Terrorist
or psychopath?
As if we
had to choose one or the other. As if all terrorists were not (and have not
always been) psychopaths. As if the Nazi henchmen of the 1920s and ‘30s, the
Hitlerian paramilitary squads that hounded democrats and Jews, as if the SS
brutes responsible for the ideological indoctrination of the German masses were
ever anything but psychopathic monsters up and down the hierarchy. Mohamed
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the truck-driving killer who cut short 84 lives last
Thursday in Nice, was a terrorist and a psychopath. He was unstable, mentally
deranged, and a member of the criminal army who heard Daech’s call, published
in the organization’s propaganda magazine: Use a truck “like a lawnmower”! Go
into the “most densely populated places”! To “maximize the carnage,” gather “as
much speed as possible while maintaining control of the vehicle”! And bring
along firearms to finish off survivors once the truck is stopped! No
contradiction there. This is the double face of barbarism.
The
question of the “lone wolf.”
We seem compelled to repeat, ad infinitum and ad nauseam,
as if to reassure ourselves, that “as far as we know at present,” the killer
was acting alone, had not been flagged as a security threat, and had no
apparent link with Daech. As if that were the question. As if Daech were not
the exact opposite of an entity with which one would be clearly affiliated. And
as if the innovation in its mode of operations were not precisely that it did
not need, in order to function, a central committee to give orders, assign responsibilities,
and set targets. Daech is the caliphate plus Twitter. It is the Uberization of
opportunistic mass terrorism. It is influence without contact, power by
contagion and suggestion. The ultimate stage of a nihilism born in the in the
mud and the mist of the twentieth century and nearing the end, perhaps, of its
mad course. One can be a soldier in the new army without ever being trained,
recruited, or even approached.
The claim
of responsibility.
Oh, the
anxiety with which we awaited the claim of responsibility for the crime! And
the buzz it generated when it came! Followed by byzantine debates about its
wording, its timing, and the fact that, this time around, the invisible
committee took not 24 hours but 36 before issuing its statement! The truth is
that none of that matters any more now than it did in the days of the Red
Brigades, which sometimes neglected to claim responsibility for their crimes
and sometimes, when it suited them, took credit for the acts of rival
organizations. Even more so with Daech, this web of gangsters with no code and
no honor who have no reason to fit themselves into the neat boxes created by
our experts. On some occasions the terrifying effect of an act is magnified by
a claim of responsibility (even if the claim is false). On others the terror is
greater if survivors are left confused and in doubt. I can imagine the
amusement in Mosul at the naïveté of our Daechologists poring over every word
of their slapdash communiqués. Islamism is opportunism. Lift the rock of radicalism
and one finds the makeshift rhetoric of a gang that fears neither God nor man.
What? An
Islamist who did not attend a mosque or observe Ramadan? Who salsa danced and drank beer?
Well, yes. Because Islamism is not a religion but a form of politics. More
precisely, it is a version of Islam only insofar as it is first and foremost a
variant of the generic form of politics that for a century has been known as
fascism. So that whereas the political link is intense, essential, and
defining—whereas jihadism has been from its origins (that is, from the founding
of the Muslim Brotherhood) a specific and explicit form of Nazism—the religious
link, the link with faith, is fuzzy and serves merely as a back-up. Indeed the
fuzziness grows as one leaves the theological-political center for the vast and
nebulous periphery in which these ultimate barbarians operate. Mohamed
Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was the proof of that. He was the face of a Daech that, one
hopes, is approaching the limits of its possible growth, where, appropriately,
its watchwords lose their distinction.
Why Nice?
Why France? What did we do to find ourselves once again in the line of fire?
Another false question. The very
definition of the false question. One that generates answers—as is always the
case when one begins with the wrong question—in which absurdity (for example,
the myth of “reprisals” undertaken ostensibly for a French military engagement
in Syria that began after, not before, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the
kosher market) contends with an inclination toward submission (evident in calls
to repeal France’s ban on wearing the veil in public, to relax the principle of
secularism, to come to terms). The truth is that jihadism strikes everywhere.
It has no shortage of targets, and these are chosen purely opportunistically.
Orlando one day. Tunisia or Bangladesh the next. Or Brussels, Istanbul, or
Nice, if that is where jihadism detects vulnerability. It is a mistake to
attribute to this array of randomly chosen targets more sense than it has. And
it is an even worse mistake to give jihad credit for having a mind that is
programming its offensives as one might play a game of chess. These people
derive their strength from our weaknesses. And the temptation to overinterpret,
to see subtle signs everywhere, to lend to these mean souls the dignity of a
logic they do not have—that is another of our weaknesses.
(Translated
from French by Steven B. Kennedy)
