While the late 19th and early 20th century anarchist attackers often wanted to target the well-off (and indeed carried out many assassination attempts in service of this goal), they weren’t averse to making indiscriminate attacks as long as the target was vaguely upclass—consider the Cafe Terminus attack or the Galleanist Wall Street bombing, which were indiscriminate in nature.
Similarly, the anarchist doctrine of “propaganda of the deed” held that attacks would break down the state’s monopoly on violence and show the people that revolution was possible, and as such the attacks were valuable simply as demonstrations, even if they did not kill their intended targets; the 1919 Galleanist bombings, while notionally assassination attempts against various powerful figures, killed only a night watchman and blew a servant’s hands off, but were still considered blows struck for anarchy.
My sense is that Galleani and his followers would have been quite happy to crash vehicles into crowds of people, especially in financial or government districts, but they didn’t much realize it was an option.
Hmm. I don’t know anything about Galleani, but wanting to inspire the masses to action via “propaganda of the deed” seems incompatible with directly terrorizing the masses? (Excuses about “collateral damage” aside.)
It seems like this might have something to do with tribalism: who do the terrorists consider “us” versus “them”?
While the late 19th and early 20th century anarchist attackers often wanted to target the well-off (and indeed carried out many assassination attempts in service of this goal), they weren’t averse to making indiscriminate attacks as long as the target was vaguely upclass—consider the Cafe Terminus attack or the Galleanist Wall Street bombing, which were indiscriminate in nature.
Similarly, the anarchist doctrine of “propaganda of the deed” held that attacks would break down the state’s monopoly on violence and show the people that revolution was possible, and as such the attacks were valuable simply as demonstrations, even if they did not kill their intended targets; the 1919 Galleanist bombings, while notionally assassination attempts against various powerful figures, killed only a night watchman and blew a servant’s hands off, but were still considered blows struck for anarchy.
My sense is that Galleani and his followers would have been quite happy to crash vehicles into crowds of people, especially in financial or government districts, but they didn’t much realize it was an option.
Hmm. I don’t know anything about Galleani, but wanting to inspire the masses to action via “propaganda of the deed” seems incompatible with directly terrorizing the masses? (Excuses about “collateral damage” aside.)
It seems like this might have something to do with tribalism: who do the terrorists consider “us” versus “them”?