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A THEORY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE
RICHARD KOENIGSBERG
The term "martyr" derives from the Arabic word "shahid," meaning witness. The martyr bears witness to his love for Allah by killing infidels (non-believers) and possibly himself in the process.
This is the dynamic of sacrificial death, killing in the name of removing those who do not worship the object that one's own group worships. I call this mystical object that generates murder and death the SACRED OBJECT.
Members of society kill in the name of this mystical object which, in the mind of the believer, is offended by those who do not believe in him.
The dynamic of warfare is identical. One bears witness to the object one worships, the SACRED OBJECT, by killing infidels (enemies), those who do not believe (one imagines) in the omnipotence of one's nation. One kills and dies in the name of the sacred object, one's nation, in order to produce the death of "others" who do not worship the sacred object that one's own group worships.
Thus emerges a theory of political or cultural encompassing war, terrorism and genocide. It begins with the SACRED OBJECT, a phantasy created by the group. Each group creates its own sacred object out of a phantasy which is shared. The phantasy of a sacred object becomes the foundation of society.
This dynamic encompasses both Hitler and Bin Laden. For Hitler, Jews were the infidels ("death to the non-believers"). Punishing the infidels. Destroying the infidels. That group which Hitler imagined did not worship German
The infidel or Jew is the name given to the group of people who do not worship the sacred object. Their existence is the negation of the sacred object, calling its reality into question.
Germany and Allah are words possessing no substantail reality. Yet these words or abstractions rule the political world and generated the murder of 200,000,000 people in the Twentieth Century.
RICHARD KOENIGSBERG
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