Old School Terorrists

by phil on Sunday Sep 7, 2003 8:06 AM
Chicle

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The president and the assassin

Just as Islamist terrorists stalk us now, so the communist specter haunted our parents and anarchists ambushed our grandparents. We have lived with this dread for as long as anyone can tell.

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If, as the British philosopher John Gray claims, "Al Qaeda's closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late 19th-century Europe," then we may learn something from the strategy Roosevelt used to quell that radical threat. Let's hope so.

Yeah, I felt like I've been sold on the idea that terrorism was a modern phenomenom. I don't remember at all being taught about an anarchist spectre in high school. Maybe they didn't want to give teenagers the wrong idea. Hah, and I used to think that propoganda didn't reach into the classrooms.