Fanatic Terrorism from the Past describes a previous wave of terrorists, before the Islamists:
Our current war against terrorism is not the first time that western civilization has faced a widespread terrorist threat.A century ago, there were bombings and assassinations all over Europe and America. Followers of a radical, utopian ideology (and the wackos who used that ideology as an excuse for murder) murdered a Tsar of Russia, a President of the United States, a President of France, a Premier of Spain, an Empress of Austria, a King of Italy, and various lesser officials.
They also, occasionally, attacked random innocent civilians. The man who killed one person and injured twenty others with a bomb he placed in the Café Terminus in Paris said he chose that site because there came ‘all those who are satisfied with the established order, all the accomplices and employees of Property and the State, … all that mass of good little bourgeois who make 300 to 500 francs a month, who are more reactionary than their masters, who hate the poor and range themselves on the side of the strong.’ (Quoted in Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, p. 93.)
This group of terrorists called themselves ‘Anarchists,’ and their enemy was all government.
Why? Because they believed that all the evils of human life were caused by the interference of governments, which were merely tools of the rich to harm the common people. Strike down those governments, and the common people would, they believed, quickly establish a fair system of sharing the wealth and living in freedom.
Never mind that it is impossible for people to live together without government. Strike down one set of rulers, and quickly another emerges in its place — and usually not a very nice one, either.
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Power vacuums are always filled. The trick is to try to fill them with people who accept strict limitations on their own behavior — in other words, rulers who obey the law and relinquish power without being forced to.