Posted on 12/02/2006 6:23:18 AM PST by Valin
APOLOGISTS for terrorism (and they are not in short supply) argue that it is a weapon used by people who despair of achieving their goals in any other way. It is a cry from the depths by those deprived of a voice in the political process. The terrorist is not an aggressor but a victim, and we must disarm him not by violence but by addressing the grievance that motivates his deeds. This argument has been used to excuse Palestinian suicide bombers, IRA kneecappers, Red Brigade kidnappers, and even the mass murderers of September 11. Its main effect is to blame the victim and excuse the crime.
If you look at the actual condition of terrorists down the ages, however, you will soon discover that the excuse does not match the reality. Some terrorists have been poor and some have been victims of injustice. But those are the exceptions. The Jacobins, who unleashed the original Terror, were for the most part privileged members of the rising elite. The Russian anarchists of the 19th century were no worse off from the point of view of material and social privileges than you or me, and with grievances that were more the work of the imagination than the result of either observing or sympathising with the ordinary people of Russia. There is no evidence that Osama bin Ladens entourage is any different, and even the IRA, which purports to represent the oppressed Catholics of Ulster, is very far from recruiting from those whose oppressed condition it loudly advertises. As for the Islamist terrorists who have targeted our cities, they tend to be well educated, specialists in medicine, engineering or computer science, people who might have helped to provide the Middle East with the stable middle class that it so badly needs, but instead have chosen another and faster route to glory.
It seems to me that we will be nearer to understanding terrorism if, instead of looking at what terrorists have in common, we look at what is common to their victims. The targets of terrorism are groups, nations or races. And they are distinguished by their worldly success either material or social. The original Terror was directed against the French aristocracy soon supplemented by all kinds of real and imaginary groups supposed to be aiding them. The Russian anarchists targeted people with wealth, office or power. The Great Terror of Stalin, initiated by Lenin, was directed against groups alleged to be profiting from the system that impoverished the rest. The Nazi terror picked on the Jews, because of their undoubted material success, and the ease with which they could be assembled as a group. Even the nationalist terrorists of the IRA and Eta variety are targeting nations thought to enjoy wealth, power and privilege, at the expense of others equally entitled. Islamic terrorists bomb the cities of Europe and America because those cities are a symbol of the material and political success of the Western nations, and a rebuke to the political chaos and deep-rooted corruption of the Muslim world.
Success breeds resentment, and resentment breeds hate. This simple observation was made into the root of his political psychology by Nietzsche, who identified ressentiment, as he called it, as the distinguishing social emotion of modern societies: an emotion once ordered and managed by Christianity, now let loose across the world. I dont say that Nietzsches analysis is correct. But surely he was right to identify this peculiar motive in human beings, right to emphasise its overwhelming importance, and right to point out that it lies deeper than the springs of rational discussion.
In dealing with terrorism you are confronting a resentment that is not concerned to improve the lot of anyone, but only to destroy the thing it hates. That is what appeals in terrorism, since hatred is a much easier and less demanding emotion to live by than love, and is much more effective in recruiting a following. And when the object of hatred is a group, a race, a class or a nation, we can furnish from our hatred a comprehensive stance towards the world. That way hatred brings order out of chaos, and decision out of uncertainty the perfect solution to the alienated Muslim, lost in a world that denies his religion, and which his religion in turn denies.
Of course hatred has other causes besides resentment. Someone who has suffered an injustice may very well hate the person who committed it. However, such hatred is precisely targeted, and cannot be satisfied by attacking some innocent substitute. Hatred born of resentment is not like that. It is a passion bound up with the very identity of the one who feels it, and rejoices in damaging others purely by virtue of their membership of the targeted group. Resentment will always prefer indiscriminate mass murder to a carefully targeted punishment. Indeed, the more innocent the victim, the more satisfying the act. For this is the proof of holiness, that you are able to condemn people to death purely for being bourgeois, rich, Jewish, or whatever, and without examining their moral record.
The tendency to resent lies in all of us, and can be overcome only by a discipline that tells us to blame faults in ourselves and to forgive faults in others. This discipline lies at the heart of Christianity and many argue that it lies at the heart of Islam too. If that is so, it is time for Muslims to organise against those who preach resentment in the name of their religion, and who regard the crimes of last Thursday as virtuous deeds, performed with Gods blessing, in a holy cause.
Roger Scruton is author of The West and the Rest: Globalisation and the Terrorist Threat
In dealing with terrorism you are confronting a resentment that is not concerned to improve the lot of anyone,
The radical loser
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
http://www.signandsight.com/features/493.html
(snip)
But anyone wishing to understand the radical loser would be well advised to go a little further back. Progress has not put an end to human suffering, but it has changed it in no small way. Over the past two centuries, the more successful societies have fought for and established new rights, new expectations and new demands. They have done away with the notion of an inevitable fate. They have put concepts like human dignity and human rights on the agenda. The have democratized the struggle for recognition and awakened expectations of equality which they are unable to fulfil. And at the same time, they have made sure that inequality is constantly demonstrated to all of the planet's inhabitants round the clock on every television channel. As a result, with every stage of progress, people's capacity for disappointment has increased accordingly.
"Where cultural progress is genuinely successful and ills are cured, this progress is seldom received with enthusiasm," remarks the philosopher Odo Marquard (book): "Instead, they are taken for granted and attention focuses on those ills that remain. And these remaining ills are subject to the law of increasing annoyance. The more negative elements disappear from reality, the more annoying the remaining negative elements become, precisely because of this decrease in numbers."
(snip)
There is also no mistaking other similarities, such as the fixation with written authorities. The place of Marx and Lenin is taken by the Koran, references are made not to Gramsci but to Sayyid Qutb. Instead of the international proletariat, it takes as its revolutionary subject the Umma, and as its avant-garde and self-appointed representative of the masses it takes not The Party but the widely branching conspiratorial network of Islamist fighters. Although the movement can draw on older rhetorical forms which to outsiders may sound high-flown or big-mouthed, it owes many of its idées fixes to its Communist enemy: history obeys rigid laws, victory is inevitable, deviationists and traitors are to be exposed and then, in fine Leninist tradition, bombarded with ritual insults.
The movement's list of favourite foes is also short on surprises: America, the decadent West, international capital, Zionism. The list is completed by the unbelievers, that is to say the remaining 5.2 billion people on the planet. Not forgetting apostate Muslims who may be found among the Shiites, Ibadhis, Alawites, Zaidites, Ahmadiyyas, Wahhabis, Druze, Sufis, Kharijites, Ishmaelites or other religious communities.
(snip)
Contrary to what the West appears to believe, the destructive energy of Islamist actions is directed mainly against Muslims. This is not a tactical error, not a case of "collateral damage". In Algeria alone, Islamist terror has cost the lives of at least 50,000 fellow Algerians. Other sources speak of as many as 150,000 murders, although the military and the secret services were also involved. In Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number of Muslim victims far outstrips the death toll among foreigners. Furthermore, terrorism has been highly detrimental not only to the image of Islam but also to the living conditions of Muslims around the world.
The Islamists are as unconcerned about this as the Nazis were about the downfall of Germany. As the avant-garde of death, they have no regard for the lives of their fellow believers. In the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that most Muslims have no desire to blow themselves and others sky high only goes to show that they deserve no better than to be liquidated themselves. After all, the aim of the radical loser is to make as many other people into losers as possible. As the Islamists see it, the fact that they are in the minority can only be because they are the chosen few.
(snip)
See reply 41.
Until our government leaders takes to task the destroying of the "Muslim Religion of Peace" there will never be any peace.
If we had presently, leadership as we did during World War II we would not be facing the WOT as we now find ourselves in.
If that's not Nutter stuff, I don't know what is.
Yankees! GRRRRRRRR! Curse you, Steinbrenner!
Not for this simple observation - which is shared by many, many observant people.
If Freud thought it was correct...then it's probably not!
Here, it's important to distinguish between Freud - who was truly a genius - and his followers - who most defitely were not. I don't agree with Freud's constructs (ego, id, etc.) and his therapies have proven to be mostly ineffective...but he was a great observer and his ideas were a vast improvement on previous thought.
Again, though, we are dealing with a simple but profound insight and my point was to show that many great and thoughtful men had had it.
Muslims = levelers.
Meaning they want to bring all mankind down to their level where faith in Allah explains all and conquerers all. They are extremely agitated and busy with the cult of their false prophet but making no progress for themselves or mankind. Jews are only 15 million world wide but they contribute 500 times more to technological, medical , scientific advances
Yep. But it's here:
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbors house; you shall not covet your neighbors wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
in the oldest, most fundamental part of the Bible.
A wise old Jewish friend of mine used to say "Why does he hate me -- I never helped him!". The point made is that helpful, generous, charitable works must be done carefully, for they bring considerable resentment. He who gives/helps automatically gains status over the one helped, who is automatically placed in an inferior position, That breeds a LOT of resentment, and then hate.
In other words, it is not just our success in the US that breeds resentment, but even more so our flaunting of it by being the most generous rich nation in history.
You wrote, "Freud thought it was correct...and Einstein agreed. That's good enough for me."
Freud was a fraud, all but completely disavowed by modern psychiatry, basing his theories on the most slipshod scientific methodology ever perpetrated by anyone. You might want to reconsider using him as an authority on, well, anything.
This guy sounds sorta right, but the bottom line is the radical islmaics resent us for our not being moslem in their image of the 'islmaic ideal'. and for our entire culture and faith or lack of faith for the securlarists in the west whom they also hate.
It's more than that -- see post #49
Well you could also arm them with missiles, nuclear bombs and gunships then they would be able to use those. They would not have to resort to terrorist tactics any longer because they would have real weapons. Right?
Amen, bro. And the Islamist will continue to hate until the enemy capitulates and becomes his compatriot. They don't acknowledge co-existence, only surrender. Ask Steve Centanni.
You are on target. This author is clueless.
It is not about resentment.
Osama has hundreds of millions of dollars and a family that gets their asses kissed by American politicians and elite wherever they go. He didn't put his life on the line because of resentment.
The nineteen young 9-11 hijackers healthy and relatively wealthy and educated gave their lives to Allah to kill 3,000 of us infidels, not because they resented us-it's because we have no intentions of believing in their God Allah. It is not about resentment for Muslims; it is about following Islam to the letter and battling Infidels for Allah. - tom Posting HTML This forum allows optional use of most HTML tags. If your post does not contain HTML, it will be converted to HTML when posted, retaining paragraphs as typed. This conversion is not performed if you have anything resembling an HTML tag in your text.
Just dotting the i's and crossing the t's. I refer to the 10 commandments in a later post for the same reason. By the way, simple and profound does not mean easily recognized or readily accepted.
Modern psychiatry is also a fraud (by your standards). So is most psychotherapy. Its practitioners are the modern-day snake-oil peddlars. The fact is mental disease and human suffering are beyond the ken of present-day knowledge.
As I said in a previous post Freud - despite his errors - was a genius and well-worth studying.
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