Leaderless Resistance

Leaderless resistance is a strategy advocated and used by some militant antigovernment groups in the United States. Each member is free to engage in whatever actions at whatever time or place he or she believes appropriate to further the organization's aims. The organization neither issues direct orders nor coordinates actions, thus avoiding legal responsibility for any criminal activity of individual members. Members act independently and secretly, in isolation from the group and from each other.

American militia leader and Ku Klux Klansman Louis Beam wrote and published a widely circulated essay advocating leaderless resistance as a strategy to counteract the destruction by law enforcement agencies of hierarchical U.S. militias. The essay, originally published in 1994 in Seditionist, a white supremacist magazine, was later widely distributed on the Internet. Beam's vision was one where “all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report ...