How ISIS Resembles Yesterday’s Anarchists

American Conservative, the ^ | 11 October 2016 | Katrina Gulliver

[Lorianne]

Today, revolutionary anarchists seem archaic, almost quaint. But for around 50 years, from the 1880s to the 1930s, anarchists carried out terror attacks all over the world. Buildings blew up; world leaders and random civilians alike were killed.

The parallels between then and now, when we face the threat of ISIS and other Islamic extremist groups, are many.

During the decades of anarchist terrorism, it seemed like each week we heard of another incident carried out by an immigrant from a politically unstable region of the globe, and some prominent public figures called for banning all immigration from these regions. Anarchists were decentralized and self-defined (“self-radicalized” as the media puts it today). In June 1918, the House unanimously passed the Alien Anarchist Deportation Bill, which authorized the immediate expulsion of foreign nationals subscribing to anarchist politics. The bill also extended the ability of immigration authorities to remove foreigners who had been resident for more than five years, a group to whom earlier laws had offered greater protections. In a nation at war, legislators were keen to kick out German sympathizers—the term “anarchist” being conveniently flexible enough to mean “foreign subversive.”

The draconian nature of this legislation was apparently vindicated within a year, when 36 mail bombs were sent to prominent citizens between April and June 1919, including eight on June 2. This series of bombings led to what came to be known as the “Red Scare” of 1919–20, in which hundreds of political agitators were expelled, most to the newly Sovietized Russia.

[Gaffer]

Islam is much, much older than the recent classification of Anarchist would imply. Barbarism isn’t a political ideology. It is madness and depravity.

[Paine in the Neck]

It was the anarchists who necessitated the tight immigration controls we had in place until Ted Kennedy saw fit to tear them down with his immigration “reforms”.