I am scared to see this happening again. I always wonder why stuff like this stopped happening, to be honest. At least, stopped happening with regularity.
I mean, it was in the late 1880s and '90s, all the way into and through the early prewar 1900s and '10s, with powerful explosives becoming widely understood and easy to make and use, when bomb outrages first became - well, not common maybe, but common enough to make the hated and feared archetype (stereotype?) of the "bomb-throwing anarchist" as prevalent then as the hated and feared archetypes of "mass-murder-by-any-means-available fanatical terrorist," or "bullet-strewing unhinged troubled youth" are prevalent now.
What scares me is, as far as I can tell, effective measures were never brought to bear to stop the bomb-throwing anarchist. I mean, sure: investigations conducted, culprits identified where possible, books thrown - but there never really seemed to be anything we ever came up with to "make them stop." They just kind of tapered off. My personal theory was, maybe when the Great War and the Spanish Flu Epidemic came along, people got distracted by outrages and tragedies of far huger scale. By the time WWII came and went, most of those then living had experienced an overdose of aggression, and the death of most ideals as things worth killing for. A numbed world, glad just to get through to some kind of peace, was more than ready to sublimate hatreds into playing some role or another in the coming cold war. The bomb-throwing anarchist - pretty stupid-looking, by comparison with pandemic, blitzkreig, systematic genocide and nuclear annihilation - just more or less seems to have...stopped. Stopped being an issue, at least.
As a non-bomb-thrower with some pacifist anarchist sympathies, I'm glad the bomb-throwing anarchist per se pretty much went away. But eventually, anti-established-powers sentiment began welling up in its new guise of "terrorist." Whether Irish, Semetic, Balkan or otherwise, a terrorist is one who attacks a bystander/secondary target to cause fear in and destablize the primary target. You'll note: pretty much the same as what the bomb-throwing anarchist attempted to do. What is the difference, really?
Sadly, as far as I can tell, we have never come up with any really good way to stop it, recently or in past times. We just waited it out, the world went on, other horrible shit happened and it went away. When it came back, we relabeled it "terrorism" and blamed religion. Everyone knows religion is a problem no one wants to try to solve! Blaming something on religion is a get-out-of-solving-the-problem-free card. As if problems in the Middle East (or Ireland) don't have their strong roots in rulership and ownership wrangles - in hard and ugly political and economic realities.
"Wait and see if it goes away" isn't much of an action plan to be comfortable with. Nor is pretending that killing bunches of strangers over claimed reason X is any better than killing bunches of strangers over any claimed reason why.
I don't know what to say, except this was disgusting. The Boston Marathon. Holy hell, why is that even on anyone's list of things to target? What can we do?
Investigate, I guess. Identify culprits where possible. Throw the book. I dearly hope we catch the bastards responsible for this. Whether acting alone or supported by a group, I hope we catch the bastards responsible - and if they weren't acting alone, I hope we go after and get as many of the supporters as we can find additionally responsible, under the law. It's a hard thing to be, legal.
Every bomb-throwing anarchist attempted to terrify. Every death-dealing terrorist attempts to sow anarchy. The goal is always the same: to destabilize and undermine the power structure of the enemy population. To show its people that their power structure is powerless to stop the outrages. To make the people, terrified, clamor for any new power structure that can "protect them." Perhaps a fundamentalist power structure could protect us? Perhaps a fascist power structure can do it?
The only way they win is if we let them change who we are.
3 comments:
Interesting theory. You say that the phenom of the individual rogue terrorist was favored by historical / social conditions between roughly the 1880s and 19-teens ... and social conditions have not favored it again until the last couple of decades? Never thought about it that way, but ... scary thought.
I don't know much about the anarachist community (if that's not an oxymoron?) in the West during the period you describe. But it seems to me that the modern instances of terror you cite - Middle Eastern and Irish to be exact - aren't rogue individuals just deciding, out of the blue, to throw a bomb or whatever. They are the product of ingroup/outgroup thinking. Not that alone, obviously. But from an anthropological perspective, you've got a group that is either is oppressed and misunderstood by all non-group members, or has a group narrative that this is so. That narrative arises from, or justifies, a cultural value that you only owe common decency, mutual help, etc., to group members. Not to non group members. In short, on the members of your tribe are really human.
Scary, because pretty hard to combat.
Well, I couldn't put it so strongly as to say it was favored by conditions - I'm mystified as to why it flowered, why it faded, why it returns. I don't know what the conditions are, but I do try to take as many stabs as I can!
I'd agree that in either period, bomb-throwers are not necessarily individual rogues, in the sense of acting in isolation without support. But such support may be purely moral support, in many cases. The de facto support community may be just: malcontents. Any vague bloc of people who hate this, that, or the other structure or ideal. And in that bloc you'll have many people yelling, some grousing, some writing manifestos. Rhetoric escalates, but that escalation doesn't always lead to a violent act.
It takes the violent actor to step forward, and take the cue. That would usually be the position of the "individual rogue" terrorist - supported, but more by outrage than organization.
Of course naturally. there are also terrorist organizations, where groups of people take it upon themselves to step up, organize, recruit violent actors and plan more effective actions.
As usual, I neglect to even mention the points where I agree most. I tend to let them pass as understood! But your description of the problem I usually call "demonization of the Other" is very astute. The ways you put it instruct me, in better ways to conceive it myself. Thank you!
I need to thank people more where I agree with them for gosh sakes. So much strong agreement, left entirely unremarked, what's wrong with me!
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