Terrorism: The Return of the Anarchists
Mr. Rumsfeld has, recently, along with his master Mr. Bush, been publicly referring to Islamic terrorists as "Nazis" and "Islamic Fascists". Putting aside the issue of the pot calling the kettle black, there are fundamental issues of terminology here.
Fascists seek to control society using violence, they seek to maintain traditional structures that are no longer functional using brute force and repression. They are, fundamentally, irrational, because their goals are obsolete and impractical. Terrorists, in contrast, simply seek to destroy and terrorize because society gives them nothing to lose.
The correct analogy to the modern terrorism phenomenon is, in fact, not the Nazis, but the Anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their role was eclipsed by the Soviet Union, but people forget how effective they were. Despite their relatively small numbers and antipathy to systematic organization, they managed, among many other "achievements", to assassinate Czar Alexander II of Russia and President Mckinley of the United States, as well as Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, bringing on that "Capitalist Holocaust", the first world war.
And a capitalist holocaust was exactly what they wanted. Here, we require some additional terminological distinctions, specifically:
1. Capitalist: one who subscribes to the doctrine of Adam Smith, in "The Wealth of Nations", that Greed, up to a point, has its uses in society, through the manipulation and accumulation of wealth or "Capital".
2. Social Darwinist: one who believes that those who fail to prosper in capitalist societies are genetically inferior individuals who should be eliminated from the human gene pool for the good of the human race. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such individuals saw Greed as the ultimate human motivation, and anyone deficient in Greed was inferior, and should be allowed to die.
3. Robber-Baron Capitalists : Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller Senior, J.P Morgan etc. Effectively, the ultimate Social Darwinists.
Effectively, the Anarchists arose to fight the (social darwinists)/(Robber-Baron Capitalists) who wanted to let a significant portion of the population starve to death because they weren't greedy enough to ensure the "progress of the human race". They used random violence to undermine the robber barons. They faded away with the rise of the Soviet Union, an organized competition to the robber barons, that effectively forced the rich to share the wealth or face certain revolution and their own extermination.
Take a good look at Mexico, just south of the border. Civil war and corruption. Is history repeating itself? It tends to.
Jerry Kraus
jkraus_1999@yahoo.com
Mr. Rumsfeld has, recently, along with his master Mr. Bush, been publicly referring to Islamic terrorists as "Nazis" and "Islamic Fascists". Putting aside the issue of the pot calling the kettle black, there are fundamental issues of terminology here.
Fascists seek to control society using violence, they seek to maintain traditional structures that are no longer functional using brute force and repression. They are, fundamentally, irrational, because their goals are obsolete and impractical. Terrorists, in contrast, simply seek to destroy and terrorize because society gives them nothing to lose.
The correct analogy to the modern terrorism phenomenon is, in fact, not the Nazis, but the Anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their role was eclipsed by the Soviet Union, but people forget how effective they were. Despite their relatively small numbers and antipathy to systematic organization, they managed, among many other "achievements", to assassinate Czar Alexander II of Russia and President Mckinley of the United States, as well as Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, bringing on that "Capitalist Holocaust", the first world war.
And a capitalist holocaust was exactly what they wanted. Here, we require some additional terminological distinctions, specifically:
1. Capitalist: one who subscribes to the doctrine of Adam Smith, in "The Wealth of Nations", that Greed, up to a point, has its uses in society, through the manipulation and accumulation of wealth or "Capital".
2. Social Darwinist: one who believes that those who fail to prosper in capitalist societies are genetically inferior individuals who should be eliminated from the human gene pool for the good of the human race. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such individuals saw Greed as the ultimate human motivation, and anyone deficient in Greed was inferior, and should be allowed to die.
3. Robber-Baron Capitalists : Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller Senior, J.P Morgan etc. Effectively, the ultimate Social Darwinists.
Effectively, the Anarchists arose to fight the (social darwinists)/(Robber-Baron Capitalists) who wanted to let a significant portion of the population starve to death because they weren't greedy enough to ensure the "progress of the human race". They used random violence to undermine the robber barons. They faded away with the rise of the Soviet Union, an organized competition to the robber barons, that effectively forced the rich to share the wealth or face certain revolution and their own extermination.
Take a good look at Mexico, just south of the border. Civil war and corruption. Is history repeating itself? It tends to.
Jerry Kraus
jkraus_1999@yahoo.com
posted by Jerry Kraus at 8:18 AM
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