By R.C. Smith
This will either be the age of humanity or its opposite.[i] There is no in-between. As much as I detest a black and white course of analysis, there is no middle here, there is no nuance or greater complexity; we have reached or are close to reaching the fundamental climacteric of humanity, its violent cycles, and the ritual suffering of these days formally characterised as the “war on terror”. Before the death of the notorious Islamic State murderer Mohammed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John”, whose crimes and acts of violence were particular repulsive (including the beheading of innocent hostages), the political will in much of the west was that this individual and the rest of IS (or Isis) be shown no remorse. Now that he is dead, the general response to the news has been one of an ‘instant sense of relief’. The death of Emwazi has even been described as “highly symbolic”, a shift in the course of the war that is now “showing some signs of progress”. A shy boy who loved football, eventually turned extremist and thirsty for blood, the story of Emwazi has a caused a great stir in the UK, US and other parts of the western world. Video footage of him killing innocent people are unbearable. There is no doubt that there is something especially sinister and savage about his violence, which could perhaps be seen as a clear example of the intensifying patterns of barbarity of this young century. Cries for his death have echoed throughout society, in newspaper columns and on the television. His acts are gruesome. His ideology sinister. That Emwazi and all he stands for is particularly notable in its horror – a horror that stands out from all the especially gruesome realities of the last 14 years – shows that the direction the war on terror is taking is of limitless, pure brutality. The repulsion felt by many in the west and beyond has been met with cries that Emwazi should suffer ‘a death of a thousand wounds’, conveying not only a general attitude toward his violence and that of IS but also our own. Irrespective of faith, of religion, or lack therefore, agreement seems set that no decrepit death would be enough for this man. As I read on one forum, “he must die, and no unimaginably gruesome death will be enough”.
Yesterday, 13 November 2015, messages of celebration rippled throughout the media, on comment boards and on the radio: Emwazi was finally killed. It has been reported by the US military that they are “reasonably confident” he was finally brought to justice in the Syrian city of Raqqa, after a Hellfire missile hit his car. The popular and mainstream response has been one of joy. That his body was likely torn to bits, fragmented, annihilated, scattered in and amongst debris, likely blood soaked – society’s cry for vengeance has been satisfied. The thirst for public execution – or, at least, execution energized through public will – has been quenched. Tomorrow there will be new targets. New acts of violence. New acts of barbarity. IS will no doubt respond in its own typically horrific way, and in retaliation new calls for capital punishment – for death as justice – will ring throughout society. Though one can be sure that the execution of Jihadi John and those like him would not be tolerated in the public squares of our towns and cities, with the spectacle of the guillotine having long been done away with, the same rationale persists. It persists in the demand for blood, for justice as death, but only insofar that it shall happen out of sight. This cunning cognitive manoeuvre, to demand death and yet bear no responsibility for it, defines an age in which murder and casualty by bombing in some remote part of the world is viewed as just, without ever needing to know the details. This has increasingly become the psychology behind the general view of the war on terror, as the western subject becomes increasingly entwined in an ever-more heightened culture of violence and domination. Details such as how Muslim terrorists do not represent all or even anywhere near a significant percentage of the world’s Muslim population; that westerners are not the only and true universal victims, when a lot of people in the east suffer too; that western bombs have caused, as of the time of my writing, 459 non-combatant deaths in Syria and Iraq, including 100 children[ii] – these are facts, critical realities, which are uncomfortable for the mass population to accept. The belief is that western society is the universal victim and at the same time the rightful overseer of universal justice. But this is ideology.
I admit that I have never personally witnessed gruesome death, though I have spent significant time studying the experience and imagining what it must be like. Violence, irrespective of its form or argued justification, is something that has long concerned me. For this reason I take great interest in talking with people and listening to their views on the issue of execution, drone assassination, war, and state violence, particularly in relation to the war on terror. I can say without being guilty of hyperbole that a large portion of those I have encountered seem sympathetic to the ritual of death on behalf of the notion of “justice”. Though the death penalty is not currently practiced in the UK and Canada, the psyche and rationale for its reinstatement is present, even if not in traditional form. In the United States, the practice of capital punishment is still ongoing in dozens of states. But the US has a particularly violent culture which, for the sake of focused analysis, I’ll shall bracket and put to one side. The general rule, the general sentiment, shared among all three countries – and also in France, Germany, Belgium and beyond – is that violent retribution in response to acts of terror, especially when such death is executed in unknown and distance places, hidden from sight – better yet, from either drone or cruise missile – is justified. That is to say that the spectre of the guillotine, of the public impulse to kill and torture haunts. It haunts precisely in the popular encouragement of death as retribution, in death as justice against terror. There is hardly any division among the moderates today, the left or right-wing liberal centre of contemporary society. Of the majority who may vote no to the reinstatement of capital punishment, agree on the execution of, and continued violence against, terrorists. But it remains to be said that, ‘a punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge. It is a quasi-arithmetical reply made by society to whoever breaks its primordial law. The reply is as old as man; it is called the law of retaliation. Whoever has done me harm must suffer harm; whoever has put out my eye must lose an eye; and whoever has killed must die. This is an emotion, and a particularly violent one, not a principle’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627). Retaliation, in other words, is irrationalism practiced as reason; it is related to instinct but not to law (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627). Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as the impulse to retaliate (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627). That is to say that ‘law is not intended to imitate or reproduce’ the irrational impulse, ‘it is intended to correct it’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627). In progressive and emancipatory terms – terms which I shall increasingly draw – retaliation is inapplicable. To play on the words of Camus, ‘let us admit that it is actually just and necessary to compensate for the murder of the victim by the death of the murderer’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627), the fact remains that the torture of potential suspects, the assassination or annihilation by drone of an entire town, is not simply death:
…it is just as different, in essence, from the privation of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It is a murder, to be sure, and one that arithmetically pays for the murder committed. But it adds to death a rule, a public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization, in short, which is in itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Hence there is no equivalence. Many laws consider a premeditated crime more serious than a crime of pure violence. But what then is capital punishment [or ritual violence] but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 627)
***
On the same day that Jihadi John was reported killed, the city of Paris was attacked. Unimaginable violence was inflicted on innocent Parisians, killing 129 people and wounding at least 352 (as of the time of my writing). It is widely suspected that these acts of terrorism were perpetrated in response to France’s role in the war against Islamic State insurgents. Within hours IS issued a statement revealing that this suspicion is accurate: IS was responsible for the attacks. France, it was claimed, is the “top target” for IS terror. Paul Rogers assesses the strategy of the attacks, when he writes:
The ISIS assaults in Paris on the evening of November 13 were carefully planned by a large team of three groups with at least eight men prepared to die. Some internal French involvement, perhaps limited, is possible.
The operation had three components, each with a distinct target. The Stade de France attack was small-scale but large impact – its ingredients a modern national sporting icon, the occasion of a match with Germany, and the French president’s presence among the fans. The Bataclan theatre was hosting a popular American rock band, thus ensuring a very international audience. The café and bar attacks would result in persistent fear across a popular district of Paris and well beyond.
Indeed the global impact is already huge, probably more than London’s bombs in July 2005, Madrid’s Atocha rail terminal bombs in March 2004, and even the Sari nightclub attack in Bali in October 2002. Paris is on a similar scale to the even more complex and long-lasting Mumbai operation in November 2008, which had a profound impact in India (but less so outside). Among western states, the effect is the biggest since 9/11, which was of course much greater still (Rogers, 2015).
In light of the shocking scenes on the streets of Paris, it is without question that the barbarity of terrorism has taken a historical step. The latest violence, which followed largely unreported and indifferent news of two separate bombings in Beirut (suspected to also be linked with IS), killing 43 innocent people and wounding at least 239 others, reveals a new level of pure ritual hate. While state official are quick to define it as war – that is, an open, armed and prolonged conflict between parties – the situation is actually one of systemic cycles of domination. There is no question that the massacre coordinated in the heart of Paris was particularly appalling. One is left feeling repulsed, saddened, and shocked. There are no words to describe the blood, the images of the bodies, the barbarity. The ritual terror was conducted in cold determination, and this time it was on ‘our streets’, provoking pure outrage as it involved killing ‘everyday people’ not so different to those in our own communities. Unlike the Beirut bombings, the earliest images of the Paris attacks spread throughout the world – images of bodies strewn throughout the city centre, blood everywhere. Men, women and children were seen crying, buckled at the knees in despair, while others emerged from the Stade de France defiantly signing the national anthem. The sites of violence were all focused on public orientated districts largely comprised of entertainment, pubs, and atmospheres of friendliness and leisure. Witnesses to the horror spoke of shock and dismay – of their entire worlds collapsing, as they stood in tears unable to comprehend exactly what was happening. Death, suffering, inhumanity – mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, of faith or no faith, lay cold and lifeless before our very eyes. The line of fire, the focus of violence, were everyday people going about their lives, simply out with friends, celebrating the start of another weekend. One can only feel indefinable grief on a night which will forever be marked in France’s history.
In truth, when it comes to IS, there is no shortage of words which may underline the menace that France and the rest of the west are dealing with. But we must remember, when mourning the horror in Paris, that human life was also taken elsewhere. That no western outrage was provoked in response to the attacks in Beirut is regrettable. To think that equally innocent Lebanese people, of both Muslim and Christian background, were killed in cold blood and without hardly the same outburst of despair speaks to the psychology of the western subject, and the divisive perception that the “war on terror” is creating: one of us and them. These lines are not only drawn in terms of race and ethnicity, culture and language, but also geographically. That the west may only focus on its own suffering at the hands of brutality, of the evil of the Islamic State, does not do justice to the very human struggle unfolding around all around us, in Europe and abroad. One of the purposes of recent attacks by IS, including the destruction of Russia’s Metrojet over Sinai and the bombing in Beirut, is to demonstrate that IS has now gone truly international (Rogers, 2015). International solidarity with all victims, whether Christian or Muslim, must, in response, be a constant focus. Outrage, mourning, compassion should have no boundary or division. Now is not the time to diminish or make less significant the loss of life in one region or another: to succumb to the wishes of IS is to undertake a view of us and them. The attacks, irrespective of their geography, are tantamount to an assault on the whole of humanity.
If another goal of IS is “to further damage intercommunal relations, not just in Paris but across western Europe and further afield”, particularly by fuelling reactionary movements and “accelerating Islamophobia”, this is because the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment suits the project of terror “in its quest to attract more recruits from recent diasporas and more established migrant communities, many members of whom now feel thoroughly insecure and greatly worried and even fearful of the hardening of attitudes towards them” (Rogers, 2015). The issue of the western psyche is that it is becoming increasingly hardened and hostile to the diversity within and around it. The Muslim world, the people of the Middle East and Africa and elsewhere, have already or are well on their way to becoming reduced to the object of the Other – a form of epistemic violence which plays into the cycle of ritual violence. When perception shifts in the majority in this way, life is devalued in those foreign regions now perceived as synonymous with any and all terror.
When it comes to Europe and European suffering, in witnessing the violence and murder in Paris, one can only immediately respond to the massacre in horror and compassion. We think of the victims and their families as we take in the news and the images and all of the commentary and personal accounts. As hours and days pass, it becomes impossible not to mobilize in solidarity with all those affected. To offer every bit of humanity available, every bit of civility and empathy, this is a first step. No doubt French society – with its deeply rooted bonds of liberté, égalité and fraternité – will find the courage to move forward, to rebuild, and to not give in to terror and to direct acts of violence and oppression. Along political lines, internally speaking, if we have any decency, we must not allow terrorism to continue to justify the rise of right-wing movements and violence. We must not allow – if the bonds of liberté, égalité and fraternité are real – right-wing and reactionary movements to target the influx of refugees to Europe. Undoubtedly the Paris attacks will be used to support the cause of hate, a trend that has already started to crystallize in the language of far-right political leaders who have spoken in response to the Paris tragedy. But as Martin Luther King once said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”. It remains vital, in moving forward, that resistance persists against reactionary movements, against the threat of a final tidal wave of xenophobia, which could forever scar European society. That reactionary right-wing movements have no legitimacy, that their hate against refugees has no real foundation, that their irrationalism is anathema to actual rational discourse and critical thinking, this context of truth must be weighed and weighed again. Political struggle within France, within Germany, the UK, the US – within the west writ large – for a better and more just society, this struggle is ultimately one for solidarity, emancipation and egalitarianism. That same struggle should be seen internationally. Thus there is no divide, in human terms. Such ritual acts of horror and violence as witnessed in Paris go against every decent moral fibre of actual emancipatory struggle, and we must resist the right-wing populist agenda to use this violence and barbarity and suffering caused by terrorist groups to cease control of power, to exploit fear and anxiety, and persuade our collective consciousness to close down our boarders once and for all, to target immigrants and refugees as the source of our problem and as the source of terror. Instead, we must respond critically. We must try to understand the international context of terrorism, the systemic trends behind such violence, and extend our solidarity from the streets of Paris to the streets of Beirut, from the despair of Parisians left to mourn the loss of friends and family to the refugees fleeing from everyday violence in Syria and elsewhere. To defeat the evil of IS, this is not achieved by building walls and by deepening indifference to those who also suffer in other parts of the world.
France, Germany, the UK, the US – their policies and international roles are targeted by vicious, reactionary groups like Al-Qaida and IS, with the goal only to unleash inexplicable cruelty. Moving forward – if and when we’re able to begin to look to the future – how we respond as a society, how we decide to begin looking ahead, this is the question which could define our historical moment. How we respond and plan our action in the days ahead directly concerns our vision of society: what society actually means, what we want in society moving forward, what we see as the society we should like to defend. The bonds of liberté, égalité and fraternité bear no meaning if they are not internationally transferable – if those value do not also, in our minds, extend beyond our own geographical boarders. If we truly believe in peace, then we must not partake in war. If we truly believe in freedom, as a concept and as a thing, and if we actually hold the value of human flourishing to be more than pretense, then we must reflect on those emancipatory ideals when trying to grasp how we might respond to terror and its threat. Actual democracy, actual egalitarianism cannot be built on ritual violence and bloodshed. The psychology of retribution, of the ritual of violence and execution, are anathema to any actual emancipatory politics. When President Hollande declares, “I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless”, and as other elected leaders follow in thirst for blood, the social body is forced to look inward, to engage in deep introspection about what sort of society we are building and in struggle to work toward.
There may be variations in form on the scale of democracy, with liberal democracy not being the most nor the least progressive – but in a liberal democracy, tyrants like Mohammed Emwazi and those guilty of recent attacks on Paris and in Beirut, should have and should still face trial. To react and jettison any actual justice, both in practice and belief, at the mere scent of redemptive blood, goes against the grain of what liberal democracy wants to believe in itself. Now is not the time for unabashed praise for the ideals of western life, to then suppress all of the struggles and conflicts and lack of progress that still remains within western society, its destructive and exploitative political-economy, and its internal policy arrangements. The truth is – and it is a difficult one to come to terms with – the bloody attacks in Paris are invariably linked to the violence and barbarity unfolding in the Middle East. Western interventionism, the invasion of Iraq, the deep legacy of colonization has played its own role – a rather significant one at that. And this is something that right-wing political movements refuse to accept. As one respectable and noteworthy analyst commented: “the war in Syria is coming home”. If our first course of action is to look at the situation critically, from systemic trends to foreign policy and beyond, then surely the reality behind the west’s complicity in the creation of Isis in the first place is a vital point worthy of serious reflection.[iii] The endless turmoil and death as a result of US led bombings and the western incitement of ever-deepening conflict in the Middle East, which has caused tremendous suffering, must surely also be taken into account. France, for all the suffering it currently endures, has also played a part in the manifestation of such ongoing violence and death abroad. Somewhere, at some point, the vicious cycle must stop. A horrible international situation is spiralling into insanity, and the worst we can do is react by calling for more violence and for the persecution of Muslim people – that is, by slipping into and prolonging the irrational. The path of justice, of democracy – of hope in the possibility of an egalitarian society – is not always the easiest path. To think that society is simply an abstract term to describe social, political and economic systems which operate above our heads misses the point. This type of rationale is the product of decades of neoliberal language and theory. Society is something that constitutes and is constituted by the subject. It is something we prefigure and must constantly prefigure in our everyday practice and struggle for a better life. In trying to come to grips with how we may move forward, with how France may begin to mourn its victims, we must ask, before the impulse for vengeance overwhelms the collective psyche, what is this cycle of violence and how might we actually put an end to it. If society chooses that the just penalty is more death, the question becomes for all of us: how might we as respectable citizens consider violent retaliation as a justifiable action to defend to liberty, reason, and genuine solidarity? If more bombs were to drop on more hostile targets with more loss of innocent civilian life to inevitably follow, how can we honestly maintain the idea that this will eventually bring peace, that these actions will foster the sort of human flourishing we like to believe we stand for?
***
In the times when we’re our most collectively irrational, it is easy for us to slip backwards in history. At the end of the Second World War, when Europe was trying to come to grips with the unspeakable violence and death that had gripped the continent, with the absolute horrors of the Holocaust, there were two sides of debate not too dissimilar to today: ritual death, the perpetuation of the grain of insanity in the form of execution and continued murder, or trial. In a turn of events that will remain forever significant in history, it was decided that the Nuremberg trials would proceed. The crime, the murder, would not continue. Instead, efforts were made to realize a concept of justice and to begin to make amends for the harm done, if ever any amends could actually be made. Today, we face a similar defining moment which will forever impact society’s history and its future unfolding.
Hannah Arendt once postulated that violence can be used, whether through revolution or whatever, to destroy old systems or current institutions of power; but violence cannot establish the “authority” that legitimatizes new power. Violence is an illegitimate means. Society cannot be built, nor can it justify its continued existence, if built on violence. Jihadi John is celebrated for being killed – his death a spectacle in much the same way as Bin Laden. But death demanded by citizens and enacted by the state equates to moving ever further away from the concept of actual justice and its practice. Perhaps this is why death as ritual, death as justice, by the hands of western military forces is hardly ever dissected in any great detail, at least not in the mainstream. Hence we hear officials talk about the violence inflicted in other parts of the world, reporters comment on it, but the reality is never really held in one’s self-reflective awareness as the details are rarely ever actually considered. A bomb drops on some remote village in Syria, and in the morning it may be in the newspapers and on the television screen. But the act itself, the potential victims, the shameful aspects, generally go unfelt (Camus, 157/2004; p. 610). Thus we watch the news at breakfast time, we absorb the headline that another terrorist has been killed or another military bombing operation has commenced – it is said that the murder and injustice previously against us has been “atoned”. And yet outside of the ritual language that is more often than not reduced to stereotypes (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 610), what actually do we know of the violence our society, our state is inflicting or may inflict on others? The execution of suspected terrorist targets and the annihilation of pitiless air wars may be paraded on the front page of our newspapers, but the standard psychology and emotional impulse remains largely one which speaks of the actual reality of death at a whisper (Camus, 1957/2004; p.610). Much in the same way, as Albert Camus writes, that everyone used to strive to refer to capital punishment through euphemisms (Camus, 1957/2004; p.610), the psyche behind ritual violence today is to the body politics, to play on words, ‘what cancer is to the individual body’, and yet ‘with this difference it remains that no one has ever spoken of the necessity of cancer’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p.610). Similar to the guillotine – that once popular public display of justice as death – there is no hesitation today ‘about presenting capital punishment’ in the form of military drone strikes ‘as a regrettable necessity, a necessity that justifies killing because it is necessary’, all the while admitting we must not democratically debate its existence, nor actually come to close to considering the reality, ‘because it is regrettable’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p.610).
But like Camus before me, my intention is talk crudely about the reality of our political situation and the social, political, economic context in which we now mourn the loss of more innocent life. In raising the question of the ritual of violence in which the west is a part, I am in no way justifying any acts of terrorism. What I am saying is that it is no coincidence that in an authoritarian society, whose legacy is one of domination and whose culture still possesses aspects of this legacy, we are growing more passive to our own violence and to the genesis of an ever-more terrifyingly violent psyche – i.e., a dominant subjectivity. In response to acts of terrorism, calls are issued that justify the perpetuation of a horrible global trend: “we must strike back” is perhaps one of the more popular responses. But the more we repress the ‘grain of insanity’ – the more we refuse to identify it, call it out, and confront it – the more we become blind to the systemic trends in which our violent retaliation plays a part in deepening, and the more society strays toward an irreparable course of action. On the other hand, when ‘silence or tricks of language contribute to the production and reproduction of violence, there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p.610). The ‘grain of insanity’, to borrow from Adorno, lies in the very existence of ritual violence – from guidance missiles and drone assassinations to mass surveillance technology and its justification – it is tantamount to the impulse to dominate, whether through fear or the law of retaliation. Not only does this ‘grain of insanity’ have to do with the very nature and impetus of the (ideological) systems and organisations that support the cycle of death from both sides of the “war on terror”, but also in the very historical process of their development. To take from Noam Chomsky’s critical analytical legacy, we critique western society and its policies and actions because we care about it, because we know it can be better and that it should be held accountable to its own ideals. The UK, US, France, Germany, are the few countries with the status to authorize assassinations and coordinated executions, to launch an onslaught of terror in the form of a sustained air assaults, destroying up to 10,000 targets within the last fifteen months. ‘The survival of such a primitive rite has been made possible among us only by the thoughtlessness or ignorance of the public, which generally reacts only with the ceremonial phrases that have been drilled into it’ (Camus, 1957/2004; pp. 610-11). Undoubtedly the state also plays a part in this regard, as testified by the very existence of organizations like WikiLeaks, whose operation is to reveal the realities of either thoughtlessness, ignorance or manipulative concealment. In a social world where the concept and practice of “democracy” is increasingly becoming its opposite, imagination and critical thinking sleeps, while words are emptied of meaning, ceremonies to honour the dead innocent victims of war and terror betrayed (Camus, 1957/2004; pp. 610-11). Instead, as Camus put it in no less stinging terms: with every murder justified in the name of democracy, peace, progress and solidarity, ‘a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man’ (Camus, 1957/2004; pp. 610-11), and then another man, and then another man. Unlike Camus however, I am uncertain whether if people are shown the machine, made to touch the steel of the bomb, the button of the launch device, and to hear the screams after the explosion, to see the limbs scattered everywhere, that ‘public imagination, suddenly awakened, will repudiate both the vocabulary and the penalty’ (Camus, 1957/2004; pp. 610-11). The question I posit, moreover, is whether violence has sunk too deep in the collective psyche, whether hate has grown too strong, for any possible awakening and break in the cycle?
The ethical predicament posed by the revelation of western execution and ritual violence in return is not in and of itself solely a matter of the crisis of democracy. The problem is much worse: On the one hand, it has to do with the type of individual subject that damaged society is fostering and, in turn, the type of collectivity being developed on the basis of our subject formation. On the other hand, the problem goes to the heart of how: “democracy today, as a concept and as a thing, has less to do with the actual content of “democracy” as an egalitarian system of political-economic values than it does with the neglect of this content for its (mere) form”. In a society whose democratic ideals are eroding – if ever actually realized in the first place – it is difficult to speak of things like universal justice when our own social-political situation is “the mere distillate remaining” after the actual democratic content (Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc.) of our social practice “has been boiled away” (Smith and Sperber, 2014).
Thus, as far as I am concerned, in raising the question of ritual violence, of the vicious cycle that is the war on terror, the ethical predicament we face has to do with the greater (historical) decay of values, of the erosion of ethical concepts and principles, overlapped and converged with the domination of instrumental rationality and the intensification of our own experiential blindness when it comes to insidious violence beyond the shock and horror of acts of murder and terrorism on our city streets. It is not that we are completely unaware of insidious violence, it is only that we recognize the illness of such systemic patterns of violence within the very fact that we don’t actually acknowledge it in explicit terms (Camus, 1947/2004; p. 610). And this, in large, is why one must question not only the path forward, the path to peace in the context of the threat and actuality of inexplicable terror; but also the current systemic trends and cycles in relation to our society’s own unfolding, its structural status, internal conflicts, and foreign and international policy mandates.
***
I do not pretend to know how to deal with the monstrosity that is the Islamic State. What I do know is that there are comprehensive alternative lines of thought, which do not rely on more needless death. Dr. Nafeez Ahmed is one of the most progressive of our generation when it comes to understanding IS, the system that incubated it, and how we might finally destroy it. His analysis and proposals are worth serious consideration.[iv]
What I will say, in addition to this, as I reflect on the suffering that Paris has experienced and as I mourn the awful images of the bloodshed, that I believe in society and its continued progress. I believe that society, as we continue in struggle to make it better, more just, more humane, more free and sustainable, will not find reconciliation and emancipation on the basis of death. To retaliate by way of retributory killing goes against the laws our society is principled on. There is no evidence that assassinating more extremists, that dropping more bombs, will finally conclude the war on terror. In fact, the evidence we have suggests the contrary, as even admitted by US Intelligence sources (Rogers, 2015):
In the first eleven months of the air war, to July 2015, the US-led coalition killed 15,000 ISIS supporters. By October, that had risen to 20,000, yet a Pentagon source said that the total number of ISIS fighters was unchanged at 20,000-30,000. (USA Today, October 12 2015).
In an extraordinary admission, US intelligence sources say there has been a surge in recruits to ISIS in spite of the air war and the losses. In September 2014, 15,000 recruits were reported to have joined from 80 countries; a year later the figure had risen to 30,000 from 100 countries.
In blunt terms, ISIS is actually being strengthened by the air war, and it can be assumed that it wants more. The movement vigorously and insistently peddles the message of “Islam under attack”; and though it is disliked and hated by the great majority of Muslims worldwide, the message strikes enough of a chord with a small minority to serve ISIS’s aim of creating this purist if brutal caliphate (Rogers, 2015).
“To defeat IS,” writes Ahmed, “we need to [first] recognise that this Frankenstein’s monster is neither simply a fault of “the West”, nor of “the Muslims”. It is a co-creation of the Western and Muslim worlds, specifically of Western and Muslim “security” agencies who have lost all moral compass in the pursuit of geopolitical prowess, self-aggrandisement and corporate profiteering” (Ahmed, 2015). Second. We must mobilize as citizens:
Citizens of all faiths and none must stand together in solidarity to reject the violence perpetrated in our name on all sides. We must pressure our governments to re-configure our alliances with brutal regimes that sponsor terror, ending our abject, slavish dependence on Middle East fossil fuels, and cutting off open-ended financial ties and investments. Our governments must deploy diplomatic, economic and other pressure to shut down the financial networks sustaining IS, incubated covertly by countries like Turkey. We should work with Russia to come to an agreement to decisively end all military and financial support to actors on all sides in the region, to force them to end hostilities and come to the negotiating table.
We must exert robust oversight over our unaccountable intelligence services, whose secret support for militants abroad has undermined national security and permitted associated extremists to run amok at home (Ahmed, 2015)
In mobilizing as citizens in solidarity with all victims of IS and the war on terror, we should move forward by recognizing, mutually, across all faiths, the immense suffering unfolding around us and work toward a future global reconciled society based on justice, egalitarianism, inclusive discourse and mutually recognitive forms of communication. In the process we must not “merely denounce the atrocities committed by Western governments, the dictatorships they support, and the Islamist terrorists wreaking havoc in various parts of the world, but to work together in generating new inclusive discourses of peace, diversity and co-existence inspired by faith and non-faith values alike” (Ahmed, 2015). If there is an immediate path, this is it. Public pressure, public solidarity aligned with an emancipatory politics – a politics of peace and inclusivity, of egalitarianism and actual democracy – is the only way we can begin to heal and to develop and practice transformative power. If it is, philosophically and practically, “in and through interaction that emancipation – or self-determination, or full humanity – may exist” (Gunn, 2015), then we already have a philosophical and practical foundation from which we may begin to confront the war on terror and prefigure the future of society in egalitarian terms. We have an understanding of the grassroots basis from which we may begin to develop international and cross-faith solidarity – symbolic, historically transformative solidarity – whilst we, at home, re-evaluate “the role of the West in the [Middle East] and, in doing so, accept that the only way to end IS’s capacity to recruit extremists is to restore hope: the same hope that we extinguished with unfathomable levels of violence, which to this day we continue to deny. Restoring hope means that Western governments must let go of their counterproductive geopolitical self-interest, apologise wholeheartedly for their wanton destruction of Iraq, and replace the endless provision of instruments of death and torture, with meaningful aid to help rebuild life in the form of humanitarian relief, reconstruction and economic development” (Ahmed, 2015). If these are the earliest and most basic coordinates in which we may respond humanely and effectively to the Paris Massacre, they are also the first steps toward reclaiming justice – steps that require we pressure political leaders to act responsibly, with care and forethought, rather than rushing into a more intensive war (Rogers, 2015).
‘If society justifies death by the necessity of the example, it must justify itself by making the publicity necessary’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 619). In other words, if it so happens that our society chooses to continue on its current path and the public choice is one which prolongs the ritual of violence and the intensification of bloody and horrendous war, then society ‘must show the executioner’s hands each time and force everyone to look at them’, so that every citizen and all those who had any responsibility in bringing the executioner into being, understand the abyss that they are moving toward (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 619). ‘Otherwise, society admits that it kills without knowing what it is saying or doing’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p.619). There is no ultimate proof that another military campaign, another execution, another aggressive phase in the war on terror will deter any future attacks or will deter more individuals from joining IS. In fact, it would seem the contrary: the more western society commits to violence, the more violence will be committed in return. If society votes for prolongation of war, then it should explicitly acknowledge its irrationalism each day, upon each new death.
On the other hand, if society chooses to work toward an end to IS and terror, it will have admitted that death rarely ever involves probability for peace.
In pre-emptive or retaliatory violence, the cycle of which western society is currently caught up in, the rationale of the ritual is simple: that by striking the enemy, they will either be defeated or deterred from future violence. In the case of IS or even Al-Qaida, neither is true. Bombs are dropped, entire cities are annihilated, and the monster grows. Thus more assassinations may be executed, the grain of insanity may deepen, ‘not so much for the crime committed but by virtue of all the crimes that might have been and were not [yet or possibly] committed, that can be and will not be committed’, in which case ‘a dangerous contradiction’ emerges: that ‘sweeping uncertainty authorizes the most implacable certainty’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 624). The basic issue, moreover, is this: ‘what will be left’, to paraphrase Camus once more, if ‘that power of example’ in the form of “pitiless war” and ritual violence as retribution ‘has another power, and a very real one, which continues to degrade humanity to the point where irrationalism prevails, the grain of insanity deepens, while shame, madness and murder become regularities of social existence? (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 625).
Irrespective of one’s politics – with the exception, perhaps, of the individual who has already subscribed to the ideology of the far-right and thus, in all actuality, has already become too hardened to absorb these words – we each want a society that offers us as individuals and our communities the best chance to live peacefully, without unmet needs and in relative comfort and co-existence. We want laws and institutions which serve the flourishing of all people within society, even if this want becomes confused today or ends up supporting political and economic opposites. Ritual violence and murder, either through war and terror or single acts of retribution, undermine the potential of human flourishing by justifying death as a means toward justice. ‘The fact that Cain is not killed but bears a mark of reprobation in the eyes of men is the lesson we must draw from the Old Testament, to say nothing of the Gospels, instead of looking back to the cruel examples of the Mosaic law. […] And if, really, public opinion and its representatives cannot give up the law of laziness which simply eliminates what it cannot reform, let us at least – while hoping for a new day of truth – not make of it the ‘solemn slaughterhouse’ that befouls our society’ and our international relations with one another (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 655). Compromises and potentially humane and effective steps forward are possible, if we open ourselves up to them and mobilize in solidarity with the victims and in the hope that we may work together, in the plurality of our struggle, to generate “new inclusive discourses of peace, diversity and co-existence inspired by faith and non-faith values” (Ahmed, 2015). The new government in Canada, for example, has already taken one step by pulling all CF-18 strike-aircraft from Syria and Iraq (Rogers, 2015). It is possible Australia may now follow (Rogers, 2015). These are positive signs. And yet, without mass public pressure, it is unlikely Paris will lead to a critical rethink (Rogers, 2015).
To those who may mobilize in struggle for peace or are at least sympathetic to the reflections presented in this essay, I offer one final thought: it is true the weight of suffering – that heavy burden of the loss of life and of the experience of horror – is not an easy one to carry forward. But together it is possible that we carry our history, its suffering and pain and terror, and seek an end to the vicious cycle, to the ritual of violence and to the public thirst for retribution and justice as death. It is the only way. And in coming together to achieve this end, we should remember that our politics of hope and co-existence is one built on interaction in and through one another, irrespective of faith. This is where real freedom begins, where real healing and peace may begin to germinate until finally it overthrows systemic cycles of violence and the psyche caught up in ritual patterns of domination. Ultimately ‘there will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed’ (Camus, 1957/2004; p. 656) – now is the moment to finally expunge death as a ritual and as a law.
References
Ahmed, N. (2015). No Piers Morgan – This is how to destroy the Islamic State. Middle East Eye. Retrieved from http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/no-piers-morgan-how-destroy-islamic-state-1630388804#sthash.wBAfF9b3.dpuf
Camus, A. (1957/2004). Reflections on the Guillotine. In The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 609-656
Gunn, R. (2015). Emancipation, Recognition, Democracy: A Talk on Occupy-Style Politics. Heathwood Press. Retrieved from https://heathwoodpress.com/emancipation-recognition-democracy-a-talk-on-occupy-style-politics/
Smith, R.C., Sperber, E. (2014). Democracy in Crisis: Toward a Foundational, Alternative Theory of Participatory Democracy. Heathwood Press. Retrieved from https://heathwoodpress.com/democracy-in-crisis-toward-a-foundational-alternative-theory-of-participatory-democracy/
Rogers, P. (2015) The Paris atrocity, and after. openDemocracy. Retrieved from https://www.opendemocracy.net/paris-atrocity-and-after
Notes
[i] This essay is dedicated to Albert Camus and his tireless fight against needless violence and suffering. Camus’ famous essay, Reflections on the Guillotine, acts in spirit as a primary inspiration for the analysis that follows.
[ii] For further breakdown of these figures, please see the latest research by Airwars, an independent body who is monitoring the international coalition’s airstrikes against Islamic State (Daesh) in Iraq and Syria.: http://airwars.org/
[iii] For a more in-depth analysis of the complex relation between western society and the creation of the Islamic State, I suggest reviewing Nafeez Ahmed’s (2015) widely recognized investigative research published under the title” Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS”: https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
[iv] For example, see: Ahmed, N. (2015). No Piers Morgan – This is how to destroy the Islamic State. In Middle East Eye. Retrieved from http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/no-piers-morgan-how-destroy-islamic-state-1630388804#sthash.wBAfF9b3.dpuf
R.C. Smith
Latest posts by R.C. Smith (see all)
- Reflections on Ritual Violence: The War on Terror, the Paris Atrocity, and Roads to Peace - November 16, 2015
- Review of Herbert Marcuse’s Paris Lectures at Vincennes University, 1974 - October 27, 2015
- Call for Papers: Critical Theory and Emancipatory Politics (Heathwood Journal, Issue 2) - September 24, 2015
- The All-Pervasive Presence of the Bigot – Understanding the Persistence of Prejudice and How to Combat It - September 15, 2015
- Paths Forward: Grassroots (Participatory) Movements, Hierarchy vs. Horizontality, and Issues of Solidarity and Representation - August 3, 2015
