On Terror

With the world reeling from the news of the arrests in London in connection with an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, we need to step back and consider the conundrum we all face as a consequence of the threat of terrorism. When we think of terror today, what comes to mind are the attacks of September 11, 2001 on New York City and Washington, DC, the bombings in London and Madrid, the Air India bombing, the suicide attacks in Israel and Iraq, and terrorist networks and organizations such as Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah. If we cast our minds further back to 1995, we recall the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a disciple of the far right American militia movement. Beyond these terrible images, there is the packaging of our comprehension of terror, in the so-called “War on Terror”, the centrepiece of the global policy of the administration of George W. Bush.

I submit that the perception of terror that has been drilled into our minds has been coloured by the political agenda of those who have conceived the War on Terror. The resort to terror is a much broader, deeper and more persistent feature of human existence than we have been taught, and it defies the simple lessons that are constantly repeated by our political leaders.

What follows are thoughts on the history, purposes, and politics of terror, and a few observations on the existential pose we ought to adopt in facing it:
Terror is one of the dark arts of civilization and has been around since the dawn of recorded history. Indeed, the moment the state came into existence and began claiming its right to a monopoly over the means of violence, terror appeared and has been practiced ever since, both by those representing the established order and by those opposing it. It is misleading to claim, as is often done today, that terror, by default, is a weapon of the weak. While the weak and powerless have often resorted to terror, the implication that terror is never the weapon of choice of the strong is utterly false.

Here are a few examples of the uses of terror and counter-terror over the centuries followed by comments on the effects of terror on our world today:

The ancient Spartans ran what can be called a “terror” state against their slaves, the Helots. Male citizens of Sparta lived in barracks with their comrades-in-arms, long after they were married, so they would be ready to mobilize against a foreign foe, or to suppress a slave revolt. Young Spartans were even encouraged to kill Helots who exhibited leadership qualities or who seemed too strong and self-willed. In 464 B.C., the town of Sparta was severely damaged by a powerful earthquake. In the aftermath of this natural disaster, Messenian serfs took advantage of the disarray to rebel against their masters. Initially things went well for the rebels who managed to wipe out a force of three hundred Spartans in a pitched battle. Driven into a fortress in Messenia, the helots managed for several years to hold out against Spartan soldiers and formations from a number of Greek cities, before their final defeat. Solidarity among elites in ancient cities against slave rebellions, even among cities that were potential foes, was a widely recognized code. Slave risings have always been seen by slave owning societies as acts of terror of the most dangerous kind. Accordingly, their suppression has involved extreme acts of vengeance, designed to terrorize those who might emulate the rebels into abject submission.

The most famous slave revolt in history broke out in Italy in the first century B.C. and was led by the slave-gladiator Spartacus. Under his leadership, a formidable slave army was assembled and it succeeded in taking control of most of mainland Italy against the armies of Rome. In the end, the Romans triumphed and to underline both their fury and the futility of resistance to their authority, they crucified six thousand of Spartacus’ warriors along the Appian Way. In the eyes of the Romans, it was the slave-rebels who were the terrorists because they were in violation of the law and were seeking to overturn the social order. But what was the punishment meted out by the Roman state to Spartacus and his followers if not a terror warning to others that this too would be their fate if they took the path of rebellion?

The most notorious wave of mass executions in modern history was unleashed during the “reign of terror” in 1793-94 during the French Revolution. With armies invading France from the conservative powers of Europe determined to halt the revolution, the French republic tried and condemned thousands of enemies of the republic, many among them aristocrats. The most famous of the victims of the guillotine, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were actually put to death before the period known as “The Terror” began. The terror is seared in the popular imagination in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Less well known but even more bloody were the summary executions of twenty-five thousand Communards in Paris in one week following the suppression by the political right of the Paris Commune in 1871.

The great rising of Indians against British rule in 1857, was known by the British as the “Indian Mutiny” because it began among sepoys in the Army of Bengal. Depicting the uprising as a mutiny framed it for the British as an act of unspeakable treachery on the part of people who were benefiting from the wisdom of British administration and were the recipients of British military training. British newspapers provided their avid readers with lurid accounts of the uprising, which featured brown heathens killing captives, massacring babies and raping white women. That there were atrocities is undeniable, but the evidence suggests that few of the Indians who took women captive raped them. That did not stop the spread of vicious lies on the subject that fed the racial loathing of the British for dark skinned men who supposedly relished the idea of violating white women. The rebellion was put down with unspeakable ferocity. Some Muslim rebels were sewn into pigskins before being hanged, a deliberate way of dishonouring their religion and inflicting on them a terrible death. Other mutineers were fired out of the mouths of cannons or hanged. In the British public discourse of the time, the Indian Mutiny was seen very much the way contemporary terrorists are understood.

During the 20th century, terror was practiced on such a vast scale by regimes in power and by oppositional movements that only a few cases can be mentioned here. The bitter experience of 20th century bloodbaths yielded important lessons about advancing weaponry and the utility of terror. By the end of the First World War, the century’s potent new terror weapon, the aerial bombardment of civilians had already been baptized. During the 1920s and 1930s fear of aerial bombardment became an important weapon in the hands of the ruthless such as Adolf Hitler. The prevailing theory was that “the bomber will always get through.” In the early days of the Second World War, it was widely expected that cities such as London would be demolished as soon as urban areas became targets. Although London and other British cities suffered enormous casualties and devastation, they were not destroyed by the Luftwaffe and the V1s and V2s that Germany deployed in the last days of the war. Beginning in 1943 and continuing until hundreds of thousands of people died in Dresden in 1945, the allied bombing of Germany did end with the wholesale destruction of cities. Something very unexpected happened, however, as a consequence of the bombings of British, German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese cities. Civilian morale did not fall. Indeed, the hatred for the enemy grew in each of these cases. The massive allied bombing of Germany did not prevent German production of military hardware from increasing to its peak in 1944. Bombing of cities and civilians, it turned out, was a terror weapon that hardened the resolve of the people on whom the bombs fell, to continue their resistance. The recent conflict in the Middle East yielded the same results. The killing of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of their homes and infrastructure by Israeli warplanes roused the fury of the population under assault and drew them more strongly to the side of Hezbollah. Similarly, the hundreds of rockets fired by Hezbollah at northern Israel killed Israelis and destroyed property, but had virtually no effect on Israel’s military capability. The effect was to harden the sentiment of Israelis in support of the need for military action. The Olmert government was sharply criticized, not for striking out against Hezbollah, but for being relatively ineffectual in its military campaign. Bombing civilians, in almost every recorded case, has strengthened the resolve of peoples to fight on. Where the mass killing of tens of thousands of civilians did work was when the U.S. detonated atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These supreme acts of terror bombing did finally drive the Japanese government to surrender.

Over the course of the last hundred years, the politically and militarily weak, as well as the strong have resorted to terror. Terror has been used in targeted assassinations and bombings by groups such as the red brigades in Europe and the Black Panthers in the United States. Bombings and assassinations have been weapons in the arsenal of the Irish Republican Army, the Tamil Tigers and other political movements.

In general, it is not inaccurate to conclude that terror has had the general consequence of mobilizing those against whom it is directed. Regimes in power have seldom been overturned solely by campaigns of terror directed against them. Terror used indiscriminately against populations has overwhelmingly had the effect of reinforcing the willingness of people to submit to the strictures of those who govern them. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has based its claim to legitimacy on its ability to protect the American people from the threat of terrorism. While the invasion of Iraq has increasingly lost support, whenever terrorism rears its head, the tattered reputation of the Bush administration revives, at least to some extent. Republican strategists are hoping that the recent arrests in London and the unearthing of a fearsome plot will improve their party’s chances in the fall Congressional elections.

It is abundantly clear that terrorism, in all its forms, whether practiced by the powerful or the weak, is the deadly foe of democracy. Anarchist bombs will always mobilize the state to suppress the people more than they will mobilize the people to achieve basic social reforms. Today, an army of politicians and so-called security experts have feasted off the terrorist threat to enhance their power and make lucrative careers for themselves. Together these people persist in making us an offer they calculate that “we cannot refuse”, to make us secure against the tribulations of the world. It is a phony offer that contains a sting in its tail---the creation of a surveillance state, through the USA Patriot Act and copy-cat legislation in other countries that allows the state to spy on, subvert, lock up, and censor the people who live in the democratic world. These offers we should turn down, not because there are not risks in this world which contains risks of all kinds, but because the risk of saying ‘yes’ to their agenda is greater than that posed by those wield terror against us. Democracies need to safeguard themselves against terrorist attacks, but never by placing themselves in the hands of those who use fear to take power.