VI. Compelling Submission
Terroristic violence seeks to squelch doubt or disbelief—by affirming the omnipotence of the sacred object with which members of one’s group are identified. Death to the non-believer means: “How dare you doubt that the object we worship is omnipotent? How dare you disbelieve in the power of the nation or god or ideology that our group worships?”
Acts of collective violence declare: “We will teach you a lesson. This will show you what happens to people who doubt the power of our nation, god, or ideology.” Acts of violence function to affirm or reaffirm the power of the object with which members of one’s group are identified: to reconstitute the fantasy of the object’s omnipotence. The act of violence functions both to punish the non-believer, and to persuade him just how powerful the object is.
At the heart of Nazi ideology was the idea of national self-sacrifice. Hitler asserted that any man who loves his people proves it solely by the “sacrifices he is prepared to make for it.” Jews were conceived as “selfish individualists”—the opposite of people willing to sacrifice for a nation. The primary (racially given) characteristic of the Jew, according to Hitler, was the “absolute absence of all sense of sacrifice.”
The Final Solution sought to convey the following message to Jews: “Do not imagine you are exempt from the obligation to sacrifice your lives.” Acts of violence performed by one group are designed to terrorize members of another group: to compel them to bow down; submit to one’s own god, nation or ideology. Acts of violence seek to convert infidels or enemies into “believers.”
The Final Solution was a massive terroristic performance designed to evoke shock and awe in the hearts and minds of Jews (the quintessential non-believer), as if Hitler was saying, “Do you Jews see now that we are capable and willing to perform this radical, extreme action in the name of our country? Do you still doubt that Germany is omnipotent?”
The Holocaust was a form of terroristic violence functioning to “give witness."
The World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, similarly, were performed by Bin Laden and the suicide bombers as if to convey to America (and the world): “Do you disbelieve in the greatness of Allah? Do you doubt the depth of our belief—the sincerity of our devotion to God?” The suicide bombers became martyrs by virtue of their willingness to die and kill for Allah: giving witness to the greatness of their god.
Political violence conveys the message: Death to non-believers: death to those who refuse to acknowledge the omnipotence of our nation, ideology or god. The purpose of acts of collective or group violence is to compel others to submit to the sacred ideal to which members of one’s own group have submitted. Acts of terroristic violence are performed in order to “give witness” to the depth of one’s devotion.
Acts of group violence represent demonstrations: “Now you see how powerful our nation, god or ideology is.” Collective acts of violence seek to persuade other groups that one’s own nation or god is powerful, and its ideology true. Violence functions in the name of verification: This is what happens to people who do not acknowledge the power of our god or nation. This is what happens to people who do not embrace our ideology.
Speaking in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1879), the Grand Inquisitor explained that so long as man remained free, he strove for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to “find someone to worship.” The chief misery of every man individually—and of all humanity according to the Grand Inquisitor—is not only to find what one can worship, but to participate in a “community of worship.” People seek to worship, not according to their individual tastes, but according to what is established beyond dispute so that “all men agree at once” to worship the same thing.
For the sake of common worship, the Grand Inquisitor says, human beings have slain each other with the sword. They set up gods and challenge one another: “Put away your gods and come and worship ours or we will kill you and your gods!” A person in one group—who devoutly believes in the omnipotence of his god—seems unable to tolerate the idea that another group of people also possesses a god claiming to be omnipotent. It is as if two gods with claims to omnipotence cannot co-exist.
Each group demands that the other group abandon its sacred object and bow down to one’s own sacred object. Group violence conveys the message—as Dostoevsky put it—”Put away your god (or ideology or nation) and come and worship our god (or ideology or nation). If you do not worship the object that we worship, then we will come and kill you (and destroy your god, ideology or nation).” Terroristic violence seeks to compel members of the other group to bow down to the sacred object that is worshipped by one’s own group.