Terrorism

Oslo: Flowers for the victims of a terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011

In his study of evil, Roy F. Baumeister tells the story of a North Korean young woman who had been chosen to become a special agent for the foreign intelligence service and then to carry out a bomb attack on a South Korean airplane. She was “explained that the airplane’s destruction would create a broad sense of chaos and uncertainty that would prevent South Korea from hosting the upcoming 1988 Olympic Games as scheduled. This in turn would lead to the reunification of Korea ...”. Later she wrote that she didn’t understand how this could happen, but she saw herself as politically naïve and she wanted to be a good patriot. Also any feeling of moral responsibility that more than hundred people would die did not come to her mind. The bomb attack was purely a technical operation, she thought. The woman successfully performed the action, but, as we know, the 1988 Olympic Games took place as planned and Korea was never reunified. The woman was captured, sentenced to death but pardoned by the South Korean government. Gradually she also begun “to feel terrible guilt much of the time” because of the innocent passengers killed, and she got nightmares.

In this case, so Baumeister, we see three characteristics typical of a terrorist act. First, the actor is not troubled by guilty thoughts that many innocent people will be killed, although such thoughts often come after the deed. Second, vicious terrorism is motivated by the highest ideals and principles, not by personal hate towards the victims or by personal gain. Third, the action doesn’t lead to the desired goal; neither a possibly short-term goal is reached, nor a long-term goal is. Even more, I want to add: What the goal is, is often vague and unrealistic. It is usually only stated afterwards, so that there is nothing to negotiate about in order to prevent it. An act of terrorism happens. (pp. 27-30)

Terrorism is a rather new phenomenon that could only develop since the end of the 18th century. There are at least two reasons for this. The media must have been developed to such an extent that the news about a terrorist act can get around on a rather wide scale and relatively fast. Otherwise it has no sense to perform it. Moreover, a human life must be seen as valuable. Before the Enlightenment life expectancy was short; not much more than 30 years. People could be sentenced to death for all kinds of crimes, including petty theft. Many people were murdered. This gradually changed since the end of the 18th century.

Although the motives for a terrorist act can be complicated and, for instance, can involve also revenge and punishment, actually such an act is a deed meant to create an atmosphere of fear: the intention is that people fear that they might be killed and that because of this they take all kinds of preventive measures that disturb their lives, if not society as a whole; or that then people or governments give in to the demands of the terrorist or his/her group. Therefore terrorism needs not be aimed directly at persons but it can also exist in, for example, poisoning water supplies. However, as said, a problem is that the demands are often vague, if the possible victim would be prepared to negotiate at all (which is often not the case). In the past revenge or punishment of a certain person was more important than it is today. Usually victims were carefully chosen and it was not the intention to kill people arbitrarily or to kill innocent passers-by. The murder of archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War, is a case in point. Also the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and later chose its victims precisely. Today terrorists just want to kill innocent victims – as many people as possible –, although the killing of the editorial board of Charly Hebdo in Paris in 2015 shows that sometimes the victims still are purposefully chosen.

This shows another characteristic of terrorism: Man is seen as a mere instrument, as Camus makes us clear. This does not conflict with the point that for terrorism being possible man must be valuable. Just because people are valuable in the view of others, terrorists see them as instruments to draw attention to their causes. For the terrorist the ideal is higher than man, which makes man instrumental. That’s also why ultimately the terrorist is prepared to kill him or herself in the act, or that, in case of state terrorism, the people may be oppressed, for their oppression is seen as a step on the road to the ideal state. As Camus quotes Nechayev, a Russian communist revolutionary and nihilist from the 19th century: “It’s not about justice but about our duty to eliminate everything that can harm our cause.” Everything is allowed.

And this is what we see in all kinds of terrorist acts today, whether performed by representatives of organised groups or by lone wolves. Locked up in their brains they see only abstract ideals and instruments but no people, like in the recent terrorist acts in Churchland, New Zealand, or in Utrecht, here in the Netherlands. In fact, man is absent in the ideals of the terrorist. Terrorists only care for ... yes, for what?

Sources

- Baumeister, Roy F., Evil. Inside human violence and cruelty. New York: Henry Holt and Cy, 1999.

- Camus, Albert, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.