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xx INTRODUCTION The vast majority of the entries found within this work focus on individuals and groups who are considered extremist or terroristic within the post–World War II time frame. Within this span of time can be found groups and individuals on both the left wing and the right wing of political extremism. Given the nature of this work, there is a far greater focus on extremists on the right wing than on the left. Yet there are entries that pertain to a brief period in American history when left-wing extremism was prominent in the United States. During the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s, several left-wing groups existed in the United States that were intent on radically reorienting American society and culture. Groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Students for a Democratic Society, and the Weathermen all carried out extremist actions that were politically motivated. At the time, groups on the left wing of the political spectrum were determined to bring down the old political order of the United States and replace it with a new order based on collective principles motivated by communism. These groups were largely anticapitalist and urban, and the number of women in these groups far exceeded any numbers that would be found in right-wing groups. These groups were antigovernment, as many right-wing groups were and later would be. Yet extremists on the left were not beholden to an idealized version of American life. They believed that modern life (“modernity”) was “revolutionary” and that to meet the challenges of the future, Americans had to throw off their preconceptions, prejudices, and allegiances in order to pledge fealty to a new order wherein people would be equal. This sentiment directly challenged the long-established American morals and values that characterized the “exceptional” American experience. As might be expected, there was significant opposition to these groups, and by the 1980s they had largely disappeared from the American political scene. Extremism on the right, however, has endured. Whereas left-wing extremism is “revolutionary” and forward looking, right-wing extremism tends to be much more concerned with returning the social, cultural, and political milieu of the United States to an idealized version of the past. Indeed, there is ample evidence that a large plurality of Americans believe that the current decade in which they live is not the best in the history of the United States. Though Americans today live longer, enjoy higher standards of living, travel more quickly around the world, communicate instantaneously, and have achieved higher levels of freedom and equality than ever before in their history, there is a significant number of Amer- icans today who long for the past (Bailey 2017). Many Americans today long for the 1950s, believing it to be the last “great” American decade (Harper 2013). Many extremists on the right wing of the political spectrum view the 1950s as a time when whites were still indisputably in control of government, the United States was the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world, and society “made sense”—in other words, women knew their place (as did minori- ties), prayers were said in schools, everyone pledged allegiance to the flag, gays stayed in the closet, and the vast majority of immigrants coming into the United States were from majority-white countries (Balleck 2015). For conservatives on the extreme right, everything started to go to hell when civil rights were enacted, women burned their bras, gays demanded equal rights, and you could no longer