Communist terrorism
[7] The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union have been credited with leading to a notable decline in this form of terrorism.
[8] In the 1930s, the term "communist terrorism" was used by the Nazi Party in Germany as part of a propaganda campaign to spread fear of communism.
The Nazis blamed communist terrorism for the Reichstag fire, which they used as an excuse to push through legislation removing personal freedom from German citizens.
[9][failed verification][10] In the 1940s and 1950s, various Southeast Asian countries, such as the Philippines and Vietnam, witnessed the rise of communist groups engaging in terrorism.
Yonah Alexander deemed these groups Fighting Communist Organizations (FCOs),[14][15] and says they rose out of the student union movement protesting against the Vietnam War.
[22] According to Richard Drake, Lenin had abandoned any reluctance to use terrorist tactics by 1917, believing that all resistance to communist revolution should be met with maximum force.
Drake contends that the terrorist intent in Lenin's program was unmistakable, as acknowledged by Trotsky in his book Terrorism and Communism: a Reply, published in 1918.
[32] In 1988, members of the JRA detonated a car bomb outside of a USO recreational facility in Naples which killed 4 Italian civilians, 1 U.S. Servicewoman, and injured 15 other people.
Another communist terrorist group, Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, gained notoriety after taking hostages at the Japanese Embassy of Peru which lead to a 126-day stand off with Peruvian authorities.
The Shining Path is regarded as a terrorist organization by Peru, Japan,[36] the United States,[37] the European Union,[38] and Canada,[39] all of whom consequently prohibit funding and other financial support to the group.
[46] While ZIPRA conducted similar operations to a lesser extent, most of its men made up a conventional-style army in Zambia, which was trained by Cuban and Soviet officers to eventually overtly invade Rhodesia and openly engage in combat against the Rhodesian Security Forces.
[50] Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka (the Soviet secret police), widely employed terrorist tactics, especially against peasants who refused to surrender their grain to the government.
[52] During the apartheid era in South Africa, the government under the Afrikaner National Party deemed the ANC and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, communist terrorists.
[57] Carol Winkler has written that in the 1950s, Viet Cong terrorism was rife in South Vietnam, with political leaders, provincial chiefs, teachers, nurses, doctors, and members of the military being targeted.
[60] Historian and former U.S. State Department analyst Douglas Pike has called the Massacre at Huế one of the worst communist terrorist actions of the Vietnam War.
[66] In May 1967, Tran Van-Luy reported to the World Health Organization "that over the previous 10 years Communist terrorists had destroyed 174 dispensaries, maternity homes and hospitals.
[69] Arthur J. Dommen has written that the majority of those killed due to VC terrorism were civilians, caught in ambushes as they traveled on buses, and that the group burnt down villages and forcibly conscripted members.
