Organized violence versus individual terror: The contested politics of defining extremism

“ It is organized violence on top [Emma asserted] which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to his act.... We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light that shines in the darkness—the ideal of economic, political, and spiritual liberation of mankind! ”

“ It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender to his act. ”

“ The enemy is not one person. It is not a single political regime. Certainly it is not a religion. The enemy is terrorism--premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. Those who employ terrorism, regardless of their specific secular or religious objectives, strive to subvert the rule of law and effect change through violence and fear. ”

“ it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation -- the right of all people to speak, worship, and live in liberty. On the other side are those driven by tyranny and extremism -- the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest. ”

“ Although al-Qaida functions as the movement's vanguard and remains, along with its affiliate groups and those inspired by them, the most dangerous present manifestation of the enemy, the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group, or state. What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule. What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate. ”

“ At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the world is engaged in a great ideological struggle, between extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear, and moderate people who work for peace. ”

“ It instigates terror and violence and incites hostility between different ethnic groups, running counter to the teachings concerning patriotism, peace, solidarity, the golden mean, tolerance, and good works advocated by Islam and many other religions. Religious extremism, which constitutes the ideological base of ethnic separatism and terrorism, is by nature anti-human, anti-society, anti-civilization, and anti-religion. ”

“ The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of Western values upon their cultures. ”

“ But when we are all afraid to get on a bus or drive to work or open an envelope or send our children off to school, when our children are fixated on the possibility of terrorist action against them or other innocent children, we give terrorists a victory. That kind of corrosive fear could rust our national spirit, drain our will, and wear away our freedom.
These are the true stakes in our war against terrorism. We cannot allow ourselves to be frightened or intimidated into a bunker mentality. We cannot allow our sacred freedoms to wither or diminish. ”

“ The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will be an enduring test of our free society and our leadership in the world. ”

“ Major sources of tension Violent extremism The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.
In Ankara, I made clear that America is not and never will be at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people. ”

“ Terrorist forces, by means of violence, sabotage and intimidation, pose a serious threat to world peace and security by scorning human rights, slaughtering innocent people, endangering public security, and creating fear and panic in society. ”

“ The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the [Pg 258] individual, "crime." ”

“ Founded in violence, sustained only by violence, such a wrong must by sure law of compensation blast master as well as slave,—blast the lands on which they live, blast the community of which they are part, blast the government [Pg 127] which does not forbid the outrage; and the longer it exists and the more completely it prevails, must its vengeful influences penetrate the whole social system. ”

“ We do see a shared struggle against extremism -- and we'll do everything in our collective power to help the forces of tolerance prevail.
In the Muslim world, a small -- and I believe a very small -- number of violent extremists are beyond the call of reason. ”

“ Speaker, the fact is that people in the West do not share the extremist analysis or the extremist agenda. As usual, it is a tiny fraction of people who, for whatever misguided reason, have decided that the government is the enemy. ”

“ The killers who committed these acts of terror are followers of a clear and focused ideology that hates freedom, rejects tolerance -- and their stated goal is a radical Islamic empire stretching from Europe to Southeast Asia. ”

“ The President of the United States told us yesterday in this Hall, “everywhere you turn you hear extremists who tell you that you can escape your misery and retain your dignity through violence and terror and martyrdom.” Wherever he looks he sees extremists, and when he looks at your colour, my brother, he thinks “You are an extremist”. ”

“ Over the years these extremists have used a litany of excuses for violence--the Israeli presence on the West Bank, or the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, or the defeat of the Taliban, or the Crusades of a thousand years ago. In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers--and no concession, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder. ”

“ Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. ”

“ The still remaining anarchical tendencies of certain individual members of the state, lagging behind the rest, will generate occasional acts of violence, threatening, directly or indirectly, the very life and existence of the state. These acts will excite the horror of all the more orderly members of the community, and will be denominated by some such term as crimes. ”

“ Assured of the neutrality of the peasants, the government could contend with the fanatics who were burning the towns, throwing bombs among the crowds, and waging a merciless warfare. All those who could be taken were killed. Such extermination is the only method discovered since the beginning of the world by which a society can be protected against the rebels who wish to destroy it. ”

“ Assembled together with{334} multitudes of other evil-doers like yourselves, you have, by threats and acts of violence, thrown the peaceable and industrious inhabitants of this city into a state of panic and alarm—you have deprived many of their only means of livelihood—you have carried fire to public buildings and to private dwellings, and have exposed the property of all to pillage, and the lives of many to destruction. Human society cannot be held together, if crimes like these are not put down by the strong hand of the law. ”

“ They will never consent, that by violence and murder, those institutions shall be broken down, their homes despoiled, and their property destroyed. And the people are Pg 180 strong enough to protect and sustain their institutions and to punish all offenders against their laws; and those who threaten danger to civil society, if the law is enforced, are leading to destruction whoever may attempt to execute such threats. ”

“ If threats and terrorism were not prevented by law, it can hardly be doubted that cruelty would be rife in the relations of men and women and of parents and children. It is true that the habits of a community can make such cruelty rare, but these habits, I fear, are only to be produced through the prolonged reign of law. Experience of backwoods communities, mining camps, and other such places seems to show that under new conditions men easily revert to a more barbarous attitude and practice. ”

“ It is plain, that were all things in perpetual tumult and confusion,—disturbance and contention on all sides—deeds of violence and wrong committed in open day, and no power to check them,—robbers breaking into houses, and murderers running through the streets with naked swords in their hands,—in such a state of things, what could the peaceable and well-disposed do? ”

“ Legislation rests on organized violence. It follows that an improvement in the condition of the people is possible only through the abolition of organized violence. “But organized violence is government, and how can we live without governments? Without governments there will be chaos, anarchy; all the achievements of civilization will perish, and the people will revert to their primitive barbarism.” ”

“ We set ourselves, as our final aim, the task of the destruction of the State, that is, of every organized and systematic violence, every form of violence against man in general. We do not expect the advent of an order of Society in which the principle of the submission of the minority to the majority will not be observed. ”

“ Viewed in the unclouded light of truth, what is war but organized murder, murder of malice aforethought, in cold blood, under sanction of impious law, through the operation of extensive machinery of crime, with innumerable hands, at incalculable cost of money, by subtle contrivances of cunning and skill, or amidst the fiendish atrocities of the savage, brutal assault. The outrages, which, under most solemn sanction, it permits and invokes for professed purposes of justice, cannot be authorized by any human power ”

“ What forces them to believe that the existing order is unchanging and they must support it?
All violence rests, we know, on those who do the beating, the handcuffing, the imprisoning, and the killing with their own hands. ”

“ But the fact that you ruin thousands of men in prisons, fortresses, galleys, and exile, break up millions of families and ruin millions of men, physically as well as morally, in the army, that fact is not an imaginary but a real act of violence, which, according to your own argument, one ought to oppose by violence. And so you are yourselves these wicked men against whom, according to your own argument, it is absolutely necessary to use violence," the oppressed are sure to say to their oppressors. ”

“ Hence the theory of the necessity of State violence in order to protect mankind against evil-doers, if it had any foundation three or four centuries ago, has none whatever at the present time. One might say quite the reverse nowadays, for the activity of governments, with their antiquated and merciless methods of punishment, their galleys, prisons, gallows, and guillotines, so far below the general plane of morality, tends rather to lower the standard of morals than to elevate it, and therefore rather to increase than to lessen the number of criminals. ”

“ When the violence of the government is destroyed, acts of violence will, probably, be committed by other men than before; but the sum of the violence will in no case be increased, simply because the power will pass from the hands of one set of men into those of another.
"The violence of state will be stopped only when the bad men in society shall be destroyed," say the defenders of the existing order, meaning by this that, since there will always be bad men, violence will never come to a stop. ”

“ Why should the abolition of the organisation which arose in consequence of violence, and which traditionally has been handed down from generation to generation to do violence,—why should the abolition of such an organisation, now devoid of use, cause people to outrage and kill one another? On the contrary, the presumption is that the abolition of the organ of violence would result in people ceasing to violate and kill one another. ”

“ If State violence disappeared, it is not unlikely that [228] other acts of violence would be committed; but the sum of violence can never be increased simply because the power passes from the hands of one into those of another.
"State violence can never be abolished until all the wicked disappear," say the advocates of the existing order, by which they imply that there must always be violence, because there will always be wicked people. ”

“ The reason why violence is dangerous is that, whenever it is employed, all the arguments which the perpetrators advanced in their own defense may be used against them with even greater force. They talk of the violence done in the past, and more frequently of future and imaginary violence, while they themselves are the real offenders. ”

“ The weakness of the use of violence lies in the fact that all the arguments brought forward by oppressors in their own defense can with even better reason be advanced against them. They plead the danger of violence—most often imagined in the future—but they are all the while continuing to practice actual violence themselves. "You say that men used to pillage and murder in the past, and that you are afraid that they will pillage and murder one another if your power were no more. ”

“ The antiquity, scale and organization of violence cannot alter the nature of the deed. The man awakened does not believe in the thing called the State and sees no justification for all the acts of violence performed in the name of the State: therefore he cannot participate in them. State violence is eradicated not as a result of external factors, but only through the awareness of those who have woken to the truth. ”

“ They want to answer violence with violence; they want to respond to the terrorism of the Government with a terrorism of their own. And in Germany at this time there were a number who argued that, as they were in fact outlaws, why should they not adopt the tactics of outlaws? Should men peaceably and quietly submit to every insult and every form of tyranny—to be thrown in jail for speaking the dictates of their conscience and even to be hung for preaching to their comrades the necessity of a nobler and better social order? ”

“ Very often an un-holy co-dependence develops between the organization and its prey. It is the interest of the freedom fighters to have a contemptible and tyrannical regime as their opponent. If not prone to suppression and convulsive massacres by nature - acts of terror will deliberately provoke even the most benign rule to abhorrent ebullition. ”

“ The brutalities may have been perpetrated precisely in order to provoke the democratic forces to abandon their well-laid plan and even to commit violent acts in order that the dictators could more easily defeat them. ”

“ These groups’ dependence on violent factions for survival, given the tactics of state police, pushed them into higher levels of violence against civilians, even when such violence was not politically ideal. ”

“ The director of the Terrorism Studies Center over at the University of St. Andrew in Scotland says that these attacks, he expects, are going to be increasingly brutal, more ruthless, less idealistic. For some, he says, violence becomes an end in itself, a cathartic release, a self-satisfying blow against the hated system. Little that can be done about that, if indeed the man's right. ”

“ It is the same with revolutionaries of whatever party, if they permit murder for the attainment of their aims. No matter what they say about the fact that when power is in their hands they will have no use for the violent means they now employ, their crimes are just as immoral and cruel as the activities of the government. And they therefore lead to the same awful consequences as do the evil-doings of the government: the animosity, bestialization and corruption of the people. ”

“ It is directed solely against the scab, placing him in such fear for life and limb as to drive him out of the contest. But when terrorism gets out of hand and inoffensive non-combatants are injured, law and order threatened, and property destroyed, it becomes an edged tool that cuts both ways. ”

“ As soon as that act is committed, every vital force in society will tend to re-establish the relationship which we have been trying to end, and what is more, these vital forces will conquer us in the form of a violent reaction, a counter revolution. ”

“ In social change or interchange, we find violence to be abhorrent because it requires generally the transformation of the target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative that the means of violence be abolished and the institutions--local, national, international--that encourage non-violence as a condition of conflict be developed. ”