I once got into trouble for producing a political talk show in Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s for the BBC, based on the premise that the IRA consisted of several hundred psychopathic gangsters, all of whom the security services should be ordered to hunt down and kill without benefit of trial. Well, yes, I knew I was being naughty, but I was just sick of endless discussions during which the IRA and their various bastard offspring were treated as if their nihilistic destructiveness and sadism were the results of “ludjudumud” grievances, rather than sheer wickedness.
When it comes to terrorists and gangsters, the powers that be almost always get it wrong. On the surface, both groups want something – power - but don’t want to work within the law to attain it. The gangster is unwilling to put in the effort required to build up a legitimate business in the usual way, and terrorists know their chances of winning power through democratic processes are non-existent, because their views aren’t sufficiently popular – which is why all terrorists loathe democracy. So they resort to violence.
Well, up to a point. Some gangsters undoubtedly ultimately tire of the violence and end up trying to go legitimate. And some terrorists – with the acquiescence of cowardly governments – are finally welcomed inside the democratic tent (if they’ve killed enough innocent people, of course.)
But these are exceptions. I suspect the majority of gangsters and terrorists are indistinguishable in that committing evil acts – and violence in particular – is what they fundamentally enjoy. Hurting people isn’t a means to an end: it’s an end in itself. Yes, they often start with a “cause” – driving the Jews out of Israel, imposing their own demented brand of Marxism, uniting Ireland, imposing Sharia law, controlling the rackets on the Lower East Side (if they still do that sort of thing), amassing untold wealth… whatever. This gives their life an ostensible purpose, holding out the promise of a state of affairs which, once obtained, will assuage the terrible gnawing hunger inside them.
But inevitably it becomes easier to assuage psychic hunger – created by feelings of worthlessness and meaninglessness – by planning and committing regular acts of violence, which demonstrate potency.
It’s only when democracies realise that the violence itself rather than the stated purpose of the violence – the “cause” - is driving these pathetic little monsters to commit acts of subhuman savagery that we might begin to deal with them effectively.
Similarly, when a bunch of pissed-up hooligans go on a violent rampage (as they did in Belfast this weekend), pretending this has anything whatsoever to do with politics or grievances or the desire to right wrongs is counter-productive. Such a stance merely lends credibility to what is nothing more or less than an outbreak of evil. Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay of the “Police Service of Northern Ireland” – i.e. the Ulster Police Force - leaps to criticise the region’s First Minister, Peter Robinson, and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness (a gun-toting thug who has managed to crawl inside the tent) for somehow causing the violence, while Finlay’s boss lays the blame on “dissident Republic elements”.
Yes, politicians are often incompetent, and sinister gangsters masquerading as political activists often stoke up trouble – but no sooner do a bunch of drooling Calibans indulge in a bit of ultra-violence than our cultural and political elite is falling over itself to ascribe deep and lofty motives to what are simply outbursts of bog-standard human evil. The same with hunt saboteurs, anti-Global Capitalism protesters, anti-Global Warming fanatics, “Stop the War” peace-creeps and those Islamofascists who deface war memorials and shout abuse at troops returning from Third World hell-holes.
The “cause” really isn’t the point: its role is to allow unhappy people to commit evil while, for once, feeling good about themselves.
The problem isn’t political - it’s psychological.
In the eighties, when the denizens of Brixton, Toxteth, Broadwater Farm and other ethnic communities were regularly rioting the authorities always cited racial disadvantage and police harassment as the cause (while condemning the violence, of course, but only as an afterthought). No one ever seemed to come up with a far simpler explanation, namely “they're rioting because they enjoy it – they get to attack and sometimes murder policemen, smash buildings, destroy small businesses, and steal stuff!” Similarly, when we see Palestinian kids throwing rocks, might it not be that they’re simply enjoying behaving badly with the full approval of their parents? There was a brilliant Private Eye cover once, after some domestic riot or other, featuring a fat middle-aged woman waddling out of a shop with a stolen video recorder. Her speech bubble read: “I blame the parents”. I’m old enough to remember visiting Paris just after the 1968 student riots and chatting to some of those who had taken part. As a keen young leftie, I was disappointed to realize that they had absolutely no interest in changing the basic structure of society – they just enjoyed behaving like pigs!
ReplyDeleteSaturday, July 17, 2010 - 06:00 PM