Fwd: (en) current crisis

seyedjavad

From: "Susan Brown"

To: ra-len@univ-montp3.fr

Subject: (en) current crisis

Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 07:50:03 -0400

From: ARMANM@sbcglobal.net

Comments:

From: John Rapp

Dear RA-L colleagues,

I was just on a panel discussion last Friday on the current

crisis, .....

Many of us influenced by the anarchist critique claim that most

states have their origins in violence and expanded over time to add

other functions that only mask or help justify those continuing

violent activities. If the state is defined as the monopoly on the

legitimate use of coercion within a given territory, then a terrorist

group is only a would-be state that does not yet have that monopoly.

Thus, even if possessing a social base, terrorist groups themselves

also go beyond the interests of their followers to carry out acts

that quickly take on a life of their own.

If there were suddenly overnight a just and humane U.S. foreign

policy, and economic justice throughout the world, terrorist groups

would not disappear. Leaders of such groups as the one that carried

out such atrocities and crimes against humanity as occurred in New

York and Washington last Tuesday do not really have as their prime

goal the increase of autonomy and economic justice of their

followers, but only the continued and if possible increased autonomy

of their own terrorist groups and the possibility that their use of

violence can eventually grow to become new monopolies.

***********

1. This is an assumption. Just imagine, if the U.S. would have pulled

out of the Middle East at the beginning of the '80s, broke its

dependendy on Middle East Oil, allowed the people to develop

alternative energy sources, the World Trade Center would be standing

today. In order for the U.S. to maintain its disparity with the rest

of the world (which, Chompsky points out, began after WWII), the U.S.

has to play a certain geopolitical game. The Middle East is one of

those places on the geopolitical gameboard that can not be given up.

Tibet? Nah...but Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. etc. Not only

that, we have to try and impose our culture don them as if what we

call "Modern" is better. The U.S. set up a fascist state in Iran and

in consequence of that, made the asshole conservative Moslems look

good. This thing "terrorism" is not an occuring item in history, as

you seem to be using the term. There is after all a relativity in

the whole concept. To the British, George Washington and the

Continental Army were "terrorists". Its all in whose eyes you are

looking through, isn't it?

********

To the extent that they succeed in using violence, such groups can at

best only succeed in recreating the state, never in destroying it.

One casualty of the current crisis might be that anarchism will

lose its very small revival of appeal for young people opposed to the

WTO. This would in fact not be a casualty at all if what lost its

appeal were petty acts of violence justified in the name of a

perverted form of anarchism descended from Bakunin and others,

leaving room for less blatantly self-contradictory forms of anarchism

to stand out and gain appeal. This latter point will doubtless

infuriate many of you who find the ideology of anarchism more useful

as an identity-reinforcing mechanism than as a cogent critique of the

state, but I hope that will not keep you from condemning terrorism as

much as you condemn militaristic state responses to it.

*******

2. Let's not poison the wells too fast Mr. Rapp, you know as well

as everyone else that the police and other "authorities" of all kinds

will use this new "terrorist license" in the most brutal and gruesome

manner to stomp out all civil demonstration and acts of civil

disobedience carried out in opposition to a repressive unjust status

quo by the most well intentioned people on the planet

*********

In any case, those of us who find the anarchist critique of the

state a powerful tool to help explain the roots of the current crisis

and the developing state response to it would do well to criticize

terrorist groups as harshly as we do established states for their

inherently murderous behavior.

--John Rapp

John A. Rapp tel: (608) 363-2335

Professor, fax: (608) 363-2718

Department of Political Science email: rappja@beloit.edu

Beloit College

700 College St.

Beloit, WI 53511

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