Terror and Modernity PDF
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Terror and Modernity Terror and Modernity Donatella Di Cesare Translated by Murtha Baca polity First published in Italian as Terrore e modernità © Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a, Turin, 2017 This English edition © Polity Press, 2019 Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 101 Station Landing Suite 300 Medford, MA 02155, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3148-6 ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3149-3 (pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Di Cesare, Donatella, author. Title: Terror and modernity / Donatella Di Cesare. Other titles: Terrore e modernità. English Description: Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018049242 (print) | LCCN 2018051323 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509531516 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509531486 | ISBN 9781509531486q(hardback) | ISBN 9781509531493q(pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism. | Terrorism–Religious aspects–Islam. | State, The. Classification: LCC HV6431 (ebook) | LCC HV6431 .D52416 2019 (print) | DDC 303.6/25–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049242 Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Limited The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com Contents 1 Planetary Terror 1 Bataclan 1 War on terror 6 Global civil war 9 The bomb of modernity 13 The ghost of bin Laden 16 Philosophies of terrorism 17 Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction (RAF), and the impossible exchange 21 The absolute weapon of one’s own death 25 Atmoterrorism: Auschwitz, Dresden, Hiroshima, and so on 27 Heidegger and the ban of existence from the biosphere 32 The monopoly of negation 34 The metaphysics of the terrorist attack 36 2 Terror, Revolution, Sovereignty 40 A brand name 40 Defusing terrorism 43 Notes on fear, anxiety, and terror 46 Revolutionary terror is not terrorism 50 Are terrorists nihilists? 54 Why defend anarchists? 59 Dostoyevsky and the terrorist inside me 62 Terror and sovereignty: on Lenin 64 “Once upon a time there was a revolution” 68 The partisan, the guerrilla, the terrorist 71 3 Jihadism and Modernity 78 Radicalization 78 The political theology of the planetary neocaliphate 82 The postmodern horsemen of the Apocalypse 89 The path to terror 91 Cyberterrorism 96 Jihadist thanatopolitics 98 Media, new media, and terror 106 The car bomb 111 Explosions, massacres, decapitations 114 Vulnerability, or innocence lost 119 The negated ethics of the hostage 120 The future in the time of terror 125 vi Terror and Modernity 4 The New Phobocracy 128 Clash of civilizations, class struggle, or “holy” war? 128 The offensive of radicalized secularism 131 Hermeneutics counters violence 132 Sedative or stimulant? Religion according to Marx 134 The left and jihad 138 Spanish brigades, Syrian brigades 143 The terrorism of global capitalism 145 Democracy put to the test by antiterrorism 147 Snowden: on planetary surveillance 149 The new phobocracy 150 Notes 155 Selected Bibliography 166 1 Planetary Terror No universal history leads from savagery to humanitari- anism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb.1 1 Bataclan The lively shouts of students who were rushing out of the Robespierre school were dying down, while the usual background noise that marks ordinary life on the Rue Georges Tarral, a small street in the modest Parisian quarter of Bobigny, resurged. It was the afternoon of November 13, 2015. In an anonymous second-floor flat of a modern apart- ment block across from the school, seven men were beginning to get prepared, after having meticulously studied the plan and activated their cell phones, Kalashnikovs, and suicide vests. They were members of two commando units: one would attack the Stade de France, the other would target the open-air bistros in the 11th arrondissement, which had itself become a symbol of openness and intermingling. The members of a third group of commandos were staying in the Appart’City complex in the suburb of Alfortville, about ten kilometers from the Place de la République. 2 Terror and Modernity This type of operation is called “oblique” because of the strategy that was followed: organized in Syria, it was directed from Belgium. The religious mentor of the group was a 35-year-old Algerian known to French antiterrorist forces, Mohamed Belkaid. He was preparing to coordinate the attacks with a single Samsung cell phone and two sub- scriber identity module (SIM) cards. He would die on March 15, 2016, in Forest,2 after having thwarted no fewer than three raids by the Belgian police, in the attempt to cover Salah Abdeslam’s escape. The three commando units spread out across Paris from one end to another were perfectly synchronized. Nothing was left to chance. The first attack, during a soccer match at the stadium, was intended to divert attention; the second, to draw all the resources of security forces and emergency services through a series of surprise raids, paving the way for the third, decisive attack: the massacre at the Bataclan theater. The final toll would be 130 dead and more than 360 wounded. It was the bloodiest attack on French soil since World War II. Leaving aside the devastating effects of the explosions, the men in the three commando groups fired at least six hundred rounds from their Kalashnikovs. The meteoric sequence of attacks violently imposed a battle scene reminiscent of Iraq or Syria at the heart of the metropolis. The City of Lights was plunged into the darkness of a long, bloody night. For the first time the victims were not sworn enemies; nor were they journalists or apostate Muslims, as in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, or Jews, as in the attack on the Hypercacher kosher supermarket at Porte de Vincennes. Global jihadism had abandoned any criterion: people were massacred indiscriminately. The three cars used in the attacks—a Volkswagen Polo, a SEAT, and a Renault Clio—had Belgian license plates. They had been rented by Brahim and Salah Abdeslam, two French Moroccan brothers who had spent their life in Molenbeek- Saint-Jean, an overcrowded suburb of Brussels and a powder keg of radical Islam. But it cannot be said that Brahim and Salah were fervent Muslims. In 2013, after having accumu- lated a series of convictions for petty crimes, they opened a bar, Les Béguines, where alcohol, gambling, and drugs were
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