Leftist terrorist groups are evidently experiencing a rebirth of sorts in Europe. Most of the terror organizations of the 1970s had died out, but lately, fueled by poor job prospects in socialist economies, the number of disaffected and radicalized young people has been increasing.
Paradoxically, these malcontents often insist on creating a more thoroughly socialist economic structure - socialism is the problem so the cure must be more of it - and an arrant secularization of society. The latter is also odd since European leftists are often allied with radical Islamists who are intent on bringing the whole world under the banner of Islam, and who, if they ever succeed, would immediately kill atheists like those lefties who champion the Islamists' various causes.
Strategy Page tells us that:
The widespread use of violence by Islamic terrorists has masked the revival of leftist terrorist groups in the West. Some of them are older groups trying to make a comeback. Three years ago, Italian police arrested fifteen members of the 1970s era "Red Brigades," and charged them with plotting the murder of people who did not agree with their revolutionary goals. The Red Brigades were part of an wave of small, violent, leftist revolutionary groups that emerged in the 1960s and 70s, and were largely gone by the 1990s. Actually, the groups never died out completely, but, except in Greece and Latin America, they were much less violent after the Cold War ended.
The Soviet Union had provided some support for these groups, but mostly they were sustained by disaffected middle class kids out to change the world. A new generation of disaffected, politically motivated murderers are now signing up. Many Western leftists still see the United States as the enemy of the people, and capitalism as something that must be destroyed at all costs. In an odd confluence, many of these leftists are marching (literally) shoulder to shoulder with Islamic radicals. This despite the fact that the two groups (one anti-religious, and the other very pro one religion) are natural enemies.
More enthusiastic adoption of socialist, and anti-capitalist policies in Western Europe over the last century has led to a high unemployment rate for people coming out of school, and this has made radical politics a more attractive proposition to some. But compared to the poverty and desperation in the Islamic world, the Western terrorists have a far smaller recruiting pool. But like the Islamic terrorists, the Western groups share the same basic myth. That is, if the world would only unite under a benevolent despotism, everything would be better. Like the Islamic radicals, the Western terrorists find it more comfortable to blame foreigners for their trouble. In this case, the big bad is the United States....
It is a noteworthy fact about our existential situation that there are millions of people around the globe whose lives are so empty that they are reduced to a nihilistic desire to just tear down everything, kill everyone who opposes them, and establish ..... what? An Islamic or Marxist paradise? When in history has such a paradise ever existed? When has a state founded on the blood of its predecessors ever been more just or prosperous than the polity it succeeded?
RLC