Abstract
The ‘leaderless resistance’ concept has been a long‐standing subject of internal debate in the American radical right. It emerged originally as a prescription for irregular warfare against invading ‘communist’ troops in the early 1960s. Turned against the American government rather than hostile foreign invaders, the tactic was employed by a few of the most committed members of the American radical right in the 1970s and early 1980s. The term became widely known with the publication of Louis R. Beam's ‘Leaderless Resistance’ essay in 1992, only a few months before the bloody shoot‐out between Christian Identity adherent Randy Weaver and federal agents and the Waco tragedy. This article follows the history of leaderless resistance from its inception through its various permutations in the disparate ideological camps of the American radical right.
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