Leaderless resistance
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Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a
Leaderless cells lack vertical command links and so operate without hierarchical command,[1] but they have a common goal that links them to the social movement from which their ideology was learned.[2]
Leaderless resistance has been employed by a wide range of movements, including
General characteristics
A covert cell may be a lone individual or a small group. The basic characteristic of the structure is that there is no explicit communication between cells that are acting toward shared goals. Members of one cell usually have little or no information about who else is agitating on behalf of their cause.[1]
Leaderless movements may have a symbolic figurehead.
As a result, leaderless resistance cells are resistant to
Given the asymmetrical character[
Leaderless resistance often involves resistance by violent means, but it is not limited to them. Non-violent groups can use the same structure to author, print, and distribute
History
The concept of leaderless resistance was developed by Col.
The concept was revived and popularized in an essay published by the anti-government
Beam argued that conventional
More contemporary examples of social movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France, Extinction Rebellion, or the #MeToo movement seem to have spontaneously arisen as leaderless movements, perhaps due to the prevalence of social media that bring together individuals with common grievances even in the absence of organized leadership.[9]
In practice
Animal liberation
The first recorded
A new
The
In 1999 the leaderless resistance strategy was employed by animal liberation organisations like
Within a few years of the victories claimed by the SHAC, other campaigns against animal testing laboratories emerged. At the same time,
In April 2009, the Militant Forces Against Huntingdon Life Sciences (MFAH) became active. With the ALF, they began targeting HLS customer and financial Directors, as well as company property. Since then, groups[who?] have reported over a dozen actions in Europe, including painting homes, burning cars, and grave desecration. Militants[who?], however, oppose ALF ideology[clarification needed], instead believing in any necessary action to prevent suffering at HLS's laboratories.[20]
Radical Islamists
Leaderless resistance is also often well-suited to terrorist objectives. The
Given the small, clandestine character of terrorist cells, it is easy to assume they necessarily constitute leaderless resistance models. When there is bidirectional communication with external leadership, however, the label is inappropriate. The men who executed the bombings of the London Underground on July 7, 2005 constituted a leaderless resistance cell in that they purportedly acted out of sympathy for Islamic fundamentalism but under their own auspices. The hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks, by contrast, allegedly received training, direction, and funding from Al-Qaeda, and are not properly designated a leaderless cell.
Neo-Nazis and White nationalists
The concept of leaderless resistance remains important to far-right thinking in the United States,[citation needed] as a proposed response to perceived federal government over-reach at the expense of individual rights. Simson Garfinkel, however, found in his research that for the most part the far right seldom used this tactic.[citation needed] Timothy McVeigh is one example in the United States. McVeigh worked in a small cell which based its attack on motivations widespread among far-right anti-government groups and the militia movement.[citation needed]
Leaderless resistance has been advocated by white supremacist groups such as
Examples of modern-day leaderless resistance/lone-wolf terrorism include:
- 1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting
- 1999 murders of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder
- 2008 Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting
- 2009 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting
- 2011 Norway attacks
- 2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting
- 2014 Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting
- 2015 Charleston church shooting
- 2015 Lafayette shooting
- 2016 Murder of Jo Cox
- 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting
- 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
- 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings
- 2019 Escondido mosque fire and Poway synagogue shooting
- 2019 El Paso shooting
- 2022 Buffalo shooting
- 2022 Colorado Springs nightclub shooting
Radical environmentalism
Leaderless resistance emerged in the environmental movement in 1976 when
In 1980
The organization was committed to nonviolent
A series of actions earned ELF the label of
Following the
In 2005 the FBI announced that the ELF was America's greatest domestic terrorist threat, responsible for over 1,200 "criminal incidents" amounting to tens of millions of dollars in damage to property.
Movements/organizations
- Camp for Climate Action
- Earth First!
- Earth Liberation Army (ELA)
- Earth Liberation Front (ELF)
- Environmental Life Force
- Plane Stupid
- Antifa
Anti-abortion militancy
Anti-abortion
Countermeasures
Network analysis in classical setting
Leaderless resistance
Network analysis was successfully used by French Colonel
Advantages of leaderless resistance
Traditional organizations leave behind much evidence of their activities, such as money trails, and training and recruitment material. Leaderless resistances, supported more by ideologies than organizations, generally lack such traces. The effects of their operations, as reported by the mass media, act as a sort of messaging and recruitment advertising.
Paul Joosse[clarification needed] argues that leaderless resistance movements can avoid the ideological disputes and infighting that plague radical groups. They do this by limiting interaction to the virtual realm[clarification needed].[2]
The internet provides counter-insurgents with further challenges. Individual cells (and even a single person can be a cell) can communicate over the internet, anonymously or semi-anonymously sharing information online, to be found by others through well-known websites. Even when it is legally and technically possible to ascertain who accessed what, it is often practically impossible to discern in a reasonable time frame who is a real threat and who is just curious, a journalist, or a web crawler.
Despite these advantages, leaderless resistance is often unstable.[citation needed] If the actions are not frequent enough or not successful, the stream of publicity, which serves as the recruiting, motivation, and coordination drives for other cells, diminishes. On the other hand, if the actions are too successful, support groups and other social structures will form that are vulnerable to network analysis.
In fiction
- The 1970 novel A Piece of Resistance, re-published in the US in 2004 under the title Never Surrender by Clive Egleton depicts resistance to a Soviet occupation of England.
- The 1996 novel Unintended Consequences by John Ross portrays a successful rebellion by the American heartland after decades of bullying by faraway Washington.
See also
- Asymmetric warfare
- Clandestine cell system
- Individualist anarchism
- Insurrectionary anarchism
- Lone wolf (terrorism)
- James C. Scott
- Social peer-to-peer processes
- The Starfish and the Spider
- Shaheen Bagh Protests
References
- ^ ISSN 1396-0466.
- ^ S2CID 17532687.
- S2CID 145748563.
- ^ a b Berlet, Chip (Fall 2008). "Leaderless Counterterrorism Strategy—The 'War on Terror,' Civil Liberties, and Flawed Scholarship". The Public Eye. Retrieved 27 June 2022.
- ^ S2CID 225320075.
- ^ Amoss as cited in "Leaderless Resistance: Amoss Version 1953-1962". Defending Dissent Foundation Study Guide. Archived from the original on 2015-06-26.
- ^ Beam, Louis (February 1992) [1983]. "Leaderless Resistance". The Seditionist (12).
- ^ "Peter J. "Pete" Peters". Anti-Defamation League. Archived from the original on June 28, 2008. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-02-15.
- ^ a b Best, Steven; Nocella, Anthony J., eds. (2004). Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. Lantern Books.
- ^ Webb, Robin (2004). "Animal Liberation — By 'Whatever Means Necessary'". In Best, Steven; Nocella, Anthony J. (eds.). Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. Lantern Books. p. 77.
- ^ Southern Poverty Law Center. "From Push to Shove". Archived from the original on November 22, 2009. Retrieved May 7, 2006.
- ISBN 0948062029. Retrieved 2007-11-09.
- ^ Chittenden, Maurice (2004-10-17). "Focus: Desecrated". The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 2011-06-29.
- ^ Alleyne, Richard (January 19, 2001). "Terror tactics that brought a company to its knees". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2003-03-01.
- ^ "Animal rights, terror tactics". BBC News. 30 August 2000.
- ^ "From push to shove". Southern Poverty Law Group Intelligence Report. Fall 2002. p. 3. Archived from the original on 2009-11-22.
- ^ "Quantum Analytics: Drop HLS". Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. Archived from the original on 2005-03-26.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "Activists' 'war' to save lobsters". BBC News. July 30, 2004. Archived from the original on 2008-12-03.
- Bite Back Magazine. 7 April 2009. Archived from the originalon 2009-08-16.
- ^ University of Michigan. "Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism" (PDF). Retrieved May 7, 2006.
- ^ .
- ^ "Original ELF". Archived from the original on 2012-04-15. Retrieved 2018-12-01.
- ^ Earth First's first treesitting civil disobedience action Archived 2005-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, Earth First! 1985, Oregon, June 1985.
- ^ Tree Spiking Memo Archived 2008-04-24 at the Wayback Machine, Earth First!, April 1990.
- ^ Wall, Derek (1999). Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement: Radical Environmentalism and Comparative Social Movements. Routledge.
- ^ ELF Burns Down Vail Archived 2006-02-11 at the Wayback Machine, FIRE, December 1999.
- ^ Earth Liberation Front is now FBI's No. 1 Domestic Terrorist Threat, Property Rights of America Foundation Inc, March 2001.
- ^ ELF News Archived 2009-02-11 at the Wayback Machine, Earth Liberation Front
- ^ Paige, Sean. "waste & abuse" Archived 2008-09-25 at the Wayback Machine, BNet, September 27th 1999.
- FBI, January 20th 2006.
- ^ Resentencing date set for Jeff Luers, Freedom4um, 29 December 2007.
- ^ Best, Steven and Best & Nocella. Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth, Lantern Books, 2006, p. 47.
- ^ FBI, ATF address domestic terrorism, CNN, May 19th 2005.
- ^ Brown, Jonathan (2006-09-01). "The Battle of Drax: 38 held as protest fails to close plant". The Independent. Archived from the original on March 1, 2007. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
- ^ Wainwright, Martin (2006-09-01). "In the shadow of Drax, not so much a fight as a festival". The Guardian. London. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
- ^ Louis Beam (1962-04-17). "Leaderless Resistance". Armyofgod.com. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
- ^ "A Most Dangerous Profile: The Loner". The Washington Post. August 18, 1998. Retrieved April 4, 2010.
- ^ Jennifer Gonnerman (1998-11-10). "The Terrorist Campaign Against Abortion". Village Voice. Retrieved 2012-11-07.
Further reading
- The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics In the 21st Century, by Carne Ross (2011)
External links
- An Introduction To Terrorist Organisational Structures
- Networks and Netwars - PDF book by RAND Corporation.
- Leaderless Resistance - the original essay
- Simson Garfinkel - "Leaderless resistance today"
- The History, Definition, & Use of the Term "Leaderless Resistance"