Haunted by the past

Assassinations for political or ideological motives have occurred throughout history, but the earliest recorded organisation seems to have been the Nizari Ismaili sect based in the Alamut mountain stronghold just south of the Caspian Sea. And the Arabic Asāsīyūn, meaning "people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]", became a generic word. The state has also killed and executed since prehistoric legendary times, but the first to proclaim itself terrorist, and to herald the rule of terror, was the Comity of Public Safety (1793/4) during the French revolution. Since then governmental violence has been practiced with the same zeal, but with less noise and exposure. However, war is where the most killings occur, and where murder attains its utmost legitimacy. Being ordered to kill those who wear a different uniform can be made to seem normal. And the civilian deaths are just unavoidable collateral damage for which no one is accountable. In some cases all the dead are counted as enemy combatants, which absolves from any guilt. This happens in total war, where nations confront nations in a death struggle, or when an occupying army fights a popular uprising and a whole population is the enemy.

State terror at home and abroad is the norm. Governments constantly use violence to maintain their rule and keep their dominions. Force is the prerogative of an executive that has right as well as might on its side. This state monopoly means that all other sources of violence are automatically condemned and repressed. However, the justification of state terror may not seem obvious to those it is being exerted on. This should give them the right to oppose violence with violence, but only a very wide majority has a chance of success. A minority can only hope and be patient, or resort to subversive terror. This last is a desperate decision, as state might often retaliates without discrimination. It is the act of a minority within the minority, those whose despair is not mitigated by resignation. They are combatants prepared to kill and ready to die, martyrs without fear or pity. They are the produce of extreme conditions, of constant daily violence, of foreign occupation, of racial or religious oppression, of air-warfare. They have nothing to lose but their lives, which are deemed worthless. Their actions contradict the dominant system in such a radical way that its reaction far outweighs the apparent threat. Giving one’s life for an ideal seems aberrant in a mercenary world, where preserving it has reached the boundaries of science fiction, while mass killings elsewhere are perceived like Hollywood scripts of good against evil.

June 28^th 1914, a terrorist attack in Sarajevo sparked off a war that would kill millions, displace millions more, and change the political structures of Europe. September 11^th 2001, a terrorist attack in New York sparked off a war that would kill hundreds of thousands, displace millions, and is changing the political structures of Western and Eastern societies. The first event modelled history for the rest of the century (WW2, Cold War, national liberations, etc.). The second is shaping up to be a similar game changer. The present phase is that of paranoia, with totalitarian trends and rising police and military powers, very similar to events in the 1930s described by Hannah Arendt in chapter 9 of “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. The war on terror and its parallel on drugs have become war as such, provoking mass migrations of refugees trying to reach the only safe-havens of Europe, North America and Australia. This human flow to the heart of empire is the consequence of imperial terror around the globe, and it is severely disrupting institutions in the homelands of power. People are fleeing violence in growing numbers everywhere. And in the aftermath of a financial crisis that is not yet resolved, the impression of having been here before cannot be avoided. Like the beatings of a butterfly’s wings, a significant individual act can determine the path of history. Or was the storm gathering anyhow?