One of the great, scary things to come out of the neo-nazi movement is the concept of leaderless resistance, the idea of simply putting out ideas and having people come up with their own ways of implementing the ideology in blood in the streets.
US right wing extremists are fans of the idea and supposedly the OKC bombing was an example of it. The ALF/ELF use the same sort of tactics on the left with people independently adopting the label in their actions. And now, from StrategyPage comes this:
While the idea of al Qaeda "concentrating on Iraq," is attractive, the truth is that al Qaeda is no longer an organization as much as it is a bunch of like minded people all over the world. The numerous al Qaeda "members" do what they can in the areas where they live.
This seems to fit into the broad idea of leaderless resistance and provide an intellectual framework within which all such movements should be confronted. There's no reason not to concentrate on finding a generalized formula for defeating leaderless resistance movements.
Posted by TMLutas at March 5, 2004 09:54 PM