Leaderless resistance

Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups (covert cells), or individuals (a solo cell is called a "lone wolf"), challenge an established institution such as a law, economic system, social order, or government. Leaderless resistance can encompass anything from non-violent protest and civil disobedience to vandalism, terrorism, and other violent activity. Leaderless cells lack vertical command links and so operate without hierarchical command, but they have a common goal that links them to the social movement from which their ideology was learned. Leaderless resistance has been employed by a wide range of movements, including animal-liberation, radical environmentalist, anti-abortion, military invasion resistance, anarchist organizations, colonialism resistance, terrorist, and hate groups. A covert cell may be a lone individual or a small group. The basic characteristic of the structure is that there is no explicit communication between cells that are acting toward shared goals. Members of one cell usually have little or no information about who else is agitating on behalf of their cause. Leaderless movements may have a symbolic figurehead. This can be a public figure, a multiple-use name, or an inspirational author, who picks generic targets and objectives, but does not actually manage or execute plans. Media, in this case, often create a positive feedback loop: by publishing declarations of a movement's role model, this instills motivation, ideas, and assumed sympathy in the minds of potential agitators who in turn lend further authority to the figurehead. While this may loosely resemble a vertical command structure, it is notably unidirectional: a titular leader makes pronouncements, and activists may respond, but there is no formal contact between the two levels of organization. As a result, leaderless resistance cells are resistant to informants and traitors.

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Concepts associés (3)

Anarchisme insurrectionnaliste

L'anarchisme insurrectionnaliste est un courant de l'anarchisme, revendiquant des pratiques de propagande par le fait, de reprise individuelle et de sabotage et prônant l'insurrection comme moyen efficace d'affaiblir et de mettre à mal la société dite de domination, autoritaire et capitaliste. L'objectif est de créer une situation révolutionnaire permettant de libérer des zones, où l'autonomie serait alors possible et où les classes seraient abolies, ainsi que les rapports économiques inter-individuels.

Radical environmentalism

Radical environmentalism is a grass-roots branch of the larger environmental movement that emerged from an ecocentrism-based frustration with the co-option of mainstream environmentalism. The radical environmental movement aspires to what scholar Christopher Manes calls "a new kind of environmental activism: iconoclastic, uncompromising, discontented with traditional conservation policy, at times illegal".

Action directe (théorie politique)

thumb|right|Une action directe non-violente de Greenpeace contre Esso en 2003. Une action directe, dans les domaines politiques et sociaux, est le mouvement d'un individu ou d'un groupe qui agit par lui-même, afin de peser directement sur un rapport de force pour changer une situation et ceci, sans déléguer le pouvoir à un intermédiaire (« représentant », professionnel de la politique, bureaucrate, etc.). Principalement rattachée à la mouvance anarchiste dont elle est issue, l'action directe peut être pacifique ou non.