Omer Bartov
John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History
Brown University

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Introduction

• This is a historical talk with political implications. My goal is to examine contemporary terrorism with respect to the mass violence committed by totalitarian regimes, specifically the Third Reich and to a lesser extent the USSR.
  
• Terrorism is a very old phenomenon. Even its modern global variety has been with us for some time. Nevertheless, the number of recent victims has drawn a lot more attention to it.
  
• In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, two basic arguments were offered with regard to the nature of contemporary terrorism.
  
  • First, that Islamic fundamentalism was a continuation of totalitarianism. The implication here was clear: the only way to deal with these in the 20th century was through military means.
    
  • The second argument focused on distinguishing between good and bad terrorism, and focusing on the roots of terrorism. This approach goes back to the terrorism of the French Revolution, and terrorism in late 19th and early 20th century. The debate is between those who think all terrorism should be condemned, and those who think some types of terrorism are justifiable because of their goals and targets. Some worried about the liberal state using too much power to crush terrorists. In the U.S., and even more so in Europe, liberals debated which types of terrorism were legitimate: freedom fighters vs. people with less noble motivations? This was the debate in the 1970s.
    
• Now there are 2 arguments that support or condone terrorism. First, terrorism is acceptable if it is a tool to fight occupation or oppression. Such violence is legitimate. This is similar to the just/unjust wars debate, and makes distinctions between means and ends. Only mindless, purely destructive violence should be condemned. But who decides what is mindless and purely destructive?
  
• Both those who condemn terrorism as totalitarianism by other means and those who condone it as a struggle of liberation are having a hard time distinguishing Sept. 11 from the suicide bombings in Israel. Both of these arguments refer to past controversies about violence perpetrated by and against tyranny and totalitarianism.
  
• There are fundamental distinctions between totalitarian state terror and global terrorism. When we speak of totalitarianism, we think of the Nazis and the USSR. When we speak of fascism, we think of Italy. For the present discussion, I will speak about totalitarianism, a type of regime that has been produced both by the right and by the left.

Some Comparisons between Totalitarianism and Terrorism

• Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism were based on a boundless definition of the state, whose borders could expand almost without limits. By contrast, terrorism has no state (though it may be harbored by a state, as in Afghanistan).
  
• Both the USSR and Nazi Germany were highly organized, with great bureaucracies for persecution, and major secret police apparatuses. While they rendered a variety of services to their citizens, and were therefore at times popular, the most characteristic feature of these regimes was the mass production of death.
  
• By contrast, terrorism is by its very nature decentralized. This makes it much harder to crush. Also, it relies on primitive technology and techniques. It is an effort to return to a traditional social and religious order, and it is a rebellion against transition from old patriarchal hierarchy to modernity. It is a defender of the old order, or of a mythical version of it.
  
• A distinction can also be made regarding motivation. Totalitarianism seeks to mobilize the atomized individuals produced by the industrialization and urbanization of society that causes the erosion of family and religion. It thus emerges from mass society.
  
• Conversely, the new global terrorism originates in non-industrialized societies that feel they were left behind or perceive themselves as going backwards. This terrorism is elitist and individualistic. It is not trying to mobilize the masses. It is about individual martyrdom.
  
• Totalitarianism seeks to control society's resources, fate, production, and reproduction. Conversely, terrorism seeks to tear down the existing order. It hopes to undermine the perceived hegemony of the west, especially the United States and Israel.
  
• There are also certain striking similarities between totalitarianism and global terrorism. This is largely because of the inner contradictions in each.
  
• Totalitarianism is forward-looking, but it also contains an idealized view of the past. Nazism rejected the borders and historical narrative of the Weimar Republic. It relied on a fabricated myth of ancient empire that Hitler was supposed to resurrect. Communism urged its followers to destroy the old world and create a new one, but it modeled its vision on a primitive socialist utopia of the Middle Ages.
  
• Despite its rhetoric of returning to a traditional order, terrorism is in fact an effort to create an entirely new social and political order. Conversely, the Nazi and Soviet regimes turned against modernism. A dialectical relationship between the old and new, the modern and the mythical, is part of the totalitarian state. Totalitarianism set itself up as against religion, but promoted leader worship and sacralized the party, blood, land, or class. It's therefore a form of political religion.
  
• Contemporary fundamentalist terrorism embraces modern means of destruction despite professions of anti-modernism. It is, in fact, an attempt to continuously create something new. Fundamentalism is as much a rebellion against traditional religious authority as an attempt at restoration. Fundamentalist terrorism stresses individual action, but refers to the masses. The suicide of the individual is in this sense an appeal to the multitude. Heroic, beautiful, meaningful death is seen as the expression of faith and a triumph over fate.
  
• Totalitarianism is obsessed with control, yet this is largely motivated by phobias of disintegration through racial disunity or foreign infiltration. It is such phobias that give rise to mass murder, concentration camps, and genocide. The urge to control eventually loses its meaning and leads to destruction. Hence Hitler ordered the destruction of Germany on the eve of defeat, following in the footsteps of Stalin's scorched earth policy of 1941. The Communist fear of decentralization destroyed the very edifice its controlling measures were supposed to hold together by eroding initiative and innovation.
  
• When specifically comparing Nazism and contemporary terrorism, it is important to note that while the Nazis used terror against their own people and perpetrated genocide on other peoples, Nazi terror was a state phenomenon. Conversely, while contemporary terrorism may become genocidal, there is no evidence yet that it has reached that point.
  
• The main exception to this rule, which indicates a troubling link between Nazism and contemporary terrorism, is the blatantly antisemitic rhetoric of radical Islamic groups that is as genocidal as Hitler's. The danger of mass murder cannot be discounted.

Recommendations

• Contemporary terrorism has become increasingly focused on the figure of the Jew. Anti-Semitism has become more and more integrated into a radical discourse on the enemy. The belief is that the Jews are in charge of the world, running the United States and using Israel as its proxy. We lack the will to recognize and combat this rhetoric, and it is time to speak up.
  
• This debate has not yet taken place. I think some basic structural changes can be introduced. The most basic change in policy would be to transform the economic policies of the United States and Europe in those parts of the world that are producing these kinds of discourses. Without changing the notion in these parts of the world that their people are being exploited, one cannot make any progress.
  
• Second, the United States should become truly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. This is a focus point for much of the violent fanatic discourse in the Islamic world today.
  
• Propaganda alone is not a policy, nor is military action without policy likely to succeed. Only a combination of military action against terrorists and positive political and economic incentives to the regions that breed violence and fanaticism and give people a hope of a better life in the future may have a fair chance of success in the long run.

Rapporteur: Caitlan Talmadge

back to seminar schedule, Fall 2004