The Rise of the New Left and the Failure of Communism: Increasing Terrorism on a Global Scale

Abstract

From 1967 and 1968 to the beginning of the 1990s, terrorism in the world was characterized by the appearance of large numbers of groups of leftist dissidents willing to use violence to achieve their goals. Western democracies were frequently, but not exclusively, the targets for this violence. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam fueled the unrest, but that was not the sole reason for the discontent. Students in Europe were also opposed to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and they often saw it as part of a broader capitalism plan to control and exploit countries and workers around the world. In 1967, the Israeli Defense Forces triumphed over the armed forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It was clear to the Palestinians that conventional military warfare was not going to lead to a Palestinian state, thus, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) opted to rely on terrorism as an additional weapon in its struggle to create this state. The period of the New Left terrorism largely ended with the collapse of Communism in Europe and the end of the Cold War. In addition, the long-simmering discontent of some Irish over the British presence in Northern Ireland erupted, and there were a variety of other dissident organizations that began to rely on terrorism.KeywordsTerrorist GroupSecurity ForceDissident GroupMilitary RegimeLeftist GroupThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.