Dark Horses

Terrorism, Leon Trotsky wrote, consists of tactics which “kill individuals and intimidate thousands.” (Admirable, how clearly the Santa Claus of the radical Left perceived the world, how directly he phrased his perceptions.) Of course, in Trotsky’s case, killing, mutilation, and public terror were advocated for the good of the great global cause of international Communism. In the case of almost all latter-day terrorists, their aim is considerably less millennial, although their tactics are no less brutal. Most terrorists are concerned with the liberation of what is admittedly only a self-contained minority—the Basques, the Catholic Northern Irish, the Guatemalan peasantry, and so forth. For them, the millennium Marx, Trotsky, and Lenin dreamt on would be just a pleasant bonus to the individual liberation of El Salvador, Algeria, or Boreo-Boolagaa.

In his informative book Fear of Fear: A Survey of Terrorist Operations & Controls in Open Societies (Plenum, 233 Spring St., New York, N.Y. 10013; $22), John B. Wolf of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City describes the nature of terrorist activity, the structures of terrorist organization, global terrorist coalitions, and the politics, so to speak, of terrorism. In the second part of his study he considers the means available —and appropriate—to democratic societies for combatting what he considers to be the gravest peril of the 1980s.

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Terrorism, Leon Trotsky wrote, consists of tactics which “kill individuals and intimidate thousands.” (Admirable, how clearly the Santa Claus of the radical Left perceived the world, how directly he phrased his perceptions.) Of course, in Trotsky’s case, killing, mutilation, and public terror were advocated for the good of the great global cause of international Communism. In the case of almost all latter-day terrorists, their aim is considerably less millennial, although their tactics are no less brutal. Most terrorists are concerned with the liberation of what is admittedly only a self-contained minority—the Basques, the Catholic Northern Irish, the Guatemalan peasantry, and so forth. For them, the millennium Marx, Trotsky, and Lenin dreamt on would be just a pleasant bonus to the individual liberation of El Salvador, Algeria, or Boreo-Boolagaa.

In his informative book Fear of Fear: A Survey of Terrorist Operations & Controls in Open Societies (Plenum, 233 Spring St., New York, N.Y. 10013; $22), John B. Wolf of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City describes the nature of terrorist activity, the structures of terrorist organization, global terrorist coalitions, and the politics, so to speak, of terrorism. In the second part of his study he considers the means available —and appropriate—to democratic societies for combatting what he considers to be the gravest peril of the 1980s.