took on a peculiar relevance duringa period when fear of international Communism and of nuclear warwas greatly aggravated by the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.