Attack the System

by Keith Preston

  In return for fostering technological development which made possible a much-augmented standard of living the state exacted protection money. Essentially it consisted of unlimited blood and treasure, a development which climaxed during the first half of the twentieth century. Reveling in total war, the state demanded and obtained sacrifice on a scale which, had they been able to imagine it, would have made even the old Aztec gods blanch.[200]

  2. Anarchists versus the State and Propaganda by the Deed: Early Challenges to the State’s Monopoly on Violence (1885–1915)

  As previously mentioned, the use of violence to promote political ends has always existed in some form or another. The actual use of the term “terrorism” began during the time of the French Revolution. The term was brought into common use by the English political philosopher Edmund Burke, who denounced the “terrorism” of the French revolutionaries.[201] What is of importance to the thesis outlined in this article is not political violence per se, but the manner by which the use of such violence has arisen in the modern Western world and its relationship to the modern state and the future of the modern state. What is distinctive about modern terrorism is not that it is “terrorism” but that it occurs within the context of an institutional framework where a single corporative entity (the state) claims a monopoly on the use of violence as opposed to one where the waging of war by private individuals and groups is expected and where private acts of violence (such as assassination) are standard political tools.

  The popular image of “terrorism” in its contemporary form is traceable to the tendency of nineteenth-century revolutionaries to engage in political assassinations. Such tactics were utilized by a number of ideological tendencies (for instance, Irish nationalists), but by far the most notorious and stereotypical of such tendencies were what would now be called the “classical anarchists.”[202]

  There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that among the earliest challengers to the modern state’s monopoly on violence would be an ideological tendency that denies the very legitimacy of the state itself, as opposed to the legitimacy of a particular type of state or a specific state policy or action. Although fairly obscure today, the classical anarchists were in their time a rather large movement, considering the radical nature of their ideas, involving millions of people and maintaining a presence in most countries, not only in Europe and North America but also in Russia, Asia, Latin America, and even Africa. As might be expected, the anarchists were a diverse and often eccentric lot. Their ranks included everything from labor militants to organizers of utopian colonies, proto-feminists and homosexuals to those who synthesized anarchist militancy with the machismo common to Latin cultures, quasi-Marxists to extreme individualists, and pacifists and extreme idealists to proponents of terrorism or what was called “propaganda by the deed.”[203]

  The concept of “propaganda by the deed” was formulated by the anarchists as a means of describing their notion of leadership by method of “direct action” as opposed to conventional political outlets like political parties. Not all efforts at “direct action” or even “propaganda by the deed” involved violence. Sometimes these terms took on milder connotations, such as the creation of alternative institutions (for example, worker cooperatives or independent schools) that the anarchists hoped would be a model for the broader transformation of society. However, these terms eventually came to be identified by the public at large and many anarchists alike as mere synonyms for acts of political violence. There were many such incidents. The most notorious of these were the regicides carried out by the anarchists. In his study of the origins of urban terrorism, Anthony M. Burton observes that over a thirty year period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the anarchists assassinated a head of state or cabinet official approximately once every eighteen months. The most well-known attacks of this type were the assassinations of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, President Carnot of France, King Umberto of Italy, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and President William McKinley of the United States.[204]

  The actual political and intellectual theories of the anarchists were more sophisticated than what they were often given credit for, and not all anarchists approved of the actions associated with “propaganda by the deed.”[205] Indeed, the anarchists included within their ranks many rather innovative thinkers, including the pioneer sociologist and leading anarchist militant Peter Kropotkin, the economist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the geographer Élisée Reclus, and other individuals of similar caliber. Some anarchists opposed violent actions outright, and others felt somewhat ambivalent about the question. However, some anarchist leaders were unabashed champions of armed insurrection and overthrow of the existing bourgeois order by any means necessary. The majority of anarchists did not simply oppose the state and its laws and institutions. They were also social revolutionaries of a type and bitterly denounced the frequently deplorable working conditions the laboring classes of the day were subjected to, a characteristic they shared with socialists and progressives of all stripes. Political violence was not merely an end unto itself but an act of revolt against political and economic situations regarded as unduly oppressive and unjust.[206]

  Of the leading personalities of classical anarchism, the one who was perhaps most representative of the stereotype of the anarchist as the terrorist madman was the German-American Johann Most. By the time of his emigration to America in 1882, Most had already served time in Germany’s Reichstag (as a socialist deputy) and in Germany’s prisons (as a treasonous socialist revolutionary). Deciding that socialism lacked the revolutionary fervor he desired, Most became an anarchist. As editor of the anarchist publication Freiheit (German for “Liberty”), Most was an incessant preacher of violent revolution.[207] He was at times described as a “terrorist of the word” with his writings characterized as “like lava shooting forth flames of ridicule, scorn and defiance . . . and breathing hatred.”[208] The title of one of Most’s published works provides a sufficient description of his general outlook: Science of Revolutionary Warfare: A Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitro-glycerin, Dynamite, Gun Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons.[209] Most was based in Chicago, location of the Haymarket incident of 1882, when a bomb was thrown into a crowd of persons, killing eight policemen. Though no actual perpetrator was determined, eight anarchist militants were prosecuted for incitement. Four were executed and a fifth committed suicide while awaiting the gallows.[210]

  Anarchists were predictably regarded by the authorities of the day as mere deviants and criminals. Two interesting works that survive from the Haymarket period bear this out. One of these, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe was written by Michael J. Schaack, a Chicago police captain who supervised the investigation following the Haymarket bombing. Schaack describes the anarchists with language resembling that of the “international communist conspiracy” rhetoric that later came to be popular in the United States during the 1950s:

  Let none mistake either the purpose or the devotion of these fanatics, nor their growing strength. This is methodic—not a haphazard conspiracy. The ferment in Russia is controlled by the same heads and the same hands as the activity in Chicago. There is a cold-blooded, calculating purpose behind this revolt, manipulating every part of it, the world over, to a common and ruinous end.[211]

  The other work in question, The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America, by an unidentified author using the name “George N. McLean,” describes the Haymarket incident and the subsequent investigation, trial, and executions. Included is a section with the subtitle “The Anarchist’s Fatal Delusion,” providing the following characterization of the anarchist:

  Under the fascination of rose-tinted delusion whose fatal mists obscure the mental and moral realm of thought, many become criminals, goaded on by blind infatuation which persevered in becomes a passion all-absorbing in its nature. In the blindness of their infatuation they seek to immortalize their names
by a bold and base attempt at the subversion of law and order.[212]

  So much for the prosecution. In assessing the incendiary rhetoric and violent behavior of the anarchists from the perspective of a historian, context is immensely important. Yes, the anarchists could be violent at times, but so could their opponents. The labor battles of the era often approximated the idealized “class war” preached by radicals of the day. Violence was common on both sides, and utilized not only by labor militants, but also by strikebreakers, “scabs,” policemen, soldiers, and state militiamen. Many acts of violence carried out by the anarchists were done in response to repression of dissent or lethal action against labor organizers and striking workers carried out by the forces of the state and business interests. The anarchists’ antigovernment rhetoric, in the context of the present era, often mirrors that of contemporary political conservatives. Many of the issues championed by the anarchists, such as the right of labor unions to organize, the right to birth control, and freedom of political speech, are now mainstream and frequently uncontroversial. So were the anarchists really criminals and deviants as their enemies proclaimed, or were many of them simply people whose thinking was ahead of its time?[213]

  The importance of the classical anarchists for the purposes of this article is not their specific beliefs, but their role as one of the earliest and most famous political tendencies that sought to overthrow the modern liberal states that have taken root in the Western world over the last one and a half centuries. The anarchists would eventually fade from the scene, but many other groups would subsequently arise that would utilize tactics identical to those associated with “propaganda by the deed.” The anarchists offered an alternative to liberal-democratic capitalism that contained a vision of decentralized confederations of autonomous worker communes and farming villages. Future insurrectionists would possess alternative political visions of their own. These visions would be widely divergent, but their common denominator would be a hatred of the values of modern liberal society.

  3. Liberalism and Anti-Liberalism: Political Violence by Non-State Actors in the Postwar Era (1945–89)

  Insisting it is the lack of freedom that fuels terrorism, Bush declares, “Young people who have a say in their future are less likely to search for meaning in extremism.” Tell it to Mussolini and the Blackshirts. Tell it to the Nazis, who loathed the free republic of Weimar, as did the communists.

  “Citizens who can join a peaceful political party are less likely to join a terrorist organization.” But the West has been plagued by terrorists since the anarchists.The Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Puerto Ricans who tried to kill Harry Truman, the London subway bombers were all raised in freedom.

  “Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock,” said the president, “are less likely to blow themselves up at rush hour.” But Hamas and Islamic Jihad resort to suicide bombing because they think it a far more effective way to overthrow Israeli rule than marching with signs . . .

  —Patrick J. Buchanan, September 10, 2006[214]

  We need a Revolution, be it fascist, communist or Islamic, please God(s), save Portugal from big money democracy, I’m willing to support anything other than this.

  —Portuguese revolutionary nationalist, September 10, 2006[215]

  Political violence by non-state actors declined in the West during the period between 1914 and 1945. The labor battles that had characterized previous decades were overshadowed by the fury of the First World War. In some countries, particularly the United States, the war effort was used as a pretense for the repression of dissident political movements under the guise of suppressing “sedition” and preserving national unity. Structural changes implemented by Western governments during the interwar period had the effect of either co-opting or subjugating labor unions and the Socialist parties. In some countries, particularly those of Central and Eastern Europe, the newly emergent fascist and communist movements often maintained violent quasi-military organizations of their own, but these soon came to either dominate the state (such as the German Nazis or Italian Fascists) or suffer repression when their enemies were able to seize political power (such as the Communist parties in countries where right-wing authoritarian regimes came into being). The atmosphere of total war that accompanied the Second World War had the effect of diminishing conflict between states and non-state actors, and the conflict of this type that did take place (the resistance in France, for example) primarily pitted indigenous resistance forces against the forces of direct foreign occupation. Prior insurrectionary forces like the anarchists were overrun by the hegemony achieved by Communism on the political Left following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the increased respectability, cooptation, and “mainstreaming” of the labor movements of the various Western nations.

  The defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 and subsequent American occupation of Western Europe, the region from where the state first originated, assured for that region the pre-eminence of liberalism. Martin van Creveld observes that while the corporative state was subsequently exported to other regions following its initial rise in Western Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, Russia, and Latin America, it was in the nations of the Anglosphere that the state became most firmly established.[216] It was in these nations that a particular ideological expression of the state, liberalism, became the most pronounced. How can liberal states be best described? The irreducible minimum qualities would be a parliamentary form of government of some sort, a commercial-capitalist-bourgeois economic foundation, an expansive technological base, a relatively cosmopolitan cultural atmosphere, and, since at least the mid-twentieth century, an extensive public sector managerial bureaucracy. Additionally, the defeat of the Axis forces in the Second World War, the resulting occupations of Western Europe by the United States and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the Cold War between the two great superpowers had the effect of reducing Europe to the status of de facto colonies or vassalages to one of the two Cold War contenders. Also, the unprecedented level of international power achieved by the United States in the postwar era combined with its ongoing rivalry with the Soviet Union, brought about a drastic expansion of American intervention into conflicts between other states and into the internal politics of other states.

  The presence of this arrangement in the Western world in the latter half of the twentieth century means that political violence exercised by non-state actors during this period, at least in the West, amounted to acts of violence against the United States and its protectorates, client states, or de facto colonies in Europe, Latin America, and, because of the symbiotic relationship between the United States and Israel and the propping up of the Saudi oil cartel by the United States, the Middle East. In examining this phenomenon, it is once again essential to point out that the concern of this article is not the question of political violence per se or even non-state political violence (so-called “terrorism”) but the relationship between political violence carried out by non-state actors and states who claim to possess a legitimate monopoly on such violence and the effect of this relationship on the evolution of warfare and the likely future of the state. During the postwar era, liberal and/or American hegemony was challenged by an amazing variety of organizations, groups, and tendencies with grievances, ideologies, agendas, and strategies of their own, and some of them rather colorful to say the least.

  In 1982, Dennis Pluchinsky observed that Western Europe had become the focus of terrorist activity and that 33 percent of terrorist actions between the years of 1968 to 1980 had occurred in this region. Latin America achieved a close second place with 21 percent.[217]

  These non-state armed resistance forces can be broken down into roughly the following classifications: First World Marxist, Third World Marxist, nationalist, separatist, religious, racialist, traditionalist, and ecologist and/or technophobic. Each of these, of course, could be broken down into several sub-categories of their own. In 1992, Stephen E. Atkins identified mo
re than eighty major organizations involved in violent resistance to Western states and/or puppet regimes in Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East.[218] Many of these organizations are fairly well-known. Among those who can be considered “First World Marxist” are Germany’s Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof Gang), Italy’s Red Brigades, and America’s Weather Underground.These kinds of insurrectionary groupings typically claimed hostility to Western imperialism, neocolonialism, capitalism, and racism, and profess solidarity with leftist revolutionaries, or “Third World Marxists,” whom they see as their counterparts in the lesser developed regions. Most of the more significant armed, militant leftist groups from the Third World have, during the postwar era, originated from Latin America. These included El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Peru’s “Shining Path” (a popularized term for the Communist Party of Peru-Maoist), Colombia’s Armed Forces of the Colombian Revolution (FARC), and the “Zapatista” peasant revolutionary force of the Mexican state of Chiapas.