Airplane hijackings. Political assassinations. Targeting bombings. Subterfuge and armed resistance. Bold raids on government offices and hostage taking. Agents and double agents in disguises carrying falsified documents. And political manifestos. So many political manifestos…
The 1970s were both the start of and the “golden age” of incidents and accidents that would soon become known as “terrorism.” Of course, one person’s evil terrorist is another’s noble freedom fighter, depending on your cause, your country, and your politics and religion. And even within a single “cause,” multiple factions and fractions fought for power, influence, and media attention.
Author Jason Burke has spotlighted some of the biggest and most interesting personalities, events, and events both tragic and near-tragic into a hefty and deep volume The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s (768 pp., $40, Knopf).
“This book is about violence, and people who use it in an effort to bring about radical change,” Burke writes early on. And he’s not kidding.
The title is somewhat misleading as Burke covers events between 1967-83, but the 1970s were definitely the prime decade for hijackings, kidnappings, and explosions. An era where airport security was (compared to today) shockingly lax, plane travel was still glamorous, and mini-skirted stewardesses could offer fliers unlimited booze. And you could smoke on the plane.
It was also the dawn of a new media era. And while coverage was not instantaneous as it is today (things were shot on film, which still had to be transported and developed before broadcast), groups could get their messages to the masses via TV. Or—as Burke quotes one observer—a way to have “a lot of people watching and not a lot of people dead.”
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Burke’s research involved reading hundreds of books originally written in 12 different languages, while personally interviewing scores of former revolutionaries, activists, soldiers, agents, and diplomats. And—as he notes—they came from a surprisingly wide berth of society: penniless refugees to scions of wealthy families, trained assassins to wide-eyed idealists and out and out hedonists.
Sometimes, the revolutionaries’ tactics defied logic. In 1968, Mahmoud Issa and conspirators would attack a plane on the ground in Greece with explosives, shoot and kill a guy, terrorize passengers, but hand out leaflets in French and English explaining and justifying his group’s goals. As if that would make a difference to a passenger scared of losing his or her life in an immediate and violent manner.
The comely young Palestinian provocateur Leila Khaled would be known as the “Grenade Girl” for smuggling two of those weapons in her bra on a plane. That her mission would fail, her partner end up dead, and she was still freed in a prisoner exchange seems impossible today.
The book covers the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Jewish athletes and the Black September Group, the Popular Front, Yasser Arafat, messiah-seeker Juhayman al-Otaybi, the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat during a military parade, and the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. They are some of the more famous (infamous) players and incidents that Burke tells in great globe-hopping detail, even if today’s average reader may struggle to keep track of the details.
Special attention is paid to a recurring character born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez but better known by his colorful nickname, “Carlos the Jackal.” Seemingly everywhere and nowhere, he was sometimes given too much personal credit for terrorist activities but did manage to elude authorities while leading a fairly expensive and decadent lifestyle in cities around the world, almost impervious. Shockingly, he is still alive today at 76.
Burke also conjures an alphabet soup of organizations with varying aims, goals, and tactics. So many that the reader has to pay attention to discern the PFLP, FLSN, PLO, and RAF from J2M, DRMLA, and SAVAK.
Later in the book, Burke turns from incidents of political goals to more religious ones, especially, the conservative Islamic Revolution that swept Iran and Saudi Arabia. And while most Americans’ idea of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini is that of a man with unsmiling visage, heavy black eyebrows and long white beard under a black turban, Burke charts his backstory and rise to power to flesh out the man and his unsparing beliefs.
His successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, took up the role of Supreme Leader upon Khomeini’s death in 1989. But his killing this past weekend by the U.S. and Israel’s just-launched attack on Iran means there is now a jarring and large power vacuum in an already unstable country.
Burke also writes of the early years of a seemingly nondescript, thin, scion of a wealthy family whose increasing and fervent religious and political views would have giant repercussions later. A man named Osama bin Laden.
Toward the end of The Revolutionists, Burke covers Israel’s violent and bloody 1983 military incursion into Lebanon, as well as that year’s successful attacks on both the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut. The straight lines to September 11 and October 7 are clear.
Jason Burke has more than 30 year’s experience reporting on conflicts and extremism around the world and is the international security correspondent for UK’s The Guardiani as well as an author of other books. The Revolutionists represents more than a decade of research for him, and is an exception dive into a subject that is anything but just history.