Terrorism: Theory and Praxis
Terrorism: Theory and Praxis
Abstract
We need to change the way we think about foreign terrorists, as opposed to domestic protesters. Today, we use cognitive psychology to explain why crazy people do crazy things—like cutting the throats of journalists online. Alternatively, we use behaviorist psychology to explain why well educated petit-bourgeois unemployed youth are occupying Wall Street. We change our theories depending on whether we like the protestors or not. This is bad social science, so here I offer one theory that distinguishes genocide, rebellion, and terrorism as strategies that might inspire the use of violence (for and against the cause). Some suggestions for fighting terrorism in social democracies or post-colonial dependencies are offered in conclusion.
Richard Hogan
Purdue University
Draft toward a presentation at Terror in Paris symposium
Purdue University, April 22, 2016
Terrorism: Theory and Praxis
Thanks for inviting me here today. Please hold questions or comments—boos or applause, until I invite questions or comments. As I tell my students, I expect to offend everyone at some point in this presentation, so I apologize at the outset and ask for you to be patient for the next 15 minutes.
In case we get lost later on, I want to explain that I will be speaking mostly in English and using the USA as my favorite case, but I think that both France and the USA need to recognize, first, that terrorism is not exclusively either recent or foreign. Terrorism, rebellion and even genocide are part of our histories—frequently parts that we don’t want to talk about. Second, the military (extermination) solution, taken to its logical extreme, is genocide, which probably is not what we want to be promoting today for the Middle East or for our domestic terrorist organizations.
Some of my best friends and most esteemed colleagues—including Professor Bill Ayers, from Chicago, have been called terrorists, when, in fact, I think they were rebels or, if you prefer, revolutionaries offering armed opposition to the state, including bombing ROTC offices on college campuses. I don’t want to defend them or their tactics, but I do want to explain how, after 40 years of studying collective political struggles—foreign and especially domestic, violent and nonviolent, I have come to realize that we can distinguish rebellion, terrorism, and genocide but still explain them with the same organizational theory of political contention.
When I arrived in Ann Arbor for graduate school in 1975, Chuck Tilly (1978) and Bill Gamson (1968) were offering Resource Mobilization theory[1] as an alternative to theories of collective behavior (Blumer 1993; Le Bon 1896; Smelser 1963) and collective choice (Brustein 1996; Coleman 1973; Olson 1965). One of the reasons that they were offering this new organizational theory of political challenge was because they did not believe that the protesters of the 1960s were expressing anomie or frustration in hostile outbursts of frustration-aggression. Neither did they believe that the protesters were just like the students who were joining the army—there was something about political challenge or protest as an alternative to exit or loyalty (Hirschman 1970), but we did not need a different theory for “streaking” and for “sitting in.”
Michael Schwartz (1988 [1976], p. 135) summed it up best by claiming that social movement participants were “at least as rational as those who study them.” At the same time, we did not want to pretend that joining the army and protesting the war were similar actions. For one thing, joining the army (loyalty) was not usually a collective action, but it was something that tended to be social—taking others (parents, teachers, and friends) into account. It was also even more dangerous or risky and more likely to result in collective violence—either as recipient or user, that going to Canada (exit) or protest (voice)—see Hirschman (1970).
Clearly, joining the army and blowing up the ROTC building might be associated with different interests, but not everyone who was pro-war or anti-war was willing to use violence. Some of them were, but that does not necessarily distinguish them from their fellow partisans. The psychology of why this one versus that one joins this or that movement is an interesting area of study, but it does not tell us much about the rise and fall of political challengers.
Organizations, such as the lynch mob, the Sons of Liberty, or ISIS, are rational actors, who pursue a collective interest, using a variety of strategies and tactics in efforts to gain new advantages or mobilize constituent resources or to recruit new adherents, form new alliances, or vanquish old foes. Why people join these organizations is an interesting question, but, generally, people join organizations in groups, with friends and family—sometimes as an act of adolescent rebellion, but usually in groups. Organizations find it easier to recruit people who are already organized. Which organizations they target depends on their interests, and their relations with other organizations, including governments.
Labor unions and churches, schools and prisons might be good places for recruiting new members. Schools and churches were the base of organizing drives for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, during the Civil Rights Movement in the South (USA) in the mid-twentieth century. Prisons and temples or mosques operated similarly for Black Muslim in the late Sixties, just as they do for ISIS today. So long as there are urban blacks or Muslims in prisons and concentrated in urban or suburban ghettos from which juveniles are recruited into gangs, one should expect street gangs or ISIS (or the Panthers or Black Muslims) to form chapters. White militias or skinheads (or Nazis and Klansmen) recruit similarly—although in the USA we tend to keep our poor whites in Appalachia or other Southern or Western rural areas, so the geography of terrorism varies for white militias and Islamic Jihadists. People in prison, in urban ghettos (or suburban “quartiers chauds” in France—see Body-Gendrot 1993) are more likely to accept a protection racket, gang or religious cult, because they might feel the need for protection from other gangs, cults or whatever (see Hogan 1985; Rubenstein 1970).
They might be motivated by fear, as opposed to rational self or collective interest, but their motives are less important for understanding where, how, and why members are recruited. It is the interest of the organization that is most important in understanding who joins. The fact that urban blacks or suburban Muslims are recruited from gangs or mosques or prisons makes sense and should help us to understand where we need to focus our attention if we wish to increase the difficulty of recruiting new members. The poverty, misery, and oppression that characterize daily life in these places are rooted in structural problems associated with increasing inequality and the failure of social democratic or democratic governments to institutionalize facilitative (as opposed to repressive or tolerant) relations (see Tilly 1978, on government facilitation, tolerance, and repression of challengers). We need, particularly in the USA, to close down our prison system and, more generally, to extend the reach of social welfare beyond the boundaries of racist and nativist citizenship or nationalist identities.
Here is where looking at the organizational life of the challengers should help. Black Panthers, for example, established school lunch programs and citizen self-defense programs (Foner 2002 [1970], pp. 167-181)—things that the corporate liberal state might have been offering instead. In fact, we (local government and state university) offer both at Purdue and in the Greater Lafayette Area today. By focusing on the guns and the confrontational rhetoric, however, using undercover agents to encourage illegal activities, the federal government ensured that violence would be the preferred tactic of challengers and authorities. We seem to be making the same mistakes with ISIS. Perhaps we should be building mosques and community centers instead of attempting to tap their cell phones or carpet bomb their Middle-eastern conquests.
Terrorism is a strategy, generally a weapon of the weak, which uses fear to control a civilian population. Feudalism ultimately was established by armed thugs who imposed their protection racquet on self-sufficient farmers/peasants, complete with religious obligations to tithe or to keep holy the lord’s day. This was possible after the collapse of the Roman Empire, as remnants of the mercenaries and the barbarians attempted to survive on the labor of freed slaves or not yet conquered barbarians—including, of course, Les Gaulois. ISIS is similar if less successful in establishing codes of chivalry or honor amongst thieves. The ill-fated invasions of Iraq and the monumental stupidity of refusing to negotiate with Assad, the rebels, and the Kurds (whom we have only recently tried to bring to the table), in Syria, have created an ideal place for ISIS to conquer.
The opportunities to challenge Iraq and Syria are classic—divided elites, powerful allies, and authorities unwilling or unable to repress challengers (Tilly and Tarrow 2007, p. 57). The same opportunities that allowed ad-hoc organization of unemployed petit-bourgeois youth to challenge the established authorities in Egypt and elsewhere provided the perfect storm for various flavors of religious and secular challengers, including ethnic parties, to battle for electoral or military victory.
Neither the protestors nor ISIS have the organization, resources, or power required to win an election. They lack the popular base for electoral victory, and they are reluctant to enter into alliances with authorities who wish to control rather than enable them. More mainstream Muslims have a network of religious authorities who can mobilize voters—just as the dissenting curés did in the Vendée (see Tilly 1976 [1964]). Neither the rebels (who terrorize governments rather than citizens) nor the terrorists are interested in joining the government. Neither is capable of institutionalizing their rule—based on disruption or terror. Either can contribute to the escalation of conflict in what has become a revolutionary situation, in Syria at least—with competing claims to legitimate authority[2]. Neither can effect a revolutionary outcome, which would require building an institutional order rather than complaining or dreaming about an illusionary Arab Empire, which never would or could exist—at least not without an emperor. Even with an emperor, the empire would ultimately be defeated, as was Rome. The barbarians always win.
What is needed to rule is (1) the support of the indigenous population, (2) control of the armed forces, and (3) international support. If no party is able to claim all three, “Two out of three aint bad” (with apologies to Meat Loaf 1977).
Not all strong governments are democratic, but all democratic governments are strong. Only strong governments are capable of accommodating contradictory interests and competing claims within economic and political systems that produce and reproduce inequality, even in the most obvious form of granting citizenship, which is exclusive as well as inclusive. The problem is not amassing the weapons of destruction necessary to defeat the terrorist militarily. We could kill everything living in Syria and Iraq. That was not, however, how the British subdued the colonial rebels. Ultimately, the British surrendered political authority in order to secure their economic control (particularly in textiles). That is how global capitalist systems are supposed to work in this modern or post-modern world. Assad, Hussein, and Gaddafi might have been petty tyrants, but that is how peasants or petit-bourgeois empires have always been ruled. If we really want a democratic government, we need to develop a hegemonic bourgeoisie—preferably an indigenous bourgeoisie that can effectively control its workers and minister to its under and unemployed citizens.
In the case of Colonial USA, however, the rebels were able—eventually, to institutionalize a constitutional government—at first cobbled together with courts and parties (Skowronek 1982), but eventually tested and empowered by secessionist war, economic crisis, Cold War (Bensel 1990), and now the war on terrorism. The terrorists are less threatening than the communists (Lenin 1969; Mao 1966), since they clearly lack a foundation (other than fear) for winning popular support. Fear will suffice as a temporary expedient, but ultimately it is insufficient as the foundation for an institutional order (with apologies to Machiavelli 1995—see Weber 1968). Emperors can maintain the support of peasants by absorbing their surplus population into the military and promising more land, acquired through conquest. That worked for both Bonapartes, but only until they were defeated militarily (Marx 1978).
The problem in Syria is that defeating ISIS is not going to solve the problem, which is that there is no effective government to seal the borders and prevent ISIS from simply running away. Iraq and Syria are broken. They are like barely inhabitable apartments in a deteriorating slum. You can call the exterminator and kill all the pests in your apartment, but you really need to destroy or fundamentally reconstruct the apartment complex and the surrounding community. Otherwise, the pests will simply run away and terrorize your neighbors—moving between Syria and Iraq, just as they moved between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Extermination is actually the genocide strategy—kill all Muslims, Jews, Hutus or Croatians. This was, essentially, how the USA extinguished Native American claims to the North American continent, but it is not clear that anyone here is proposing genocide as an alternative to building state capacity in a region where democratic institutions are currently impossible to establish—not because of religious or cultural, intellectual or psychological problems. The problem is the lack of a hegemonic bourgeoisie and/or military/state capacity sustained by international support. Absolutism worked fine in Europe as a staging ground for what eventually became a social democratic republic, in France, but the protracted revolutionary struggle, 1789-1871, included three monarchies, three republics, and two empires—plus at least one “Reign of Terror” and the brutal state-sponsored repression of the Commune. Why should we expect the Middle East to recover so quickly from the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and from Cold War efforts to carve states out of contested home-lands. Why should Syria be able to claim “once and done.” The real questions should be, “How has Tunisia managed to do so well?” Perhaps it is time to ask students of social movements and social change to offer advice on alternatives to the repression of terrorist attacks, or the more extreme—reactionary rather than radical, genocide strategy of selective extermination.
Thanks. I’ll take questions or comments now.
References
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1
[1] Mayer Zald came to Michigan later. His and John McCarthy’s work seems more prominent among the critics than the defenders of this theoretical tradition.
[2] Tilly and Tarrow (2007), p. 101, distinguish institutionalization and escalation in similar terms.