James P. Brochin
The Unit will begin by defining domestic terrorism and terrorism:
domestic terrorism
- terrorism practiced in your own country against your own people. The 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City was an instance of domestic terrorism.
act of terrorism, terrorism, terrorist act
- the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature (source: The Free Dictionary.com)
Nat Turner:
Nat Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1800. In 1828 he confided to a few companions that a voice from heaven had announced that "the last shall be first", which was interpreted to mean that the slaves should control.
On February 12, 1831, an annular solar eclipse was seen in Virginia. Turner saw this as a black man's hand reaching over the sun, and he took this vision as his sign. The rebellion was initially planned for July 4, Independence Day, but was postponed for more deliberation between him and his followers, and illness. On August 13, there was another solar eclipse, in which the sun appeared bluish-green (possibly from debris deposited in the atmosphere by an eruption of Mount Saint Helens. Turner took this occasion as the final signal, and a week later, on August 21, he began the rebellion. On the night of the 21st of August 1831, with seven companions, he entered the home of his master, Joseph Travis, and murdered the residents. In all thirteen men, eighteen women, and twenty-four children had been murdered. After hiding for six weeks Nat was captured on the 30th of October and was tried and hanged, having made, meanwhile, a full confession. Nineteen of his associates were hanged and twelve were sent out of the state.
As far as his motivations are concerned, he, like Brown, believed himself to be doing God's work, that he was intended for "some great purpose." It appeared that God's purpose included the intentional killing of 18 women and 24 children. What follows is Turner's own words, and is excerpted from
The Confessions of Nat Turner:
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SIR,--You have asked me to give a history of the motives which induced me to undertake the late insurrection, as you call it--To do so I must go back to the days of my infancy, and even before I was born. I was thirty-one years of age the 2d of October last, and born the property of Benj. Turner, of this county. In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the ground work of that enthusiasm, which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here necessary to relate this circumstance--trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time, and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother overhearing, said it had happened before I was I born--I stuck to my story, however, and related somethings which went, in her opinion, to confirm it--others being called on were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shewn me things that had happened before my birth. And my father and mother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast
John Brown:
Brown is motivated by a deep and uncompromising belief that God commands him to end slavery by any means. A dramatized family scene in the historical novel
Raising Holy Hell
expresses it well:
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And all flesh shall know that I, the Lord, have drawn my sword out of its sheath. It shall not be sheathed again. I, John Brown do hereby solemnly pledge my determination, in secrecy before God and my family, to dedicate my life henceforth to do all in my power to carry forth the eternal war on slavery-the mother of all abominations and the sum of all villainies-neither by word nor by deed, but by force of arms alone, certain in the knowledge that the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, and that without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin.
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He who is not with me is against me. Now which of my dear family will pledge alongside its loving father? And which… will dare to… go against him?
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His sneer fans from ear to ear.
In a very real sense there are two John Browns. The first most clearly fits the definition. The first is the John Brown of the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas, where Brown, his sons, and accomplices, brutally attack and murder proslavery activists. The Doyles, father and sons, are rousted from their beds at night onto a dirt road:
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Training his pistol on Billy's midsection, the old man cocks the hammer by the web of his thumb. "Beat it. Go on. Take a hike," he says grimly, pointing the barrel at each of them in succession before aiming suddenly sidewise and high in advance of releasing the spur. The shot powders the night to fractions. "Runaway! Now! All you Doyles!"
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Drury and his father cover forty yards on the dead hurtle, before meeting up with Owen, Salmon, and Oliver standing musketeered across the middle of the road, their swords gripped like bayonets out-thrust at armslength before them.
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So intent are father and son on getting away, so hell-bent on outrunning their imaginary pursuers, that they collide head long with the roadblock, impaling themselves to the hilt on the blades. (Source:
Raising Holy Hell)
Compared to the Kansas murders, the raid on Harpers' Ferry looks like an armed insurrection, carried off with the naïve belief that slaves would join Brown's raiders, and, once given the huge numbers of arms, that a widespread slavery rebellion would ensue. Brown miscalculated, badly. His accomplices did not indiscriminately kill civilians, but they found themselves surrounded, shot, down, and Brown was later tried for treason and hung.
The Harper's Ferry Brown and the Bleeding Kansas Brown cannot be neatly separated, morally. Their motivations were the same, that killing innocents in the name of anti-slavery is justifiable.
Charles Manson:
Charles Manson organized, and ordered, some of the most gruesome killings in American History (the Tate and LaBianca murders), and became the leader, and object of adoration, of his own cult, known as The Manson Family. Manson believed that lyrics to a Beatles song, "Helter Skelter" commanded him to precipitate a race war. Even though Manson is widely regarded as insane, his own words suggest that his acts were intentional, and he insists that his deeds are a reflection of society.
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From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of
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scorpions to torment.
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I can't dislike you, but I will say this to you: you haven't got long before you are all
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going to kill yourselves, because you are all crazy. And you can project it back at
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me, but I am only what life inside each and every one of you.
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I can't judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I
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think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie
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that you live in.
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I'm probably one of the most dangerous men in the world if I want to be. But I
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never wanted to be anything but me.
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If you're going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy.
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Living is what scares me. Dying is easy.
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My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system... I am only what you made
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me. I am only a reflection of you.
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So for you people who are filled with fear that I might someday be released: breath
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easy, I don't see it happening.
Timothy McVeigh:
The Oklahoma City bombing was a bomb attack on the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people. It destroyed or damaged 324buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86cars, and shattered glass in 258nearby buildings, and was estimated to have caused at least $652million worth of damage.
The chief conspirators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, met in 1988 at basic training for the U.S. Army at Fort Banning, Georgia. Michael Fortier, McVeigh's accomplice, was his Army roommate. The three shared interests in survivalism (preparing for a time after major discretions in society), opposed federal or state controls on firearms, and supported the militia movement. They expressed anger at the federal government's handling of the 1992 FBI standoff with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, and also the FBI's handling of the Waco, Texas, a 1993 51-day standoff between the FBI and a religious group, some say a cult, called the Branch Davidians. The standoff began with the shooting deaths of federal agents who were attempting to execute a search warrant and ended with the deaths of Branch Davidian spiritual leader David Koresh and 75others. In March1993, McVeigh visited the Waco site during the standoff, and then again after its conclusion. McVeigh later decided to bomb a federal building as a response to the raids.
James Charles Kopp:
James Charles Kopp (born August 2, 1954) is the American who was convicted in 2003 for the 1998 sniper-style murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an American doctor from Amherst, New York, who regularly performed abortions. Prior to his capture, Kopp was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He was affiliated with "The Lambs of Christ," a militant anti-abortion group. Kopp has been referred to as a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, and was "well-known in militant anti-abortion circles, where he was nicknamed Atomic Dog."
On October 23, 1998, at about 10 p.m., Dr. Barnett Slepian was standing in the kitchen of his home in Amherst, New York. Kopp fired a single shot from a rifle from nearby wooded area, which entered the Slepian home through a rear window. Slepian was a well-known obstetrician/gynecologist who performed abortions at a women's clinic in Buffalo, New York. He also maintained a private medical practice in an office in Amherst, New York. Within hours of the murder, anti-abortionists posted Slepian's name "crossed out" on their internet website, which also served as "a virtual hit list of doctors who carry out abortions."
Kopp claims that his conversion occurred [to being pro-life] in 1980, at Stanford Hospital in California, when a female acquaintance, who was in favour of abortion, took him to the hospital morgue to show him an aborted fetus, in its eighth month of gestation, which had been discarded in a small bucket. Kopp was horrified by the sight, and decided to involve himself in the anti-abortion movement, and which eventually led to his conversion to Catholicism. He also became involved with the militant Christian groups, the "Army of God" and the "Lambs of Christ."