Leaderless resistance
Media, in this case, often create a positive feedback loop: by publishing declarations of a movement's role model, this instills motivation, ideas, and assumed sympathy in the minds of potential agitators who in turn lend further authority to the figurehead.
[1] While this may loosely resemble a vertical command structure, it is notably unidirectional: a titular leader makes pronouncements, and activists may respond, but there is no formal contact between the two levels of organization.
[1] Given the asymmetrical character[clarification needed] of leaderless resistance, and the fact that it is often strategically adopted in the face of a power imbalance, it has much in common with guerrilla warfare.
Non-violent groups can use the same structure to author, print, and distribute samizdat literature, to create self-propagating boycotts against political opponents via the internet, to maintain an alternative electronic currency outside of the reach of taxing governments and transaction-logging banks, and so forth.
[6][5] The concept was revived and popularized in an essay published by the anti-government Ku Klux Klan member Louis Beam in 1983, again in 1992, and was read as a keynote message at the 1992 gathering Rocky Mountain Rendezvous of right-wing extremists.
[7][4][8] Beam advocated leaderless resistance as a technique for white nationalists to continue the struggle against the U.S. government, despite an overwhelming imbalance in power and resources.
[5] Beam argued that conventional hierarchical pyramidal organizations are extremely dangerous for their participants, when employed in a resistance movement against government, because of the ease of disclosing the chain of command.
[9] The first recorded direct action for animal liberation which progressed (after a considerable delay) into a movement of leaderless resistance was by the original "Band of Mercy" in 1824 whose goal was to thwart fox hunters.
[10] Inspired by this group and after seeing a pregnant deer driven into the village by fox hunters to be killed, John Prestige decided to actively oppose this sport and formed the Hunt Saboteurs Association in 1964.
[15] A violent group called the Justice Department was established in 1993, and in 1994 sent razor blades[clarification needed] to hunters such as Prince Charles and to animal researchers.
Despite claiming successes[18] leaderless animal liberation and environmental movements generally lack the broad popular support that often occurs in strictly political or military conflicts.
The men who executed the bombings of the London Underground on July 7, 2005 constituted a leaderless resistance cell in that they purportedly acted out of sympathy for Islamic fundamentalism but under their own auspices.
The hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks, by contrast, allegedly received training, direction, and funding from Al-Qaeda, and are not properly designated a leaderless cell.
The concept of leaderless resistance remains important to far-right thinking in the United States,[citation needed] as a proposed response to perceived federal government over-reach at the expense of individual rights.
[21] Troy Southgate also advocated forms of leaderless resistance during his time as a leading activist in the National Revolutionary Faction and a pioneer of National-Anarchism.
James Mason a former American Nazi Party member and neo-Nazi was a proponent of the idea of "leaderless resistance" as detailed in SIEGE a collection of writings from the defunct National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) which advocated violence against political opponents, Jews and non-whites of which he deemed to be the supposedly Jewish controlled entity he referred to as "The System" which has since been embraced by the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division (AWD) in the modern day.
"[clarification needed][22] Stormfront, while regretting the loss of life, explains how Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's 1999 killing spree was compelled by circumstances.
[33] In 2005 the FBI announced that the ELF was America's greatest domestic terrorist threat, responsible for over 1,200 "criminal incidents" amounting to tens of millions of dollars in damage to property.
[citation needed] Network analysis was successfully used by French Colonel Yves Godard to break the Algerian resistance between 1955 and 1957 and force them to cease their bombing campaigns.
Paul Joosse[clarification needed] argues that leaderless resistance movements can avoid the ideological disputes and infighting that plague radical groups.
Even when it is legally and technically possible to ascertain who accessed what, it is often practically impossible to discern in a reasonable time frame who is a real threat and who is just curious, a journalist, or a web crawler.
