Terror is as old as warfare – they go hand in hand, or
worse: warfare equals terror. Nevertheless when claiming a dichotomy, the protagonists
on both sides prove the point that they are engaged in a just war but having to
break the rules of warfare (as for example enshrined in the Geneva Convention)
because the terrorist combatants don’t follow the rules. Terrorists cannot be
considered ordinary criminals because they have political and religious
motivations that threaten the ideological status quo. Interestingly terrorists
from the fascist right, like Breivik and more recently the guy in Munich, are
more likely to be rebranded as ‘running amok’, presumably because the ideology
of the political and religious right-wing is sacrosanct while the ideology of
the (atheist) left is to be abhorred even in its mildest
manifestations, as currently experienced by Corbyn of the UK (how dare he
propose to scrap the nuclear weapons capable Trident submarines). Modern
jihadists are considered terrorists despite their seemingly fundamentalist
religious (read ‘extremely conservative’) ideology, for what is lurking below
this façade is a primitive socialism that is absent in the otherwise equivalent
Christian fundamentalism (which is Calvinist to the extreme, i.e. beholden to
an aggressive capitalism). Just like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was a
threat to the capitalist West because they advocated a type of socialist fraternité
(minus liberté and égalité) that ran counter to corporate
free-market doctrines and was subsequently removed from the chess board by the
Egyptian military with tacit support from the Western powers, the even more
radical Islamic State must also be squashed by all means and therefore branded
as the most evil terrorist organisation known to mankind. Of course the
Baathist Syrian regime must be removed as well because it is ‘socialist’ in
name if not exactly in practice. In this context, note that Christian
liberation theology with its leanings towards Marxist socialism has also been
extinguished where it once seemed to take root, i.e. in Central and South
America. That the Islamic State fighters turn out to be such an obstinate enemy
is of course a well-known reaction to the even more obstinate counter-terrorism
practiced by the US and their allies. Slavoj Žižek in his article ‘Edward
Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange: our new heroes’ in the Guardian
puts it thus:
We all remember President Obama's
smiling face, full of hope and trust, in his first campaign: "Yes, we
can!" – we can get rid of the cynicism of the Bush era and bring justice
and welfare to the American people. Now that the US continues its covert
operations and expands its intelligence network, spying even on its allies, we
can imagine protesters shouting at Obama: "How can you use drones for
killing? How can you spy even on our allies?" Obama murmurs with a
mockingly evil smile: "Yes, we can."
What with France and Germany currently bearing the brunt of these
so-called terrorist attacks, it is no small wonder that the media of these
countries are instructed by their respective owners to shape public opinion
accordingly. In Germany DER SPIEGEL is often considered one of the most
influential mouthpieces of ‘liberal democrats’ (Freidemokraten), espousing a
quasi-rationalist ideology that equates roughly with what goes on politically,
socially and above all economically (free-market) in Germany. While the
right-wing neo-fascists all over Europe decry the current refugee and migration
policies and practices, accusing Germany of wholesale sell-out, the liberal
democrats use this sentiment to disguise their own economic motivations as
humanitarian sainthood of sorts, the fact being that Germany (and France for
that matter) benefit enormously from the current migration in-flows to boost
the manufacturing sector with cheap and compliant labour – just like Germany
did in terms of its Wirtschaftswunder
in the 1960s and 70s by importing millions of southern-European and Turkish Gastarbeiter. So how do we sell this as
a humanitarian gesture in the face of terrorist attacks that fuel the ire of
racists and neo-feudalists? For one, we must employ the Orwellian newspeak that
muddies the waters of a rational discourse. Take a recent op-ed from DER
SPIEGEL:
… was die Terroristen des IS
erreichen wollen … Ihr Ziel ist es, die Gesellschaft zu spalten und
aufzuhetzen. Die unbeirrte Menschlichkeit ist die stärkste Waffe, die wir gegen
sie haben. Nur mit ihr können wir diesen Kampf gewinnen.
(Eng. my translation): what the
terrorists of IS want to achieve … their aim is to split society and spread
hatred. A relentless humanity/humanitarianism is the strongest weapon we have
against them. Only with it can we win the war.
The oxymoron of ‘humanitarianism as a weapon’ is as woeful
as the notion of ‘winning a war against terrorism/IS’. It might be understood
as a sort of appeasement of the extreme rightwing who want to see blood and
revenge but that would mean to overestimate the intellectual integrity of the
writer. Neither is this approach aligned to the idea of radical
(Marxist/Liberation – as mentioned above) Christianity which offers the enemy
the cheek to strike, as some of the German and French Protestant heretics
propose. My contention is that this use of Orwellian newspeak is exactly as
described by Orwell, i.e. a propaganda tool devised by the political, social
and above all economic elites of the countries in question. After a while it
becomes ingrained and everybody repeats it. That such neo-feudalist despotism
breeds medieval scorched-earth movements like Islamic State is no surprise. As
the brutality of the ‘war’ increases on both sides (note that the
‘humanitarian’ police forces in Germany and France now shoot to kill the
terrorists) we sink ever deeper into the quicksand of an age that glorified
pillage and rape as a means to economic success. Germany as such must put up
with terrorist attacks lest she shoots herself in the foot by stopping the
inflow of cheap labour that aids and abets the current German Wirtschaftswunder. The EU’s policy a
free movement of labour is a center-piece of its economic free-market strategy,
emulating the USA where it would be absurd to propose to limit the freedom of movement
between states. Mind you, Donald Trump and his ilk are getting close to this
idea by wanting to barricade the borders to Mexico and other terrorist
countries, so if a majority of a state like New-Mexico vote for Hilary instead
of the winner-takes-all Donald, then Donald may close the border to New Mexico
as well. The utterly brutal, neo-feudalist wars fought in Syria and Iraq must spill over more and more into
neighbouring countries and into Europe and the rest of the world if the
slaughter continues unabated. Strongmen like Erdogan in Turkey and Sisi in
Egypt will clamp down on any signs of dissent and hold the fort for a while for
Europe in return for a free hand to commit their own brands of oppression. May
and Johnson in the UK, and so-called leaders in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia
will also tighten immigration and strengthen the fundamentalist and anti-Muslim
Christian factions, even against the advice of their free-market comrades.
Hollande of France, embattled economically and politically, will have few
options to respond apart from continuously declaring war on IS, which is as
farcical as the word is French. The US, as a terrorist state – as noted by Noam
Chomsky – engaged in indiscriminate drone warfare against so-called terrorist
targets and with ‘special’ forces on the ground in many parts of the world to
carry out targeted assassinations, bears the greatest responsibility for the
current upsurge in counter-terrorism. As this is not likely to change – or is
even more likely to intensify – the rest of the world will have to live with
the consequences. Naturally, as long as the collateral damage is kept in bounds
there will only be clamour for more war, emulating the Israeli formula that for
each Israeli citizen 10 Palestinians must die. That the provision of cheap
labour remains paramount is nicely expressed in a Guardian opinion piece (the Guardian
being the UK equivalent of the German Spiegel):
It will be no consolation to
learn that western Europe is actually safer now than it has ever been or that
the number of deaths from terrorism is now far lower than through much of the
1970s and 1980s.
In other words, current terrorist activity is only so much
more in focus because so-called social media has overtaken the fourth estate,
forcing its hands in terms of sensationalist reporting. Of course the fourth
estate is as active on social media as are the millions of Facebook, Twitter
and WhatHaveYou apps subscribers who produce ‘raw’ sound bites as fast as they
can, allowing to be there while the crazed terrorist cuts the throat of the
priest. At the same time the drone pilots watch the explosions on their
internal media networks, giving high fives when they hit something (anything).
Sooner or later a disaffected pilot will leak a video or two, ending up on
WikiLeaks or on WhatEver, ensuring that such sources will either be
incarcerated for ever (e.g. Chelsea Manning) or be sort of imprisoned (e.g.
Julian Assange) or be exiled a la Edward Snowden (as via Žižek above).
While the Guardian
does occasionally publish voices like Žižek and Chomsky, the editors take great
care that, like the German Der Spiegel,
the status quo must be maintained and supported by more subtle Orwellian
newspeak. Witness the article ‘Terror and rage: what makes a mass murderer
different to a terrorist?’ by Jeff Sparrow who at first seems to make a valid
point with saying that
The current insistence on
entirely separating ideological and non-ideological rampages seems rather
perverse.
But then goes off the rails by suggesting that the urge to
kill is somehow a result of the boring life that entails peace on earth,
quoting mad authors like Sebastian Junger:
That’s
why, as he says, “for many people … war feels better than peace.”
And coming to the conclusion
… ending the carnage may require
more than simply ending the wars (as necessary as that remains). We need also a
more profound discussion about constructing a different kind of peace.
So what does this mean? Is it the pathetic maxim of ‘to keep
the peace we have to prepare for war’ or is it some kind of peace that preempts
sociopaths, warmongers and terrorists to take up arms by allowing them a kind
of virtual warfare ad finitum and ad nauseum? Or can he possibly mean that such
a ‘different kind of peace’ is a political manifestation of a genuine socialism
that is the real enemy of the corporate world, the one percent, the power
elites, the monarchists, the religious maniacs, the war lords, the fascists,
the racists, the patriarchs, the governments – in short, the ideological status
quo? As we move towards a neo-feudalism with attendant state terrorism based on
the latest technologies of warfare and surveillance, the reaction by ever more
primitive and brutal counter-terrorists will be a sign of the times, at least
until a socialist peasant-prekariat revolution gets underway. History will
repeat, hopefully not as a farce this time round but as turning point in the
history of the human species that until this point perfected an Orwellian
nightmare whereby the 99% of the populace gladly submitted to their own
oppression. Those who will spark the revolution are scattered around the globe
like escapees from the human zoos described in Huxley’s Brave New World.
Perhaps this revolution will be perfectly peaceful as a result of a genetic
mutation that will compel the 1% (and their armed forces) to act like lemmings
and jump off the cliff. It is not that the meek will inherit the world but the
new normal people who will live in a socialist world-village in harmony with a
universalist nature, free from the terrors of the past, free from the bizarre
dogmas of religion and Westminster politics, free to express love and
sexuality, free to be good and altruistic – having switched off the gene that
in the past eons might have been responsible for being bad and selfish and thus
having terrorized those who were good. So, good night, sweet dreams! Tomorrow
morning may be the same but not like this!
