Make up your own terrorist group

Not a quiz. A challenge. To be rated on plausibilty, originality, technothriller possiblities, capacity for pure evil and/or good/bad ambiguity (with double points given if the last two aspects are combined.)

I'll begin; A Japanese group, The Tokugawa Restorationists. Nickname for the Chrysanthemum Order who are actually strongly repudiated and condemned by the Tokugawa family. A violent offshoot of a sect of Pure Land Buddhism that arose in early 18thc Japan on the idea that merchants and other classes might become samurai. Now preach a weird philosophy akin to the more radical brands of turn-back-the-clock Islamic fundamentalism but based on Shinto. Want to return to the past and restore most features of the Edo period, including the Shogunate and Japan's isolation, but paradoxically want to keep modern conveniences and weaponry. Will ally with most fascist groups, narcoterrorists, organized crime and some Islamists. Hate most socialists. Incompetent bumblers but occasionally dangerous for just that reason.

That was terrible, but I hope it conveys the idea. I'm sure you can do better.

Reformed Black Mountain Army of Montenegro

Reform of the 1914 terrorists that killed Franz Ferdinand (Black Hand). Dedicated to overthrow Serbian rule in Montenegro and declare a fascist state. Ultra-nationalist, kills Montenegrin government officials, cafe bombings, ship hijacking, etc... Around 7,000 members in total. Also known for killing Communist party members and pro-Serbian foreigners in Montenegro. Operates from Montenegrin moutains, controls 5% of the province.

Ejercito Unido de Carlist (United Carlist Army) A group that wishes to overthrow the successors of General Franco and replace him with a monarchy headed by Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon. Their preferred system would be a constitutional monarchy along the line of the United Kingdom. They frequently come into conflict with groups fighting for the independence of areas like the Basque country and Catalonia because they (the EUC) want a unified Spain

Kameradschaft Ostland

This group forms the hard organisational core of a white supremacist, xenophobic and nationalist surge of violence in Germany, especially its Eastern Länder. Believed to consist of as little as ten 'hardcore' members whose identities are currently unknown to the federal authorities, they recruit local Germans of proven loyalty and supply them with the training and wherewithal to carry out increasingly sophisticated attacks. Their targets in the past have included asylum seeker accomodation, the homes and businesses of foreigners, especially of Middle Eastern descent, grassroots activists working for asylum seekers, mosques, community centres, and in two cases local politicians. They are now in the process of training operatives for more sophisticated attacks on harder targets.

The aim of Kameradschaft Ostland is twofold: to increase terror and insecurity in the so-called 'nationally liberated areas' - the German equivalent of 'sunset towns', where foreigners are not wanted and discouraged from settling - and to make a political statement that the right in Germany has not abandoned violent, armed struggle. Their ideology is white supremacist more than nationalist - they support European integration on a racial basis, but oppose the immigration of people of Middle Eastern or African descent. There are also clear statements regarding their support for anti-Israeli and anti-US violence in the Middle east. While they are anti-Semitic, they have not yet carried out any attacks on Jewish targets.

Kameradschaft Ostland is not afiliated with any legitimate right-wing party or organisation as these are known to be riddled with informers. They are informally allied with a number of organisers of right-wing music events and meeting centres, where they recruit. Part of the group's funding and logistical support comes from ties with US 'Aryan' organisations built up through cooperation over offshore websites and publication of materials illegal in Germany, though their weapons and training are acquired mostly in cooperation with Russian and Ukrainian white supremacists. The founder and leader of the Kameradschaft is a retired Bundeswehr intelligence officer from Hamburg. He intends to create a 'white Al-Qaeda' providing support and weaponry for a disparate and fragmented aggression potential.

NapoleonXIV said:

Not a quiz. A challenge. To be rated on plausibilty, originality, technothriller possiblities, capacity for pure evil and/or good/bad ambiguity (with double points given if the last two aspects are combined.)

I'll begin; A Japanese group, The Tokugawa Restorationists. Nickname for the Chrysanthemum Order who are actually strongly repudiated and condemned by the Tokugawa family. A violent offshoot of a sect of Pure Land Buddhism that arose in early 18thc Japan on the idea that merchants and other classes might become samurai. Now preach a weird philosophy akin to the more radical brands of turn-back-the-clock Islamic fundamentalism but based on Shinto. Want to return to the past and restore most features of the Edo period, including the Shogunate and Japan's isolation, but paradoxically want to keep modern conveniences and weaponry. Will ally with most fascist groups, narcoterrorists, organized crime and some Islamists. Hate most socialists. Incompetent bumblers but occasionally dangerous for just that reason.

That was terrible, but I hope it conveys the idea. I'm sure you can do better.

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Well, don't knock it. I think Gasaraki came close to having what you describe.

Hmmmm...I've been thinking a little about this...

Sometime in the near future, with oil having peaked, industrial nations decide to utilise other energy-rich resources like coal and even firewood to keep their economies growing, since renewables can't make up enough of the shortfall. Environmental standards are thrown out the window, and most populations support this, not wanting to countenance permanent recession even though the thermometer's shooting dangerously north.

With this state of affairs in mind, an intellectual radical produces a thesis proclaiming that man can never reconcile himself with nature unless he drastically changes his ways. In a book he introduces the idea of the 'eco-state', a society intrinsically designed to minimize human's ecological impact by outlawing all technology and reducing the population to manageable levels. Without these measures the planet's eco-system will collapse within their lifetimes (let's assume this is actually true, in the near-future scale he describes) and Earth will only be inhabitable via artificial means.

This book starts a movement with a strong following, adopting a distinctly anti-humanist position. It's tolerated in most countries at first as nothing more than a pressure group, along with other environmentalists, but this opinion changes when certain members of the group set off bombs inside a dozen aircraft in-flight over the Atlantic. While other environmentalists abhor the attack, the 'eco-state' author gives his unequivocal support for it, a support replicated by members of the movement he founded. When other followers explode bombs inside a shopping mall in South Korea, bringing down the structure at peak shopping hour and killing hundreds, the world unites to ban the movement outright.

The movement moves underground and names itself "New Earth Dawn" (NED). It has around 50,000 members worldwide and numerous sympathisers. Their ideology states that the killing of humans and destroying their property is necessary to reduce the population, curb our technology and save the Earth. They find common cause with far-left, Islamic and neo-fascist groups only so far as they fight against what NED also fights against (typically: major corporations, governments, or just large groups of people). They typically ally with groups who wish to establish eco-communes (on the far left) or just otherwise return to the 'good old ways' (Islamic or far right) and don't mind killing to do it. Notorious for approaching terrorist operations with a cold, analytical objectivity, always intentionally maximising the death toll of any incident.

The NED, paradoxically, is often used as a justification for governments to reject environmental measures on the basis of 'not giving into the other side', hence in the long term unintentionally advancing eco-system collapse by at least a decade.

I've been thinking about that for a while. It's why whenever I write environmental treatises I make doubly certain that it can't be twisted for 'Khmer Rouge' purposes...

A yet unnamed group of Chinese. Started after the successful conquest of China by the Japanese. Many Chinese fled to places where they could hide well, like the Philippines or Indonesia. Some of those "boat people" started attacks on Japanese freigthers. Later, they developed into modern pirates. Difference: While Western passengers they catch have to be released by paying ransom money, caught Japanese will be instantly killed.

A real Swordfish group:

After 9/11/2011, when the city of Cleveland is destroyed by a dirty nuclear bomb, and the entire swath of territory from Toledo to Cincinatti to Pittsburgh is evacuated from the fallout, high ranking members of the Defense Department and old money industrialists decide to take action that the President is unwilling and unable to do. They form a well funded ultra black ops group, using men with special forces or NSA experience, from the ranks of the US, England, and Isreal.

The group spends some significant time in training and intelligence gathering, also spending time to develop a worldwide network of businesses to further generate revenues and launder monies. This delay also helps to distance themselves from all obvious ties to their respective governments.

The mission of the group is clear: To make the cost of terrorist acts against the West too high to bear. Assassinations of mid level terrorist leadership and persons with any money ties to active terriorist groups become routine. Reverse kidnappings of entire families of terriorist patrons and fundamentalist Clerics occur. The heaviest blow is a massacre of over 800 people in the Afghani mountains at a Terrorist training camp and Fundamentalist school. Only three women are allowed to live, so that they can deliver a message to the people.

That message reads: An Eye for An Eye is not good enough. We will return everything thrice in magnitude. We will strike against your comrades when we can, against your family and friends next, against your hometown after that, then randomly against your people if need be. If you choose to act the west, then you are returning with the mark of death to all who you care about.

The Limiters. This is an American group who believe that the 55 mph speed limit was divinely inspired and abandoning it was a cardinal sin. Their main attacks consist of driving side by side across whole stretches of interstate highways and going only 55 mph....

The Sons Of Mao Zedong--A fanatically hyper-Marxist insurgent group who fought to restore hard-line Communist rule to China in the 1980s.

The Burning Men: secret Catholics, largely acting in primarily Protestant areas, who committed wholesale acts of arson, especially directed at the property of protestant land owners and military buildings following a decree by Bonny Prince Charlie.

Dave Howery said:

The Limiters. This is an American group who believe that the 55 mph speed limit was divinely inspired and abandoning it was a cardinal sin. Their main attacks consist of driving side by side across whole stretches of interstate highways and going only 55 mph....

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Wait a minute...don't they already exist? We are talking about ALTERNATE HISTORY, right?

Earth First! A secret terrorist group that opposes all attempts to explore/travel in space. They were responsible for the destruction of the Challenger and Columbia orbiters. Several attempts to stop private space efforts by sabotoge have been prevented by the expert work by the Counter Terrorist Unit.

The Atlanteans

A group that believes that civilization has its origins with now sunken civilizations that were actually alien colonies. They believe the aliens will return and want to make room for their allegedly superior civilization by bringing down the current one. Actions from attempted mass murder (nerve gas in mass transit) to the burning down of a local library to an attempt to smash Rodin sculptures to the killing of a federal judge have been done.

The Children's Republican Army

Don't trust anyone over the age of 10


The Pink Panthers

All power to the lesbians

The Sons of the South

After president Lincoln was assassinated in early 1862, Hannibal Hamlin assumed the Presidency, instuting a policy of 'zero compromise' against the south. When an overzealous US navy officer blew up the British mail packet Trent in November, Britain declared war on the Union. The US Civil War gradually blossomed into the Great War, as one by one, France, then Prussia, then Russia, all the way down to Mexico and several central and south American nations, were sucked into the conflict.

Hamlin narrowly won the election in 1864, but as 1868 rolled around and the War ground on, he was defeated by Maclellan. Maclellan promised an end to the war in the next two years, and true to his word, an armistice was signed on March 20, 1870. The Confederacy was crushed, and even the mighty British Empire herself had suffered a bloody nose, losing Vancouver Island and parts of New Brunswick in the peace settlement.

The southern states were transformed into military districts, and a draconian Reconstruction was instituted. Various rebel groups continued to operate in Tennessee, Kentucky, and points west, some covertly backed by the British. One of these was the Sons of the South, led by Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest planned dozens of raids on US railroads, troop transports, banks, and other targets from 1870 to 1881, when he died from unknown causes. The Military Districts were a place of fear, distrust, murder, and conflict well into the 1920s, when the Sons found common cause with the fascist governments of Italy and France and orchestrated what would later become known as the Great Uprising of '27...

Angleton's Angels. Started by James Jesus Angleton after leaving the [his belief] riddled by Soviet spies CIA.

Originally operated as a covert operations group using Angleton's senior aides in counter-intelligence, his deputy Raymond Rocca, William J. Hood, the executive officer of the counter-intelligence division, and Newton S. Miller, Angleton's chief of operations. They recruited personal by going back to the old OSS/Stratigic Service Unit guys because he believed they weren't penetrated by the Russkies unlike the CIA and of course the Brits. Preformed terrorist activities throughout the Soviet Union, along with anti-communist activities in countries like Italy. Often preformed deep black missions in liaison with the Mossad.

Angleton's increasingly wild rants against various US government officials and world leaders served to aptly cover the operations of his group.

With Angleton's death in 1987 and the break-up of the Soviet Union shortly after the organization was left directionless. With most of the founding members dead or forced out the organization became an instrument of terror against the United States, as they saw the US government as an oppressive regime riddled with ex-Soviet operatives.

Connections in the Mediterranean (especially Italy and Israel) and Russia served to keep them well supplied with equipment. Old contacts in the US government are their main form of intelligence in their new war.

Currently they have been following a combination of terrorism disguised under various extremist groups, and a planned series of political assassinations.

The Sword of Tikal

Continued expeditions by Zheng He in the 15th century eventually stumble across the Mexica Empire. The Chinese, not wanted to outright conquer the state, set it up as a trading vassal-state of sorts, in which they can get gold and silver and corn in exchange for technology. A ring of trade, of sorts, emerges in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with Mexica, Javan, Indian, and Chinese goods circulating throughout the entire region, and Europe is none the wiser- until the Portuguese start sniffing around. There is a small Sino-Portuguese naval war (with various Indian states backing the Chinese) which drives the Europeans away.

The Spanish arrive in Mexico on time, but now they are faced with a much better prepared empire- diseases have already been transferred, the Mexica tribute states are more in line, and most importantly, the Jaguar Knights are armed with muskets and cannon. Cortes is promptly driven off. Soon after, the Mexica emperor dies and his nephew takes the throne- a man who will later be known as Cuauhtemoc the Enlightened. He was educated in China, and was a secret member of a growing underground cult, different from the Mexica sacrificial religion. It is a fusion of Mesoamerican mythology and Buddhist and Confucian ideals, and the cheif diety is Quetzlcoatl, a thunder god who demands only flowers for sacrifice. Cuauhtemoc's loyal guards assassinate the High Priests in 1571, and the cult of Quetzlcoatl is made into the official state religion. Under his reign, the Mexica Empire is restructured along the lines of the Chinese Empire and the tribute system is done away with; turning the empire into a centralized state.

Fast forward into the twentieth century- 1927 to be more precise. The Mexica Empire is a world power. A global war has just ended, which pitted the Mexica, France, China, and a few other states against the alliance of Castile, Russia, Saxony, and Ethiopia- and the latter were crushed absolutely. During that war, Castile sponsored an uprising of the Maya peoples of the Yucutan Peninsula (called the Mayan Peninsula in this timeline), who declared independence in 1924. It took three long years of brutal house-to-house fighting for the Mexican Army to obliterate the rebels and reconquer the peninsula, and the Maya were not happy. They took to the jungle and continued to wage a guerilla war.

In 1933, a terrorist group called the Sword of Tikal [1] was formed, which unified the various Mayan rebel groups into one fighting force. They commit a variety of acts, from political assassinations, raids, to bombings. Their most infamous act was a bombing in 1945 that killed over one thousand people in a busy Tenochtitlan marketplace- which they coordinated with the assassination of Field Commander Yoltzin Ixcatzl of the Jaguar Knights- a high-ranking official in the Mexican military who was responsible for many of the tactics that destroyed the rebel forces in the '20s. They were active well into the 1960s, when a sting operation obliterated most of the Sword of Tikal's high command- but sporadic bombings and kidnappings still occur to this day.
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[1] Tikal is the largest of the ancient Mayan cities.

This is fun! I'll do some more in a bit.

Beschermers van Evolutie (BE)

Convinced by the writings of a well-known but very fringe biologist that huge amounts of radiation will lead to a more evolved human race down the road, this North-European-based group's main targets are nuclear power plants, which they hope to spread radiation with, as well as major population centers, which they attack using dirty bombs made out of any nuclear material they can find. They have a racist twinge, though: their operating fields are only in Europe and North America, as they would prefer that white-skinned people receive the benefit of an increased evolution pace only, as dark-skinned people aren't worth "helping".

Possible FH, although it may require ASBs:

United Satanist Army of Mesopotamia:

During the Anti-Islamic Revolution that has been occuring since the 2020s, many across the upper Middle East began to embrace alternative faiths, including dissident sects of Islam, Coptic Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Atheism, various Pagan sects, and the new Liberationist faith. Even with the increasing antipathy toward the traditional faith shown in the newly renamed states of Parthia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, a few groups were considered outsiders among the Freedom movement - Satanic worship was not exactly popular. However, a small group of somewhat unusual Iraqis who believe God failed them together with some less sane expatriates and former US soldiers came to worship Lucifer. A few took up arms; led by Shaitan Rushdie (a pseudonym for a really, REALLY disillusioned cleric), they tend to commit small acts of terror against Sunni and Shiah Muslims - usually by attempting to do something to desecrate their faith, like strapping dynamite to a pork chop and exploding it in a Mosque, or having female members abuse, torture, and rape captured clerics, or conducting Koran-burnings. The government of Mesopotamia does not approve of this, and attempts are being made to hunt down Rushdie. He is reputed to be stirring up trouble in Arabia (not like the three-way civil war down there needs any more trouble...).