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Historical Parallels of Terrorism
Pankaj Mishra.
What if we are looking at the phenomenon of terrorism through the wrong lens? The vast majority of terrorism in the world today is coming from Muslims, that much is clear. But this observation must be tempered with its corollary that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Is it right, then, to look at modern terrorism strictly through the lens of Islam? Or are there perhaps prior historical patterns and precedents that hold up a warped mirror to our own predicament? Does modern terrorism stem directly from Islam, or is modern terrorism just an Islamic spin on another expression of deeper problem of modernity, a problem whose prior manifestations we might recognize? This is just a short post as I don’t have time for a more in-depth one and would need to read this book to have a fuller response.
I ask because of an interview I recently listened to through BBC History Magazine’s podcast, History Extra. The interview was with Pankaj Mishra, who has authored a book entitled The Roots Of Modern Rage. From the book’s description at Amazon (emphasis my own):
[Pankaj] shows that as the world became modern, those who were unable to enjoy its promises―of freedom, stability, and prosperity―were increasingly susceptible to demagogues. The many who came late to this new world―or were left, or pushed, behind―reacted in horrifyingly similar ways: with intense hatred of invented enemies, attempts to re-create an imaginary golden age, and self-empowerment through spectacular violence. It was from among the ranks of the disaffected that the militants of the nineteenth century arose―angry young men who became cultural nationalists in Germany, messianic revolutionaries in Russia, bellicose chauvinists in Italy, and anarchist terrorists internationally.
Pankaj sees in modern Islamism patterns very similar to Nazi Germany, revolutionary Russia, and many other groups besides. I do not have an interview transcript to quote directly, but in the interview he declares that the Islamism that guides terrorists of Isis and Al-Qaeda is a mish-mash of 19th and 20th century socialist philosophy with Islam thrown in, and thus itself of the same family as horrible philosophical responses to modernity that drove the Nazis and the Soviets. Far from actually reaching back to historical Islam for purity, it is far more akin to the Nazi obsession with old German pantheism, inventing a philosophical and religious past that never was and steering itself towards a purity that never could have existed.
I think he’s got a point here. Germany, after centuries of division as the battleground of the European powers, united, modernized, and industrialized extraordinarily quickly, and in feelings its oats while having a massive chip on its shoulder it sparked two massive wars, the second of which was sustained by an insane pagan racial ideology. Russia, being forced to modernize in a very short order, without having the educational or cultural foundation to sustain it, devolved through revolution into a brutal industrial dictatorship that threatened the rest of the world for many decades.
I’ve not had the chance to read his book in full, though, and as I recall from the interview he doesn’t necessarily have any good solutions for the problem, save that the West must have and express more faith in itself over its successes, the Islamic world must reconcile itself to modernity, and that the rest of the world and the West must together find a new a fusion of thought that respects the past while also facing up to the fact that it’s never coming back. Near the end of the interview, the author, himself an Asian, responds rather humorously to the query of whether Eurocentrism in philosophy should be set aside by saying that not only should it not be discarded, but that it should be embraced for its strengths.
For myself it has had me wondering if perhaps we ought to be taking the longer view too that Islamism will eventually burn itself out like the Soviets if we keep a firm resolve against it, or if it will by necessity be crushed like we had to do to the Nazis. Both solutions, though, have little to say on immigration itself and a lot to say in favor of having strength in our own history and culture as being paramount. Either way, If Pankaj is correct in his diagnosis, when Islamic nations and cultures do reconcile themselves with the modern world (and they’ll have to, though the process is proving extremely painful from within and without), the phenomenon of Islamism, with its terrorism, will eventually burn out or be crushed — either way it will not sustain itself.
I have no conclusions on this myself, but it does bear pondering and questioning.
Published in History
Provincialism is always present, but hard to see when you’re not part of it. I went to school with an Iraqi who always referred to Palestinians as hicks and bumpkins. I mean, he really really didn’t like them and would make fun of their accents.
I’ve worked with lots of H1-B Indians, and they do the same thing with Punjabi.
Yeah. I had a bunch of Chinese frat brothers, all from California, all at least third generation. One guy from a big city and others from small towns you never heard of. The guy from the city used to make fun of how one of the small town guys talked: “you sound like you just got off the boat.”
A friend of mine who was very good with foreign languages learned Chinese in high school, and later traveled to China. Everyone he spoke with was able to understand him, but they always looked at him perplexed. It wasn’t until someone asked him “Excuse me, but, if you are an American, why do you sound like a country bumpkin?” Then he realized that he had picked up the regional accent of his Chinese teacher in addition to the ability to speak Chinese.
And, from a terrorist sympathizing elected leader in one with a possibly formerly meaningful franchise: Democracy. Train. Station. Get off.
My college advisor was an American Francophile of mixed German and Scottish descent. He looked very German too, so it rather broke his heart to learn from French natives that though he learned French from another French native, he somehow spoke it with a thick German accent.
The Chinese subjects who went to America tended not to be wealthy, highly cultured, or well connected.
Have you heard that (probably apocryphal) story about how all these efforts to ‘save the rhino’ – educating villagers, promoting ecotourism, increasing ranger numbers – were defeated by the strong demand for rhino horn as an aphrodisiac? What saved the rhino was the advent of Viagra.
What drives terrorism? The equivalent of the wish to kill rhinos or the equivalent of the desire for an erection?
So, what is the root cause according to Zafar?
My Spanish teachers were all Cuban, which isn’t a bumpkinish accent, but a heavy one. The relative who taught me German, to the extent I learned it, passed a real hayseed accent along to me, though.
I was thinking the same thing. My Spanish teacher passed along a Colombian accent, which is like the Southern drawl of Spanish accents. And I can’t keep up with Cubans or Puerto Ricans; too fast, too staccato.
An Italian teacher told me, if you learn standard Italian, everyone knows you’re foreign, because no native Italian speaker speaks standard Italian in normal conversation. Newscasters use it, but that’s about it.
I had never paid enough attention to those two trends to connect them to other attempts to bring back the good, old agrarian days. Missing out on a connection like that makes me wonder if I’ll have to turn in my Reticulator badge.
Just today I was reading that during the Depression of the 1930s there was a back-to-the-land movement in the United States. People who had become urbanized still had enough connections with their rural past that the hard times made them long for the Golden Age of rural, agricultural life. I had not been aware of this trend, either, though maybe it was a case of my not seeing the forest for the trees.
I read about it in:
Connkin, P. K. (1960). Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Conkin wrote (sympathetically) about the planned communities that were established as part of the New Deal, which (in my view) were a bastardization or hijacking of the back-to-the-land movement, done at great expense to the taxpayers and without much to show for it. But I’m trying to understand just what the New Deal brainiacs were thinking when they set these up.
I’ve gotten into it this topic because I’m trying to find out whether so much as one (1) Co-Op farm tractor was produced at the Arthurdale community, which was one of a hundred settlements set up by the New Deal, and one in which Eleanor Roosevelt meddled personally. One former Congressman who was very opposed to this program said not a single tractor was produced. I don’t know if he was prone to exaggeration like our current President. Other sources are ambiguous about it.
I have an offer by an antique tractor enthusiast in our area to show me the tractor with Serial No. 1 stamped on it. It’s not in working condition, but a lot of those early tractors are in working order and are in the hands of collectors. These earliest models were made in a printing plant in my town of Battle Creek, Michigan.
Interesting observation. I had never before heard that explanation for why the Nazis redoubled their efforts at genocide when they were losing.
There actually was a back-to-the-land-movement that was effective, but not part of any government or political program. When factory jobs dried up, people went home to the family farms they had left a few years before, because there, at least they would eat.
Do you know of anybody who did this? I’m sure people would have done it if they could, as most farm families (such as my relatives) at least didn’t go hungry during the Depression. But if you sold your farm and moved to the city, how would you go back unless you moved in with relatives? I don’t happen to know of any examples where this happened.
My family. While members of the family had other farms over the years, there was a family farm from about 1830 to 1966. Someone of each generation worked it throughout that time, with the other kids mostly going off and doing other things.
That’s an interesting theory, but I don’t think it’s entirely supported by the facts. The more labor intensive killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen and the Wehrmacht in the East killed more than is generally thought. Fr. Patrick Desbois’ work (archival, interviews, ballistic and other forensic evidence) led him to estimate the non-industrial death toll in the “Holocaust by Bullets” for Ukraine alone at more than 1 million.
1942, before the USSR began to turn the tide, saw the first large scale implementation of the death camp technology such as gas chambers – and the largest Holocaust death toll of any single year of the war. (I think that this estimate for 1942 doesn’t take into account Fr. Desbois’ work, either.) This is not to minimize the murder spree that took so many lives in the last year of the war in Europe.
We probably shouldn’t underestimate the effect of the fact that Hitler, yemach shemo, was doing speedballs plus meth pretty much daily by the end of the war. Many tens of millions of doses of meth consumed by German troops throughout the war especially during Blitzkreig operations.
On the other hand, the retail killing in the East was lubricated by alcohol:
Of terrorism? Some people are crazy, but they only get enough support to be dangerous because a critical mass of poeple perceive a profound injustice and experiece it as personal. jmho.
Their analysis and preferred solutions may be completely wrong, but that’s what drives it.
There must have been more of this than I had thought. Conkin cites government estimates that show the urbanization of America had reversed briefly. In 1930 the country had a net gain of 17000 in population over the cities. In 1931 it was 214,000 and in 1932 it was 533,000. In 1933 the usual pattern resumed with urban areas having a net gain of 277,000 over the country. (Then he tells of revised statistics showing that only in 1932 was there a net gain by rural areas, and that of only half of the early estimate.)
Then the government stepped in, which I think will be the main story of his book.