{"id":1662,"date":"2011-08-08T07:51:05","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T11:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=1662"},"modified":"2011-08-26T07:52:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T11:52:54","slug":"the-number-frightened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=1662","title":{"rendered":"the number frightened"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(learn more about the book at the “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here’s a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?<\/p>\n

“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”<\/p>\n

The TV reporter from Britain’s ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, \u00a0more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”<\/p>\n

– MSNBC.com’s World Blog<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ongoing riots in and around London highlight the truth behind an old Arab proverb:\u00a0 “victory is not gained by the number killed, but by the number frightened.”\u00a0 <\/em>The formative entropy that began when a Tunisian fruit-dealer immolated himself on the street has finally rippled out across borders of the Arab world and into the West.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t the first time an act of public violence somewhere else in the world has started a movement that ends up resonating inside the West as well.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

As one century melded into the next, a different sort of terrorism began to stir in the core of the world’s great power.<\/p>\n

Like others before, it was rooted in protest against the oppressive policies of what it saw as an immoral and corrupt government. A government that was seen by many as having no right to be exercising any influence over the lives of a people and occupying its lands. A government that hadn’t been legitimately elected by its people and was seen by many as serving the interests of a wealthy elite while ignoring the moral and social degeneration going on inside the nation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The group sought to buck this illegitimate authority and bring a new form of rule to its people, one which would better ensure their prosperity. For too long the group had watched as this oppressive government dominated its lands and acted for its own benefit, not taking into account the effect its decisions had on the local populace. Corruption seeped into their affairs. Resources were exploited. Women and children suffered. The terrorists were determined to enact change – however, this group was faced with a critical problem.<\/p>\n

It seemed nearly impossible to rally the masses, the popular Street, to action. Generations of authoritarian militaristic rule had caused them to be filled with “apathy and alienation.” Any sort of democratic reform seemed impossible, as any move towards it was met with a heavy and lethal hand.<\/p>\n

To fight this illegitimate and exploitative rule the group had to find some way to break the Street out of its hellish shell of hopelessness and oppression \u2013 solving this dilemma was their first problem. And in the response to this problem lay this terrorist group’s novelty: they resorted to “daring and dramatic acts of violence designed to attract attention to the group and its cause.” So the terrorists chose targets which they felt embodied the symbolic value of their oppressors, targets which they believed would be most apt to awaken the Street from its apathy and despair. And finally, after having taken “extraordinary measures to ensure the success of this attempt,” they acted.<\/p>\n

The attack was coordinated, well planned, and involved four separate, stunning explosions \u2013 each carried out by a group of volunteers who proved they were willing to die for their cause. The success of the attack caused the full wrath of the state they had attacked to rain down on the heads of the terrorists, who quickly saw their remote safe-houses and hide-outs swarmed by the government they’d assaulted.<\/p>\n

On the first day of March in 1881, the Narodnaya Volya assassinated Tsar Alexander II by bombing his sleigh as it was traveling along the snowy late-spring Russian roads \u2013 one-hundred and twenty years before al-Qaeda carried out its own spectacular attack on the morning of September 11th. And, after the sun set on that cold Russian winter’s day, the world would \u2013 once again \u2013 never be the same.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Narodnaya Volya, or People’s Will, set that standard that al-Qaeda sought to emulate. Their actions against the Cossack-guarded Tsar were fueled by the first true manifestation of the theory “propaganda by deed.”<\/p>\n

This theory, elucidated by the Italian extremist Carlo Pisacane, states that violence is necessary to both draw attention to a revolutionary cause as well as rally the disaffected masses behind it. Every terrorist act has an instructive purpose as well as a fomenting one. Pisacane argued, and many revolutionaries who listened to him have agreed, that violence was needed “not only to draw attention to, or generate publicity for, a cause, but to inform, educate and ultimately rally the masses behind the revolution.”4<\/a><\/sup> This latter purpose of dramatic violence, the instructional and educational one, could never be accomplished through pamphlets, posters, or rallies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Italian theorist saw every act of Symbolic Terror as a “chimera,” due to the paradoxical belief that “the people will not be free when they are educated but educated when they are free.” In simpler parlance: violent acts are necessary to first free the People from their manacling to false social assumptions both in terms of what is possible and what is Right.<\/p>\n

It is violence that opens minds to new revolutionary ideas.<\/p>\n

Minds that otherwise would remain locked by the bars of what is socially acceptable. Minds aren’t changed by ideas, but are changed after actions open them up to the possibility of new ideas. Actions, then, are what rewires minds and makes them capable of accepting, forming, and eventually implementing new ideas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

The terrorist attacks of September 11th weren’t the maniacal actions of an apocalyptic sect madly bent on the annihilation of America and its people, nor were they fueled by hatred and an irrational predilection with death and mayhem. Neither death nor mayhem were even main goals of al-Qaeda. They did not seek to kill as many innocents as possible, but to dramatically attack buildings which served as the most vivid symbols of America’s dominance and control over the world. The people inside the buildings were invisible to the attackers, and so were largely incidental.<\/p>\n

And their attacks were meant not to cause mayhem per say, but a coordinated and documentable violence that would be broadcast to the entire world. Violence that would show their people, the audience was not only the American public but Muslims across the world, and the message was that American hegemony was not invincible and could be successfully assaulted.<\/p>\n

It is almost universally assumed that 9\/11 was aimed at the American public. We interpret it in terms of how many lives were lost, in what it meant to us, in how it affected us, and it resulted in us asking the question Why Do They Hate Us? It is assumed that 9\/11 wrought a destructive toll \u2013 in terms of fathers and friends and loved-ones lost, billions of dollars of damage done, airline revenues turning into debt, even a destruction of our own national innocence.<\/p>\n

But if you really look at it, 9\/11 very clearly wasn’t just about killing innocents.<\/p>\n

It was about lighting torches. It was about empowering a disaffected and largely hopeless group, and rallying them to the vanguard and the ideas of a man who was seen by many of those who share his faith as one of the most devout and pious men alive at the time.<\/p>\n

Understanding how this could be possible is based on two rather distant predicates. The first is the fate of the Narodnaya Volya. After their assassination of the Tsar in 1881, Russia soon became a police state as the Tsar implemented oppressive polices to try and destroy the group. Soon thousands of police forces were sent into the furthest corners of the Motherland, on the hunt against a “tiny, clandestine band that had the advantages of mobility, surprise, and relative invisibility.”11<\/a><\/sup> And although the Narodnaya Volya was soon destroyed, the propaganda of their deed lived on.<\/p>\n

Later that same year, American president James Garfield was assassinated by anarchists inspired by the actions of the Narodnaya Volya. And two decades after that, terrorists managed to kill President William McKinley. Soon the techniques of the Narodnaya Volya which had caused the Tsarist regime to expend resources on repression which might’ve been used to extend its stay in power, were copied across the world. Much of the violent anarchism that swept across early 20th Century Europe can arguably trace its roots back to the Narodnaya Volya and the propaganda of their deed. Bin Ladin is hijacking their fundamental manifestation of the propaganda by deed, but mixing in elements unique to our modern era.<\/p>\n

The second concept needed to understand bin Ladin’s own take on propaganda by deed that hasn’t been explained yet requires returning back to the Middle East of the 1970s. Then, at the same time as city buses were serving as multi-ton wheeled canaries for the fumes of civil discontent, international jetliners were being directed in a different direction and on a more cosmopolitan course \u2013 although for many of the same purposes.<\/p>\n

And, perhaps more importantly, they provide the necessary vehicles for conveying the tale of how bin Ladin began to act his dreams with open eyes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(learn more about the book at the “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit) Here’s a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent? “Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?” The TV […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,19,31,44,45,20,153],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anonymity","tag-civil-unrest","tag-domestic-terrorism","tag-innercity-violence","tag-propoganda","tag-riots","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nthe number frightened - Tremble the Devil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=1662\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"https:\/\/tremblethedevil.com\/?p=1662&page=2\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"the number frightened - Tremble the Devil\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(learn more about the book at the “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit) Here’s a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent? 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