Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups ( covert cells), or individuals (a solo cell is called a " lone wolf"), challenge an established institution such as a law, economic system, social order, or government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent protest and

civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be called "civil". H ...

vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The ter ...

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, and other violent activity. Leaderless cells lack vertical command links and so operate without hierarchical command, but they have a common goal that links them to the social movement from which their ideology was learned.Joosse, Paul. 2007. "Leaderless Resistance and Ideological Inclusion: the Case of the Earth Liberation Front. Terrorism and Political Violence 19(3): 351-368. Leaderless resistance has been employed by a wide range of movements, including animal-liberation, radical environmentalist,

anti-abortion Anti-abortion movements, also self-styled as pro-life or abolitionist movements, are involved in the abortion debate advocating against the practice of abortion and its legality. Many anti-abortion movements began as countermovements in respo ...

, military

invasion An invasion is a military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitical entity aggressively enter territory owned by another such entity, generally with the objective of either: conquering; liberating or re-establishing ...

resistance,

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...

organizations,

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their reli ...

resistance,

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, and

hate group A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society. Acc ...

s. The non-hierarchical, decentralized organization is simple and difficult to stamp out. However, with the absence of a formal hierarchy and formal criteria for membership and affiliation, they are vulnerable to appropriation, false flagging or hostile takeover from the outside, since anyone can declare oneself a member of and affiliate with the group.

General characteristics

A covert cell may be a lone individual or a small group. The basic characteristic of the structure is that there is no explicit communication between cells that are acting toward shared goals. Members of one cell usually have little or no information about who else is agitating on behalf of their cause. Leaderless movements may have a symbolic figurehead. This can be a public figure, a

multiple-use name A multiple-use name or anonymity pseudonym is a name used by many different people to protect anonymity. It is a strategy that has been adopted by many unconnected radical and cultural groups, where the construct of personal identity has been crit ...

, or an inspirational author, who picks generic targets and objectives, but does not actually manage or execute plans. Media, in this case, often create a positive feedback loop: by publishing declarations of a movement's role model, this instills motivation, ideas, and assumed sympathy in the minds of potential agitators who in turn lend further authority to the figurehead. While this may loosely resemble a vertical command structure, it is notably unidirectional: a titular leader makes pronouncements, and activists may respond, but there is no formal contact between the two levels of organization. As a result, leaderless resistance cells are resistant to

informant An informant (also called an informer or, as a slang term, a “snitch”) is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informant ...

s and

traitor Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

s. As there is neither a center that may be destroyed, nor links between the cells that may be infiltrated, it is more difficult for established authorities to arrest the development of a leaderless resistance movement than it is with movements that adopt more conventional hierarchies. Given of leaderless resistance, and the fact that it is often strategically adopted in the face of a power imbalance, it has much in common with

guerrilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run ta ...

. The latter strategy, however, usually retains some form of organized, bidirectional leadership and is often more than the individualized actions of leaderless cells. In some cases, a largely leaderless movement may evolve into a coherent

insurgency An insurgency is a violent, armed rebellion against authority waged by small, lightly armed bands who practice guerrilla warfare from primarily rural base areas. The key descriptive feature of insurgency is its asymmetric nature: small irr ...

or guerrilla movement, as with the

Yugoslav partisans The Yugoslav Partisans,Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene: , or the National Liberation Army, sh-Latn-Cyrl, Narodnooslobodilačka vojska (NOV), Народноослободилачка војска (НОВ); mk, Народноослобод� ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Leaderless resistance often involves resistance by violent means, but it is not limited to them. Non-violent groups can use the same structure to author, print, and distribute samizdat literature, to create self-propagating boycotts against political opponents via the internet, to maintain an alternative electronic currency outside of the reach of taxing governments and transaction-logging banks, and so forth.

History

The concept of leaderless resistance was developed by Col. Ulius Louis Amoss, a former

U.S. intelligence The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

officer, in the early 1950s. An

anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...

, Amoss saw leaderless resistance as a way to prevent the penetration and destruction of CIA-supported resistance cells in Eastern European countries under Soviet control. The concept was revived and popularized in an essay published by the anti-government

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

member

Louis Beam Louis Ray Beam, Jr. (born 1946) is an American white supremacist, conspiracy theorist and neo-fascist. After high school, he joined the United States Army and served as a helicopter door-gunner in Vietnam. He was awarded the Distinguished Flyin ...

in 1983 and again in 1992. Beam advocated leaderless resistance as a technique for white nationalists to continue the struggle against the U.S. government, despite an overwhelming imbalance in power and resources. Beam argued that conventional

hierarchical A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

pyramidal organizations are extremely dangerous for their participants, when employed in a resistance movement against government, because of the ease of disclosing the chain of command. A less dangerous approach would be to convince like-minded individuals to form independent cells without close communication between each other but generally operating in the same direction.

In practice

Animal liberation

The first recorded

direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...

for animal liberation which progressed (after a considerable delay) into a movement of leaderless resistance was by the original "Band of Mercy" in 1824 whose goal was to thwart fox hunters.Best & Nocella (eds), ''Terrorists or Freedom Fighters'', Lantern Books, 2004. 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 The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) is a United Kingdom organisation that uses hunt sabotage as a means of direct action to stop fox hunting. It was founded in 1963, with its first sabotage event occurring at the South Devon Foxhounds on 26 Dec ...

(HSA) in 1964. Within a year, a leaderless model of hunt-sabotage groups was formed across the United Kingdom. A new 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 Ronnie Lee (born 1951) is a British animal rights activist. He is known primarily for being the Press Officer for the UK Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976. He also founded the magazine '' Arkangel'' in 1989.Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976 and adopted a leaderless resistance model focusing broadly on animal liberation. Earth First! and the

environmental movement The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...

in the 1980s also adopted the leaderless resistance model. An animal liberation movement advocating violence emerged with the name

Animal Rights Militia The Animal Rights Militia (ARM) is a banner used by animal rights activists who engage in direct action utilizing a diversity of tactics that ignores the Animal Liberation Front's policy of taking all necessary precautions to avoid harm to human ...

(ARM) in 1982. Letter bombs were sent to the then British Prime Minister,

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime ...

. Two years later the name Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS) was also used. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) formed in 1992, breaking from Earth First! when that organization decided to focus on public direct action, instead of the ecotage that the ELF participated in. A violent group called the

Justice Department A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...

was established in 1993, and in 1994 to hunters such as Prince Charles and to animal researchers. In 1999 the leaderless resistance strategy was employed by animal liberation organisations like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), which was formed from the Consort beagles campaign and

Save the Hill Grove Cats Save the Hill Grove Cats was a British animal rights campaign set up in 1997 with the aim of closing Hill Grove Farm near Witney in Oxfordshire. The farm, owned by Christopher Brown, was the last commercial breeder of cats for laboratories in the ...

to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). Despite claiming successes leaderless animal liberation and environmental movements generally lack the broad popular support that often occurs in strictly political or military conflicts. The Revolutionary Cells--Animal Liberation Brigade (RCALB) appeared in 2003 and sent pipe bombs to Chiron Corporation and used

incendiary device Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, ...

s against other targets. Within a few years of the victories claimed by the SHAC, other campaigns against animal testing laboratories emerged. At the same time, SPEAK Campaigns and the more radical ALF militants, Oxford Arson Squad began their campaigns towards the same goal: to end

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

'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 , instead believing in any necessary action to prevent suffering at HLS's laboratories.MFAH Communique: April 7th 2009
'' Bite Back Magazine'', 7th April 2009

Radical Islamists

Leaderless resistance is also often well-suited to terrorist objectives. The Islamist organization

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

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 The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

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 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, by contrast, allegedly received training, direction, and funding from Al-Qaeda, and are not properly designated a leaderless cell.

Neo-Nazis and White nationalists

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, 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. Leaderless resistance has been advocated by white supremacist groups such as White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and the British neo-Nazi Combat 18 (C18). The modern

is also credited with having developed a leaderless resistance model. Troy Southgate also advocated forms of leaderless resistance during his time as a leading activist in the

National Revolutionary Faction National-anarchism is a radical right-wing.... nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity... National-anarchists claim to syncretize neotribal ethnic nationalism with p ...

and a pioneer of National-Anarchism.

James Mason James Neville Mason (; 15 May 190927 July 1984) was an English actor. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films inc ...

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 (AWD) in the modern day. Stormfront, Aryan Nations, and Hammerskin Nation (HSN) link to Beam's ''Leaderless Resistance''. These groups promote lone wolf actions. Stormfront, while regretting the loss of life, explains how Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's 1999 killing spree was compelled by circumstances. The

World Church of the Creator Creativity, historically known as The (World) Church of the Creator, is an atheistic ( "nontheistic") white supremacist religious movement which espouses white separatism, antitheism, antisemitism, scientific racism, homophobia, and religious a ...

(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." Examples of modern-day leaderless resistance/lone-wolf terrorism include: *1999

Columbine High School massacre On April 20, 1999, a school shooting and attempted bombing occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. ...

*1999

Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting On August 10, 1999, at around 10:50 a.m. PT, American white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. walked into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and opened fire with an Uzi sub machine gun, firing 70 bullet ...

*1999

murders of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder Gary Matson (April 6, 1949 — July 1, 1999) and Winfield Mowder (May 30, 1959 — July 1, 1999) were a gay couple from Redding, California, who were murdered by white supremacist brothers Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams. The W ...

*2008

Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on July 27, 2008 when an unemployed Tennessee truck driver named Jim David Adkisson went on a shooting rampage at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Unive ...

*2009 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting * 2011 Norway attacks *2012 Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting *2014 Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting *2015

Charleston church shooting On June 17, 2015, a mass shooting occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Among those people who were killed was the senior past ...

2015 Lafayette shooting On July 23, 2015, a mass shooting occurred at the Grand 16 movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. John Russell Houser, 59, opened fire during a showing of the film '' Trainwreck'', killing two people and injuring nine others before committing su ...

*2016 murder of Jo Cox *2017

Quebec City mosque shooting The Quebec City mosque shooting (french: Attentat de la grande mosquée de Québec) was an attack by a single gunman on the evening of January 29, 2017, at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, a mosque in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood ...

*2018

Pittsburgh synagogue shooting The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was an antisemitic terrorist attack which took place at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The congregation, al ...

*2019 Christchurch mosque shootings *2019

Escondido mosque fire The Escondido mosque fire was a terrorist arson attack perpetrated against the Islamic Center of Escondido, California, in March 2019. Police found graffiti on the mosque's driveway that referenced the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zeala ...

and Poway synagogue shooting * 2019 El Paso shooting * 2022 Buffalo shooting

Radical environmentalism

Leaderless resistance emerged in the environmental movement in 1976 when John Hanna and others as the

Environmental Life Force Environmental Life Force (ELF), also known as the Original ELF, was the first radical environmental group in 1977 to use explosive and incendiary devices to advance their agenda. History The original ELF was founded by John Clark Hanna. who was ...

(ELF) (also known now as the ''original ELF'') used explosive and

s. The group conducted armed actions in northern

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

and

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, later disbanding in 1978 following Hanna's arrest for placing incendiary devices on seven crop-dusters at the

Salinas, California Salinas (; Spanish for "Salt Marsh or Salt Flats") is a city in California and the county seat of Monterey County. With a population of 163,542 in the 2020 Census, Salinas is the most populous city in Monterey County. Salinas is an urban area l ...

airport on May Day, 1977. A decade and a half later this form of

resurfaced using the same

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

. In 1980 Earth First! was founded by Dave Foreman and others to confront environmental destruction, primarily of the American West. Inspired by the Edward Abbey novel ''

The Monkey Wrench Gang ''The Monkey Wrench Gang'' is a novel written by American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989), published in 1975. Abbey's most famous work of fiction, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the ...

'', Earth First! made use of such techniques as treesitting and

treespiking Tree spiking involves hammering a metal rod, nail or other material into a tree trunk, either inserting it at the base of the trunk where a logger might be expected to cut into the tree, or higher up where it would affect the sawmill later proce ...

to stop

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Logging is the beginning of a supply cha ...

companies, as well as other activities targeted towards

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...

road A road is a linear way for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles (motorized and non-motorized) and pedestrians. Unlike streets, the main function of roads is transportation. There are many types o ...

construction,

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separ ...

an development, and energy companies. The organization was committed to nonviolent 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. Three years later in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

, inspired by the ELF in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, the first ''Earth Liberation''

occurred, but this time as the

Earth Liberation Army The Earth Liberation Army (ELA), similar to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), is the collective name for anonymous and autonomous individuals or groups that use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of th ...

(ELA), a similar movement who use ecotage and monkeywrenching as a tool. A series of actions earned ELF the label of

eco-terrorists Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines eco-terrorism as "...the use or threatened use of violen ...

, including the burning of a ski resort in Vail, Colorado in 1998, and the burning of an SUV dealership in

in 1999. In the same year the ELA made headlines by setting fire to the Vail Resorts in Washington, D.C., causing $12 million in damages. The defendants in that case were later charged in the FBI's " Operation Backfire" with other crimes; this was later named by environmentalists as the

Green Scare The Green Scare is legal action by the US government against the radical environmental movement. It alludes to the Red Scares, periods of fear over communist infiltration of US society. The term was popularized by environmental activists. It is ...

, alluding to the Red Scare periods of fear over communist infiltration of U.S.Eco-Terror Indictments: "Operation Backfire" Nets 11
, FBI, January 20th 2006. Following the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

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. 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 It was announced in 2003 that ''"

eco-terrorist Eco-terrorism is an act of violence which is committed in support of environmental causes, against people or property. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines eco-terrorism as "...the use or threatened use of violen ...

"'' attacks, known as ''" ecotage"'', had increased from the ELF, ELA, and the ''"Environmental Rangers"'', another name used by activists when engaging in similar activity. 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. Best, Steven and Best & Nocella. ''Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth'',

Lantern Books Lantern Publishing & Media is an American non-profit book publisher founded in 2020, having acquired the assets of Booklight Inc. DBA Lantern Books in 2019. Booklight was founded in 1999, and first located in Union Square (New York City), before mo ...

, 2006, p. 47. The United States

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-ter ...

confirmed this with regards to both the ALF and ELF.FBI, ATF address domestic terrorism
'' CNN'', May 19th 2005.

Movements/organizations

* Camp for Climate Action * Earth First! *

(ELA) * Earth Liberation Front (ELF) *

* Plane Stupid * Antifa

Anti-abortion militancy

Anti-abortion

militants The English word ''militant'' is both an adjective and a noun, and it is generally used to mean vigorously active, combative and/or aggressive, especially in support of a cause, as in "militant reformers". It comes from the 15th century Latin " ...

The Army of God 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.''

Countermeasures

Network analysis in classical setting

Leaderless resistance

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods fo ...

s are potentially vulnerable to social network analysis and its derivative, link analysis. Link analysis of social networks is the fundamental reason for the ongoing legislative push in the U.S. and the European Union for mandatory retention of telecommunication traffic data and for limiting access to

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anony ...

prepaid cellphones, as the stored data contain important network analysis clues. Network analysis was successfully used by French Colonel Yves Godard to break the Algerian resistance between 1955 and 1957 and force them to cease their

bombing A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanica ...

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. were obtained by the use of

s and

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts ...

and were used to obtain the identities of important individuals in the resistance; these individuals were then

assassinated Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...

, 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.

Advantages of leaderless resistance

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 Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit informati ...

, act as a sort of messaging and recruitment advertising. argues that leaderless resistance movements can avoid the ideological disputes and infighting that plague radical groups. They do this by . The internet provides counterinsurgents 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 timeframe who is a real threat and who is just curious, a journalist, or a

web crawler A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web s ...

. 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 groups and other social structures will form that are vulnerable to network analysis.

In fiction

*The 1970 novel ''A Piece of Resistance'', re-published in the US in 2004 under the title ''Never Surrender'' by

Clive Egleton Clive (Frederick William) Egleton (1927–2006) was a British author of spy novels. He enlisted in the Royal Armoured Corps in 1945 to train as a tank driver while still underage. He was subsequently commissioned into the South Staffordshire Reg ...

depicts resistance to a Soviet occupation of England. *The 1996 novel '' Unintended Consequences'' by John Ross portrays a successful rebellion by the American heartland after decades of bullying by faraway Washington.

References

External links

An Introduction To Terrorist Organisational Structures

Networks and Netwars
- PDF book by RAND Corporation.

- the original essay * Simson Garfinkel
"Leaderless resistance today"

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leaderless Resistance Activism by type Guerrilla warfare Secret societies Social movements Terrorism tactics