Compare And Contrast The Four Waves Of Terrorism

Terrorism is something that has been in the world for quite a substantial amount of time. It is something that most people are aware of and have been impacted by at one point in their lives. However, though most people know what terrorism is, they cannot easily define the term “terrorism” With that said, the purpose of this assignment is to talk about what terrorism is and provide a couple of different definitions of terrorism as well as some characteristics and statistics of terrorist. After a concept of terrorism is grasped, the paper will then look at the four different waves of terrorism and provide examples of different groups within those waves. By the end of the paper, a thorough understanding of terrorism as well as the study of the …show more content…
The anarchism wave (1880-1920) was the first wave of the terrorism. This wave of terrorism had the goals of expanding boundaries and empires. The political philosophy of this wave was for stateless societies (Lecture 10/07). A group that was active in this wave was Narodnaya Volya. This was a group that did not think government was good and essentially targeted only high-level officials within the government. The anti-colonialism wave (1920-1960) was the second wave of terrorism. In this wave of terrorism, groups fought against the colonial governments as well as resisted against them. The goal of this wave was to change government, not abolish it. A group from this wave was the Irish Republican Army. The IRA was known for waging a campaign of violence against British rule of Ireland (Lecture 10/07). The New left wave (1960-1980) was the third wave of terrorism. This wave was influenced by the events of the Vietnam War. Groups in this wave felt that governments were not as democratic as they portrayed themselves as. A group from this wave was the Weather Underground. Weather Underground was a group that was viewed as a domestic terrorist group that was strongly against the Vietnam War. In order to make their presence known, they carried out protest as well as attacks to show how their strong negative feelings of the Vietnam War were. The religious wave (1980-present) is the fourth and current wave of terrorism. In this wave of terrorism, religion is considered as the organizational structure for states to base their attacks off of. According to lecture, out of 35 suicide terror groups in 2005, 31 of those groups had claims of being religious. A group that was/is active in this wave is Al-Qaeda. They base their ideologies and motives for doing what they do based off of