The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?1

Abstract

This article builds on David Rapoport's Four Waves Theory by identifying several anomalous movements which did not appear to precisely fit with the internationalist model posited in Rapoport's Four Waves. Specifically, groups which I have called Fifth Wave movements have turned inward, becoming localistic rather than international, and manifest intense ethnic, racial, or tribal mysticism. They are millenarian and chiliastic in nature, and seek to create a new society—based on the creation of new men and women—in a single generation. Fifth Wave movements thus focus strongly on women and see children as the vanguard of their movements. Following this logic, rape is their signature tactic and child abduction their normal recruiting practice. This study posits the pre-state Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as the avatar of the current Fifth Wave, but finds that after a nearly generation-long hiatus, the fifth wave in its fully modern form emerged in Africa with the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda as its paradigmatic exemplar.