动物解放首个记录在案的直接行动发生于1824年,最初由“Band of Mercy”发起,经过漫长延展成为无领袖抵抗,目标是阻止猎狐者。[10] Inspired by this group and after seeing a pregnant deer driven into the village by fox hunters to be killed, John Prestige decided to actively oppose this sport and formed the Hunt Saboteurs Association(英语:Hunt Saboteurs Association) in 1964. Within a year, a leaderless model of hunt-sabotage groups was formed across the United Kingdom.[10]
A new Band of Mercy(英语:Band of Mercy) was then formed in 1972. It used direct action to liberate animals and cause economic sabotage against those thought to be abusing animals. Ronnie Lee(英语:Ronnie Lee) and others changed the name of the movement to the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976 and adopted a leaderless resistance model focusing broadly on animal liberation.[11]
Within a few years of the victories claimed by the SHAC, other campaigns against animal testing laboratories emerged. At the same time, SPEAK Campaigns(英语:SPEAK (animals)) and the more radical ALF militants, Oxford Arson Squad(英语:Oxford Arson Squad) began their campaigns towards the same goal: to end Oxford University's animal research.
In April 2009, the Militant Forces Against Huntingdon Life Sciences (MFAH) became active. With the ALF, they began targeting HLS customer and financial Directors, as well as company property. Since then, groups have reported over a dozen actions in Europe, including painting homes, burning cars, and grave desecration. Militants, however, oppose ALF ideology, instead believing in any necessary action(英语:By any means necessary) to prevent suffering at HLS's laboratories.[20]
激进伊斯兰主义
Leaderless resistance is also often well-suited to terrorist objectives. The Islamist organization Al-Qaeda uses a typical figurehead/leaderless cell structure. The organization itself may be pyramidal, but sympathizers who act on its pronouncements often do so spontaneously and independently.
Given the small, clandestine character of terrorist cells, it is easy to assume they necessarily constitute leaderless resistance models. When there is bidirectional communication with external leadership, however, the label is inappropriate. The men who executed the bombings of the London Underground on July 7, 2005 constituted a leaderless resistance cell in that they purportedly acted out of sympathy for Islamic fundamentalism but under their own auspices. The hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks, by contrast, allegedly received training, direction, and funding from Al-Qaeda, and are not properly designated a leaderless cell.
新纳粹与白人民族主义
The concept of leaderless resistance remains important to far-right thinking in the United States, as a proposed response to perceived federal government over-reach at the expense of individual rights. Simson Garfinkel(英语:Simson Garfinkel), however, found in his research that for the most part the far right seldom used this tactic. Timothy McVeigh is one example in the United States. McVeigh worked in a small cell which based its attack on motivations widespread among far-right anti-government groups and the militia movement(英语:American militia movement).
Leaderless resistance has been advocated by white supremacist groups such as White Aryan Resistance(英语:White Aryan Resistance) (WAR) and the British neo-Nazi Combat 18(英语:Combat 18) (C18). The modern Ku Klux Klan is also credited with having developed a leaderless resistance model.[21]Troy Southgate(英语:Troy Southgate) also advocated forms of leaderless resistance during his time as a leading activist in the National Revolutionary Faction and a pioneer of National-Anarchism. James Mason(英语:James Mason (neo-Nazi)) a former American Nazi Party member and neo-Nazi was a proponent of the idea of "leaderless resistance" as detailed in SIEGE a collection of writings from the defunct National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) which advocated violence against political opponents, Jews and non-whites of which he deemed to be the supposedly Jewish controlled entity he referred to as "The System" which has since been embraced by the terrorist group Atomwaffen Division(英语:Atomwaffen Division) (AWD) in the modern day.
Stormfront, Aryan Nations, and Hammerskin Nation(英语:Hammerskin Nation) (HSN) link to Beam's Leaderless Resistance. These groups promote lone wolf actions. While nominally decrying violence, the sites praise the man who "practices what he preaches, and who backs up his words with his deeds."[22] Stormfront, while regretting the loss of life, explains how Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's 1999 killing spree(英语:1999 Independence Day weekend shootings) was compelled by circumstances. The World Church of the Creator(英语:World Church of the Creator) (WCOTC) gave a mixed message, calling Smith "a selfless man who gave his life in the resistance to Jewish/mud tyranny," but noting "the Church does not condone his acts."[22]
Examples of modern-day leaderless resistance/lone-wolf terrorism include:
Leaderless resistance emerged in the environmental movement in 1976 when John Hanna and others as the Environmental Life Force (ELF) (also known now as the original ELF) used explosive and incendiary devices. The group conducted armed actions in northern California and Oregon, later disbanding in 1978 following Hanna's arrest for placing incendiary devices on seven crop-dusters at the Salinas, California airport on May Day, 1977.[23] A decade and a half later this form of guerrilla warfare resurfaced using the same acronym.
The organization was committed to nonviolent ecotage(英语:ecotage) techniques from the group's inception. Others split from the movement in the 1990s, including the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) in 1992, which named itself after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) which had formed in the 1970s.[27] Three years later in Canada, inspired by the ELF in Europe, the first Earth Liberationdirect action occurred, but this time as the Earth Liberation Army (ELA), a similar movement who use ecotage and monkeywrenching as a tool.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks several laws were passed increasing the penalty for ecoterrorism, and the U.S. Congress held hearings on the activity of groups such as the ELF. To date no one has been killed as a result of an ELF or ALF action, and both groups forbid harming human or non-human life.[33]
In 2005 the FBI announced that the ELF was America's greatest domestic terrorist threat, responsible for over 1,200 "criminal incidents" amounting to tens of millions of dollars in damage to property.[34] The United States Department of Homeland Security confirmed this with regards to both the ALF and ELF.[35]
Anti-abortion militants(英语:Militant (word))The Army of God(英语:Army of God (USA)) use leaderless resistance as their organizing principle. As of 2009, The Army of God's webpage hosts a reprint of an article entitled "Leaderless Resistance" from a publication called The Seditionist.[38][39][40]
Network analysis was successfully used by French Colonel Yves Godard(英语:Yves Godard (French officer)) to break the Algerian resistance(英语:Nationalism and resistance in Algeria) between 1955 and 1957 and force them to cease their bombing campaigns. The Algerian conflict may be better described as guerrilla in nature rather than leaderless resistance (see Modern Warfare by Col. Roger Trinquier), and this illustrates the weakness of cell-structured insurgents when compared to leaderless ones. The mapping data were obtained by the use of informants and torture and were used to obtain the identities of important individuals in the resistance; these individuals were then assassinated, which disrupted the Algerian resistance networks. The more irreplaceable the individual is in the adversary's network, the greater the damage is done to the network by removing them.
无领袖抵抗的优势
Traditional organizations leave behind much evidence of their activities, such as money trails, and training and recruitment material. Leaderless resistances, supported more by ideologies than organizations, generally lack such traces. The effects of their operations, as reported by the mass media, act as a sort of messaging and recruitment advertising.
Paul Joosse argues that leaderless resistance movements can avoid the ideological disputes and infighting that plague radical groups. They do this by limiting interaction to the virtual realm.[2]
The internet provides counter-insurgents with further challenges. Individual cells (and even a single person can be a cell) can communicate over the internet, anonymously or semi-anonymously sharing information online, to be found by others through well-known websites. Even when it is legally and technically possible to ascertain who accessed what, it is often practically impossible to discern in a reasonable time frame who is a real threat and who is just curious, a journalist, or a web crawler.
Despite these advantages, leaderless resistance is often unstable. If the actions are not frequent enough or not successful, the stream of publicity, which serves as the recruiting, motivation, and coordination drives for other cells, diminishes. On the other hand, if the actions are too successful, support group(英语:support group)s and other social structures will form that are vulnerable to network analysis.
流行影响
英国作家克莱夫·埃格尔顿(英语:Clive Egleton)于1970年发行小说《抵抗的一部分》(A Piece of Resistance),2004年在美国以《永不投降》(Never Surrender)为名再版,描述对苏联占领英格兰的抵抗。
^ 2.02.12.22.3Joosse, Paul. Leaderless Resistance and Ideological Inclusion: the Case of the Earth Liberation Front. Terrorism and Political Violence. 2007, 19 (3): 351–368. S2CID 17532687. doi:10.1080/09546550701424042.
^Webb, Robin. Animal Liberation — By 'Whatever Means Necessary'. Best, Steven; Nocella, Anthony J. (编). Terrorists or Freedom Fighters. Lantern Books. 2004: 77.
^Southern Poverty Law Center. From Push to Shove. [May 7, 2006]. (原始内容存档于November 22, 2009).
^Bron Taylor(英语:Bron Taylor), 1998. Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism: From Earth First! to the Unabomber to the Earth Liberation Front, Terrorism and Political Violence 10(4):1-42 doi:10.1080/09546559808427480