Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [0]
Blood and Rage
A CULTURAL HISTORY OF TERRORISM
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1 Green: The Fenian Dynamiters
CHAPTER 2 Red: Russian Nihilists and Revolutionaries
CHAPTER 3 Black: Anarchists and Terrorism
CHAPTER 4 Death in the Sun: Terror and Decolonisation
CHAPTER 5 Attention-Seeking: Black September and International Terrorism
CHAPTER 6 Guilty White Kids: The Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction
CHAPTER 7 Small-Nation Terror
CHAPTER 8 World Rage: Islamist Terrorism
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AFTERTHOUGHTS
About the Author
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
This book’s starting point is the moment when recognisably modern terrorist organisations emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, dubious precedence being accorded here to the Irish Fenians. We could venture back to the medieval Assassins of Syria or the early modern British Gunpowder Plot, but my knowledge of both has faded with age and I do not regard either as especially helpful in understanding contemporary terrorism. The book’s working assumptions are evident throughout. There are well over a hundred definitions of terrorism and it is possible to aggregate those elements that recur most frequently. Terrorism is a tactic primarily used by non-state actors, who can be an acephalous entity as well as a hierarchical organisation, to create a psychological climate of fear in order to compensate for the legitimate political power they do not possess. It can be distinguished from, say, guerrilla warfare, political assassination or economic sabotage, although organisations that practise terror have certainly resorted to these too.
That modern states, from the Jacobins in the 1790s onwards, have been responsible for the most lethal instances of terrorism, including self-styled counter-terror campaigns, is taken as a given, which does not absolve non-state actors through repetition of this historical truism. State violence is currently on the defensive, as various rabble armies run amok under the guise of Islamic or liberation or people’s revolution or whatever they call themselves. Nor does the cliche that yesterday’s terrorist is tomorrow’s statesman really get us very far. If you imagine that Osama bin Laden is going to evolve into Nelson Mandela, you need a psychiatrist rather than an historian. The Al Qaeda leader does not want to negotiate with us since what he desires is for all infidels and apostates to submit or be killed.
This book focuses on life histories and actions rather than the theories which validate them, roughly in accord with St Matthew’s precept ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’. This is not because I am dismissive of ideas and ideology - quite the contrary - but because these seem a relatively neglected part of the picture. Ideology is like a detonator that enables a pre-existing chemical mix to explode. Terrorists make choices all along their journey, and it is these I am most interested in. Hence the book is about terrorism as a career, a culture and a way of life, although obviously one involving death, for the terrorists’ victims and sometimes for the terrorists themselves, unless they deliberately court this through suicidal operations like Hamas, Hizbollah or the Tamil Tigers. Terrorism is violent, which is why there is much detailed discussion of violence in the book, as well as material intended to demystify and deglamorise terrorist operations. Some terrorists do indeed kill people; many others spend their time laundering money or stealing vehicles. Since much of this material is in the public domain, it is of no operational use to would-be terrorists.
As the book tries to make crystal clear, especially to anyone who might appear to harbour a sneaking admiration for those who wish to change the world by violence, the milieu of terrorists is invariably morally squalid, when it is not merely criminal. That is especially evident in the chapters below on Russian nihilists, the Baader-Meinhof gang, and both loyalist and republican terrorists