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Islamic diaspora that is an established fact of life in the U.S. and Europe. In this sense, the terrorists may have as much in common with the radicals spawned in the U.S. and the industrial democracies in the 1960s as with the shock troops of Hamas or Hezbollah.

Like the leaders of America’s Weather Underground, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and Japan’s Red Army Faction, the Islamic terrorists were university-educated converts to an all-encompassing neo-totalitarian ideology. Just as the terrorists who plagued the industrial democracies in the ’60s and ’70s lionized Leninist guerrillas like Uruguay’s Tupamaros, the Islamist terrorists are youthful members of a bored middle class who have grown contemptuous of “soft” and corrupt elites and are drawn to the romance of revolutionary guerrilla movements.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.

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Islamic diaspora that is an established fact of life in the U.S. and Europe. In this sense, the terrorists may have as much in common with the radicals spawned in the U.S. and the industrial democracies in the 1960s as with the shock troops of Hamas or Hezbollah.

Like the leaders of America’s Weather Underground, Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and Japan’s Red Army Faction, the Islamic terrorists were university-educated converts to an all-encompassing neo-totalitarian ideology. Just as the terrorists who plagued the industrial democracies in the ’60s and ’70s lionized Leninist guerrillas like Uruguay’s Tupamaros, the Islamist terrorists are youthful members of a bored middle class who have grown contemptuous of “soft” and corrupt elites and are drawn to the romance of revolutionary guerrilla movements.

About the Author

John J. Miller

John J. Miller, a former national correspondent for National Review, is the director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College. He is the author of A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America.