Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

22 • ANARCHISTIC LEFTIST TERRORISTSThese groups could be considered leftist only insofar as they despisedcapitalism, believed in the superiority of a socialist state, and oftenspoke in Marxist jargon. For the most part they consisted of alienatedmiddle-class youth who subsisted on their support groups orfrom the proceeds of robberies and kidnappings. They were alsoanarchistic insofar as they limited their purposes to destroying theexisting capitalist states rather than building the foundations of somesuccessor socialist state. These groups also became known in Europeas Fighting Communist Organizations, and included, in addition tothe five European groups mentioned above, the November 17 andRevolutionary Popular Struggle groups in Greece, the RevolutionaryPeople’s Liberation Party/Front in Turkey, formerly known asDev Sol, the October First Antifascist Resistance Group, and thePopular Forces of April 25 in Portugal.Many of these groups envisioned themselves as vanguard groupsin a world revolutionary movement and sought contacts and workingrelations with such groups as the Popular Front for the Liberationof Palestine (PFLP), which often provided them with training andexperience. The Red Army Faction eventually became co-opted bythe East German Communist regime while the Japanese Red Armysimilarly became dependent on the Libyan and Syrian regimes. Thesegroups were characterized by a certain heady romanticism and utopianismthat drew forth the scorn of more orthodox Marxist thinkersand activists, who generally criticized such groups as seeking to substitutethe volunteerism of vanguard groups for patient constructionof class-based revolutionary consciousness. Although the writings ofHerbert Marcuse were much admired by such anarchistic leftists, hehimself derided their movement as the “pubertarian struggle.”Because most of the members of these groups rejected theirfamilies and class origins or ethnic and religious backgrounds, theywere isolated from a community support system that ensured steadyrecruitment of younger members into their ranks, and therefore thesurvival of these groups became doubtful. In part for the same reason,ethnonationalist terrorist groups and sectarian-based movements,such as Islamic fundamentalism and Identity Christianity, havesupplanted anarchistic leftist terrorist groups as the main source ofantistate and international terrorist violence in the 1990s. By themid-1990s most of these movements had ceased to operate, with theRed Brigades ceasing in 1988, Direct Action being neutralized in