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In a calm, level-headed analysis, Rubenstein offers a powerful rebuttal to many assumptions about terrorism. He maintains that terrorist acts are often the responses of frustrated people to American-sponsored oppression that is intended to protect U.S. imperial interests. The average terrorist may be like "the guy next door," living on the edge of despair. A professor at the Antioch School of Law in Washington, D.C., Rubenstein refutes the notion that terrorist movements are products of outside manipulation or links in a unified "red terrorist network." The conditions that allowed the early Ku Klux Klan to flourish post war disorder, nationalist solidarity have much to tell us about current terrorist activity around the world. The logic of terrorist acts, according to the author, makes terrorism an appealing tool for some Third World nationalists and conservatives, but a bane to social revolutionaries who favor mass activism and genuine change.
