Pop-Up | The Revolutionists: Lessons from the 1970s Experience (Future Security Forum 2026)

Duration: 12:58 1908 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video features Jason Burke, a renowned foreign correspondent and author of *The Revolutionists*, who presents his book as an exploration of the prehistory of modern terrorism by examining the radical movements of the 1970s. Burke argues that this decade is highly relevant to today because it shares significant parallels with the current era, including economic distress, populism, distrust in political institutions, Middle Eastern conflicts, great power competition, and disruptive technological changes. He challenges the conventional narrative that traces the origins of groups like al-Qaeda solely to the 1980s, instead tracing the roots back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, a global wave of political activism emerged from the protests of 1968, giving rise to radical fringes on both the left and within Islamic movements that eventually turned to violence as their primary means of achieving revolutionary aims. Burke highlights a fascinating parallel between two distinct but ideologically similar projects: Marxist-Leninist leftist groups and emerging Islamist movements. Both groups were often composed of educated, middle-class individuals who felt compelled to act on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged, driven by high ideology and a shared utopian vision of social justice. While they differed in their specific religious or secular identities, they targeted common enemies such as the United States, Zionism, and capitalism. The transcript notes that while leftist groups like the Weather Underground and the Red Brigades operated in the West, similar radicalization occurred in the Islamic world, though with a crucial difference: whereas Western states eventually developed legislation and specialized units to handle terrorism by the late 1970s, the Middle East experienced severe repression against its left-wing movements. The central argument of Burke's presentation is that when states fail to address the root grievances that mobilize people, they create a vacuum that inevitably gets filled by something else, not necessarily the same ideology but one that offers similar promises with added identity components. In Europe, where leftist grievances were addressed through social reforms like reproductive rights and expanded education, the threat of terrorism diminished significantly by 1980. Conversely, in the Islamic world, left-wing movements were systematically destroyed through incarceration, torture, and execution without any resolution of underlying issues. This vacuum was filled by Islamist ideologies that promised social justice combined with faith and authenticity, a powerful combination that culminated in events like the Iranian Revolution of 1979, where clerics stepped into the power void left by eliminated Marxist leaders. Ultimately, Burke concludes that terrorism is a social activity that reflects the dynamics of its community; destroying an organization or movement without addressing the underlying causes will simply result in a different, potentially more dangerous ideology taking its place. The destruction of the secular left in the Middle East without solving the grievances that fueled their activism allowed Islamism to rise and evolve into the global jihadist networks seen later in the 1980s and beyond. Burke emphasizes that the lesson for future security is clear: repression alone cannot solve the problems driving radicalization, and ignoring the root causes of unrest guarantees that new forms of extremism will emerge to fill the void left by previous movements.

Read the full video transcript

Jason Burke uh is one of the top foreign correspondents in the world uh for the Guardian. We met playing pool in the American club in Pashawara in 1998. Uh we both had a strong interest in al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, we forgot to play pool last night because that would have been fun. Um Jason has reported pretty much on he was the you were the India correspondent the south the Africa every everywhere and he almost couldn't I think this is kind of an an important point he could not get a visa to come into this country even though he's a very well-known journalist because he visited Sudan four years ago I think your visa was issued about like three days ago or something >> Friday afternoon >> Friday afternoon very convenient anyway So, uh, Jason has a new book called The Revolutionist, which was nominated for the Gayy, uh, the Bailey Gford Prize, which is the best, uh, book for non-fiction. And this is really the sort of prehistory of a lot of things we've been talking about, uh, the 1970s wave of terrorism. And, uh, Jason's going to talk do a kind of short introduction to kind of the big themes of that book, of this book. Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for that. Um, I'd like to point out Peter won the pool actually, which meant I had to buy all the drinks all night. Um, which is most of what I remember from that evening. Um, so, and thank you very much for the opportunity to talk about uh my book, The Revolutionists. Um there is a very there are a lot of very good reasons to talk about the 70s and the um wave of radicalism during that time. Uh one is that the 70s resembles in many ways today. uh we it was a time lot obviously massive differences but you know a time of economic distress, populism, distrust in political leaders uh conflict in the Middle East, great power competition, um radically new technologies particularly in media being introduced with enormous disruptive effect and all of these things are from that period and now and are obviously really relevant. Um, I came to look at the period because I had written extensively about al-Qaeda and its origins and I felt there was something missing from the origin story. The origin story classically told is the 1980s perhaps 1979. We heard that again today and I in looking at it began to think hold on I'm not sure that's absolutely right. There were people moving to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and their local auxiliaries in the 80s who were already Islamists. There was a an attempted Islamist coup in Afghanistan in 1974. There were groups forming in um Egypt all the way through the 70s. Similarly in Jordan and elsewhere and in Iraq. uh obviously in Iran there was a major Islamist movement neotitionalist clerical but still during that period too and I started looking closely at it and I and it took me straight back to the 1960s to the late 1960s and that I found really really interesting because anybody here remember the late 1960s they say thank you sir yeah and they say if you can remember it you weren't there but the Um but you can sir so it shows you were behaving yourself. Um the but as long as as well as large quantities of narcotics being ingested, there's also an awful lot of political activism. Clearly 1968, 1967, you know, these are kind of mythic moments for in in in Western democracies, moments of youthful uh protest on a massive scale. A huge wave of mobilization, radicalization in some ways too because out of these movements came uh a radical fringe that felt that violence was the only way to achieve their aims. And then out of that fringe came an even smaller number of people actually who felt that they were permitted and should obliged to even kill for that cause. Now that was a a global historic moment. It's been acknowledged as stuff. There's huge literature on 1968. Lots of great books uh particularly in the US also in France, West Germany and so forth. There's much less looking at what happened in the Islamic world and elsewhere. And in fact, as I looked at it, I could see that the um moment that 1968 and so forth symbolized was not just in the west. It was much broader. And you can see the emergence, the beginnings of Islamism in that moment. This is when, as I say, a lot of the first groups were beginning to form. It's really interesting that Sad Kutub, the great ideologue of Sunni jihadism, was hanged by NASA in Egypt in 1966. Cha Gavara, the great icon of leftist radicalism, dies in 1967, shot by a CIA drained death squad in Bolivia. Um, now what I was really interested in is looking at both Islamism and radical leftist activism. people you'll know about the Weather Underground, the Bam Minehoff gang, others of similar ilk, Red Brigades in Italy. Um, looking at them and the Islamists as not joint clearly, but parallel projects, revolutionary projects. And looking at it, you can see that there are very big differences obviously, particularly in sort of social conservatism and so forth. There's a lot that is shared. Same kind of people, often educated, middle class, acting on behalf of those poorer than themselves, less advantaged, but still convinced of a cause. Both highly ideological, some elements of identity, mainly politics, obviously. One is Marxist Leninist, the other is Islamist, but still shared enemies, the US, Zionism, capitalism, um, and a shared project that is a utopian vision of a world of social justice. And that really interested me. And it's a 600 page book and I'm going at about a minute every 100 pages. But so this is the late60s. You get this wave of left-wing violence, the hijackings. People will know about things like the Munich attacks which are on the Olympics in 72 which is a Palestinian uh group called Black September. Largely secular nationalist uh influenced by Marxist Leninism and others supported by the USSR. um in indirectly not time to go into that but the um this wave the left wing wave comes through the 70s middle of it and then dies away by 60 76 778 okay really interesting why it does that one reason is that states get much much better at the beginning of the decade they don't know what to do they haven't even got a vocabulary to describe what's happening they don't have legislation. They certainly don't have police or military units that can go in resolve a hostage taking a hijacking or anything like that. When Leila Halid hijacks a plane in the UK uh or tries to and ends up landing in the UK, an allal plane, British government have no legislation to hold her on anything other than immigration offenses. She just tried to, you know, hijack a passenger plane over at British airspace. By the end of the decade, that's all changed. Legislation is in place. You have units which have got guns and the training and the capacity to go out and take down attackers. That's one major change. Another thing that resolves or at least minimizes the left-wing radicaliz radical fringe is the end or the resolution of many of their grievances. Vietnam ends which is a major motivation particularly in the US but a focal point elsewhere and also you get a whole series of social reforms, political reforms that answer some of those demands. better reproductive rights for women, lower voting ages, more funding for further education. I could go on lots of them. Abortion rights, all sorts of things. So, the battle is half won. There is there's explainer terrorism later on, but it's often identitarian rather than ideological. Nobody is talking about a revolution any longer. They're talking about reforming the system in some way. Environmentalism, we want to love the planet, but we don't want to be Marxist Leninists loving the planet. Right? That's by about 1980 81 in the Islamic world middle east got two minutes the whole Middle East in in 15 years but basically my argument is this in in the Islamic world you do not see that okay there's no red address of any grievances if anything it gets much worse through that period the left wing and there is a very powerful left wing that emerges in in the Islamic world is just destroyed either It's people are incarcerated, tortured, shot, forced to leave, scattered. Whatever happens, it's just by the late '7s, it's finished. There is no change to the root causes, the grievances that mobilize people, you have a vacuum. What fills the vacuum, but it's not the same ideology with different people. It's a similar ideology with a different vocabulary, but with an added advantage of identity. Where the left-wing promised social justice and atheism, this can promise social justice and faith and Islam and authenticity. And that is a really powerful combination. Faith and authenticity in the 80s is a big winner. And not just in the Islamic world. And this is what you see. I'd say most I'm going to pick one example is the Iranian revolution 1979. The leader of the leaders of the opposition to the sha through the 70s were not the clerics. It was the left wing Marxist Lenonists the violent ones. The guy who lives in Brenford in London who I know very well ran the Fedina Hal who was the major vanguard operation. He got out, survived. Thousands of others were killed. But because they were killed, it meant there was a vacuum in 79. Who filled the vacuum? It was Kmeni and the clerics. So the lesson of the 70s, if I'm going to sum it up, is that uh one of the that is me telling me to be quiet and it says repeat, which I won't do. Um the uh the lesson of the 70s for me is that you can destroy an organization, you can destroy a movement, you can destroy even an ideology. If you do not look at the root grievances, then you will get something else. You will not get the same ideology. Terrorism doesn't work like that. It's a social activity. It will reflect the community and it reflect the dynamic evolving community. But you will get something else. In Europe, you didn't get anything else. You got something very different, but something much less threatening because people voted, people listened to those votes, people marched and the rest of I don't think the terrorism actually helped that cause particularly, but it the reforms that drew away much of the support did for the Islamism. There was nothing but repression. The left had been destroyed, so it filled the gap. That takes you to about 198384 which is a moment we heard earlier when Abdullah Aan is issuing his fatwa the obligation of the duty of jihad anywhere in the world. It's when Bin Laden is beginning to think about forming something that would four years later become alqaaida and from then on we're into the rest of the conference. Thank you very much for listening.