Who is behind the political bombings? How the Soviet Union Transformed Terrorism

[L. Coyote]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/how-the-soviet-union-transformed-terrorism/250433/
Nick Lockwood Dec 23, 2011

The USSR developed two tools that changed the world: airplane hijackings and state-sponsorship of terror

In the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union sponsored waves of political violence against the West. The Red Brigades in Italy and the German Red Army Faction both terrorized Europe through bank robberies, kidnapping, and acts of sabotage. The Soviets wanted to use these left-wing terror groups to destabilize Italy and Germany to break up NATO. State-sponsored terrorism was a deeply Soviet phenomenon, but its practice did not stop when the Soviet Union ended. While state sponsorship continues, terrorism has mutated into something even harder for us to understand and respond to. But some of the roots of today's terrorism go back to the Soviet Union.

Russia is the birthplace of modern terrorism. The Russian nihilists of the 19th century combined political powerlessness with a propensity for gruesome violence, but their attacks were aimed at the Tsarist state and ruling classes. Later, the Soviet Union and its allies actively supported terrorism as a means to politically inconvenience and undermine its opponents. The East German Stasi and the KGB provided funds, equipment, and "networking" opportunities to the myriad of leftist German terrorist cells in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The Red Army Faction and the 2nd June Movement in Germany, as well as the Red Brigades in Italy, shared Marxist philosophies, a hatred of America, solidarity with the Palestinians, and opposition to the generation, some of its members still in power, that had supported the Nazis and fascists. They were good foundations for a Cold War fifth column. It was not just Europe, either ................

This post is part of a 12-part series exploring how the U.S.-Russia relationship has shaped the world since the December 1991 end of the Soviet Union. Read the full series here.

[yardwork]

1. Rec. I don't know if Putin encouraged the recent attacks in London, but it's worth looking into.

The elections May called were suddenly looking bad for the Tories, and within days of the election, there is a low-tech terrorist attack on the beloved London Bridge. The attack was an obvious suicide mission. The attackers drove a truck over pedestrians, crashed the truck, and got out and started stabbing people in a busy marketplace. The attackers had to know that they wouldn't survive.

[blueseas]

4. Yes all facts

Why do this at this time?

[Igel]

5. Apparently to help Labor.

Oh, no. That's not the required assumption. Even if that might be the result.

Then again, of course the attackers would want to hurt the party in power. Even if some do think they actually want to weaken Labor. You see, you can argue both ways: If Labor declines in the polls, it was done for that reason; if the Tories decline in the polls, it was done for that reason. If a hypothesis is non-falsifiable, it's inherently uninteresting if you're interested in reality. CTs are uninteresting for that reason: As evidence falsifies them, they merely shift the terms of the debate, they shift the hypothesis, to something else apparently unfalsifiable. But evidence is hard to come by, either way. (Just as many have a "God of the gaps," so CTers have a "theory of the gaps".)

There was a similar attack nobody cared about because it didn't fit any neat political narrative on 3/22/17. Westminster Bridge. Bunch of people run down. That's a month before elections were called. "Why do it at that time?" wasn't a question. But I'd say any theory to explain these two attacks should readily accommodate the March 2017 event.

And there were attacks in 2015, 2013. So there are more now than before. And there were other foiled attacks in 2015, 2014. It's a good idea not just to focus on the attacks that succeeded.

At the same time, note that there are more attacks in France now than in 2013 and 2014. And in Germany. I'm not sure that a Britain-specific reason is needed for the upswing. I'd also point out that attacks cluster, as though attention was shifting from one country to the other. In that there may be some political tie-in, but a number of the attacks in each country were made at times when no election was in the offing. (Much less when one was about to dock.)

Perhaps the attacks aren't centered entirely at the surface level of British politics?

[yardwork]

7. Putin wants to disrupt European and U.S. unity.

Sure, he'd like his allies in power. But even when that fails, it serves his purpose to disrupt. Terrorism always disrupts.

There's no evidence that Putin had anything to do with this. But the Atlantic series is interesting.

[malaise]

2. Careful they attack you for conspiracy theories

You're not allowed to think and question.

Bravo Atlantic.

That said my friend died on that Cubana flight bombing in 1976 and we know who was behind that one. There are no innocents among world powers.

[KingCharlemagne]

3. Oh FFS. Russia is NOT "the birthplace of modern terrorism." Jesus H. Christ - nt

[Igel]

6. A risky topic.

Brings in the PLO and necessarily a lot of the anti-Western movements that the USSR supported directly or though its lapdog Cuba, but also the politics of 1848 France where Bakunin honed his rhetoric and ideas.

As for a particular Russian "inventing" plane hijackings, there's no lack of bravado and braggadocio in former spies. Can't prove what they say, and if somebody else actually had the idea he's likely dead or doesn't want what he did known. The KGB was openly proud and had support for what they did abroad, so that particular chekist could brag.

While some of the groups the USSR supported, the USSR was opportunistic. The goal was to weaken the West, and while a lot of the groups were socialist, others were nationalist. They had no trouble supporting the PLO, even when the PLO was also in bed with the military right-wing Sudanese government at the time. The commonality between the groups supported isn't "supported by the USSR" but "extreme fringe with important goals justifying the means." Like Maduro, their "socialism" was often thuggery, but the paper veneer of the term was sufficient to justify the support actually given because of anti-American or anti-Western or anti-capitalist attitudes. Not a few people left of center supported many of those actions. The Baader-Meinof gang was extreme, to be sure, but other groups had SWP support or support of people even a bit to the right of the SWP. Just consider Zimbabwe and Qaddhafi, both of whom were supported by some on the left for decades because they were anti-something-or-other. Even Assad in Syria got support when Bush II was against him. Knee-jerkism is a thing.

The Crna ruka in Srbija was cut from the same cloth as Bakunin, but had mostly a different ideology. So it spread a bit, pre-USSR.

If it's any consolation, the Assassins were like that. Various groups have been deemed terrorist in Middle-Ages Europe. And lets not forget the sicarii, who killed not only foreigners but collaborationists.

Ukrainian nationalists pre-WWII engaged in sabotage and targeted executions as a kind of national liberation front. They got a bad rap because some of them sided with the Nazis against the Russians (then fought the Nazis, then the Red Army again, but we overlook the absolute moral stain of being affiliated with a RW authoritarian government), and some also decided to ethnically cleanse Jews (and Poles, but we focus on Jews because Holocaust ... still, dead because you're of the wrong ethnicity is dead out of ethnic animus).

Personally, I'd say that modern terrorism is mostly in AQ's court. It's a bit different from the top-down approach that the notoriously top-down USSR sponsored, or even the Banderovtsi, more decentralized. Still, it's loosely organized so it's more organized than the sicarii, I suspect. Like the USSR, it's ideological (with ideology and religion being close inbred cousins in much of the world); and it's also opportunistic. However, it's glued together not by a government but by a particular point of view.

Still, this article fits in with the neoliberal "Russia is the Great Satan" POV. It didn't work well for the (R) back in the '50s and '60s--they had a point, to be sure, one that was often denied because of ideology--but "Great Satan" it wasn't. Like the CIA, they only seemed all-powerful as long as their bumbling was kept carefully concealed. ("He looks smart, but remember ... Light travels faster than sound.&quot