back to at least the 1st century, when the Zealots, a Jewish religious group, who believed that the only way the Romans could be overthrown was with violence. They fought against the Roman’s who occupied of what is now Israel. Their tactics were similar to the guerillas of today. A group of Ismailis (Shiite Muslims) founded in the 12th century in Iran, carried out terrorist acts against religious and political leaders of Sunni Islam. An American group, the Ku Klux Klan, (KKK) used violence to terrorize African Americans and their sympathizers in the late 1800’s and the 1900’s. (Encarta Encyclopedia, pg 235)By the 1930’s the face of terrorism had changed. It wasn’t only used to describe revolutionary movements and violence directed at governments and their leaders. It was more to describe the practices of repression employed by totalitarian states and their dictatorial leaders against their own citizens. A perfect example of this was Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany depended on their brown or black shirted thugs. They harassed and intimidated political opponents and rooted out other scapegoats for public humiliation and further punishment.Hitler believed that the Jews were responsible for Germany's defeat in the First World War. As soon as he came to power he began to attack them. The brown shirted SA or storm troopers founded in 1921 and the black shirted SS or elite guards founded in 1924 terrorized the Jewish public. They battled those Germans who stayed faithful to the once influential Social democrat and communist parties. Their influence on the German public was a big part of the act of terrorism in Nazi Germany. Then in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were announced. These made Jews second-class citizens and prevented them from marrying non-Jews. They also lost the right to vote and had to use separate seats in buses and parks, which were painted yellow. Jewish synagogues, shops and houses all over Germany were att...
