Newspaper

Publication

McKinley Birthplace Museum

World history is rife with terroristic acts front

Origformat: Artifact

Name/Title

Newspaper

Entry/Object ID

2016.2.85

Description

Let's Talk About: Terrorism World history is rife with terroristic acts The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City was perhaps the worst terrorist disaster in American history. But terrorism is not a new phenomenom. Historians can find traces of terrorism among the ancient Greeks and the biblical Jews. Two groups of long-ago Asian terrorists worked such wickedness that their names became the English words: the Assassins of Persia and the Thugs of India. But the word terrorism had to await the 18th century and the French Revolution. In those days, terrorism worked the other way around: the government terrorized the people. They called it the Reign of Terror. Maximillien Robespierre and his Committee of Public Saftey guillotined people suspected of being against the revolution. Robespierre himself eventually went to the guillotine, and France settled down. But he left behind a precedent of state terrorism for more efficient practitioners of the 20th century: Russia's Joseph Stalin and Germany's Adolf Hitler. Most people think of terrorists as free-lancers who work against governments. Shortly after the invention of dynamite, the explosive found its way into the hands of the first modern terrorists, bearded Russians of the 1870s who threw bombs. Some wanted to kill the czar. Others, the anarchists, wanted to kill the government. Terrorism came to the United States in 1901 when a young anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, assassinated President William McKinley. He was shot in Buffalo, N.Y., while greeting visitors to the Pan-American Exposition. After World War I, nationalistic terrorism reared its head in Europe. In 1916, the Irish rose up against the British. After four years, the British handed much of Ireland back to the Irish -- except for the six northern counties, part of Ulster. There the Protestant majority insisted on remaining under the British crown. The Irish Republican Army began ambushing border guards and blowing up customs posts. Peace is being talked about in Ireland now, but that dispute helped establish terrorism as another ugly fact of life. by Jim McKay Photograph: Anarchists Leon Czolgosz assassined President William McKinley in 1901.

Collection

Blaney

Acquisition

Accession

2016.2.0

Source or Donor

Eileen B. Blaney

Acquisition Method

Gift