Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

NEO-NAZIS • 479the Naxalites were more comparable to the Sendero Luminoso ofPeru, which has similarly mobilized Peruvian Indian communities,although the Naxalites apparently lacked the cohesive leadership anddisciplined following that Sendero achieved.NBC WEAPONS. Acronym for “nuclear, biological, or chemical”weapons. See WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.NECHAYEV, SERGEY G. (1847–1882). Russian revolutionary andauthor of the Catechism of the Revolutionist, coauthored with anarchisttheorist Mikhail Bakunin in 1869, which provided the portraitof the ideal terrorist willing to sacrifice everything in devotion tothe cause of revolution. In the Catechism, Nechayev advocated theassassination of moderate political leaders so that the remaininghard-liners would resort to severe repression that would in turn eitheralienate the public or move them to join the revolutionaries, a lineof thought echoed in the writings of Carlos Marighella and severalother revolutionary terrorists. Nechayev caused a comrade to bekilled as part of an internal purge in his own circle of revolutionaries,an action that discredited him in the eyes of other revolutionaries.Nechayev was convicted for the murder and sent to prison, where hedied of tuberculosis.NEO-NAZIS. Neo-Nazism is the attempt to revive, rehabilitate, orromanticize the political movement or ideology of the Third Reich.Neo-Nazi groups usually advocate overthrowing a constitutionaldemocratic order in favor of a racialist, totalitarian state and rationalizethe use of political violence and terrorism to achieve this goal.Two essential Nazi doctrines are, first, the belief in the superiorityof an imagined Indo-European, or Aryan, racial stock that alone isbelieved to have advanced human civilization, and second, the beliefin the absolute evil and malice of the Jews, viewed as the corruptersof European civilization and enemies of the Aryan race. Neo-Nazistarget not only Jews and members of nonwhite minority groups butalso members of left-wing political parties, feminists, homosexuals,pacifists, and others whom they believe to be in league with the Jewish“racial enemy.” Neo-Nazis have displayed ambivalent attitudestoward Arabs and Muslims, on the one hand often despising them asnonwhite minorities but occasionally aligning themselves with themopportunistically as tactical allies against Jewish or Israeli targets.