Orlando was just the beginning of a string of terror attack during the month of Ramadan, as summarized HERE. For this meeting, we will view three TED Talks about international terror.
- Karima Bennoune tells how Muslim communities are fighting back against terrorist
- Marc Goodman tells how terrorist are using the latest technology
- Trevor Aaronson talks about problems in how the FBI is fighting terrorism
I think the word terrorism is grossly overused. Sometimes it may be accurate, but generally it is just a catchall for insurgency, guerrilla warfare, freedom fighting, kidnapping -- more definitive terms which used to be used before the late 1960s. For the most part, the term terrorism is used to describe methods used by relatively helpless people against a powerful controller. Meanwhile, State terrorism is rarely called that; e.g., drones and other highly militarized activities.
ReplyDeleteForgive me if my posts seem pedantic and long-winded, but many of the topics we cover are issues I taught for many years. In fact, I developed a course on the sociology of terrorism. So for better or worse, here are some ideas.
ReplyDeleteLabeling any politically motivated violence as terrorism is problematic in part because even experts can’t agree on a definition. Is it terrorism if conducted by a state actor? Is it terrorism if it’s directed at military personnel? Is it terrorism if it takes place within the context of war, declared or undeclared? The Washington Post ran an article on Sunday about Saudi Arabia’s use of cluster bombs (made in Tennessee) on civilian populations in Yemen. If you’re the Yemeni father whose 15 year-old son was killed at morning prayers by such a bomb, you might be forgiven for not troubling yourself too much over definitions. Just as Marines in Beirut in 1983 were probably not interested in such arguments either.
Nevertheless, one stab at resolving the arguments was that of the actor, the late Peter Ustinov, who shortly after 9/11 succinctly opined that terrorism is a poor man’s war and war is a rich man’s terrorism. This view was also held by a fictional terrorist in the classic movie about the Algerian Revolution, The Battle of Algiers, in which a guerrilla leader is questioned by a journalist about the morality of placing bombs in women’s shopping baskets. “‘Don’t you think it is a bit cowardly to use women’s baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?’ the reporter asks. Ben M’Hidi replies: ‘And doesn’t it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenceless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims … Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.’” (Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East.)
There are a number of somewhat esoteric social theories that taken together might help us understand what motivates the terrorist. Without getting into the weeds, suffice to say that one line of reasoning begins with the assertion that we humans seek to give meaning and significance to our lives through the creation of stories—myths, religions, ideologies, etc.—and these stories invariably place us and our social group at the center of the universe. Because we and our kind must be in a “right” relationship with the cosmos if we are to avoid the terror of chaos and meaninglessness, human beings have shown themselves willing to commit the most heinous acts of inhumanity to serve this end.
Our species then seems predisposed to view those who act in concert with our preferred narrative as heroes and those who challenge it as villains. While there may indeed be those who act heroically or with villainy in the world, we might do well to remind ourselves of Hegel’s observation that “men cause evil out of good intentions, not out of wicked ones” (Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil.) Or, as Walter Truett Anderson cautioned almost thirty years ago: “This is the issue that mass democracies are going to have to come to terms with: whether we can construct our large-scale public realities in forms that enable us to grow and change and engage the difficulties of life in adult ways, or whether we will inevitably gravitate toward simple fables of good guys and bad guys.”
Thanks for the historical context. However, the Ramadan attacks may be a new form of terror, enabled by social media. Here the losing side is lashing-out against the world in an effort to do maximum harm with no hope of winning. Terrorist in the past usually had an achievable goal.
DeleteSocial media certainly enable terrorists and would-be terrorists in many ways, but it is the potential to impress large numbers of people (traditional media) that allows terrorism to be effective and it seems to me that it is the fundamental human need for significance that provides the fuel. And a world that deprives increasing numbers of its citizens significance is the atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteSaul Bellow said it far better than I ever could in The Adventures of Augie March in 1953: “That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real” (402). “Everybody wants to be the most desirable kind of man… This is neurotic, I know—excuse the jargon—but to be not neurotic is to adjust to what they call the reality situation. But the reality situation is what I have described. A billion souls boiling with anger at a doom of insignificance” (503).
Harry, re your observation about "fundamental human need for significance," I agree this is the root of the problem. One could substitute "respect" and "dignity" for "significance," but it's the same thing. A Palestinian observed (but could be anyone), "I can live with privation, with constant struggle, but I cannot live if not allowed my dignity."
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