A hundred years ago they were anarchists. Fifty years ago they were communists. Just recently they were terrorists, and today, violent extremists. Of course 230 years ago they were simply rebel dogs. Who are all these people anyway??
Anarchists are perennial favorites. Invariably depicted as heavily bearded men garbed entirely in black brandishing an old fashioned grenade with a sparkling lit fuse, the stereotype was the bugaboo of royalty everywhere. It was felt by the elite of Europe that anyone dissatisfied with a system that provided them lavish court functions, immense wealth, consummate authority and a life of idle leisure must be utterly nihilistic if not starkly mad. The image of a dark, unkempt, armed individual as the face of anarchism was promulgated to export the threat posed to princes onto common folk. If people had been fooled into feeling frightened of their brothers and neighbors who wanted nothing more than to be free from the aristocracy's tyrannical behavior, those royal houses would still be ruling Europe and its colonies openly.
The rise of communism in the nineteenth century and its political successes in the twentieth gave the ruling class a new boogeyman with which to scare their children. No longer a lone fanatic with a single weapon, the new enemy, albeit equally fanatical, was now numerous, organized, atheistic, soulless. Communism provided a much enhanced form of external threat with which to cow the masses because not only did it threaten military conflict, but also an alternative to the dog eat dog economy of profit driven monopoly capitalism. For the first time, a burgeoning middle class in the industrialized world was permitted to join the aristocracy in having something to lose in the event of social revolution. Millions of newly motorized suburbanites marginalized stalwarts of workers collectives, co-operatives and community councils. Classic carve and conquer. For nearly a century most Americans dreaded and demonized "communists", and murdered them gleefully at home and abroad, eventhough they were doing nothing more than defending themselves against economic exploitation and outright aggression. History overcame communism; since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the co-optation of China, communism no longer poses a threat to free market consumerism.
Eventually people began to recognize anarchists as isolated, impotent hotheads, communists as organized workers, and the apparent risk they pose to everyone's life began to pale. By the end of the twentieth century, America's Brobdignabian military foreclosed any possibility another nation might try aggression, and there was talk of a probable peace dividend. Since the globalist economy is driven by indebtedness and inflation, that could not be allowed to happen. Fortunately fortress America came under attack - not invasions of uniformed troops from another nation, but sneak attacks from within. The nation had seen bombings and hijackings and kidnappings galore, but they had always been treated merely as crimes, motivated by the perpetrator's greed. That fit the globalist model - no hazard to capital accumulation and crowd control. Today the same bombings, hijackings and kidnappings have been elevated to the status of terrorism because it is said the often suicidal perpetrators are motivated by the desire to frighten society into altering policy. Even the most abject of the nation's poor do not wish their communities to be held hostage by psychopathic thugs armed with weapons of mass destruction, giving them common cause with the aristocracy, and the bourgeois against this universal enemy.
Ubiquitous yet elusive, primitive but high tech, the terrorist is the perfect monster, conjoining the qualities of anarchist and communist. Like anarchists, terrorists are heedless of consequences to themselves or others, and like communists they are numerous and well organized. Funded by criminals, they aren't workers - they have nothing better to do than sit around terrorist training camps recruiting new martyrs, enrolling in flight instruction classes and placing thermite cutter charges on the support columns of important structures. Often they have the added benefit of being state supported, allowing plausible violations of sovereignty in their suppression, while at the same time decentralized, allowing plausible terror suppression tactics at any location. When thousands of Americans had died in bombed buildings it seemed terrorists really did threaten everyone. Would a mushroom cloud be next?
The nation mobilized against terrorism. The nation mobilized the world against terrorism. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. established the "frontline" against terrorism. In the tortuous logic of empire, the occupation created an attractive environment for terrorists who could then be "pinned down" on the insatiable sands by overwhelming American arms superiority, keeping them from waging jihad on the streets of Topeka. Although initially the war on terror seemed lost because the terrorists actually had frightened society into altering policy from democracy to authoritarianism, this was palpable success in the enduring freedom campaign. Insurgents were being contained in their countries of origin by the robust coalition and its force multipliers. Still, there is something a little hollow about talk of "successes" years after the mission was declared accomplished. Bloodiest fighting since the war's end would have been nonsense in any other conflict, but in Iraq it's true. The war on terror was so successful the resident decided it should "surge" (not "insurge" - those folks are already there..) tens of thousands more troops into the quagmire. More is better! The more troops arrived in Iraq, the more insurgents turned up! Regular troops and hired gunslingers really stepped on the gas, running over and gunning down nearly anything that moved. Before long everybody who wasn't wearing chocolate chips riding in an armored HMV was a terrorist. That's progress in the war on terror. The frontline in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq had attracted all the terrorists, and those were busy training more! One foreign-born presidential candidate gloated that U.S. forces would be in the region for 100 years! Goal!
The war on terror was a little too successful. Despite embedding of the American press corps and a campaign of murder against foreign correspondents, news of the success of the war on terror began to filter back to the electorate. At first eager to kick butt after the humiliation of numerous attacks on U.S. soil, Americans increasingly came to the realization that the war on terror was a hoax. Lawlessness of U.S. forces provoked outraged responses and Americans began to see "insurgents" as ordinary folks not too different from themselves. The mounting toll of those killed, combatants and civilians alike, the crimes and cover-ups of the occupying forces, the litany of lies from upper echelon conspirators began to erode the facade erected to glorify an otherwise contemptible war of conquest. Even putty-brained Prozac poppers were becoming repulsed by vignettes of the war's pathetic victims peripatetic in pulverized villages. Approval polls plummeted. Protest parades proliferated. Politicians proposed a pull out! Gulp!
Things weren't going so well for terrorists on the home front either. In the name of national security more lists were being made up of "potential" terrorists, their families, telephone and eMail contacts, and anyone with similar sounding names. The FBI has been working overtime compiling these lists, adding as many as 20,000 names per month until nearly a million identities are "watch listed". Practically anyone who ever made a public criticism of the Bush/Clinton dynasty is included. People whose names appear on the terror watch list are hasseled whenever they travel. Yousouf Islam (form. Cat Stevens) and Ted Kennedy are well known individuals subjected to enhanced scrutiny, plus countless ordinary folks including pregnant moms and even infants in arms because their names appeared on the list which ignored middle initials. Even Americans not attempting to pass a security checkpoint were treated as if they were terrorists for the slightest infractions, such as mouthing off to a cop, or skateboarding in the mall or in one case in Alabama a schoolgirl was detained as a terrorist over a dropped piece of cake. A recent police riot at a school in Miami is more icing. It turns out a terrorist can be anyone who scares a cop, by asking him to stop.
Terrorists are disappointing. Whereas once they were fiendish masterminds plotting chaos and mayhem, now they are street punks, pot growers and protesters who wouldn't hurt a fly. Remember Hogan's Heros? People used to fear a NAZI prison camp, but by the 1960's Sturmarbeitlung stalag guards had become strudel eating slugs and their implacable commandant a preposterous poofter. Even the direst of threats becomes normalized in a generation. What's scary today is silly tomorrow. The same thing is happening again: terror is becoming a joke. Soon lovers will croon Oh, you are SUCH a terrorist! Chanel will name a new fragrance Terror. Detroit will christen its newest junk wagon the Terrorado; motto - It's a bomb! Saturday morning TV will feature cute Tom and Jerry digital cartoons of the world's greatest man made disasters with voiceovers by Eddie Murphy and Jim Carey while Alan Arkin runs through town yelling The terrorists are coming! The terrorists are coming! Everyone to get from street! Historical revisionism is lots of fun! Kids of all ages'll love it!
Okay. Okay. Okay. There are terrorists and then there are terrorists. The absolute worst terrorist is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda (Arab - the "base", for database) was originally conceived by the CIA during the Cold War as a list of Central Asian assets against the then evil empire of the Soviet Union. These nationalist partisans approximately fit the bill for a proxy war against a Soviet hernia of hegemony in Afghanistan. With funds, training and weapons furnished by the U.S. and secure undisclosed locations installed by bin Laden Construction in their Tora Bora fastnesses, these mujahadeen were the first listed terrorists. At the time they terrorized mostly Russian invaders and their stooges in Kabul. Unfortunately they prevailed against the Soviet incursion and reclaimed their country where they joined with religious fanatics and launched a sectarian totalitarian state rather than an outpost of neo colonialism. Funds and training stopped forthwith but the weapons were still there and were being turned against anyone anticipating exploiting Afghanistan, including global corporations eyeing Afghan territory as a route for fuel shipments to emerging markets in the Far East, and pit mine of vast predicted mineral wealth. Once free market security forces came under fire, disbanded former al Qaeda freedom fighters swiftly became the dreaded al Qaeda terrorist network that threatens civilization today.
While "terrorist" had become too generalized a threat to instill instinctive fear, al Qaeda was too rarified. It included only the so-called known knowns already on the list, and it is hard to make people in Peoria afraid of people in Peshawar. So the list was expanded by including al Qaeda linked terrorist organizations spun off like little sausages by erstwhile listees in the region or in your town, al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations which have successfully completed a correspondence course for terrorist accreditation, al Qaeda type terrorists whose persons correspond statistically to biometric indices of listees, and al Qaeda-like terrorists who are not on the terror watch list yet behave as if they were by being detained but never charged, punished though never convicted. Most recently al Qaeda style terrorists have burgeoned the terrorist pantheon with their debut. Affecting the dress and mannerisms of the original al Qaeda band, these terrorists perform acts of terror by donning robes and burnooses shocking and awful to suburban shoppers raised on strict observance of dress codes. A one time Maine gubernatorial candidate did so on Halloween, and almost got himself gunned down by security conscious peace officers. Now al Qaeda, through simple overuse has become another joke. It is even said kay-da is a phonetic transliteration of Arab slang for toilet. HaHaHaHaHaHaHa! (waddle like a penguin)
Oh well.. What's next? Oh yeah! Violent extremists! Yow! Now THAT's scary! Could be ANYone! Why, 'member that time you'n me'n Billy Joe.. that was like so fckin extrEEme dude! Violence is deeply ingrained into the American psyche and plenty of Americans have conserved enough rugged individualism to feel a surge of pride in being extreme. When W starts talking about getting violent extremists you can bet he'll be sweeping with the broadest of brooms. Activists are the worst kind of violent extremists: environmental activists, activist judges, peace activists. Well funded, organized, motivated, these homegrown radicals have an agenda. These are the most dangerous terrorists of all - they don't want to blow things up, they want to blow things out.. of all proportion. Acting as if climate shift, due process and endless war are more important than televised electoral horseraces, these extreme extremists if you will, are the gravest threat consumerist suburbia faces today because they are everywhere, in every country, every town, every home. Activists are desperately dedicated to destabilizing imperial culture and resorting to reason, righteousness and the rule of law. Numbers dwindling, increasingly paranoid passivists will have no choice but to obey, and shoot to kill activists on sight when the Decider calls an Infragard alert, to preserve his way of life.
Reverend Doktor C. Sarian
Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia
Church of the SubGenius
030416
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