Unidad de Manejo Pesquero

Liberation: An affirmative word for the process of being set free, which is the

goal of national liberation movements, or “armed liberation struggles,” engaged in the pursuit of political independence from foreign political or economic domina- tion, rebellion against some social tyranny, or cultural revolution to replace exter- nal cultural influences with an indigenous culture. The use of the term in such names as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is meant to bolster the sense of legitimacy of the cause and inspire solidarity among the members. Radio Israel has been known for using the initials PLO, avoiding reference to liberation, which might suggest the legitimacy of Palestinian claims to land Israelis regard as belong- ing to Israel. For others, however, threatened by the political agendas of such move- ments, the term has typically connoted Marxist-Leninist thought, disruptive decolonization, and violence. For instance, while attacks committed by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) have led the FBI to list the movement as a terrorist orga- nization prompting a law-enforcement crackdown, the use of the term liberation in the name of the organization is enough in itself to connote danger (see also

ECOTERRORISM). See also FREEDOM; FREEDOM FIGHTER; GUERRILLA; INSURGENCY; TERRORISM.

Liquidation

Lone Crazed Killer

A stock figure in the language of the media and counterterrorism literature, and common stereotype in times of political violence. It suggests a loner lurking in the shadows waiting to vent warped emotions on innocent people to make his nihilistic

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mark. The likes of Theodore Kaczynski, dubbed the “Unabomber” by the FBI; Lee Harvey Oswald, who allegedly killed President Kennedy; and Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President McKinley, have been depicted as lone crazed killers (also “lone wolves,” which carries a sharper predatory connotation).

Although deviants viewed as isolated from and at war with society are not likely to find a voice through violence, any real social or political grievances they might have will be denied in rhetoric like lone crazed killer. Perhaps more important, the use of the term may be misleading about who is involved in terrorist acts. For ex- ample, many of the acts of domestic antiabortionists, Eleanor Smeal warns us, should not be dismissed as the work of “lone crazies” (McGuckin 1997, 70). The killings, arson, stalkings, and death threats at abortion clinics, as well as acts of arson and bombings, usually involve a network of extremists. Smeal also notes that we tend to write off antiabortion militants as single-issue zealots—“If I am not a doctor, this thinking goes, then these nuts are no threat to me” (71). However, antiabortion extremism overlaps in belief and strategy with such right-wing organizations as militia groups. It is highly misleading to see only a lone crazed killer in a whole movement. See also ASSASSIN;CRACKPOT;EXTREMIST;FANATIC;LUNATIC FRINGE;MAD- MAN;MISFIT;NUT.

Lone Wolf

Lunatic Fringe

Lunatic: A person believed to be insane—more exactly (the word derives from

luna,Latin for “moon”), “moonstruck.” Some ancient scientists wrote about the

moon’s influence on recurring mental disturbance, and medieval observers linked the moon with not only insanity, but idiocy and epilepsy as well. Lunatic hospital was first used in England in the mid–eighteenth century as the formal term for a mental hospital. Today, lunatic is typically a slur on persons thought of as demented, reckless, or very eccentric.

Lunatic fringe, meaning political extremists far more extreme than the everyday

dissenter, is said to have been coined by Theodore Roosevelt in his Autobiography (1913, 225). Roosevelt dismissed those who advocated disarmament as a way to permanent peace—the “foolish fanatics . . . who form the lunatic fringe in all re- form movements.” Often, the phrase has been applied by the far Right, as in de- nouncing those on the Left during the peak of the anticommunist movement in the 1940s and 1950s. However, today, it is most often found in stigmatizing such extremists as terrorists in the pro-life movement (fringe is not representative of every- one in that movement) or such groups as the People’s Temple, which committed mass suicide in Jamestown, Guyana, by use of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Domestic terrorists of the racist, antigovernment stripe, and associated with domestic terror- ism, such as the Aryan Nations, are also commonly dismissed as a lunatic fringe.

Murderous fringe, more demonizing in tone, is sometimes used as a synonym.

Commenting on how international terrorism, which he regards as part of a mili- tary tradition, survived into the modern period, Carr (2002, 53) argues “that the

men responsible for that survival were not fringe lunatics or mystics. They were soldiers and statesmen, many of them well respected, who generally did their work not in the shadowy corners of the world but in the halls of national power—just as today’s terrorists could not survive if they did not enjoy the protection, funding, and support of sovereign states.” See also ASSASSINATION; CRACKPOT; EXTREMIST; FANATIC;LONE CRAZED KILLER;MADMAN;MISFIT;NUT.

Lunatic Fringe

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