Propaganda of the deed (or propaganda by the
deed, from the French propagande par le fait)
is specific political action meant to be exemplary
to others and serve as a catalyst for revolution.
It is primarily associated with acts of violence
perpetrated by proponents of insurrectionary
anarchism in the late 19th and early 20th
century, including bombings and assassinations
aimed at the ruling class, but also had non-violent
applications.
These "deeds" were to ignite the "spirit of
revolt" in the people by demonstrating the
state was not omnipotent and by offering hope
to the downtrodden, and also to expand support
for anarchist movements as the state grew
more repressive in its response.
In 1881, the International Anarchist Congress
of London gave the tactic its approval.
== Anarchist origins ==
=== Various definitions ===
One of the first individuals to conceptualise
propaganda by the deed was the Italian revolutionary
Carlo Pisacane (1818–57), who wrote in his
"Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring
from deeds and not the other way around."
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his "Letters
to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870)
stated that "we must spread our principles,
not with words but with deeds, for this is
the most popular, the most potent, and the
most irresistible form of propaganda."
The concept, in a broader setting, has a rich
heritage, as the words of Francis of Assisi
reveal: "Let them show their love by the works
they do for each other, according as the Apostle
says: 'let us not love in word or in tongue,
but in deed and in truth.'"
Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated
publicizing violent acts of retaliation against
counter-revolutionaries because "we preach
not only action in and for itself, but also
action as propaganda."
It was not advocacy for mass murder, but a
call for targeted killings of the representatives
of capitalism and government at a time when
such action might garner sympathy from the
population, such as during periods of government
repression or labor conflicts, although Most
himself once boasted that "the existing system
will be quickest and most radically overthrown
by the annihilation of its exponents.
Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the
people must be set in motion."
In 1885, he published The Science of Revolutionary
Warfare, a technical manual for acquiring
and detonating explosives based on the knowledge
he acquired by working at an explosives factory
in New Jersey.
Most was an early influence on American anarchists
Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
Berkman attempted propaganda by the deed when
he tried in 1892 to kill industrialist Henry
Clay Frick following the deaths by shooting
of several striking workers.Beverly Gage,
professor of U.S. history at Yale University,
elaborates on what the concept meant to outsiders
and those within the anarchist movement:
To outsiders, the talk of bombing and assassination
that suddenly pulsed through revolutionary
circles in the late 1870s sounded like little
more than an indiscriminate call to violence.
To Most and others within the anarchist movement,
by contrast, the idea of propaganda by deed,
or the attentat (attack), had a very specific
logic.
Among anarchism's founding premises was the
idea that capitalist society was a place of
constant violence: every law, every church,
every paycheck was based on force.
In such a world, to do nothing, to stand idly
by while millions suffered, was itself to
commit an act of violence.
The question was not whether violence per
se might be justified, but exactly how violence
might be maximally effective for, in Most's
words, annihilating the "beast of property"
that "makes mankind miserable, and gains in
cruelty and voracity with the progress of
our so called civilization."
By the 1880s, the slogan "propaganda of the
deed" had begun to be used both within and
outside of the anarchist movement to refer
to individual bombings, regicides and tyrannicides.
In 1881, "propaganda by the deed" was formally
adopted as a strategy by the anarchist London
Congress.
In 1886, French anarchist Clément Duval achieved
a form of propaganda of the deed, stealing
15,000 francs from the mansion of a Parisian
socialite, before accidentally setting the
house on fire.
Caught two weeks later, he was dragged from
the court crying "Long live anarchy!", and
condemned to death.
Duval's sentence was later commuted to hard
labor on Devil's Island, French Guiana.
In the anarchist paper Révolte, Duval famously
declared that, "Theft exists only through
the exploitation of man by man... when Society
refuses you the right to exist, you must take
it... the policeman arrested me in the name
of the Law, I struck him in the name of Liberty".
As early as 1887, a few important figures
in the anarchist movement had begun to distance
themselves from individual acts of violence.
Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in Le
Révolté that "a structure based on centuries
of history cannot be destroyed with a few
kilos of dynamite".
A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment
of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective
revolutionary action, for example through
the trade union movement.
The anarcho-syndicalist, Fernand Pelloutier,
argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement
in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism
could do very well without "the individual
dynamiter."State repression (including the
infamous 1894 French lois scélérates) of
the anarchist and labor movements following
the few successful bombings and assassinations
may have contributed to the abandonment of
these kinds of tactics, although reciprocally
state repression, in the first place, may
have played a role in these isolated acts.
The dismemberment of the French socialist
movement, into many groups and, following
the suppression of the 1871 Paris Commune,
the execution and exile of many communards
to penal colonies, favored individualist political
expression and acts.Anarchist historian Max
Nettlau provided a more complex concept of
propaganda when he said that,
Every person is likely to be open to a different
kind of argument, so propaganda cannot be
diversified enough if we want to touch all.
We want it to pervade and penetrate all the
utterances of life, social and political,
domestic and artistic, educational and recreational.
There should be propaganda by word and action,
the platform and the press, the street corner,
the workshop, and the domestic circle, acts
of revolt, and the example of our own lives
as free men.
Those who agree with each other may co-operate;
otherwise they should prefer to work each
on his own lines to trying to persuade one
the other of the superiority of his own method.
Later anarchist authors advocating "propaganda
of the deed" included the German anarchist
Gustav Landauer, and the Italians Errico Malatesta
and Luigi Galleani.
For Gustav Landauer, "propaganda of the deed"
meant the creation of libertarian social forms
and communities that would inspire others
to transform society.
In "Weak Statesmen, Weaker People," he wrote
that the state is not something "that one
can smash in order to destroy.
The state is a relationship between human
beings... one destroys it by entering into
other relationships."
In contrast, Errico Malatesta described "propaganda
by the deed" as violent communal insurrections
that were meant to ignite the imminent revolution.
However, Malatesta himself denounced the use
of terrorism and violent physical force, stating
in one of his essays:
Violence (physical force) used to another's
hurt, which is the most brutal form of struggle
between men can assume, is eminently corrupting.
It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate
the best sentiments of man, and to develop
all the antisocial qualities, ferocity, hatred,
revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny,
contempt of the weak, servility towards the
strong.
And this harmful tendency arises also when
violence is used for a good end.
... Anarchists who rebel against every sort
of oppression and struggle for the integral
liberty of each and who ought thus to shrink
instinctively from all acts of violence which
cease to be mere resistance to oppression
and become oppressive in their turn are also
liable to fall into the abyss of brutal force.
... The excitement caused by some recent explosions
and the admiration for the courage with which
the bomb-throwers faced death, suffices to
cause many anarchists to forget their program,
and to enter on a path which is the most absolute
negation of all anarchist ideas and sentiments.
At the other extreme, the anarchist Luigi
Galleani, perhaps the most vocal proponent
of "propaganda by the deed" from the turn
of the century through the end of the First
World War, took undisguised pride in describing
himself as a subversive, a revolutionary propagandist
and advocate of the violent overthrow of established
government and institutions through the use
of 'direct action', i.e., bombings and assassinations.
Galleani heartily embraced physical violence
and terrorism, not only against symbols of
the government and the capitalist system,
such as courthouses and factories, but also
through direct assassination of 'enemies of
the people': capitalists, industrialists,
politicians, judges, and policemen.
He had a particular interest in the use of
bombs, going so far as to include a formula
for the explosive nitroglycerine in one of
his pamphlets advertised through his monthly
magazine, Cronaca Sovversiva.
By all accounts, Galleani was an extremely
effective speaker and advocate of his policy
of violent action, attracting a number of
devoted Italian-American anarchist followers
who called themselves Galleanists.
Carlo Buda, the brother of Galleanist bombmaker
Mario Buda, said of him, "You heard Galleani
speak, and you were ready to shoot the first
policeman you saw".
=== Illegalism ===
Propaganda of the deed is also related to
illegalism, an anarchist philosophy that developed
primarily in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland
during the early 20th century as an outgrowth
of anarchist individualism.
The illegalists openly embraced criminality
as a lifestyle.
Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's concept
of "egoism", the illegalists broke from anarchists
like Clément Duval and Marius Jacob who justified
theft with a theory of individual reclamation.
Instead, the illegalists argued that their
actions required no moral basis – illegal
acts were taken not in the name of a higher
ideal, but in pursuit of one's own desires.
France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group
to embrace illegalism.
=== Relationship to revolution ===
Propaganda of the deed thus included stealing
(in particular bank robberies – named "expropriations"
or "revolutionary expropriations" to finance
the organization), rioting and general strikes
which aimed at creating the conditions of
an insurrection or even a revolution.
These acts were justified as the necessary
counterpart to state repression.
As early as 1911, Leon Trotsky condemned individual
acts of violence by anarchists as useful for
little more than providing an excuse for state
repression.
"The anarchist prophets of the 'propaganda
by the deed' can argue all they want about
the elevating and stimulating influence of
terrorist acts on the masses," he wrote in
1911, "Theoretical considerations and political
experience prove otherwise."
Vladimir Lenin largely agreed, viewing individual
anarchist acts of terrorism as an ineffective
substitute for coordinated action by disciplined
cadres of the masses.
Both Lenin and Trotsky acknowledged the necessity
of violent rebellion and assassination to
serve as a catalyst for revolution, but they
distinguished between the ad hoc bombings
and assassinations carried out by proponents
of the propaganda of the deed, and organized
violence coordinated by a professional revolutionary
vanguard utilized for that specific end.Sociologist
Max Weber wrote that the state has a "monopoly
on the legitimate use of physical force",
or, in Karl Marx's words, the state was only
the repressive apparatus of the bourgeois
class.
Propaganda by the deed, including assassinations
(sometimes involving bombs, named in French
"machines infernales" – "hellish machines",
usually made with bombs, sometimes only several
guns assembled together), were thus legitimized
by part of the anarchist movement and the
First International as a valid means to be
used in class struggle.
The predictable state responses to these actions
were supposed to display to the people the
inherently repressive nature of the bourgeois
state, delegitimizing it (legitimacy being
key).
This would in turn bolster the revolutionary
spirit of the people, leading to the overthrow
of the state.
This is the basic formula of the cycle protests-repression-protests,
which in specific conditions may lead to an
effective state of insurrection.
This cycle has been observed during the 1905
Russian Revolution or in Paris in May 1968.
However, it failed to achieve its revolutionary
objective on the vast majority of occasions,
thus leading to the abandonment by the vast
majority of the anarchist movement of such
bombings.
However, the state never failed in its repressive
response, enforcing various lois scélérates
which usually involved tough clampdowns on
the whole of the labor movement.
These harsh laws, sometimes accompanied by
the proclamation of the state of exception,
progressively led to increased criticism among
the anarchist movement of assassinations.
The role of several agents provocateurs and
the use of deliberate strategies of tension
by governments, using such false flag terrorist
actions as the Spanish La Mano Negra, work
to discredit this violent tactic in the eyes
of most socialist libertarians.
John Filiss and Jim Bell are two of the best
known modern advocates, with the latter developing
the concept of an assassination market—a
market system for anonymously hiring and compensating
political assassination.
== Notable actions ==
April 4, 1866 Dmitry Karakozov made an unsuccessful
attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander II at
the gates of the Summer Garden in St Petersburg.
As the Tsar was leaving, Dmitry rushed forward
to fire.
The attempt was thwarted by Osip Komissarov,
a peasant-born hatter's apprentice, who jostled
Karakozov's elbow just before the shot was
fired.
May 11, 1878 – Max Hödel attempts to assassinate
Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany.
His two attempts to shoot the monarch both
fail, and he is apprehended and executed by
beheading on August 15.
August 4, 1878 – Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky
stabs to death General Nikolai Mezentsov,
head of the Tsar's secret police, in response
to the execution of Ivan Kovalsky.
November 17, 1878 – Giovanni Passannante
attempts to assassinate with a dagger King
Umberto I of Italy.
It is the first attempted murder against the
monarch and the first in the history of House
of Savoy.
Passannante is sentenced to death but his
penalty is commuted to prison for life.
While in jail, he goes insane and is taken
to the asylum.
February 1879 – Grigori Goldenberg shoots
Prince Dmitri Kropotkin, the Governor of Kharkov
in the Russian Empire, to death.
April 20, 1879 – Alexander Soloviev attempts
to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia.
The monarch spots the weapon in his hands
and flees, but Soloviev still fires five shots,
all of which miss.
He is captured and hanged on May 28.
February 17, 1880 – Stepan Khalturin successfully
blows up part of the Winter Palace in an attempt
to assassinate Tsar Alexander.
Although the Tsar escapes unharmed, eight
soldiers are killed and 45 wounded.
Referring to the 1862 invention of dynamite,
historian Benedict Anderson observes that
"Nobel’s invention had now arrived politically."
Khalturin is hanged on the orders of Alexander's
son and successor, Alexander III, in 1882
after the assassination of a police official.
March 1 (Julian calendar) 1881 – Alexander
II is killed in a bomb blast by Narodnaya
Volya.
July 23, 1892 – Alexander Berkman tries
to kill American industrialist Henry Clay
Frick in retaliation for Frick's hiring of
Pinkerton detectives to break up the Homestead
Strike, resulting in the deaths of seven steelworkers.
Although badly wounded, Frick survives, and
Berkman is arrested and eventually sentenced
to 22 years in prison.
November 7, 1893 – The Spanish anarchist
Santiago Salvador throws two Orsini bombs
into the orchestra pit of the Liceu Theater
in Barcelona during the second act of the
opera Guillaume Tell, killing some twenty
people and injuring scores of others.
December 9, 1893 – Auguste Vaillant throws
a nail bomb in the French National Assembly,
killing nobody and injuring one.
He is then sentenced to death and executed
by the guillotine on February 4, 1894, shouting
"Death to bourgeois society and long live
anarchy!"
(A mort la société bourgeoise et vive l'anarchie!).
During his trial, Vaillant declares that he
had not intended to kill anybody, but only
to injure several deputies in retaliation
against the execution of Ravachol, who was
executed for four bombings.
February 12, 1894 – Émile Henry, intending
to avenge Auguste Vaillant, sets off a bomb
in Café Terminus (a café near the Gare Saint-Lazare
train station in Paris), killing one and injuring
twenty.
During his trial, when asked why he wanted
to harm so many innocent people, he declares,
"There is no innocent bourgeois."
This act is one of the rare exceptions to
the rule that propaganda of the deed targets
only specific powerful individuals.
Henry is convicted and executed by guillotine
on May 21.
June 24, 1894 – Italian anarchist Sante
Geronimo Caserio, seeking revenge for Auguste
Vaillant and Émile Henry, stabs Sadi Carnot,
the President of France, to death.
Caserio is executed by guillotine on August
15.
November 3, 1896 – In the Greek city of
Patras, Dimitris Matsalis, an anarchist shoemaker,
attacks banker Dionysios Fragkopoulos and
merchant Andreas Kollas with a knife.
Fragkopoulos is killed on the spot; Kollas
is seriously wounded.
April 22, 1897 – Pietro Acciarito tries
to stab King Umberto of Italy.
He is sentenced to life imprisonment.
August 8, 1897 – Michele Angiolillo shoots
dead Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas
del Castillo at a thermal bath resort, seeking
vengeance for the imprisonment and torture
of alleged revolutionaries at the Montjuïc
fortress.
Angiolillo is executed by garotte on August
20.
September 10, 1898 – Luigi Lucheni stabs
to death Empress Elisabeth, the consort of
Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary,
with a needle file in Geneva, Switzerland.
Lucheni is sentenced to life in prison and
eventually commits suicide in his cell.
July 29, 1900 – Gaetano Bresci shoots dead
King Umberto, in revenge for the Bava-Beccaris
massacre in Milan.
Due to the abolition of capital punishment
in Italy, Bresci is sentenced to penal servitude
for life on Santo Stefano Island, where he
is found dead less than a year later.
September 6, 1901 – Leon Czolgosz shoots
U.S. President William McKinley at point-blank
range at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo,
New York.
McKinley dies on September 14, and Czolgosz
is executed by electric chair on October 29.
Czolgosz's anarchist views have been debated.
April 23, 1902 – Luigi Galleani speaks to
striking silk workers at a factory in Paterson,
New Jersey, urging all American workers to
declare a general strike and overthrow U.S.
capitalist society.
Galleani, who is wounded in the face when
police open fire on the striking workers,
is later indicted for inciting a riot.
He flees to Canada, where he is apprehended
and returned to the US by Canadian authorities.
November 15, 1902 – Gennaro Rubino attempts
to murder King Leopold II of Belgium as he
returns in a procession from a memorial service
for his recently deceased wife, Marie Henriette.
All three of Rubino's shots miss the monarch's
carriage, and he is quickly subdued by the
crowd and taken into police custody.
He is sentenced to life imprisonment and dies
in prison in 1918.
May 31, 1906 – Catalan anarchist Mateu Morral
tries to kill King Alfonso XIII of Spain and
Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg after
their wedding by throwing a bomb into the
wedding procession following the ceremony.
The monarchs are unhurt, but some bystanders
and horses are killed.
Morral is apprehended two days later and commits
suicide while being transferred to prison.
February 1, 1908 – Manuel Buíça and Alfredo
Costa shoot to death King Carlos I of Portugal
and his son, Crown Prince Luis Filipe, respectively,
in the Lisbon Regicide.
Both Buiça and Costa, who are sympathetic
to a republican movement in Portugal that
includes anarchist elements, are shot dead
by police officers.
March 28, 1908 – Anarchist Selig Cohen aka
Selig Silverstein tries to throw a bomb in
New York City's Union Square.
A premature explosion kills a bystander named
Ignatz Hildebrand and mortally wounds Cohen,
who dies a month later.
Several contemporary pictures taken after
the explosion show the mortally wounded Silverstein
with his victim next to him.
November 14, 1909 – Argentine anarchist
militant Simón Radowitzky assassinates Buenos
Aires chief of police, Lieutenant Ramón Falcón
by a throwing a bomb at his carriage while
Falcón was returning from a deceased fellow
officer's funeral.
The assassination prompted President Figueroa
Alcorta to declare a state of siege and pass
the Social Defense Law, which allowed the
deportation of anarchist "agitators".
September 14, 1911 – Dmitri Bogrov shoots
Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin at the
Kiev Opera House in the presence of Tsar Nicholas
II and two of his daughters, Grand Duchesses
Olga and Tatiana.
Stolypin dies four days later, and Bogrov
is hanged on September 28.
November 12, 1912 – Anarchist Manuel Pardiñas
shoots Spanish Prime Minister José Canalejas
dead in front of a Madrid bookstore.
Pardiñas then immediately turns the gun on
himself and commits suicide.
March 18, 1913 – Alexandros Schinas shoots
dead King George I of Greece while the monarch
is on a walk near the White Tower of Thessaloniki.
Schinas is captured and tortured; he commits
suicide on May 6 by jumping out the window
of the gendarmerie, although there is speculation
that he could have been thrown to his death.
July 4, 1914 - A bomb being prepared for use
at John D. Rockefeller's home at Tarrytown,
New York explodes prematurely, killing three
anarchists, Arthur Caron, Carl Hansen and
Charles Berg, and an innocent woman, Mary
Chavez
October 13 and November 14, 1914 – Galleanists
– radical followers of Luigi Galleani – explode
two bombs in New York City after police forcibly
disperse a protest by anarchists and communists
at John D. Rockefeller's home in Tarrytown.
In 1914, Marie Ganz threatens to shoot John
D. Rockefeller as she arrives with a crowd
and a loaded pistol in front of the Standard
Oil Building in Manhattan.
He is not in.
July 22, 1916 – San Francisco Preparedness
Day Bombing.
10 persons killed, 40 injured.
November 24, 1917 9 policemen and a bystander
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin killed when a time
bomb left at a Catholic church by Galleanists
was taken to a police station, where it exploded.
April to June 1919 – 1919 United States
anarchist bombings:
April 28 – Mayor Ole Hanson of Seattle,
Washington, receives a Galleanist mail bomb
(defused)
April 29 – A Galleanist mail bomb intended
for U.S. Senator Thomas W. Hardwick explodes,
burning a servant and blowing off her hands.
June 2 – Galleanist Carlo Valdinoci killed
when his bomb (intended for the Washington
DC home of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell
Palmer) explodes prematurely.
June 3 – New York City night watchman William
Boehner killed by a Galleanist bomb placed
at a judge's house.
September 16, 1920.
The Wall Street bombing kills 38 and wounds
400 in the Manhattan Financial District.
Galleanists are believed responsible, particularly
Mario Buda, the group's principal bombmaker,
although the crime remains officially unsolved.
March 8, 1921.
Three anarchists on a motorcycle shoot dead
Spanish Prime Minister Eduardo Dato Iradier
in Puerta de Alcalá, Madrid.
July 14, 1922.
Gustave Bouvet attempts to kill French president
Alexandre Millerand.
May 25, 1926.
Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura,
head of the government-in-exile Ukrainian
People's Republic, in Paris.
After an eight-day trial, he is acquitted
by the jury, who has been convinced of Schwartzbard's
just cause: the core of his defense was that
he was avenging the deaths of victims of pogroms
by Petlura's forces.
October 31, 1926.
Anteo Zamboni (11 April 1911 – 31 October
1926) was a 15-year-old anarchist who tried
to assassinate Benito Mussolini in Bologna,
by shooting at him during the parade celebrating
the March on Rome.
Zamboni, whose shot missed Mussolini, was
immediately attacked and lynched by nearby
squadristi (fascist squads).
1926–1928.
Several bombings in Argentina organized by
the Italian anarchist Severino Di Giovanni,
in the frame of the international campaign
supporting Sacco and Vanzetti and against
Fascist Italy's interests in Argentina.
Bombings of the US embassy, of the Buenos
Aires offices of City Bank of New York and
Bank of Boston, and of the Italian consulate
on May 23, 1928.
September 27, 1932.
A dynamite-filled package bomb left by Galleanists
destroys Judge Webster Thayer's home in Worcester,
Massachusetts, injuring his wife and a housekeeper.
Judge Thayer had presided over the trials
of Galleanists Sacco and Vanzetti.
=== Modern ===
May 1968.
Riots in Paris.
The New-York based group "Black Mask" becomes
Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers and carry
out artistic propaganda of the deed.
October 8, 1969.
The U.S. group Weatherman's first event is
to blow up a statue in Chicago, Illinois,
dedicated to police casualties in the 1886
Haymarket Riot.
The "Days of Rage" riots then occur in Chicago
during four days.
287 Weatherman members are arrested, and one
of them killed.
December 6, 1969.
Several Chicago Police cars parked in a Precinct
parking lot at 3600 North Halsted Street,
Chicago, are bombed.
The Weather Underground Organization (WUO)
later stated in their book Prairie Fire that
they had perpetrated the explosion to protest
the shooting deaths of the Illinois Black
Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark
Clark two days earlier by police officers.
1970–1972.
The British Angry Brigade group carries out
at least 25 bombings (police numbers).
Almost all property damage, although one person
was slightly injured.
September 12, 1970.
The WUO helps Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD scientist,
break out and escape from the California Men's
Colony prison.
October 8, 1970.
Bombing of Marin County (California, US) Courthouse
in retaliation for the deaths of Jonathan
Jackson, William Christmas, and James McClain.
October 10, 1970.
The Queens Courthouse is bombed to express
support for the New York prison riots.
October 14, 1970.
The Harvard Center for International Affairs
is bombed to protest the war in Vietnam.
September 28, 1973.
The ITT headquarters in New York and Rome,
Italy are bombed in response to ITT's role
in the September 11, 1973 Chilean coup.
November 6, 1973.
The U.S. group Symbionese Liberation Army
(SLA) assassinates Oakland, California superintendent
of schools Dr. Marcus Foster and badly wounded
his deputy Robert Blackburn.
December 20, 1973 Spanish Prime Minister Luis
Carrero Blanco was assassinated in Madrid
as his car drove over a bomb planted by the
Basque separatist group ETA.
September 11, 1974.
Bombing of Anaconda Corporation (part of the
Rockefeller Corporation) in retribution for
Anaconda’s involvement in Pinochet's coup
exactly a year before.
December 1975.
Greek organization Revolutionary Organization
November 17 allegedly responsible of the assassination
of CIA station chief in Athens Richard Welch.
According to a December 2005 article by Kleanthis
Grivas, journalist in Proto Thema, Sheepskin,
Gladio's branch in Greece, was in fact behind
the killing.
US State Department denied Grivas' allegations
in January 2006.
January 28, 1975.
Bombing of the U.S. State Department in response
to escalation in Vietnam.
April 21, 1975.
The remaining members of the SLA rob the Crocker
National Bank in Carmichael, California and
kill Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer, in the
process.
September 1975.
Bombing of the Kennecott Corporation in retribution
for Kennecott's involvement in the Chilean
coup two years prior.
May 1, 1979.
French group Action Directe carries out a
machine gun attack on the employers' federation
headquarters.
May 30, 1982.
The Canadian group Direct Action (aka "Squamish
Five") set off a large bomb at an electricity
transmission project.
Four transformers were wrecked beyond repair,
but no one was injured.
1984.
Bomb-attacks of the Dutch organisation RaRa
(Radical Anti-Racist Action) against the Van
Heutsz monument (Van Heutsz was the Dutch
commander during the Aceh War).
1985–1987: Dutch RaRa is responsible of
several bomb-attacks on the Makro wholesale
stores, which was active in South Africa.
1985.
Action Directe assassinates René Audran,
in charge of the state's arms-dealing.
1986.
Georges Besse, CEO of Renault but before leader
of Eurodif nuclear consortium (in which Iran
had a 10 percent stake), is allegedly assassinated
by Action Directe (although this thesis would
be questioned, in particular by investigative
journalist Dominique Lorentz).
June 28, 1988.
US naval and defense attachée in Greece William
Nordeen's assassination is reinvidicated by
the Revolutionary Organization November 17.
September 26, 1989.
Assassination of Pavlos Bakoyannis, parliamentary
leader of the conservative New Democracy party,
by Greek group Revolutionary Organization
17 November.
November 13, 1991.
Dutch Rara blow up the house of state secretary
of justice Aad Kosto.
June 30, 1993.
Dutch Rara are responsible of bomb-attacks
on the Dutch ministry of social affairs and
employment.
November 30, 1999.
Black blocs destroy the storefronts of GAP,
Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multi-nationals
with retail locations in downtown Seattle
during the anti-WTO demonstrations.
June 8, 2000 Assassination of British military
attache Stephen Saunders in Greece.
Members of 17N are arrested.
In December 2005, Kleanthis Grivas, journalist
in Proto Thema, claims that Sheepskin, Gladio's
branch in Greece, was in fact behind the killing,
along with the first violent act of 17N, Richard
Welch CIA station chief's assassination in
1975.
US State Department denied Grivas' allegations
in January 2006.
2001.
After the July Genoa G8 summit, the Publixtheatre
Caravan, part of the No Border network, is
accused of being part of a "criminal organization"
called "Black blocs", although such "Black
blocs" are not organized and only form themselves
on a spontaneous manner during demonstrations,
as in the older autonomist movement.
2006.
The Swedish Invisible Party announces its
dissolution.
== Justifications ==
The United Nations Security Council, acting
under Chapter VII of the UN Charter defined
the term "terrorism" as consisting of "Criminal
acts, including against civilians, committed
with the intent to cause death or serious
bodily injury, or taking of hostages, with
the purpose to provoke a state of terror in
the general public or in a group of persons
or particular persons, intimidate a population
or compel a government or an international
organization to do or to abstain from doing
any act."The use of political violence is
understood by its proponents in the frame
of a general conception of the state as the
control apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and
of class struggle as a form of effective civil
war.
Thus, as anarchists often put it, "peace without
justice isn't peace", but war between exploited
and exploiters.
In their eyes, this "social war" morally legitimizes
the use of violence against broader "social
violence."
This view, of course, is not shared by pacifist
libertarians.
Rioting is thus justified as a means to enhance
class consciousness and prepares the objective
conditions for a popular uprising (Georges
Sorel, 1906).
Even those who are not opposed to the political
use of violence for theoretical reasons (as
pacifist anarchists are) may consider it unnecessary
or strategically dangerous, in certain conditions.
Many note that the events of 1970s showed
clearly how terrorism may be used to influence
politics in the frame of the "strategy of
tension" by a state and its secret services,
through agents provocateurs and false flag
terrorist attacks.
In Italy and other countries, the Years of
lead led to reinforced anti-terrorism legislation,
criticized by social activists as a new form
of lois scélérates which were used to repress
the whole of the socialist movement, not just
militant groups.
Many also note that the rare cases in which
terrorism has achieved its revolutionary aims
are mostly in the context of national liberation
struggles, while the urban guerrilla movements
have all failed (Gérard Chaliand).
== Armed propaganda ==
Armed propaganda is a type of propaganda used
by revolutionary organizations that uses destructive,
but ideally not lethal violence to make a
political point known to the public and eventually
gain supporters for its cause.
The term was used in the United States by
the Weather Underground and the Black Panther
Party to describe some of their bombings.
Although armed propaganda can use guns or
bombs, its proponents argue that its goal
is debatably different from that of pure terrorism.
=== United States ===
Dan Berger, in his book about the Weatherman
organization, Outlaws in America, describes
the planning section for a townhouse bombing
by the group, describing the action as "armed
propaganda".
=== Latin America ===
The term has been applied to guerillas in
Latin America in their revolutionary literature.
=== Iran ===
Bizhan Jazani used a translation of the term
to describe armed struggle in Iran, particularly
the Fadai guerrillas.
== See also ==
Civil disobedience
V (comics)
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Abidor, Mitchell, ed. (2016).
Death to Bourgeois Society: The Propagandists
of the Deed.
PM Press.
ISBN 978-1629631127.
Christie, Stuart, Granny Made me an Anarchist:
General Franco, The Angry Brigade and Me,
2002
Cockburn, Alexander (October 9–10, 2004).
"Torture, Terrorism and the Rise of the Spanish
Anarchists; 'There Are No Innocents'".
CounterPunch.
Coolsaet, Rick (September 2004).
"Anarchist outrages".
Le Monde diplomatique.
Gage, Beverly (2009).
The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America
in its First Age of Terror.
New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN 978-0199759286.
Hansen, Ann, Direct Action: Memoirs Of An
Urban Guerrilla, AK Press, 2001
Billington, James.
Fire in the Minds of Men, 1999
Merriman, John (2009).
The Dynamite Club.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
ISBN 0-618-55598-6.
Turgenev, Ivan, Fathers and Sons, 1862, paints
the portrait of Russian nihilists.
== External links ==
Associative Press Agency – information on
political prisoners
