A Universal History of Terrorism - Yorgos Blanas [Trsl. Alexandros Tsantilas]

A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF TERRORISM

ISBN: 978-960-9776-37-0 Vakxikon - Non Profit Company Vakxikon.gr Publications 36, Marathonos str., 122 44 Egaleo, Greece www.vakxikon.gr info@vakxikon.gr Š 2013 Vakxikon.gr Publications, Yorgos Blanas & Al. Tsantilas Edition Series: Vakxikon Literature - 8 First Edition: June 2013 Edition & Cover Design: Vakxikon.gr In Cover: Theseus and the Ancient Faces of Terrorism

YORGOS BLANAS

A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF TERRORISM translated by Alexandros Tsantilas

Vakxikon.gr 2013

PRAEFARIUM

The following texts would like to disavow beforehand any pertinence to the scientific study of terrorism. They merely read several historical incidents, in the same vein as reading the most important pages of a novel or watching the most important scenes of a Tragic play. All the same, the author claims to have knowledge of the one and sole reason why Men are so persistent at terrorizing other Men: Because they are human.

It should be noted, of course, that the above assertion is in no capacity whatsoever to provide us with a legitimate definition of terrorism. It is impossible to define Terrorism as what Men do to other Men because they are human. Still, even in the absence of a definition, this author will in any case follow his own path of thought. He is well aware that they only way one can love Men is to regard them as small children. Men cry out because they are lonely, mortal, desperate, deluded, and exiled to the edges of a completely irrational universe. The sum of our belongings is a round rock and nothing more than that. And what of our thoughts, our hopes, our desires? In the mythology of Islam, there is a monster called Bahamut, so enormous it is terrible to look at it. It is a gigantic fish swimming in a fathomless sea.

On top of it stands a huge cow. On top of the cow stands a ruby mountain, and on top of the ruby mountain stands Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel’s head supports the foundations for the seven levels of Hell, and on top of Hell sits Earth with its people, and above Earth are the seven heavens. Even if Men are successful -9-

in escaping the horror of dejection, even if they hope that by pursuing a virtuous life they will be granted a place to one of the heavenly levels, even then their place in the harrowing system of creation will still be insignificant. If this is the case, what chances do our thoughts, hopes, and desires have in representing something of value in our lives’ course, if even religion has to resort to such terrorism towards its faithful flock? In the end, our thoughts, hopes, and desires are something personal to us alone, and if we manage to avoid terror, we may have a chance to live –as long as they allow us to− as if our lives are truly our own.

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HOMER, KANT, AND SOME ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Homer, at the start of the Iliad’s ninth rhapsody, in describing the first organized attempt of Men at persuading one who cannot be convinced by arms –Achilles, of course– ends up drawing a deeply realistic sketch of the terrorized soul: “As when the two winds that blow from Thrace -the north and the northwestspring up of a sudden and rouse the fury of the main -in a moment the dark waves uprear their heads and scatter their seawrack in all directions- even thus troubled were the hearts of the Achaeans”1.

Their hearts were troubled, their ranks torn between the option of standing their ground and fighting –albeit without the aid of Achilles− or running away. In these verses, terror emerges as a dilemma. The Achaeans had to make a choice between the rock of dishonorable retreat and the hard place of death in unequal battle. What is absolutely certain is that they desired to flee –“phobos”, “feygio”, the Greek words for fear and flight, stem from that root− and evacuate somewhere else other than that place.

A few centuries later, Immanuel Kant, a man very careful in his judgments –maybe because his feelings had languished to such a degree that he was unwilling to take many chances– used the temperate language of literalness to imply what Homer had hurled like a rock onto people’s heads through the language of 1. The Iliad, translated by Samuel Butler, Book IX “The Embassy to Achilles”.

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metaphor: Terror is nothing other than the loss of all hope at finding a solution to the problem of social coexistence among Men, a solution to the unbearable problem of right here and together with one another. From there onwards, we would come to know anarchism, rumored to glorify terrorism while doing nothing more than read Plato as he should be read, and also communism, rumored to be a form of oppressing people while being nothing more than a way of resolving the social issue −and no less problematic than any other solution in that regard. The list of scholars who either accepted or praised violence as a means of achieving humanitarian goals doesn’t begin with Plato, nor does it end with Marxist and anarchist theoreticians. As such, we could treat History –without being accused as being overly pessimistic, no less– as a huge novel with successive episodes of merciless terrorization of Men by Men: Endless wars, frenzied battles, ferocious conflicts, atrocious genocides, horrible mental and physical torture, imprisonments, dictatorships, and also bloodthirsty killings, extortions, and daily thrashings of children, women, elderly people, innocent civilians and protesting workers. We would certainly be disturbed despite the unfailing interest with which we would devour one page after another. We would think a myriad of thoughts, but never a myriad and one, the one thought indicating that we have already fallen into the trap set by a terrorist act. The human fixation with feeding on the corpse of our surrounding peers’ tranquility would terrorize us to such a degree that we would repel, forget, even completely refuse to think about the fact that –regardless of whether we want it or not− we are perpetrators, victims, or instruments in an unceasing struggle against both the others and our very own self. The first act of terrorism in the life of every Man is that prolonged cry through which Man seeks to safeguard its nourishment. It implies that should there be no food, Man will then proceed to the most devastating, as far as parents are concerned, act: Its death. Social motives, however, are still too far away from the infant’s cradle. Society is - 12 -

a different fact altogether. It is still brutal, of course, not unlike the brutal satisfaction of the infant’s desires, but extremely more complicated. Marx interpreted this complexity as the result of the constant conflict of Men –in groups− whose principal objective is profit and power. He had to somehow explain this hell that had failed to bear even the most remote resemblance to the ideal image of Man prepared by Christianity for consumption by the uneducated masses (Greeks believed in other things, their keen sight having taught them otherwise). Any given instinct of aggression, destruction, even self-destruction (so deceptively obvious in the infant’s case), cannot provide an explanation of its opposite effect: The amazing tendency displayed by several Men to occupy themselves with works of peace. Art, philosophy, science, they can all very well constitute human efforts to fancify their blood-craving instincts, as Freud had suggested, although such a suggestion cannot at the same time explain the fact that art, philosophy and science are sometimes frantically thrown into the battle waged by Men towards the goal of exterminating other Men, the fact that they are used as groundwork for various other forms of power. We should, at some point, just accept the truth: Men –both us and others− are nothing but products of our institutions, simultaneously an inverse bestiary and a host of flesh-craving angels. The only way we can exist is through institutions. We know no other way to be Men. We aren’t Men outside of institutions. We are merely abstract notions and wishbooks for scared intellectuals. We struggle to exist, to satisfy our needs, needs whose exact nature eludes us unless we try everything, if we won’t allow randomness, coincidence and chance to reveal us the permanent, the constant, our destined state of being. A human being’s innocence does not rely merely on its virtues, these imaginary constructs of Men aspiring to lead, correct, and when all other things are considered, rule over other Men, but on the plain and simple fact that Men don’t want to die in pain and misery before their time. From this point of view, there isn’t anything more shameful and more repulsive - 13 -

than the great virtues and great values of civilized Men. Nothing terrifies more than declarations for the eradication of all evil. No murderer ever claimed killing because he was wrong, because he behaved like a monster. Quite the opposite, if someone attempts to say something of the sort we award him with the benefit of insanity. It’s an amazing logical confusion: The one who tears the other apart due to a misconception of justice is a murderer, but the one who tears the other apart out of self-satisfaction is insane. Isn’t this a devious way to accept murder as a method of serving justice? The murderer is a murderer not because he killed, but because he wrongly believes that he served justice.

Let them say whatever they want, we are not judging the act, we judge the intent. If this is true, it would maybe explain the passion with which organized States persecute whatever they call “terrorism”. They couldn’t care less about the murderous acts of so-called “terrorists”. They tremble when they consider their intentions, for they know that terrorists pursue the satisfaction of their own needs, and they are very well aware that these needs oppose the very existence of these organized States as they are and function at that moment. They are also aware that terrorism is not a singular force acting towards the achievement of its own particular goals, but an emotion typical of a large segment of social procedures. They have no interest in the terror a citizen feels when he goes out on the street in his car, doubting whether this frenetic, uncontrollable traffic environment will allow him to return home. They don’t care about the terror TV viewers feel when they watch food advertisements, where one competitor company tries to discredit the products of another, finally managing to discredit the products in their entirety, large quantities of which have already been consumed by the buying public. They know that the intentions of the abovementioned acts of terrorism pose no question, nor any opposition to the integrity of the organized State. Therefore, whenever we hear political leaders talk about terrorism, we should keep in mind that they are referring to these acts whose intent is to - 14 -

jeopardize their power. They are referring to a war that almost always begins by them, although it is a war they deceitfully refrain from being the first to declare. When the arena of conflict is transported to public places, when the first victims begin to appear among civilian crowds, then they reprimand their opponents by digging out all the values and virtues of Man from the pile –values and virtues which, in the meantime, were being daily debased by another kind of terrorist acts, one more compatible with the preservation of power– and simply proceed to try a tactical maneuver: Winning the civilian population over to their side. Still, things in life are never as easy as we imagine them to be. What we commonly refer to as terrorism –meaning political stealth warfare− is a game whose rules (much less its definition) no one knows prior to playing it. This doesn’t mean that it has no precedent or prerequisites. The terror of a sudden attack by some individual or some group of individuals haunts any and all power, because any power knows that the levels of human tolerance towards injustice, violence, debasement, and impoverishment vary greatly. Anyone can turn into a terrorist at any given moment, regardless of whether he will trash a ticket vending machine, beat up a park warden, smash the office of a police officer –where he is being held− or plant a bomb in a public area. What matters is that the intent is the same in any and all cases: Resistance, or even revenge, against a situation that is or considered to be unjust.

Injustice is the prerequisite of the terrorist game, the sense of injustice, and in many ways, the state of the concept of justice. For whom does society work for? What goals does it serve? What do people do there all together? Do they oppress or help one another? Do they share the same prosperity, or the same wretchedness? How can somebody avoid violence when being surrounded by people who, even with the most flexible of judgments, would be impossible to describe as demanding?

How can somebody avoid violence when his very own being is nullified? Some kill their creditors. This, however, does not - 15 -

endanger the organized State, and is thus defined as murder.

Other people kill police officers serving as their guards, but this poses only a slight danger to the organized State, and is thus defined as organized crime. If the dead policeman is a foreigner and belongs to the army occupying the country where the crime takes place, then the interests of some organized State are in peril, and the murder is then called an act of terrorism.

As far as the dead policeman is concerned, though, it is death and nothing more than death. Nevertheless, how many police officers are aware that their employers have more respect for a terrorist (because they are afraid of him) than they have for them (because they regard police officers as their slaves)? Injustice, in this sense, pushes people to political resistance. At some point, this resistance will assume very violent and extreme forms that ignore any and all consequences to life and limb of other Men. How else can it be! Since the organized State itself never paid much respect to the lives of its very own citizens, how can a screaming unacknowledged individual ever be expected to show that respect? What is absolutely certain is that any terrorist act has victims. We always see them. There is no doubt about it.

Someone takes somebody’s or some other people’s life away.

Despite that, these victims, whose view afflicts our sight, are but a small portion of the lives that have been taken away. One who is dead is one who has died, but also one who expects to die within the space of the next few minutes. He lives a dead man’s life. He is some sort of vampire, feeding off the psychic reserves of others, incapable of developing his own innate stamina, to create his own self, to live his own life. There were –and still exist in our day− entire societies comprised of vampires: In the East, the West, in the New World. They were pinned down by the psychosis of terror and produced nothing but terror or terrorist attempts at ridding themselves of terror. What we call “Terror” in the French Revolution was nothing more than a violent effort to rid French society of feudal terrorism, followed by the complete and utter terrorization of the Revolution’s followers, - 16 -

under the pretense of liberating democracy from terrorism, although in this case the terror wasn’t pertinent to the effort made by a vampire society in order to preserve its parasitic permanence, but it was pertinent to Men’s anguish to escape the past. The aristocrats weren’t really the ones being terrorized, the guillotine mobs were. All aristocrats had to lose was the privilege of the master. The revolutionaries were risking their very own freedom. For an aristocrat, death could very well be a public ceremony. For a revolutionary, it would be yet another deplorable event in an otherwise deplorable life. In contrast, the Ottoman Empire lived by terrorizing its subjects. The terror it spread was relevant to the destruction of any trace of stamina in its territory. Great Britain did the same things in many corners of the planet. They afterwards completed the destruction by waging struggles seemingly against the terrorists that the British Empire herself had created. This is a Roman tactic. The Roman Emperors’ constant source of terror was the Praetorians, the murderers acting as their bodyguards. In the end, is terrorism really such a complicated thing? In a way, yes. Then again, no. It does have its steadfast characteristics, regardless of how much its definition is either stretched or shrunk from time to time. The more it keeps shrinking and thus the more it gains clarity, the more and more it excludes phenomena of terrorism, thus being in danger of ending up being morally full of holes. The wider and vaguer it gets, the more it blurs the boundaries between terrorism and any other act of protest. The result? Victims always pay the price.

As far as the definition of terrorism is concerned, here is one coming from the U.S. government: “Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents (…) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population”2. A former CIA official opts to provide 2. U.S.Code, Title 22: Foreign Relations and Intercourse, Chapter 38: Departments of State §256f –Section d: Definitions - 17 -

only the main characteristics of terrorism instead of a definition: “Terrorism is premeditated, planned. Its character is political and not criminal, like Mafia groups who only want money. Terrorism seeks political change. It is carried out by civilians and not military personnel, by unofficial agents and not by armies”. The Oxford dictionary prefers a more general definition: “Terrorism: The unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”3. It is obvious that a huge amount of actions that have terrorized societies to bits cannot be covered by the abovementioned definitions. The terror of the Third Reich cannot be called terrorism, since Germany was at war with other countries. The actions of the chosen Jack the Ripper didn’t constitute terrorism, since they didn’t involve any political targets. Who asked terrorized souls what they think?

Here’s another definition by the FBI, this time an outrageous one: “The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives”. This clearly indicates that there is a legal use of violence towards destruction. Of course there is, if Men have decided so. No one could ever deny them the right to enact their own values. The fault lies at the effort to impose these values to everyone else, either by supporting them through supernatural arguments (an almighty god establishing the value scale), or by arms. In both cases, hypocrisy competes with brutality in terms of force. Cast away all definitions, then. Definitions already constitute an act of terrorism: They kidnap reality and ask the living to pay the kidnappers ransom for their thoughts.

Recognize my authority, the wise kidnapper says, if you want to get reality back. Kidnapping and fraud. You will give everything but what you’ll take back won’t be what was stolen in the first place. The reality they took away from you is already dead. The real object of the extortion is a possible kidnapping of yourself, 3. The Oxford Dictionary.

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your own thoughts, your own emotions, your very own ideas.

You pay up and keep your thoughts, but alas, they no longer fit in any reality.

Men lived and still live in terror. They tend to forget that, however, in the same manner that a healed knee-wound can indicate forgetfulness of the initial injury.

The psychological facts of terror are very simple –if we trust Homer− although our way of thinking is no longer simple at all. Centuries of digging down to the very depths of our souls have granted us valuable knowledge, but they have also showed ways to ignore them when they frighten us. In reality, we are still (and will always be, I suppose) captives of the fact that the differences between our children and the children of prehistoric times are insignificant. The difference between a modern and a primitive man lies in their upbringing. What is questionable is what this upbringing can achieve. You can easily teach a young man that the Earth is round and that the universe consists solely of matter, but you may never have the instinctive certainty that the night is full of monsters ready to devour him cleared from the young man’s soul. Selective human psychological reactions have features completely incompatible with the psychologists’ mode of thinking, and rarely does analysis foresees something other than the analyzed individual’s reactions, which we were already bound to learn anyway at some point or another.

Most psychologists believe that terrorists have different motives and aim at different results. They are somehow confused in their efforts to draw their psychological profile, since they are dealing with Men who act quite differently. Their scientific conscience doesn’t allow them to look reality in the eye, the reality that cannot but impose the very fact that they are dealing with many different Men acting in many different ways. All these Men have a sole motive: To impose their will unto others.

They also have a single aim: To render, through terror, others incapable of acting. The only “cure”, if such a thing exists, is to eliminate terror from others, so as to render them incapable of - 19 -

imposing their will unto anyone else. But how can one achieve this? Isn’t terror one of the instruments used by the State to bring lawfulness? The terrorist knows that his action will find a ground to function. This ground is a society regulated on the basis of imposing the will of the strong upon the will of the weak. Cast away all psychologies, then. Cast away anything that could prolong our terror in the face of terrorism. Once, there were people who believed it was better to die than live in slavery. Terrorism is a form of enslaving the other. It is most certainly a lack of the necessary for our survival bravery to succumb in order to survive. It is pointless to allow ourselves to be terrorized by measures against terrorism just so we can live free from the terror of death. Nobody can protect himself from unprovoked violence, and the violence exercised by someone in order to blackmail the State and “awaken” civilian conscience is definitely unprovoked. The settling of scores between the State and those who believe that they can blackmail history is of no concern to us. In opposition, if we believe that violence is a method of solving social problems, we will then have to pay the price. But what place does terror have in this instance?

The truth is that many forms of terrorist acts are imposed upon the terrorist by the force of rage. These are rare. They are usually limited to individuals that the organizers of a terrorist act use as instruments. Most terrorists have been convinced of representing justice, they have given the matter some thought –and some of their considerations aren’t entirely without grounds− they have reached a conclusion, they plan, and they execute. Most terrorists believe that others are incapable of assuming responsibility for their lives and thus decide to impose that responsibility. The psychological root of terrorism lies in the notion that there is only a single truth, a single right, a single way for Men to live properly. Within that notion, everyone makes an inventory of their own desires and acts accordingly.

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THESEUS AND THE ANCIENT FACES OF TERRORISM

For some admittedly bizarre reason, people of exceptional intelligence such as Marx and Engels have all too gullibly accepted the notion that the original form of social co-existence among Men was some sort of primeval communism. It is assumed that despite their poverty in material sources, prehistoric humans were accustomed to equitably share the entirety of goods in their community’s possession. The accumulation of wealth rapidly led in the creation of the concept of individual ownership and the division into groups of owners and non-owners, strong and weak, rulers and ruled within the communities. This is nothing more than yet another romantic view of Man, yet another transformation of the ancient belief that the past was always better than the present and that the future’s task will be to restore the good old times. Men’s souls have always been smoldering with terror inspired by the possibility of a change in the ways that they’re accustomed to. Here is how Emerson, a philosopher who trusted the future unreser-vedly, had very lucidly put this fact into words: “There is no virtue which is final.

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices”4. The Golden Age, the Garden of Eden, and even the feeling that some extremely massive fault had seized Man 4. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essay No.10 “Circles”.

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and carried him off his initial blissfulness, all these are common motifs existing in all worldviews created by Men throughout their history, regardless of their mythical, magical, scientific or religious nature. For Israelites, the fault lies in eating the forbidden fruit, for Greeks it was Man’s insolence before the gods, for Plato it was luxury, for the Gnostics of Egypt it was the arrogance of the soul, for Rousseau it was denaturation from natural instincts, for Hegel it was the mise-rable soul’s unquenchable thirst to become absolute ruler of everything and anything, for Marx and Engels it was the accumulation of wealth. One single myth with an infinite number of heads.

History proceeds gazing backwards. Civilization is but a sad song for a lost love: Blissfulness.

It is completely unlikely that any primeval communist coexistence ever existed in any form. What is certain is that there was a time –North American Indians were already at that stage when white Europeans first set foot on their lands− when social formations were based on some wider concept of family. It is without a doubt that distinctions within these formations wouldn’t go beyond age or sentimental relationships among relatives. Even so, Men went through savage struggles to escape that state. We can suspect what bothered them. We can suspect the terror they would’ve had felt in the likely event of being slaughtered by members of another family, or even by the unbearable pressure exercised by taboos, these prohibitions enshrouded with terrible mysteries, keeping them confined within the familial pen. The terror of the unknown gave birth to magic, religion, philosophy, and science. Later on, some of these mental practices were capable of creating a peaceful framework for their practice. This, however, does not mean that they escaped terror. By and large, they inflicted it, and in many occasions they did so in an incredibly insidious way.

A similar situation must have been the rule in Attica around 1300 B.C. Thucydides downplays it, but he cannot hide at least one source of terror: War. “Under Cecrops and the first - 22 -

kings, down to the reign of Theseus, Attica had always consisted of a number of independent townships, each with its own town hall and magistrates. Except in times of danger the king at Athens was not consulted; in ordinary seasons they carried on their government and settled their affairs without his interference; sometimes even they waged war against him, as in the case of the Eleusinians with Eumolpus against Erectheus”5.

It is rather obvious that the coexistence of all these cities was anything but peaceful. Aristotle divulges even more facts when he speaks about Athens’s past. The act of sacrilege would bring a gruesome penalty. The offender would be put to death, his corpse thrown to dogs and vultures, and his immediate relatives would face exile. The poor, the women and the children were slaves to the rich. Anyone could end up a slave because of debts.

All this was until the coming of Theseus. As Thucydides continues, “in Theseus, however, they had a King of equal intelligence and power; and one of the chief features in the organization of the country was to abolish the council-chambers and magistrates of the petty cities, and to merge them in the single council-chamber and town hall of the present capital.

Individuals might still enjoy their private property just as before, viz. Athens; which thus counted all the inhabitants of Attica among her citizens, so that when Theseus died he left a great State behind him”6.

We can imagine how Theseus –or whoever else−enforced this historically and factually proven reform. We can even come to understand how he managed to achieve it through the myth that surrounds this quest, the formidable labours of Theseus: Through death. The mythical king’s first act was to find weapons.

He lifted a huge rock and extracted his sword. He would use it to massacre all those that represented the terror of the citizens of Attica, thus establishing –for the first time in history− a typology 5, 6. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Richard Crawley.

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of terrorism. What was it that scared Men living in that time and age? Unprovoked violence was the very first source of terror.

When Theseus reached the fields of Epidavros, he had to face Periphetes, a gigantic killer holding a club made of bronze, using it to crush the heads of travelers. The mythical hero killed him, but being a clever aspiring ruler, he kept the club, thus safeguarding the right of unprovoked violence for himself. He then had to face against the horrendous habit of dividing people, a habit that not even the most condescending or popularly elected authority would ever manage to be free of. The human being’s identity was always the bedrock of its dignified survival. Each person’s absolute agreement with himself had to become an ina-lienable right for all. Just before he reached the Corinthian Isthmus, Theseus took down Sinis. His byname was Pine-bender, because he would bend tall pines, tie the traveler’s feet to their tops and release him, splitting the victim in two halves. Identity was now secured. A little further away from Isthmus, on the road to Athens, he came across the first harmful animal –he would face the second such animal in Marathon− wreaking havoc in the area. By killing the sow Phaea, the hero rid his future kingdom of the terror of property destruction caused by animals. Next was the terror of forced labor, the terror of deceit. In the region of Scironian Rocks stood Sciron, who threatened travelers with an axe and forced them to wash his feet. He would afterwards kick them off a cliff to the sea, where they would become food for a giant sea turtle. Theseus paid the exploiter in his own coin. In Eleusis, Cercyon, who forced travelers to wrestle him until death, met a swift punishment. Theseus grabbed him, lifted him high over the ground and then struck him down with all his might.

From now on, no one would challenge his fellow Man, especially if one was stronger than the other. The execution of Procrustes, the most famous and most captivating labour of Theseus, holds an all too obvious symbolism. This wily killer was very eager to provide travelers with hospitality. However, he denied them to right to diversity. He would make them lie on a bed and adjust - 24 -

them to the bed’s size, amputating those too tall and stretching those too short to the point where their limbs would be dislocated. Theseus rid the citizens of Attica of the terrifying obligation to conform to anything other than themselves.

Upon entering Athens, he faced and won against a gang of fifty gigantic cousins of Procrustes who attacked him. Gangs had to disappear. When he arrived at the palace of his father Aegeus, his step-mother Medea attempted to poison him. However, his father recognized the sword and the sandals Theseus wore, saved him, and banished the step-mother. Having broken down the conspiracy, only one labour remained. Theseus now had to triumph over the terror Athens suffered because of Crete, with its dark religious symbols: The Minotaur who devoured young Athenian boys and girls in its inescapable labyrinth. He managed to free his fellow citizens from this form of terrorism as well, this time using logical analysis, even if the yarn was given to him by an infatuated woman, Ariadne, even if the final validation of the labour came with the sword that beheaded the Minotaur. From this point onwards, love’s connection with both analysis and violence would become a staple of Greek thought. Philosophy was love, a love for logic, and thought would have to be violently subdued by truth: A birth with unbearable pains. Every Platonic dialogue would emerge like a Minotaur devouring our thoughts within a dark labyrinth of ignorance. Motivated by love, the philosopher would proceed with careful steps, unraveling the yarn ball of logic, and upon reaching the irrational, he would violently tear apart any superstition blocking him from seeing the truth.

A myth like the one of Theseus is far from simple-minded.

It tells things like they are, provided that we can listen to their names. The truth never lies at the bottom of the well. The bottom always rests on the very top. The bottom is our terror before the clarity of truth, the truth that most often disagrees with our wishes. The hidden meaning is nothing but an attempt to avoid the meaning. Symbols are cenotaphs of ideas. Nothing - 25 -

lies underneath them. Ideas live somewhere else, waiting for us to decide when to stop this childish game of interpretation. The mythical labours of Theseus speak clearly. What do they say?

Terrorism is unprovoked violence. Terrorism is the alienation of the right of identity. Terrorism is the savage destruction of another person’s life and property. Terrorism is forced labor.

Terrorism is deceit. Terrorism is the wanton challenge of another.

Terrorism is the alienation of the right to diversity. Terrorism is grouping for the purpose of subjugating. Terrorism is conspiracy.

Terrorism is servitude. Terrorism is religious obscurantism.

Athenian democracy would sprout upon the defeat of these forms of terrorism, even if success against them required the employment of terrorism on her behalf. In the end, violence can only be fought with violence. The issue lies on who employs violence and for what reason, who terrorizes his opponents and what purpose does this serve. Naturally, the sentient subject, the unit, the individual, is absent from any effort to settle the issue of our social life. It is a tragic yet human fact, even more human than we imagine.

The ravine of terrorization of Men by Men has all kinds of weeds. Violence isn’t the midwife of history, it is history’s grandmother. Its boundless eroticism is responsible for the constant birth of History’s idiot offspring: Men. There is no prerequisite, no evidence whatsoever, upon which we would be able to establish grounds in our suggestion for a peaceful life. It is solely and exclusively a matter of decision. History limps burdened with luxurious trash accumulated from several centuries of mankind’s development. History is Man’s creation and Man is a creation of history. There is nothing complex, contradictory, or somber in that fact. When was it that Men actually tried, though? When did they ever choose the hard way out? Violence is the easiest thing anyone can do, even if it probably isn’t the cheapest of choices. Men are slothful animals.

Our civilization is a product of easy solutions. Terrorism is merely one side of the scary fairytale we constantly say to each other so - 26 -

that we can forget that outside the tempest is raging, the tempest that will send us drifting towards the absolute emptiness.

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THE TERRORISM OF THE ARENA

“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts in his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And God said unto Noah, Make thee an ark of gopher wood, and of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth”7.

The deluge was neither the only terrorist act committed by the god of Christendom, nor was god the only one committing acts of terror. In the Old Testament, it is a commonplace tactic to employ terrorism against Men in order to to make them accept the sovereignty of the one and only god. Angels annihilate 7. The Bible: Selections from the King James Version for Study as Literature, 1965, Riverside Editions - 28 -

whole city populations after god has sown the seeds of terror through various “signs”: Famines and cataclysm. The way Moses blackmailed Egyptians into releasing his compatriots has all the typical characteristics of terrorism. Neither sabotage, nor “biological warfare”, not even the slaughter of innocent children –a routine practice of contemporary terrorism− and conspiratorial networking are excluded. From one point of view, the Old Testament is a plain and simple handbook of terro-rism.

From another point of view, it is simply honest. Faith, strong, absolute, blind faith is a form of violence. No one would have faith in an almighty god if he didn’t feel the power, meaning the terror of superiority, right down to his very bones. Maybe there isn’t a creature more terrified than the terrorist himself. The image of power produced by his actions contains something of the horror with which the primitive man would try to thwart his terror when faced against an almighty nature.

As far as Greek mythology is concerned… the example of the deluge –an obvious ancestral memory of actual natural disasters, not absent from other idol-worshipping traditions− is enough. Zeus flooded the earth because he was angry at Men, although he made sure to save Deucalion. Therefore, what he had in mind was to impose his will through terror –much like the god of the Old Testament− and not to wipe out mankind.

The true meaning behind Prometheus’ exemplary punishment by the leader of the twelve Olympians of Ancient Greece is most clearly illustrated in the beginning of Aeschylus’ Prometheus bound: “For this he is bound to make requital to the gods, so that he may learn to bear with the sovereignty of Zeus and cease his man-loving ways”8. Hephaestus, Hermes, and Ares are the usual administrators of punishments enforced by Zeus, always to set an example to mortals. In fact, in Prometheus’s case, Hephaestus is being escorted by Kratos (Power) and Bia (Violence). Regardless of whether this was Aeschylus’s idea or an earlier invention of 8. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, translated by H.W.Smyth.

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the original myth, it was a brilliant combination. Power is might, but at the same time it is also dominance. They both require violence.

Imprisonments, exiles, executions and torture were always how the State –supposedly existing in order to coordinate and protect the labor of its citizens− enforced the will of the power-holders. Various other agents of power accompany the State: The educators of the young, the priests, and of course the followers, the thugs, all those who occasionally or systematically find the opportunity to torture their fellow men.

Democracy was the highest effort to grant citizens the right to express their will and act freely, so that they won’t have to resort to violent means. It was a short, and surely not an entirely innocent historical experiment. Pericles’s alleged praises, as they were documented by Thucydides, were relevant only to a handful of men, who regarded women and children as lesser beings and retained the right of life and death over their slaves.

The image we have of Greek antiquity, derived from works of art and literature, is warped. Artists were always characterized by pioneering, unconventional and deeply humanitarian thinking.

Behind their words and shapes, society’s pot was boiling. Socrates was dragged to court and was afterwards put to death so that Athenians would learn not to question institutions. Every time a political adversary had to be eliminated, a terrible act would take place and would be blamed on him. Descendants of prominent families would use any means at their disposal to upset the Athenians’ sleep night after night, reminding them that power lies at the hands of the wealthiest. Even so, Greek democracy was ideal next to the terror that ruled the world as it was first shaped by the Macedonians and later on by the Romans. Athens, much like other city-states of the Greek lands, had limited resources and population. The great beast of public opinion could find no space available to evolve. Mobs never numbered more than a few dozen men at the time. In any case, they would gather at the assembly, the agora, and resolve their disputes - 30 -

without any noteworthy incidents. In contrast, Alexandria and subsequently Rome were the first great cities –in the modern sense of the word− in human history. Packed crowds lived in squalid conditions without the ability to choose for their lives.

They formed groups, trying to decrease the scale of cohabitation.

Ideological inventions found a fertile soil in these closed microsocieties where one would be at each other’s throat at any given opportunity. History had somehow reverted back to 1300 B.C., in the state against which the mythical Theseus had fought.

Being spiritually and materially impoverished, citizens willingly accepted Christian views, according to which all men are equal before a single all-loving god, not to mention that the future belongs to “the poor in spirit”, the uneducated ones, and not the rich heathens that pranced around contemplating complex philosophies about the “One”, the “Infinite”, the “Essence”, and a whole host of other incomprehensible things. The monster that emerged from the filthy streets of Alexandria and Rome was called mob. It would be –for the first time in History− what is today identified as an abstraction acting in a specific, targeted manner. Nobody can pinpoint the throng, the mob, except for the moment it acts; usually, in a criminal manner. It afterwards vanishes, dispersing itself in infinite molecules that bear none of the characteristics of the horrendous body they comprised just a while ago. The mob has no will of its own, yet it acts. Who, what, where, when? No one knows, no one other than the one who will opt to speak on behalf of the raging crowd, either in the aftermath of or prior to the mass action. Greeks were also aware of the “aftermath” part, although their mobs numbered merely a handful of citizens who had a moderate degree of self-control.

The “prior” part was investigated by the first leading experts in governance: Roman senators and Christian bishops. The history of the struggle between Christendom and Roman paganism is nothing if not a series of terrorist acts. The one who would scare city inhabitants the most would emerge victorious. Terror guided each Man’s steps leading towards the place where they would - 31 -

all become a mob. Behold the arena, the most amazing and most inhuman creation in human history, Rome’s contribution to global civilization. Why was it that so many people gathered in the amphitheaters –not just in the Coliseum− in order to watch as Men slaughtered each other or as beasts slaughtered Men (and, not rarely, vice versa)?

“By chance I attended a mid-day exhibition, expecting some fun, wit, and relaxation”9, wrote Seneca to Lucilius, the young recipient of his famous letters. “Just the opposite was the case. It was plain butchery. In the morning men are thrown to bears or lions. There was no escape for them. The slayer was kept fighting until he could be slain. “Kill him! Flog him! Burn him alive!”, the spectators roared, “Why is he such a coward? Why won’t he rush on the steel? Why does he fall so meekly? Why won’t he die willingly?”. Unhappy as I am, how have I deserved that I must look on such a scene as this?”10. And this was during 50 and 60 B.C., no less!

One hundred years later, reality would crush Seneca’s philosophical sensitivities. After all, Seneca was only upset by the sad state of the gladiatorial games. Life was now laid bare and the emperor Marcus Aurelius was way too prudent to look it in the eye. The mob, the incarnate, embodied feeling of terror was let loose to run rampant through the streets of Lyon in Southern France, hunting down Christians, breaking into their homes, ravaging everything and –most importantly− causing the administration to intervene. Mass arrests were made. Those arrested were tortured before the mob. They cut off their lips, their noses, their ears, their limbs, put them up in crosses low enough to be reached by hungry lions, had them seated in molten daybeds until their flesh would melt off, and then gathered their remains and threw them at the tender mercies of the dogs. What the dogs didn’t eat they burned only when 9. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, translated by Richard M. Gummere.

10. Davis, William, Sterns, Readings in Ancient History v. 2 (1913).

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the stench of putrefaction became unbearable. It was definitely clear that power had to respond to the demands of the idolworshipping mob. Any politician who respects the sordidness he serves would do the same thing! He would be swift to justify the people! Besides, the arena had its own history as a powerful political weapon in the Roman Empire. Gladiatorial games were a famous spectacle that would win a great deal of reputation for the arranger, a reputation that at some later point would be redeemable in votes. When Rome became an empire and elections were no longer an issue, the political significance of the arena assumed a new form. The emperor, who needed and handled the satisfied mob, became the sole arranger of the games. The arena was now an instrument of monocracy. Historians usually regard this new aspect of the arena as a substitute for voting. It was only in the arena that citizens supposedly came close to the emperor, shared with him the same thrills and had the privilege of enforcing their opinion by shouting who ought to die and who is the winner. Such an aspect is indeed ascertained by the fact that the emperor acted as a delegate to the spectators, ordering the gladiator’s death or award. Nevertheless, this version might be a result of the terror that historians repel. What we call Western Civilization wasn’t born in Greece, but in Rome. Greece has always been the favorable condition, the ideal. If the historian admits what really took place in the arena, then he has to automatically accept an abhorrent aspect of the West: The aspect of terror as an existential horizon. Either that, or deny the moral dimension of the historical narrative as a whole.

What was it that really took place in the arena, though?

It is doubtful that there was ever a man who understood it as clearly as Amphilochius, the Christian bishop of Iconium. And it is also doubtful whether he really comprehended what was imprinted on his mind. “They sit unknowing of these agonies, spectators at a show” wrote Amphilochius in his poem titled In the Coliseum. “When a man flies from a beast’s jaw, they - 33 -

groan, as if at least they missed the ravenous pleasure, like the beast, and sat there vainly. When, in the next spring, the victim is attained and, uttering the deep roar or quick shriek between the fangs, they clap to see the blood run like a brook; They stare with hungry eyes, which tears should fill, and cheer the beasts on with their soul’s good will; Gnashing their teeth, like beasts, on the flesh of men”11. The bishop of Iconium didn’t remember Aristotle. His morality didn’t allow him to recall what the philosopher had said about tragedy. “Through pity and fear it effects the proper purgation of these emotions”12. Through pity and fear. The arena showed the mob what didn’t happen to it, what the mob escaped from, and what might yet happen to the mob should it one day stop being a mob. There was never a Man more terrorized than the one sitting in the rows, safe within his own brutality, ready to weep nonetheless, having lost himself among the mob, his only chance to stay alive. Rome created the first virtual reality in human history: Death in the arena. The true victim was the spectator’s soul. The others, down on the arena floor, at least fought their individual battles, the battle for their flesh or their spirit. The spectator left the arena maimed, dragging the remnants of his life behind a simulacrum of power that was nothing but terror.

11. At The Colosseum, by Amphilochius of Iconium, translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

12. Aristotle, Poetics, translated by S.H. Butcher (translation slightly modified).

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THE TERRORISM OF THE GROUP

“It is not only by his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to change the miser into a spendthrift, the skeptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero”13.

This is what Le Bon wrote down when he introduced the study of the psychology of the masses, one thousand and five hundred years after the horror at Lyon and after the masses had established their presence at the forefront of History as a commanding factor. Only terror –of loneliness, of differentiation, of discrimination− would be powerful enough to to tear individuality off the individual, the only thing for which the individual would actually wage the bloodiest of struggles. No power could redeem the idea one has of himself other than the dyna-mics of the group, the transindividual force within which the frightened citizen can find refuge.

Group dynamics! The most abhorrent, irrational, immoral, garish, illusory terrorist tool ever created. How does a group get organized? First, there is formation, then configuration, followed by uniformity, and finally subjugation. During the formation stage, group members show intense individual mobility. They aren’t always in agreement with each other and seek guidance.

13. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A study of the Popular Mind - 35 -

It appears that it is necessary to have a leader, since safety, the basic reason for which members opted to form a group in the first place, requires exemption from the terror of personal responsibility. During the stage of configuration, the group wavers as members go through personal judgments with regard to their roles. Everyone aspires to become the leader. They all want to shape the group’s goals on the basis of their own personal ideas and desires. They are still individuals. They retain their own way of living. They accepted to shelter their terrors under a common roof, but they have no intention of abandoning their ego. Moving to the stage of uniformity, members accept their roles and goals as they were arranged by the leader. The group has a leader, a set of principles, and also methods of achieving its goals. Individuals show the tendency to rationally assimilate elements that are contrary to their personal ambitions.

They can retain their individuality to the extent where they formulate arguments in favor of the “common good”. The stage of subjugation sees the emergence of blind faith. Consciences are now executive instruments of an ideological machine that functions in a manner similar to Procrustes: It welcomes individuals, provides them with hospitality, yet it chops and slices away everything that is in excess. Arguments no longer matter at this stage. Emotion now assumes the main role while ideology emerges, the womb within which terror is transformed into a promise of blissfulness. The first mass ideology in human history was of course Christianity. Prior to it, no other worldview had ever demanded from Men faith in order to reap rewards –the reward being the prize of eternal life, no less. This was a unique and enormously powerful faith. Christianity wasn’t at all engrossed with all that happened with its believers, didn’t promise any transformation of society, nor had any care to make society fairer or friendlier to the human struggle for survival.

Christianity promised the final, penultimate dominion of the individual in life after death. The return gift for faith was quite powerful. It was a trick to disperse the terror arising from the - 36 -

wretchedness of life. As Spinoza said, when we desire something that has our likeness, we then desire that it loves us back. There is a hero, a hero model, existing in all Men. From this point of view, the Nazarene appeared like a model for any terrorized man and it was thus natural for him to win the faith of the weak, it was natural for them to believe that given the right effort, he would love them back. Initially, he gave all his love at once. Nowhere do the Gospels, the first texts introducing him to us, mention him asking anyone anything other than to uphold the Law of Moses. It is however impossible to build an ideology on top of such a broad subjugation to prohibitions that are self-evident for most human groups. Bishops ascribed themselves the duty of constructing the ideology. They entered politics, dabbled with earthly affairs, eliminated their opponents, debated misfortunes and molded them at will. It is relatively easy for someone to rid himself of a man’s persistence, one who believes because he feels that this will help him live a better life. However, if he believes because he thinks that this will grant him eternal life, and will thus die willingly, then that man is a fire raging out of control. Stand between a Man and his best interests and you will have to fight against someone whose strength increases or decreases on the basis of his possible gain from surviving the fight. Stand between a Man and his eternal salvation and you have to fight with a being next to which the strongest of beasts is like a helpless sheep. Group dynamics is based on the co-evaluation of means and ends imposed by the leader. In Christianity’s case, what we are dealing with is both a spiritual teaching and a secular authority. A victim of this secondary aspect of Christianity was Hypatia, the last philosopher of the ancient world at the beginning of the fifth century A.D. The death of this impressive woman would set new terms in the utter terrorization of Men by power. This is more than a just a blatant manipulation of the mob; this was a plan to create murderers who, by accomplishing their duty to their group, failed to realize that by this accomplishment they had - 37 -

become servants of the leader. The individual rallying itself with the mob in the arena had no ideology. It merely satisfied its primal instincts, choosing the role of the spectator in a show where the very next day he could easily become the protagonistvictim. Its mobility was quite broad. There was no requirement of emotional or ideological commitment to what it saw. In contrast, the Christian believer had to deviate from the pacifist messages of the founder of his religion. The use of violence, which had greatly afflicted the crucified prophet of prophets, needed to be justified, and this justification had to be convincing enough so as to overcome the contradiction of a “Christian” sort of violence. Naturally, things were made easier due to the replacement of rational thinking by faith, which Christianity promoted. If violence and aggression aren’t two concepts within a rationally constructed scale of values, but two different forms of manifestation of the supreme god, then the Christian believer could very well be violent and leave the judgment of his actions to divine will. Still, the stance of Christian writers and priests towards violence wasn’t always the same. Two Christian writers hold distinctly different point of views as regards Hypatia’s murder.

“There was a woman in Alexandria named Hypatia” documents Socrates Scholasticus, born in Constantinople around 380 A.D., in his Ecclesiastical History. “Daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions.

Such was her self-possession and ease of manner, arising from the refinement and cultivation of her mind, that she not unfrequently appeared in public in dignified modesty of deportment from which she was conspicuous, and which gained her universal respect and admiration. Yet even she fell victim to the political jealousy which at the time prevailed. For as she had - 38 -

frequent interviews with Orestes [the prefect of Alexandria], it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was by her influence he was prevented from being reconciled to Cyril. Some of them therefore, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, entered into a conspiracy against her; and observing her as she returned home in her carriage, they dragged her from it, and carried her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with shells. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. An act so inhuman could not fail to bring the greatest opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian Church. And surely nothing can be further from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of the sort�14.

Two hundred years later, John, Bishop of Nikiu, head of all monasteries in Egypt, makes an account of this event in his Chronicle. “And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honoured her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom. But he went once under circumstances of danger. And he not only did this, but he drew many believers to her, and he himself received the unbelievers at his house.

And on a certain day when they were making merry over a theatrical exhibition connected with dancers, the governor of the city published (an edict) regarding the public exhibitions in the city of Alexandria: and all the inhabitants of the city had assembled there (in the theatre). Now Cyril, who had been 14. The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, Surnamed Scholasticus, Or the Advocate: Comprising a History of the Church in Seven Books, from the Accession of Constantine, A.D. 305, to the 38th Year of Theodosius II, Including a Period of 140 Years. Translated from the Greek, London (1853).

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appointed patriarch after Theophilus, was eager to gain exact intelligence regarding this edict. And there was a man named Hierax, a Christian possessing understanding and intelligence, who used to mock the pagans but was a devoted adherent of the illustrious Father the patriarch and was obedient to his monitions. He was also well versed in the Christian faith. (Now this man attended the theatre to learn the nature of this edict.)

But when the Jews saw him in the theatre they cried out and said : ‘This man has not come with any good purpose, but only to provoke an uproar. And Orestes the prefect was displeased with the children of the holy church, and had Hierax seized and subjected to punishment publicly in the theatre, although he was wholly guiltless. And when the chief magistrate of the city heard this, he sent word to the Jews as follows: ‘Cease your hostilities against the Christians. But they refused to hearken to what they heard; for they gloried in the support of the prefect who was with them, and so they added outrage to outrage and plotted a massacre through a treacherous device. And they posted beside them at night in all the streets of the city certain men, while others cried out and said: ‘The church of the apostolic Athanasius is on fire: come to its succour, all ye Christians. And the Christians on hearing their cry came forth quite ignorant of the treachery of the Jews. And when the Christians came forth, the Jews arose and wickedly massacred the Christians and shed the blood of many, guiltless though they were. And in the morning, when the surviving Christians heard of the wicked deed which the Jews had wrought, they betook themselves to the patriarch. And the Christians mustered all together and went and marched in wrath to the synagogues of the Jews and took possession of them, and purified them and converted them into churches. And one of them they named after the name of S. George. And as for the Jewish assassins they expelled them from the city, and pillaged all their possessions and drove them forth wholly despoiled, and Orestes the prefect was unable to render them any help. And thereafter a multitude of believers in God - 40 -

arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ –and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments.

And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a (lofty) chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her [till they brought her] through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him ‘the new Theophilus; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city”15.

What was it that took place in the space of two centuries so that a Christian man changed from reproaching an unwarranted –even following the hard logic of survival− crime to actually consecrating it? The Christian mob that had tried to impose its will during the 5th century was by the 7th century holding the reins of power. Still, we shouldn’t hurry to denounce John, Bishop of Nikiu, as a morally corrupt leader who tries to maintain the ideological coherence of the ruling mob. His text is, of course, an exceptional case of propaganda, although a more observant look would indicate that he is, in fact, terrorized! This text constitutes a “paper arena”. Let this be the name of every text whose study leaves us in the same emotional state experienced by a Roman citizen upon leaving the arena of classical times. Differences aren’t negligible, although they concern only the incomparable amorality of the rhetoric compared to the “directness” of the savage act. Supposedly no one is in danger by murders committed on paper. No real blood flows, yet the spectator is the loser in this ultimate effort to adhere to abhorrence against the act. The spectator is left abandoned in this perversion much like an animal 15. John, Bishop of Nikiu: Chronicle. London (1916), English Translation.

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trying to survive. The relief stemming from the avoidance of a fortune similar to the victim’s is a raw, childish or primal emotion, although it does hold some sort of directness, honesty, and innocence. The paper arena is addressed to “civilized” men. Blood spilled through words must be completely justified. Should the opposite be the case, death will be outside the rational contract established between the writing of a text and its reading. In this case, Hypatia is murdered for being guilty of instigating a period of bloody upheavals. In this case, the Christians’ wrath is utterly justified and cross-validated. There are, naturally, several logical gaps in the text. Hypatia’s relationship with the pagan Orestes could very well be completely natural. Still, their relationship with the monotheistic Judeans is not directly explainable. The logical gap is thus covered by the gradual rise in emotional intensity until the final discharge. The biblical rhetoric of consecutive and multiple use of the conjunction “and” functions in a decisive manner, robbing the reader of any possibility to form his own thoughts. Facts may lack definite logical connections, but they are “poetically” and “rhetorically” connected, something that in turn secures the ultimate persuasion, the emotional one.

What of the author, then? Is he so wily, so cunningly deceitful? How dares a priest use rhetoric, the craft of lying, the only tactic you can use to charge the other part, the reader in this particular instance, with the responsibility of your own actions? In all cases of propaganda, agitators aren’t endangered by their subject, but by their readers. Propaganda could very well be seen as not merely a craft for distorting the reader’s ideas, but mainly as a technique of appropriating the will of the reader, as well as diminishing his judgment and indistinctness.

The text’s final result is to consecrate the agitator before the reader, despite the fact that it appears to instigate the reader against the agitator’s enemies. All else aside, all John, Bishop of Nikiu, had wanted was to make sure that the ruling mob was on his side. He gave them the statement he needed. He took Hypatia’s thorn off his side. He watched her torment in his - 42 -

imagination and rushed to narrate it to his fellow spectators, aiming at comforting his terror. No one knows how far the mob’s demands can go. One thing is certain: They will go as far as the mob’s survival dictates.

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THE PROPHET TERRORIST

In all likelihood, Man is a creature heavily smitten by Nature’s fixation with aimless experiments, creating useless beings in the process –as if Nature is some kind of Da Vinci, who designed machinery just to verify his capability at designing machinery.

Surely, history’s progress has proven that the great artist’s machines were anything but useless. They were, however, definitely aimless. Besides, what History of Nature could ever prove that Man’s existence has any purpose? A History of Nature is a History of Histories, whose sole readers must be longtime inhabitants of somewhere other than the territory we call Life, their absence sealing the determined nature that any object of any History ought to have. Moreover, a History of History requires an end of History, meaning no Man that would write it can exist. Unless the end is but a beginning. Unless there is no end other than the personal, the individual, the terrible end that is each and every one of us in front of the crowd of all those who will keep on living. Because this is how death draws its essence: From the fact that the deceased is obliged to depart from this world all on its own. The mass parade towards death alleviates the horror. The deceased dies, simply and conclusively. The dead descend a little lower so as to come to terms with their new way of existence.

A very important characteristic of terrorism is the massiveness of its target. When it threatens an entire nation, an emotionally corpulent address by the supreme ruler of that - 44 -

nation is probably enough to appease the ruthless beast of panic.

Anyone can look at his neighbor and allow himself an innocent symptom of hysteria that can be put to words as follows: “At least it’s either both of us together or only him”. Because according to the principle of a nation’s massiveness, some will survive –a nation never dies− and those who can love their neighbor as much as it takes to mourn him, to preserve his memory, will be included among the survivors. Faced with death, the individual attains a grasp of its loneliness. Regardless of how much the Cartesian solitary self was criticized, regardless of how clear it is that the individual has a public character, the prospective dead tremble when seized by the notion of the solitary march towards death. Their only consolation is the idea that they can take everyone else with them, or that they can die in their stead.

The individual appears to be more faithful than the corpus when it comes to the principle of survival. When faced with death, the brain proves to be more archaic than the spine.

Still, what happens when terrorism targets specific people? Their number matters not. Even if it threatens many hundreds of thousands of people, each of them has to think the prospect of their own individual demise, since a few living millions will attend the mourning of their loved ones and the loved ones of the luckless strangers that died with them, so as to follow their own solitary march towards the darkness of oblivion.

Crowds of experts gather over the terror of solitary death; true Zealots, Hashishins, psychotic killers and imaginary werewolves, vampires, possessed people. They can be seen stalking their victims practically everywhere; from crowded marketplaces to the dark corners at night, hun-ting to extract a large bite from the human cattle and disappear back to where all evil comes from, the Elsewhere. This Elsewhere, which can only be set in the Future, since the past has already gone and mortal space has already been inhabited. As dark as the rooms might be, someone can always turn on the light, even if this happens - 45 -

after the first or the initial killings. With a little luck, the world is our home! The Future is what is frightening, because when it arrives in the form of irrational death, it deprives the individual of the solution of fleeing. There is only one path and it leads to the Future, towards the Future of the impending, therefore towards the after of death. The past is something much more than a “brook”. It is a solid wall that guarantees death the uninterrupted continuation of its bloodletting labor.

Nowhere is the terror of the impending solitary death more intensely and transparently clear than prophetic texts – both oral and written. The prophet is always a seer of bad omens.

It is meaningless to forecast a good future. Should this happen, the prophetic voice or scripture would cancel itself, squandering away its rhetorical fortune. A vital minimalism can make Man regard anything that is non-catastrophic as good. As a result, a good future is what is always anticipated, unless something goes wrong in the process. It doesn’t take a prophet to know this.

It should be said then, that when Agamemnon –angered by his conflict with Achilles over the ownership of a young woman who isn’t anybody’s property anyway− shouts to Calchas: “Prophet of evil, when have you ever said good things to me?

You love to predict the worst, always the worst!”16, he blatantly wrongs him. Yet, given that a good prophecy would automatically validate the Atreid’s position, the king of Mycenes forgets that the prophet’s job is to draw attention to future dangers. He either forgets or pretends to forget this fact and demands from Calchas to declare before all Achaeans that the future is fine and that they have no further need of him, and all this just to help a stubborn king off a tight spot in the present. Because when the warning of a future danger is almost always a matter of godly demands, the leader’s task was to handle a matter concerning the relationship between the human flock and Divinity. And should the gods ultimately disagree to act according to common 16. The Iliad, translated by Ian Johnston.

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sense –a fact that Oedipus, to his misfortune, learned all too well− the worst that could happen is that this would be passed on to the memory of future generations interred within a splendorous beehive tomb, whose endurance the leader could very well imagine, thus perpetuating his regime.

The personal character of each prophecy is deeply rooted in its political dimension. This is because there isn’t even a single prophecy that is devoid of political content, not a single prophecy that doesn’t create a distributional framework of its devastating fortune between the prophet and the reader or listener of the prophecy. The political dimension automatically partitions the social body into two separate areas: The private area, distributed to the one who accepts the terrorizing message, and the public area, distributed to those who perpetrated the message and must therefore correct their fault as soon as possible. The reading dimension creates an impenetrable space within which both prophet and reader become knowers of the devastating future.

Naturally, given that the prophet addresses the reader and that there is no impersonal reading, the text primarily and mainly concerns the one that is trapped between the knowledge of the future and his own future. The text monumentalizes the state of his conscience, dividing his personal history in two halves, a sinful past and a vengeful future. It is more or less personal, for had he not accepted the prophecy, he wouldn’t have had died alone. But, since he accepted it, he has isolated himself to the role of privileged reader. No one can now convince him that the prophecy isn’t about him personally. Besides, he is no philologist to analyze the communication process set in motion.

It is thus that John –the Apostle, the Evangelist or the chosen “of Patmos”− prior to devoting himself to the protobaroque narrative of the tortures imposed upon the impious mankind, first makes sure to place the noose of personal responsibility around the reader’s neck not for causing this horrifying future to come to pass, but because of the reader’s slothfulness before the possibility of its avoidance: “The - 47 -

Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John; who bare record of the word of God, and of testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand”17.

If the Revelation, in agreement with its author’s opinion, is a text made for communicational purposes only, given that its goal is to “signify” (and he sent and signified it by his angel), then to regard it as something other than such would clearly indicate carelessness from the reader’s part, and pure folly from our part.

The reader will enjoy a text rich in uncanny images and arousing allegories, subjected to the perils of “removing the lampstand of him out of the place of it”, to have Jesus “come on thee as a thief” at any given time, or to “spue thee out of his mouth”, among others.

All we would do is to simply keep on reading a monument of political terrorism as a landmark of a different kind of literature, rich in uncanny images and arousing allegories.

So, the author receives a message from Jesus delivered by an angel, authored by God. The neoplatonic “poverty” of early Christianity is well-known: Members of the Trinity stumble upon one another and all together lurch unto the Word, but what is of interest to us can be delineated as follows: Divine Word-AngelProphet, and, finally, Reader.

Who could possibly avoid feeling proud for being chosen in such a manner? How many people have ever ma-naged to reach even the lowest level of divine hierarchy? How many people have acquired the privilege of being the first to know?

The text, like any other text, sets the trap that makes its existence possible. Every speech demands a response. Therefore, “blessed is he that readeth”. Nonetheless, his only blessing is the ability to elude his fate, a fate which –in the end− isn’t restricted to him 17. The Holy Bible, King James Version, Cambridge Edition - 48 -

alone; seven Churches are threatened by the prophet. However, none of them is able to establish some sort of identification with the reader in the context of reading. The reader must in turn notify the text so as to find find himself among peers and to (most likely) die among their ranks, always alone, burdened with the inability to manage his place in the divine hierarchy: To save others and, in the process, also save himself. Still, he has the option of keeping the prophecy to himself and be saved, he and he alone. But who can assure him that he is the only one who has read the text? What if the Other reader is preparing to take the chosen one’s place? Besides, the prophet is clear on the subject of individual solution: “Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent”. Anyone can therefore repent, adhere to God’s impositions, and ultimately be saved. But to wander around, saying that he received the message, that he heard God’s words, this is too great a demand!

To save himself, yes! But to save all mankind! This is an obsessive exercise of politics! Which cruel god would demand such a thing? No god. The one demanding such a thing is the prophet himself, the demon of politics as collective action aimed at mashing together individual solids. The reader, however, isn’t educated in the History of political thought, he is not –as we could say− a prophet. He is a subject full of passions, just like any other subject, and somewhere deep within him feels alone, very alone, and bound to make harsh amends for the ignorance of others.

And after the terrorist tactic of prophecy has been tested enough, so as to prove its value at governing the mob of the faithful, we can see its victim, the lone traveler of impending death, wandering the streets of modern cities, screaming the Lord’s prophecy, on the brink of insanity, visibly panicked, truly enraged by the apathy of others. And when he screams “Repent!

The End is nigh!” he would very much like to add: “Why is it my fault if you won’t repent?”. And he may think: “What if this apathy hides the fact that they have already repented? What if - 49 -

they have already done their deed and I am left alone, charged with enlightening the enlightened? I could be stricken down at this spot, right now, by the wrath of the Lord, and they would pass me by, saved for all time! Repent! Can you not hear? The End has come!�.

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THE WALLACHIAN PRINCE, THE GREEK COMMUNISTS, AND GUTENBERG

The intensity of terror propagated by a text depends on the prestige its author enjoys and the range of the text’s readership.

In reality, there is no solitary reading other than implying an imaginary endowment of privilege towards a chosen reader.

Opening one’s self to a text goes hand-in-hand with the feeling of almightiness. As the I-he, the recipient of the other’s message, I am obliged to respond with accepting the truth that unfolds in-between the letters, the lines, and the paragraphs.

Still, the text will sooner or later show its teeth. Everything that is included in it, from the type of writing and its materials to the chosen words and rhetorical schemes, will at some point demand the imposition of their own imaginary. The reader will be forced to accept the terms of the text as reality, since language now reveals the other author and the other reader.

The other author of the manuscript entertains the reader in his private study. Once there, the reader will meet the other few yet similarly chosen readers. The other author of the printed text does not allow entry to his private space other than the access granted through a chain of imagined reductions. The other readers of the printed text have expelled all predicates save the fundamental predicate of existence. Some reductions are also necessary in this instance, so that the reader won’t feel exposed next to the category of existence itself, to the cruel generality that nullifies his being by demanding that he accepts the text’s universal truth. The printed page is inherently public in nature.

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The reader peruses the text knowing that it has been printed in hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of copies, and that while is he reading his own copy, others read another copy of the same text as well, others who are completely outside his reach of communication. Who are these people? What do they think? And what should he himself think about the text in order to appease the terror afflicted by these unknown others?

Still, the terrorism of the printed text isn’t limited to crushing the reader through his faceless colleague in the crowd.

It is a more complicated case altogether. It could not be any less, since only through words can one truly strike terror. Not through arms. Arms can only materialize terror. And, given that the text can only follow the words, like an advertiser promising a good advert which, in turn, provides the promise of a good product, it is without a doubt that Gutenberg –first by figuring out that the Chinese had discovered only woodblock printing, and secondly, by forgetting to acknowledge Koster as the inventor of movable type− discovered that movable type gave the text the ability to accelerate, reaching the blinding speed of propaganda.

This aspect of written texts –their capacity at propaganda− was discovered not by the stepfather, but by the mother of printing: Hard, demanding and adulterous politics. It was she that would teach the technical contrivance devised by the German goldsmith the steps of the archaic dance of power so that it would dance as good as its older brother, the word. In 1545, priests discovered that a devout Christian could fill Europe with indulgences overnight. A year later, they discovered that anyone could get his hands on the Bible. Bizarre emotions in strange times. The following year was bisect and very stressful for Eastern Europe. Only three years had passed since the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire fell, and the Balkans were entering an adventure from which they would never break away. In the summer, the Hungarian king John Hunyadi defeated the Turkish army near Belgrade. This was a victory that left Europeans with the habit of striking their bells in the middle of the day at the - 52 -

same date each year, as well as a constant fear of Turks, who at the time were successful in capturing the city of Athens. A few days later, some strange Wallachian prince killed Vladislav II, king of Wallachia, and took his place. The brave Lazar Brankovic became king of Serbia, while a few dozen thousands sinners were killed by the terrible earthquake that reeled Naples in Italy. Nonetheless, the second oldest university in Europe, situated in Greifswald, Germany, was founded in the autumn of the same year, while also during that time, the Portuguese Cadamosto reached Cape Verde only to disco-ver that islands aren’t a feature of the Mediterranean Sea only, and that the Dark Continent isn’t all dark. Distress, mobility, constant turn of events… nonetheless, the world was still far away from downfall, since in Nuremberg, the secular capital of the Holy Roman Empire, the only thing troubling the residents was the inability of merchants to travel in the East without returning crippled, or not even returning at all.

So, it was there, seven years later in Nuremberg, where the new art of printing was flourishing, in an environment not dissimilar to the one during the infernal year of 1456, where an eight page-long pamphlet would go into circulation recounting the atrocities of someone called Vlad Tepes or Dracula, king of Wallachia. This pamphlet, of which we know only one of its numerous republications, fashioned in 1499 by the printer Ambrosius Huber, revealed to the German public the true character of this bizarre Wallachian prince, who a few months ago had killed Vladislav II, the then king of Wallachia. Naturally, the knowledge the German subjects had about this murder was no greater than the knowledge they had of the emperor Zara Yaquob, who was making a brilliant career as an emperor in Ethiopia. Still, the African land was too far away and far too primitive to pose any threat to the safety of Europe. The land of Dracula, however, was only two steps away from the gateway to Europe and –more worryingly− stood between Europe and the East.

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Here is what the children of Europe read in the year of our Lord 1463: ďƒś THE STORY OF VOIVODE DRACULA The old ruler murdered old Dracul. Dracula and his brother renounced their faith and swore to protect and respect the Christian doctrine.

The same year he became ruler of Wallachia. He immediately ordered the murder of Ladislav, who was the ruler of that land.

A while later, he ordered the burning of villages and castles in Siebenburgen, near Hermannstadt, thus reducing the villages and castles in Siebenburgen, Kastenholz, Nenndorf and Holzmengen to ashes.

He burned Beckendorf in Wurtzland. The women, men, and children that he didn’t burn on the spot were put in chains and taken back to Wallachia with him, where he impaled them all.

Dracula signed a truce and during that truce he ordered that all merchants and draymen in Wurtzland be impaled.

He issued a demand that all young men and all those who had come to Wallachia from various places to learn the language and other things be brought before him. He gathered them all in a hall and burned them. They were some four hundred people.

Item. He wiped out all members of a large clan, from the youngest to the oldest. Children, friends, brothers and sisters, he impaled them all.

Item. He had some of his men buried up to the navel and commanded they be used for target practice. Some he roasted, others he flayed alive.

Item. He put young Dan in prison and had the priests chant his funeral service. As soon as they were done, he ordered - 54 -

that a grave be dug in accordance with Christian morals, and had him beheaded right beside his grave.

Five hundred and five ambassadors were sent to Wallachia on behalf of the king of Hungary, the Saxons, and Siebenburgen.

Dracula left them waiting for five weeks and set up stakes right in from of the place where they were staying. They believed he was going to impale them. Oh, how grave was their distress! He kept them there all that time so that they wouldn’t betray him.

And he left with the entirety of his army and went to Wurtzland.

One morning, at sunrise, he arrived at the villages, the castles and the ci-ties and razed everything, burning all brood and crops. And he burned the city of Kronstadt and took prisoners with him. And he had them gathered near the chapel of Saint Jacob, and when it dawned, early in the morning, he impaled them all: Men, women and children, young and old. And he seated himself to eat in a table under the impaled corpses, a thing he really enjoyed.

He ordered that the temple of Saint Bartholomew be burned, and he afterwards stole all vestments and chalices, which he brought back with him.

He sent one of his commanders to burn a large village called Zeinding, but that commander failed to accomplish this task because the villagers fought back. When he returned to his ruler and told him “My lord, I failed to execute your command” Dracula seized and impaled him.

He impaled all merchants and all those who had travelled with goods from Wurtzland to Tunau, near Pregel.

They were some six hundred men, and their belongings were afterwards seized.

He ordered a large cauldron with handles be made, covered with a wooden lid that had holes large enough for a man’s head to extend through them. He then ordered a large fire be lit under the cauldron, filled the cauldron with water, and put men in it to boil. He impaled many, men and women, young and old.

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He then once again went to Siebenburgen, in Kalmatz, and had many men massacred, and took many prisoners and transported them back to Wallachia, and he impaled them in various inhuman ways.

He invented horrible, ghastly, abominable and unnamable ways to torture. He impaled mothers with their infants and small children of one and two years of age. He tore babies from their mothers’ bosoms and tore mothers off from their babies. He ordered the bosoms of the mothers be cut and the heads of their infants be put in their place, and he impaled them, thus making these women suffer enormously. All tyrants and torturers of Christians such as Herod, Nero, Diocletian and many other heathens besides could never invent and perform all the torture he conceived and executed. Nobody caused other men more harm than this tyrant.

He horizontally impaled a vast number of people, young and old, women and men. And they could move and shake their hands and feet, and bend and jump like frogs. He then had their hands nailed and said many times in his language: “Ah, how just is their punishment!”. They were atheists, Jews, Christians, heretics, and Vlachs.

He caught a Gypsy who was a thief. The other Gypsies then went to beg Dracula to give him back to them. Dracula told them “He must be hanged, and you will be the ones to hang him”.

And they responded “The gallows are not something we are accustomed to”. Dracula then had the gypsy boiled in a cauldron and forced them to eat him down to his very bones.

A nobleman acting as emissary went and found Dracula walking amidst a crowd of impaled men, looking at the corpses.

And they were many, as many as the trees in a large forest. He then asked him why he was walking amidst all this stench. Dracula asked him if he felt the stench as well. The man responded “Yes”.

Immediately afterwards, he ordered that he be hanged very high so that the stench would not reach him.

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A cleric preached that sins would not be absolved if one would not return what one has stolen. Dracula then invited the cleric to sit at his table. The ruler cut small pieces from his bread and threw them in the cleric’s plate, who took some of that bread with his spoon. The prince then started repeating the cleric’s sermon for sins, etc. The cleric said “My lord, you are right”. And Dracula said to him “Then why are you taking the bread I cut?”.

And he immediately had him impaled.

He invited all the lords and noblemen from his country to his home. When the supper was finished, he turned to the eldest of them and asked him how many voivodes or princes he remembered having reigned in the land. He told him all those he could remember. He then asked the others, both young and old, and demanded that they tell him how many they remembered.

One said fifty, another thirty, someone else said twenty, some other said twelve, and none was young enough to remember fewer than seven. He then impaled all these noblemen, who were five hundred.

He had a mistress, which announced him that she was pregnant. Dracula had another woman examine her, who could not figure out whether she was really pregnant or not. Dracula then opened her mistress’s belly from the vagina up to the chest, saying that he wanted to see the place where he once was and that now holds his offspring.

He grinded men in grindstones and they say that he did many other monstrous deeds besides.

In the year 1460, in the eve of Saint Bartholomew’s day, Dracula went with his men to the land that lies beyond the forest, and as they say, he hunted down all Wallachians, both men and women, near the village of Amlas. He gathered all those he managed to capture and slaughtered them with swords and knives. He took with him the priest and all those he hadn’t killed and impaled them. He burned down the entire village and all the villager’s belongings, or so they claim. In the year of our Lord 1462 Dracula went to the great Schiltau, where he killed more - 57 -

than twenty five thousand men of all kinds: Christians, heathens, etc. Among them were the finest women and maidens, which the men of his court kept for themselves. They begged Dracula to allow them to take the women as their lawful wives. Dracula, who was against that, ordered they all be massacred, both the women and the men from his court. And he did that because he was subject to tax to the Turkish Sultan, who demanded payment of taxes. Dracula immediately informed the [Turkish] people that he desired to deliver the taxes himself to the Sultan.

The people then rejoiced, and Dracula invited them in groups, and all [Turkish] commanders hasted to meet him. And he killed them all. Moreover, he burned down the entire territory called Bulgaria. And others he had them hanged from their hair, and others he had them burned. All of them numbered twenty five thousand souls.

Ambassadors from Hermannstadt saw all the dead and impaled in Wallachia, now forming an entire forest of corpses, not counting all those he had roasted, boiled, or flayed.

He razed the entire territory called Fagaras and led wo-men, men and children to Wallachia, where he had them impaled.

He beheaded with his very own hands many of his men who had helped him bury his treasure.

Furthermore, he beheaded the noblemen of his country, took their heads and had them cooked in such a manner so as to resemble crayfish. Following that, he invited their friends to his home and told them “you have just eaten the heads of your friends”. He then impaled them.

He saw a villager with a very short shirt working and asked him “Is there a woman in your house?”, and he responded “There is”. He then said to him “Bring her here so that I can see her”. He then asked the woman “What are your chores?”. And the woman responded “I wash, I cook, I spin…” etc. Dracula immediately impaled her because she had failed to make a longer shirt for her husband, one that wouldn’t let his belly show.

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And he immediately gave him another woman and ordered her to make a longer shirt for her husband, or else, he said, he would impale her too.

He came across a barefoot monk and impaled him along with his donkey.

About three hundred Gypsies arrived to his land. He took three of their leaders, roasted them, and forced the others to eat them, saying “You will either eat each other until no one remains, or you will go fight against the Turks”. They accepted to go wherever he would send them. He then took them and dressed them in cowhides, and did the same with their horses.

When they came across the Turks, their horses were frightened because of the smell and started running towards a river. As the Gypsies chased after them, the Turks fell into the river and drowned.

He invited all the poor men of his country to his home and after he had them feast, he burned them all inside a hall. They were two hundred people.

He roasted small children and forced their mothers to eat them. He then cut off the women’s’ breasts and forced their husbands to eat them. He then impaled the husbands.

Many Italian people visited his country. When they came before him, they removed their hats, underneath which they wore a cap or a brown-reddish beret that they did not remove.

He asked them why they would not remove it and they replied “My lord, it is our custom, and we do not remove it not even in the presence of the emperor”. Dracula then said “Very well then, in this case I shall uphold your custom”. They thanked him for his kindness. He then took several strong iron nails and nailed the caps to their heads, so that they wouldn’t fall off. This way he upheld their custom.

Hear now how the old ruler of Hungary captured Dracula.

The ruler of Hungary sent Dracula a letter saying that he wished to betroth his daughter to him. Dracula arrived officially dressed, escorted by nine hundred riders, and was accepted with honors, - 59 -

and [the ruler] gave him his daughter, but only for the sake of appearances. As soon as the wedding ceremony was complete, he was escorted by his brother-in-law, along with a large following. When they reached Dracula’s country, he stopped and said “Lord husband, I have escorted you far enough”. And Dracula replied “Indeed, my lord”. He was certain that he would return to his country. He was then surrounded and captured. He still lives”.

He still lives. One would obviously think that someone would have relieved the world from the horror of such a monster, yet he still lives. And it is not at all unlikely at all for him to escape from his prison and butcher anyone and everyone.

Because, even though the pamphlet does not imply in the slightest that Dracula has any connection to wizards, demons and supernatural forces, a man such as he, who taunts even god, can only have the powers of evil at his side. This closure shatters the reader’s relationship with the text. It upsets it, without making the slightest of noises, and brings into being the dirtiness that the Mass Informational Media are being blamed for even in our time and age: It manages to terrorize the reader, imprisoning him between the enjoyment of the text and its moral aim; also, it terrorizes the subject of the text itself, imprisoning it between the power of the few and the power of the mob.

It is an extraordinary communication tactic, whose terms, conditions, and functions were supported by the −still nascent at the time− capability of mass circulation.

Four hundred and eighty four years later, in 1947 in Greece, this method of communication doesn’t seem to have lost even a slightest bit of its gross and excessive (up to the point of self-refutation) rhetoric.

The featured headline of the popular newspaper “EMPROS” at Wednesday, July 2nd 1947, was “Three brigands of ELAS have been captured”. The name of the article’s author was –ironically or threateningly?− T. Dracos. “Since yesterday, - 60 -

the National Security holds three of the EAM-communist mafia’s most bloodthirsty enforcers. […] One of them is the most lawless and most bloodthirsty –on account of his actions− G. Eipides. He is surely a pathological and twisted criminal who took pleasure in torturing his victims. […] Eipides executed his victims pursuant to his own unique system: He would cut their throats with his bare teeth, suck their blood and grind their ears! […] He was also so vicious a torturer as to extract his victims’ kidneys with a knife while they were on the way to be questioned…”.

There is a difference between these two texts, despite the five-century gap between them. The author of the German pamphlet doesn’t seem willing to hide the fact that the Wallachian prince acted in order to serve justice, a detail rendering the text’s testimonies more plausible. Where other princes would employ more humanitarian methods to keep their subjects in check or just to punish and admonish them, Dracula is being led astray by his corrupted nature and resorts to bloodbath. Which were these other humanitarian methods? Decapitation, (also) impalement, hanging, stoning, whipping until blood falls and –at least if we take into account the more or less precise journal of Great Britain’s Newgate prison− tearing off limbs with the aid of four strong horses (one for each limb). And all this, of course, performed in public.

The author of the Greek newspaper’s article claims that the communist’s atrocities are the result of his paranoid personality and not his ideology, a detail that gives his text an objectivity that is more humanitarian in nature, while at the same time implying the “softness” of the methods employed by the “Motherland” in order to save communists from their destructive self-deception. Which were these methods? Savage executions, rapes, torture, exile, mock trials. And all this being carried out in absolute secrecy.

To tell the difference between these two terrorist texts requires the spirit of the Enlightenment. The world of 1947 may - 61 -

be the result of “Man’s exit from his self-incurred tutelage”18, as Kant said, but it also stems from the Terror of the French Revolution. The balance between the acceptance of Man’s natural rights and the necessity of violence in the process of “educating” society had been achieved by withholding or turning violence into one of society’s natural rights. The society as a whole had to somehow find a way to survive the savagery of certain individuals or certain groups.

In all other aspects, the terrorist mechanism set in motion by our case texts is one and the same: Partly because the pamphlet concerning Dracula is the first application of this method, and partly because Man’s reaction to violence perpetrated by power never drifted far from its simplistic plot.

The reader of 1463 and the reader of 1947 both have to deal with a text whose nature is public. From a psychological point of view, it is no different than attending a public execution, the speeches of which are read to the masses by the judge’s proxy standing at the side of the all-too-eager executioner. The text demands that the reader chooses a side in the face of its supposedly stated truth. Should the reader question this truth, he can very well be sure that several hundreds or thousands of other readers won’t, thus facing the likelihood of being classified among the “connoisseurs” of the subject (be it Dracula or the communists). So, what is best for him is to believe what, at the very least, has been written by people who are educated and capable of knowing more. He then loses himself in the horror of the accounts and is left open to the darker side of the animal, which cannot decide whether the thought of blood invites it to pleasuredom or utterly repels it. This archaic dilemma is solved by contemplating the rage of the small and weak in the face of imperilment by the bigger and the stronger. So, by accepting the brutality of the subject, he then sets the priority of the subject’s annihilation. Only if the beast ceases to exist will Man be at 18. James Miller, the Passion of Michel Foucault (1993) - 62 -

peace. A hopeless thought. The beast isn’t always out there, since the text cannot be a real text unless it trades each and every written word contained in its lines with the reader. The reader has already been terrified because the text is made of the same substance as he: Words. If it describes a reality beyond its sentences, this beyond is made in the reader’s likeness: It is made of words. One can lead the fight against Dracula or a savage communist, both comprised of flesh and blood, but never against a Dracula or a savage communist made of words.

Only words can kill other creatures made of words. The reader’s conscience can now be manipulated by the author. The subject as an actual account belongs exclusively to his opponent. He can eliminate it at his own leisure, whenever and however he wishes. Public executions are no longer needed. Besides, in this case, the author would lose all power he has over the reader’s conscience. Naturally, the mechanism of this particular deployment of terrorism will never be completed in any other way than in small steps, and this can only be done after the principles of the Enlightenment have been assimilated –even if this assimilation is nothing but a sham. Monsters deemed dangerous for the society at large will be publicly executed for a few more centuries to come. Nonetheless, the sadistic genius of politicians and their really dangerous hired pens will realize very early on that it isn’t merely the mass that is being kept in check by informational terrorism, but also the subject itself, the political opponent. In reality, neither Dracula, nor plenty of other communists were executed. They simply became readers of the texts telling their actions. This opened up a new cycle of terrorism. The “monster” looked itself in a mirror that revealed its hideousness. And it had to choose between two stand points: Either denounce its linguistic reflection and make an effort to restore its actual face, or accept –due to a lack of alternatives− its distortion and make use of the terror it would spread. Should it choose the first, it would have to stand before the mob, which would see the subject of its terror surrender to the mercy of its - 63 -

accepted identity, and would proceed to strike it down without pity. Should it choose the second, it would have to face its opponent’s justice, who would eradicate it by merely invoking its confession. The “monster” was thus abandoning itself in its imprisonment, its only hope being the passing of time –if such a thing existed− that would make its public image fade away. It would then invade the forefront of reality. Unfortunately, the text would sooner or later become the actual reality that would establish a daily convention of terrorism, imprisoning everybody, even the author himself, between the rules of the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. In this convention, the process of producing terror doesn’t always begin with the same terms. The worst of it all? It is not at all certain that Lacan actually failed to terrorize everybody with his own text.

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THE TERRORIZED TERRORIST

Suppose we have a terrorist, a roaring Islamist who sends a videotaped message to a large TV station, in which message he threatens the president of a country that is globally recognized as the lead –even if its authority isn’t absolute. What do we have in this instance? A televisual entity faced against a human subject.

Naturally, the TV entity is a signifier. As we can easily tell, the signified is a human subject that has created its signifier in the form of a threatening message. Anyone can do that. Anyone can choose his signifiers in the vast and multiform communication process that is life. The carnival is the only holiday season that everyone can enjoy whenever they choose to, or whenever the circumstance calls for it. This is one side of the equation, the side of the transmitter. What about the side of the receiver?

As it was previously remarked, what we have here is a human subject, a signifier. In this instance, the signifier is the country globally recognized as the lead –despite the fact that its authority is probably not absolute. What is the case, then? Here is another way to examine it: A human subject linked with the image of terrorism meets a country linked with a human subject.

Terrorism experts, using very strict logical analysis in any and all instances where no conclusions are likely to be reached, may bring up numerous objections, but we can all understand that that what is at stake here lies between the image of the terrorist and that of the human subject. We could very well say that the signifiers have decided to resolve their differences at the level of - 65 -

the signified. But how else could it be, given that their very nature as signifiers is linked with several areas of reality and they are therefore bound to feed on some sort of tangible matter? Two huge skyscrapers collapsing, that is certainly tangible, although this tangible fact is not the war, but merely the battlefield. Still, which are these cannibal signs purging their signifieds so that they can be praised as signifiers?

What sort of sign can a human subject revealed as a terrorist be, and what sort of sign is a country that reveals itself as a human subject? Nothing more than the sign serving as the meeting point for the same words that elevate both of them to the stage of public relations: “Terrorist” and “President”.

Meaning: Some poor man pretending to be a terrorist, for he craves the absolute authority of a president, and some other poor fellow who plays the role of a president, because deep down he craves the absolute power of the terrorist. The first one is frantic because the only way he can satisfy his wish is by negating it. The second one is terrorized because he lies opposite to his desire erupting with the might of his own lack of accomplishments. The first one hates himself and the second one is afraid of himself. Ultimate power is the sign, the same sign that is pitted against itself, playing the quaint game of master and slave. Regardless of how you look at it, the blood that flows is the blood of the Other, the principal Other. Because Hegel failed to see that in this game the house comes falling down, and when Marx saw it, he thought that he could at least save the pots and cans.  In the year of our Lord 1561, and while witch-hunting games were commencing in Northeast Germany –games that would expose and purify 4000 witches in the pyre within the next 9 years− the priest Rodrigo Lopez de Segura published in Spain, the then bastion of Catholicism, the monumental Book of the - 66 -

Liberal Invention and Art of the Game of Chess, which establishes the rules that are still in force to this very day. Coincidentally or not, that book is published in a giant chessboard. During that time –just like in any time− European countries were getting territorially larger or smaller, proportionally to the inventiveness of moves played by monarchs, in a game with no established rules. It is sufficient to think that after one hundred and forty years the Englanders would fight the Germans in Flanders in order to place an English prince that was French on the throne of Spain. For now, the Spanish throne was occupied by Philip the Second, commonly called the Prudent, head of an empire stretching to all the known continents. So, one day in the year of 1561, it is rumored that the monarch received the following letter: “To King Philip, the Spaniard, son of Charles the Invincible: From Lope de Aguirre, your lesser vassal, old Christian, of middling parents but fortunately of noble blood, native of the Basque country of the kingdom of Spain, citizen of the town of Onate.

In my youth I crossed the sea to the land of Peru to gain fame, lance in hand, and to fulfill the obligation of all good men.

In 24 years I have done you great service in Peru, in conquests of the Indians, in founding towns, and especially in battles and encounters fought in your name, always to the best of my power and ability, without requesting of your officials pay nor assistance, as can be seen in your royal records.

I firmly believe, most excellent King and lord, that to me and my companions you have been nothing but cruel and ungrateful.I also believe that those who write to you from this land deceive you, because of the great distance.

I demand of you, King, that you do justice and right by the good vassals you have in this land, even though I and my companions (whose names I will give later), unable to suffer - 67 -

further the cruelties of your judges, viceroy, and governors, have resolved to obey you no longer. Denaturalizing ourselves from our land, Spain, we make the most cruel war against you that our power can sustain and endure. Believe, King and lord, we have done this because we can no longer tolerate the great oppression and unjust punishments of your ministers who, to make places for their sons and dependents have usurped and robbed our fame, life, and honor. It is a pity, King, the bad treatment you have given us.

I am lame in the right leg from the arquebus wounds I received in the battle of Chuquinga, fighting with marshall Alonzo de Alvarado, answering your call against Francisco Hernandez Giron, rebel from your service as I and my companions are presently and will be until death, because we in this land now know how cruel you are, how you break your faith and your word, and thus we in this land give your promises less credence than to the books of Martin Luther.

Your viceroy the marquis of Canete hanged Martin de Robles, a man distinguished in your service; and the brave Tomas Vasquez, conquistador of Peru; and the ill fated Alonso Dias, who worked more in the discoveries of this kingdom than the scouts of Moses in the desert; and Piedrahita, a good captain who fought many battles in your service. In Pucara they gave you victory, and if they had not, Francisco Hernandez would now be the king of Peru. Don’t give much credence to the claims your judges make of services performed, because it is a great myth, unless they call having spent 800,000 pesos of your royal treasury for their vices and evil deeds, a service. Punish them as evildoers, as such they certainly are.

Look here, King of Spain! Do not be cruel and ungrateful to your vassals, because while your father and you stayed in Spain without the slightest bother, your vassals, at the price of their blood and fortune, have given you all the kingdoms and holding you have in these parts. Beware, King and lord, that you cannot take, under the title of legitimate king, any benefit from this land - 68 -

where you risked nothing, without first giving due gratification to those who have labored and sweated in it.

I am certain there are few kings in hell because there are few kings, but if there were many none would go to heaven.

Even in hell you would be worse than Lucifer, because you all thirst after human blood. But I don’t marvel nor make much of you. For certain, I and my 200 arquebus-bearing maranones, conquistadores and noble, swear solemnly to God that we will not leave a minister of yours alive, because I already know how far your clemency reaches. Today we consider ourselves the luckiest men alive, because we are in these parts of the Indies, with faith in God’s commandments full and uncorrupted as Christians, maintaining all that is preached by the holy mother church of Rome, and we intend, though sinners in life, to achieve martyrdom through God’s commandments.

Upon leaving the Amazon River, called the Maranon, on an island inhabited by Christians called Margarita, I saw some reports from Spain regarding the great schism of Lutherans there, which caused us to be frightened and surprised. In our company there was a German named Monteverde, and I ordered him cut to pieces. Destiny rewards the prudent.”19 Philip was a wise monarch. Ever since he was a child, he had displayed a preference towards the pen over the sword. This made him fair, but didn’t stop him from becoming distrustful.

Too much reading turned him grim, but didn’t stop him from becoming a sexual libertine, which, in turn, didn’t stop him from demonstrating an extraordinary self-restraint when it came to eating and drinking. This is to say that God only knows what went on in his soul; God only knows who and for what purpose were locked in constant war within Philip. What is certain is that souls that haven’t tasted the peace created by identity can only have 19. Lope de Aguirre: Letter from to King Philip of Spain, 1561, translated by Tom Holloway.

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confidence to that force that brings together the most disparate of emotions and thoughts: The force of the Ego, and even more, the force of that particular Ego that howls with the fury of its constant absence. A monarch featuring the characteristics of Philip could very well stand up from the throne, tear the letter to pieces and scream for his armies to be gathered in order to punish the insolent letter-writer. However, in this particular case, he had no idea who the heck this audacious letter-writer was and no clue whether his letter held any value. It was a threat addressed to him personally, that much was certain, but who would even dare to commit such an act –which had no precedent− unless he was already a king with larger forces than Philip’s?

It is possible that Philip’s courtiers informed him of Lope de Aguirre’s person. They told him it was possible that he was recruited by Rodrigo Buran and had arrived in Peru approximately two decades ago, where he became notorious for his cruelty and for his arrogant behavior towards his superiors. He fought to enforce the Spanish Kingdom’s laws to the colonists who were then at the beginning of creating a new economy based on slave-ownership. He was involved in the ensuing plotting, always on the King’s side, slaughtering both his opponents and half of Peru’s native population. He afterwards started extorting the army officials to recognize him as Prince of Indies. Being unsuccessful in that endeavor, he took over Isla Margarita by massacring the largest part of its occupants, and he had now sent this letter. It is also possible that they were unaware that the letter-writer was beheaded by the king’s soldiers during that same year.

Philip’s reaction is unknown, as it is unknown whether Aguirre’s letter was delivered to him at all. Therefore, the only fact we know for certain is the mutineer’s intent to terrorize the king. Based on that, those that knew Aguirre said he was mad, citing as additional proof that he would see conspiracies everywhere around him. We could say that Aguirre was a perfect - 70 -

Philip without a kingdom. He acted with the certainty and arrogance of his king and did nothing more or less than what his “boss” would have done: He saw plans to overthrow him everywhere he turned. Still, what was it that made him think that the king of Spain, Southern Netherlands, Naples, Portugal, England and Scotland, would be frightened by his letter? Even if he was “mad”, Aguirre would instinctively know that what lies between a terrorist aspiring at kingship and a king desiring the ultimate power of a terrorist is the powerful bond of thirst for ultimate power. Maybe Philip wouldn’t have been frightened by the mutineer’s limited army, or by his allusion to Luther.

However, “destiny” never ceases to “reward the prudent”. If the terrorist is to be eliminated, he will be eliminated as the king’s very own reflection in the mirror of his madness, the mirror of his own distrustfulness. Philip had no other choice but to eliminate his own self in the terrorist.

As we have said before, we have no knowledge whether he did or not. Nevertheless, Aguirre’s killing was one typically reserved for royalty: Following his demise, he was cut to pieces that were afterwards sent to the great colonial cities. The Spanish throne had succeeded in terrorizing any aspiring mutineer. And Philip had probably lost his chance to fulfill the dream of the terrorist’s ultimate power.

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THE TERRORISM OF THE ANCESTORS

The sun is overhead, enjoying his age-long fiery blissfulness.

Children are coming out of the school’s front door and hop on the school bus under their teacher’s watchful eye. All morning long, they were learning to write as their ancestors did, read their ancestors’ texts, and think the way their ancestors thought.

These children are useful for the homeland of their ancestors.

They will staff the mechanism of preservation of ancestral values and increase the ancestral fortune. They will work with each other in a way selected by the mechanism of the extant, they will hate those who deny the ancestral emanation of the mechanism –regardless of whether they share a common ancestry or not− and they will fight in order to keep the negators from infecting their ancestors’ land, the land where their ancestors fed the conqueror’s worm, the same worm they will soon feed as well when their turn comes. They are children of the ancestors, but not children of their own souls. They do not belong to themselves and they do not even know it. They will never know it.

A young man wearing a jacket that is somewhat large for his size –despite the sun’s searing blissfulness− walks towards them as if he is taking a stroll. He has a positive personality, no psychological problems of any kind, not even mood swings.

He has all the virtues of his ancestors. No flaws to speak of. He has learned to write like his ancestors did, to read the texts of his ancestors, and to think just like his ancestors thought. He - 72 -

has studied a science that, despite its development by other ancestors, came to be very useful to his own progenitors, because he had to staff the mechanism of preservation of ancestral values and increase the ancestral fortune. He is a man useful to the homeland of his ancestors. He works together with his compatriots in a manner dictated by the mechanism of the extant. He hates those denying the ancestral emanation of the mechanism –regardless of whether they share a common ancestry or not− and fights the negators in order to keep them from infecting the land of the ancestors, the land where they fed the conqueror’s worm, the worm that he will very soon feed in his turn. He is a descendant of his ancestors, but not a child of his own soul. He does not belong to himself and has not come to realize it. He will never realize it.

He approaches the children with a slow pace, since the jacket he wears is a veritable mineshaft. Between the lining and the exterior fabric, similar to the illusive apathy common to the bowels of the earth, there are bullets ranging from three to seven millimeters in diameter, as well as nails, screws, nuts, and thick metal wire. These will be the main factors to determine the losses generated by this walk. These and the belt, wide –up to the chest− and tight to the wearer, equipped with blocks bearing scientific names: C-4, TNT, TATP. The explosion blasts the man to pieces and hurls the metal objects to the bodies of the children, which then, no child left out, all follow the murderer down to the common piece of land shared by their mutually resentful ancestors.

The place of tragedy –in the jargon of the deaf and dumb mass media− sees the arrival of heavily armed young men. These are hard-lined individuals that feel no need to que-stion their existence. They possess a great virtue (no faults to speak of): They have no qualms about using violence in order to protect the fortune of their ancestors. They know how to write like their ancestors wrote, even though they see no reason to read their ancestors’ texts, they’ve had enough of theories when they - 73 -

were children, much like the children they now see lying dead at their feet. They have studied an art in which their ancestors excelled since time immemorial, an art that still retains its usefulness, since their function is to protect the mechanism of preservation of ancestral values and increase ancestral power. They are men useful in the service of their ancestors’ homeland. They cooperate with each other, blindly obeying the mechanism of the extant. They hate those denying the ancestral emanation of the mechanism –regardless of whether they share a common ancestry or not− and they fight against the negators in order to keep them from infecting their ancestors’ land, the land where their ancestors fed the conqueror’s worm, the worm that they will also feed when their turn comes. They are children of the ancestors, but not children of their own souls.

They do not belong to themselves and they have no knowledge of it. They will never have any self-inquiries on the subject. But even if they do (provided that they will live long enough for their loved ones to know where their bodies have been buried) they will have forgotten what was it that the altogether dangerous and nationless literary people call “self”. They arrived there to collect the remains of the living bomb: Detached limbs, shredded belts, any and all clues that can help them investigate how the suicide attack was planned and executed. This is what they have been trained for. They help criminologists uncover the ways with which Men kill other Men. Naturally, this search is completely pointless. It leads nowhere outside the crime lab, or, it leads to the harassment of many innocent people. And this is because the ancestral mindset doesn’t allow them to understand that what takes place is not an execution of Men by other Men, but the destruction of a mechanism of government programmed in their ancestors’ language by mechanisms of government programmed in the language of the other ancestors. All is vain (as the annoyingly furtive Ecclesiastes declared in the zenith of his soul-devouring glory), yet the heavily-armed young men collect all they can without being frightened or sickened by all - 74 -

the blood. Besides, when they finished their studies they were prepared to face any eventualities, shouting: “Masada will never fall again!”. Masada, the ancestral folktale of these young men, who are paid to murder those who are killing for free the ones who pay to murder each other, those who believe that their ancestors are more important than themselves. It is a folktale that is too real to be just real: It is, in a way, as Constantinople is for modern Greek people.  Following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans – on account of Titus Flavius Josephus or Yosef Ben Matityahu, a Hellenizing, or better yet, Romanizing Judean, adhered (as it would be expected) to the political party of the Pharisees− the Sicarii became the dominant fraction in what remained of the Hebrew resistance. Gradually retreating before the war machine of the unrelenting Rome, they locked themselves in the unassailable castle of Masada. It took Lucius Flavius Silva, commander of Judea, only a few months to capture that eagle’s nest. In a stroke of good fortune, the wornout legionnaires were spared from spending days slaughtering young, old, women and children. This kind of work is always tiresome, especially when women and children are concerned. They have no respect to the rules of engagement. They do not attack the intruder, thus providing him with the alibi of defensive murder. Women and children run around screaming, pleading, sometimes evading blows in a myriad of ways! In any case, the legionnaires found them all dead: They had committed mass suicide in order to escape dishonorable mass slaughter. At least this is what Josephus suggests, who, being a proper apologist of Roman power, was obliged to give his people a fable. This would supposedly make his ingratiation appear as objectiveness. It is unknown whether this mass death discovered in Masada by the Romans, in the middle of the 73th year of Christian mythology, - 75 -

was a result of mass suicide, or if the besieged were in reality slaughtered by the Sicarii themselves, these headstrong patriots and believers, who afterwards committed suicide.

The Sicarii! As Josephus documents in his second book of the Jewish Wars, “When the country was purged [by the Romans] of these [troublemakers], there sprang up ano-ther sort of robbers [troublemakers] in Jerusalem, which were called Sicarii, who slew men in the day time, and in the midst of the city; this they did chiefly at the festivals, when they mingled themselves among the multitude, and concealed daggers under their garments, with which they stabbed those that were their enemies; and when any fell down dead, the murderers became a part of those that had indignation against them; by which means they appeared persons of such reputation, that they could by no means be discovered”20. In another paragraph, Josephus will carefully praise the bravery of the Sicarii. This, however, will by no means stop him from ascribing to them the worst possible characterizations. It goes without saying that the Sicarii murdered Judeans who collaborated with the Romans, their main targets being Pharisees. According to the Judean historian’s descriptions, we can infer that the Sicarii were people blindly devoted to their nation, which they considered to be their god’s representative on Earth. Much like all monotheist Judeans, they too were convinced that the end justifies the means and that human life holds absolutely no value before the purity of the nation and its religion. During the siege of Jerusalem, they burned the food supplies in order to force the besieged to attempt an armed exit from the city.

Behold, then, the meaning of “Masada will never fall again”: Never again will we repeat our ancestors’ error. Never again will we proceed to commit mass suicide because we are besieged by others who seek to take our ancestors’ place away 20. Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, translated by William Whiston (1737).

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from us. We will spread terror to their masses, just like our ancestors did. It stops there. The rest are to be uncovered by the observer of the events unfolding in this place, which, in the end, was never anything more than a place of the ancestors. The Israelites are slowly exterminating Palestinians with the aid of several civilized nations. They act as terrorists, since their threats are asymmetrical, their objectives concern the destruction of their victims’ resources for survival, and they strike at them in secret, under the guise of self-defense. Moreover, they mingle after every strike among the multitude of nations crying out for peace, crying out in unison with them –in a hypocritical manner, just like the crowd during the first century of Christian mythology did− for the very same necessity. It should be said, of course, that it is not at all certain they are aware that their ancestors, whom they have honored at graduation, were terrorists. Nor it is certain they are aware that by collecting the limbs of a terrorist, they are also collecting the remains of a person who, more or less, acted no differently than their own ancestors. Because the young Palestinian acted following the logic of the Sicarii: Fear of death is more effective than death itself, death is more valuable than life, ancestral morals and traditions are worthy of thousands upon thousands of deaths.

The belief that Man is expendable –a log in the fire of god and nation, lit by the ancestors− is so deeply rooted inside him that he has no second thoughts about sacrificing his own life in order to become the death-bringer to his enemies. There is of course a difference at this point: In order to avoid arrest, the Sicarii mingled in the wooing multitude and overacted in cursing the terrorists, while the Palestinian proceeded in sacrificing himself. In reality, he believed that this was the only way, just like the Sicarii in Masada did: What they lacked at the time was the necessary surrounding multitude. Even if they were to hide among the women, children and elder folks, they would have surely met the same fate awaiting the besieged that fall into the hands of the besieger. In the end, they had no other solution - 77 -

but death in order to avoid being captured, much like the young man-living bomb chose to die in order to escape arrest and execution. Idiocy is a standard trait of a fanatic who is likely to be called a hero, provided that he is successful in not leaving behind any irrefutable evidence of that trait. The idiocy of the ancestors is ever the heroism of the descendants! It couldn’t be anything else, since every descendant is but an ancestor of his own descendants. Both as terrorist, and as terrorized.

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THE VIZIER, THE POET AND THE HASHISH-EATER

If a vizier, a poet and a terrorist can spend their childhood and adolescent years together, share the same tender emotions of youth and receive the same education by the same tutor, Locke should then be obliged to see what the manuscript of An Essay concerning Human Understanding tastes like, and we ought to place the terrorist to the Atlantis of psychology. Once there, even if submerged, the terrorist’s inhuman soul, the soul of that particular kind of slayer, can confess us its passions in a relatively coherent manner, and in our ears, most of them will seem as charming as shipwrecks of once wayfaring vessels in the shores of our gullibility. Now, as far as the English philosopher is concerned… Englishmen never make mistakes, or so the Englishmen say. It is just that the philosophers of Continental Europe frequently insist, due to their characteristic inborn resentment, on pretending to miss the English truth. Even the most insignificant of Albion’s soldiers is well-versed in the psychological reactions of a cowardly Indian who is mercilessly whipped, or those of a low-bred Cypriot who receives the shock of electrical current to his testicles. These are instances of valuable knowledge that allows Englishmen to shape the psychological effects in such a way that all scientific suggestions formulated by their philosophers can thus describe them with mathematical precision, while these impossible Frenchmen, who insist on claiming to be the premier league in mathematics, can work on their own tortures in their own colonies. The bottom line is, - 79 -

nothing is easier –and more painless− than to mathematicize moral decline in the perfectly sharpened blade of the guillotine.

Moreover, the psychological effect manifesting itself in the crowd of the spectators is being contained in a couple of horror-filled glances. Behold then, all ye Frenchmen, how higher mathematics can solve the problem of a criminal, in whose case the crowd holds differential emotions: That catholic lord who had the nerve to turn against English traditions places his head in a humble log, suitable only for wretched village folk. The executioner, a man utterly corrupted by the blood of his victims, lifts an axe, whose shape holds the prestige of the Roman Empire, to the air, and downs it gleefully upon the criminal’s neck. Still, the neck is firm, allowing the viewing audience to gaze upon the cowardice nesting in the traitor aristocrat’s soul. Besides, this effect could be nothing but God-given. Only God can torture in such a way a man put to death. The executioner will carry on with his work. It will take more than ten axe-drops and plenty of cuts and slices with a small knife in order to sever the head from the body that trembles amidst this nightmarish ordeal. In the aftermath of such a bloodbath, the audience is left with one choice only: Try and forget what it just witnessed. The details: Faints, vomiting, screams, cries… all these are powerful enough to achieve the “catharsis” of the mishap. The difference with ancient tragedy –given its relevancy− is two-dimensional. First of all, the tragic poet used words, musical notes, masks and similar assortments in the hope that the audience will leave the play as better human beings than before, while English justice uses reality, firmly convinced that it will make the audience come to grasp its true nature: A mob of vile, frightened and perverse creatures.

The second dimension concerns the outrageous demand of contemporary Greeks to regard tragic poets as their ancestors.

Pursuant to English philosophy, if someone’s head is placed in the executioner’s log, then that someone can be naught but a murderer, and as such, he can have no relation whatsoever with tragic poets, or with any poets in general. The proof for that is - 80 -

the language itself. The English language, that is. A murderer is always an “assassin”, a hashish-eating terrorist. And vice versa, of course. A hashish-eating terrorist is an assassin, a drug-addict, a foreigner –be it Indian, Cypriot, Palestinian, Chinese, Greek… it doesn’t matter. Still, if the meaning of a word lies in its use, as suggested by mathematicians who dreamt of becoming philosophers, and by philosophers who never succeeded in becoming mathematicians, the use of a word is always the declaration of its absent meaning. Because the word “assassin” declares an absence with a legendary meaning.

According to the legend –fully enjoying its literary prestige in the introduction of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, transcribed in the English language by Edward Fitzgerald− there once lived three Persian adolescents, sensitive and studious, who were educated by the same teacher in Nishapur of Persia.

It was there where they took a heavy oath that whoever of the three would be the first to succeed in his life, he would help the other two in succeeding with their own lifepaths. And so it came to be. The first to succeed was Nizam al Mulk. He became vizier to Seljuk, the notable reformist Sultan. He immediately took Omar Khayyam in his service, who by that time had become a great poet, mathematician and astronomer, paying him a very good wage. The third of the company, Hassan Sabbah, never came to need, nor did he ever desire help of any kind. He traveled to Egypt where he was initiated in the religious sect of the Ismailians. Being a thinker perfectly educated in theological matters, it didn’t take him long to find his own path to success.

Ever since the 8th century, Ismailians believed that the occasional leader of Mohammed’s people inherited not only the secular, but also the spiritual authority of the Prophet, in contrast with Sunni Muslims who claimed that Mohammed’s spiritual authority followed him to heaven. In this instance, leader and prophet are one and the same thing. Back to the years of the Holy War. Regardless of the true facts behind Hassan Sabbah’s career, what is important is that two hundred years following - 81 -

his resolutions, Marco Polo –either as a successful merchant or as an unsuccessful novelist− would confirm the blood-stained rumors imprinted in the wounds or carried in the pouches of Crusaders returning from the distant lands of the East.

It is supposed that in some inaccessible castle in Northern Persia, the legendary Alamut, lived the Old Man of the Mountain, an all-wise and all-powerful leader who recruited robust young men, fed them hashish and promised them that by the spiritual force of the great prophet, that he himself possessed, he would reserve them an honorary place in heaven.

For a while, he had them go through military training equal to… let’s say the U.S. Marines, since Europeans make sure not to expose their own trained killers to the wrath of nongovernmental organizations. The young men would train their body and mind, learn how to fight, withstand the cold and the heat, suffer hunger and thirst uncomplainingly, blindly execute orders delivered by God’s prophet, and exploit everyone and everything in order to achieve their goals. Following all that, the elder successor to Hassan Sabbah –because this is who he was, as it has been ascertained by orientalists for our benefit− would assign them assassination missions whose principal targets were officials of the Sultan’s governments, as well as religious and economic figures. They did not seem to bother the little people. Why would they, anyway, given that as cruel as the English word “assassin” can be, it is obliged to sanctify the folkloric –although not bloodless in any way− means of Robin Hood? The first victim to fall before this army of killers gathered by Hassan Sabbah was none other than Nizam al Mulk himself, his friend in youth, the one with whom he had established a contract for life. It is obvious that the vizier hadn’t quite understood the adolescent oath. He should’ve had heard that “no one is allowed to succeed in his life before Hassan Sabbah”. Because, beside the legend, the vizier’s assassination by the “Hashish-Eaters” –since it is all too possible that this is the true meaning of the Persian word− is a fact. As is the - 82 -

founding of the order of “Hashish-Eaters” by Sabbah, a religious –and naturally political, in accordance with Islamic ways− order that terrorized Muslim monarchs, supported and brought down Caliphs and Sultans, went up against crusaders (and sometimes came to their help), executed extravagantly rewarded death contracts, and generally sunk the East −already plunged in the darkness of its despotism− in further chaos of scheming for the next three hundred years, until the arrival of the Mongols who reduced the legendary Alamut to ashes.

It is obvious that the “Hashish-Eaters” were nothing more than yet another case of ideologically desensitized followers of terrorist tactics, products of the historical, social and political conditions of their time. Nevertheless, psychology does not easily waive its rights to Hassan Sabbah’s deviant behavior. Nizam al Mulk became a vizier and hurried to help Omar Khayyam. By all means and purposes, he would’ve also had helped Hassan Sabbah as well. The latter one was not obliged by oath to accept that generosity. There is no doubt about it. He could very well succeed in his life based on his own strengths, which he did.

Why would he murder his faithful friend, then? Was it envy? If so, why not murder the poet as well? There is a psychological condition, in which the subject is being decorated with divine grandeur, perceiving a god-likeness, existing because it senses its godhood, feeling what Descartes did not allow himself to feel. But a god always exists as the bane of his paternal idol – with the exception of the Christian God, who exists as the bane of his own sonly idol. A god is obliged to be as cruel as possible towards the father who insists on holding to power before such a son, especially when this father expresses the ultimate authority of social hegemony. Let the father’s blood be spilled in the psychodrama of the adolescent student, then. Still, the sacrifice is a holy act and the father-slayer god cannot remain in power without justice, nor without mercy. Euripides said so, through the words of Hercules: “Either thou art a god of little - 83 -

sense, or else naturally unjust�21. Let the poet live, then. Let Omar Khayyam be and create, amidst an unfair and cold-hearted world, a world of gods massacring each other for the sake of the one single God. This is not a case-study for psychology. This is a subject for‌

21. Euripides, Heracles, translated by E. P. Coleridge.

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EXCURSUS

THE “DISEASE” OF WAR

History’s forefront at the final decades of the 20th century saw two Western characteristics reemerge, despite being regarded as “nearing extinction” by citizens of industrialized countries: The use of the armed forces as a means of settling disputes with other countries on our planet, and epidemics. In appearance, the West’s resurrected military aggression, AIDS, hepatitis, anthrax, radiation, and the flu were all things completely unrelated to each other. Social sciences ought to deal with the first, while the rest would be taken care of by medical sciences.

Still, interrelations between one another gradually started to grow tighter, with the American society bearing sole responsibility for this phenomenon. Biology demonstrated tendencies to expand its notions in describing and studying phenomena that until presently were regarded as phylogenetic instead of ontogenetic. This means that they were related to the social and civilizational side of Man’s shaping and not the biological aspects of its evolution. Informatics played a very big role, because they were the first to invade the terrain of biology, causing chain reactions to the osmosis between positive with human sciences.

Even though we are still far away from a paradigm shift in how we treat civilization, the foundations for this shift are established on a daily basis. U.S.A.’s war against “Terrorism” frequently uses the argument of self-protection against some kind of “microbe” circling the Western organism. Even if it was - 87 -

originally invented to describe phenomena such as attacks via anthrax, toxic gases or viruses, the term “Bioterrorism” is being used more and more frequently by American sociologists in order to justify this peculiar war between the U.S. State mechanism and various shadow network organizations. As time goes by, war seems to be regarded as some sort of reaction with biological characteristics.

The recent issue of the American revue Culture Machine seeks to investigate this particularly important parameter with a feature on “Biopolitics”. In one of the central articles of that feature (Nomos, Nosos and Bios in the Body of Politics), Eugene Thacker, professor of literature and communications at the Georgia Institute of Technology, takes up the task of investigating the relationships between life, law, and disease, as they are currently described in the social structures of the West, and the U.S.A. in particular.

Having remarked that equaling democracy with a body that can be subjected to the risks of a disease, both from external and from internal factors, is a notion that exists since the era of Plato’s Republic, he further notes that the 16th and 17th century inherited to us the fixation that democracy is a “body” that is healthy when governed by law’s order, while exhibiting pathological symptoms whenever there is pluralism in the decision-making process.

In summarizing the problematic developed around the stance of U.S. society as regards aggression which the leaders of the superpower use to express the doctrine of American Hegemony, he writes: “Yet, from the U.S. perspective, an emphasis on biology and information is only part of the equation.

At all levels, the ability of the government to respond to an emergency is crucial for the effective operation of the biological and informatical components of biodefense. This is where the particular philosophy of war adopted by the U.S. has come into play, and it is a philosophy in the sense that, in conjunction with the deployment of familiar Cold War concepts (a pharmaceutical - 88 -

“stockpile”, scenarios involving “dirty bombs” etc.), U.S. policy has ontologically redefined war along the lines of terrorism; that is, terrorism is defined as a series of reducible –in the medical sense of the term− but highly annoying injuries. In this sense, not only is all terrorism bioterrorism, but we may be witnessing an attempt to create a new definition of “life itself”22. Still, it is certain that here exists a metaphor, in which the equation of war with a biological function legalizes it on the basis of every organism’s right to self-defense.

Thacker’s scientific orderliness fails to make him realize that this metaphor is a maneuver. To treat this war morally is to fall on huge obstacles, considering that this treatment has to be developed within a pluralist tradition established since the era of the European Enlightenment, if not even before that time. Social ethics are a complex and therefore “perverse” issue –in terms of the time required in order to take a decision− while treating war as if it is some sort of “fever” can be easily understood by any citizen who may lack political culture, but knows all too well what disease means. The terror of anthrax is already a materialization of that metaphor. Although F.B.I.’s investigations failed to end up somewhere, this device functioned as some sort of “visual material” for assimilating a new way of treating survival.

However, osmoses between biology and war aren’t limited to mere rhetorical schemes intended for public consumption.

The U.S. 2004 Biosafety Program drawn up under the auspices of the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services required 247 million dollars in order to conduct a national informational campaign, the result being the creation of a persistent syndrome of constant alertness even in very remote communities. Naturally, these programs are meant to produce ideology which will hold back any “left wing” impulses for oppositional actions. The “Soviet threat” is rapidly 22. Eugene Thacker, Nomos, Nosos and Bios in the body of Politics.

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changing to “Biological threat”. If anarchists and communists were once dangerous “like” germs, today the enemy “is” germs.

Terrorists –regardless of whether they possess pharmaceutical weaponry or not− have to be treated as if they themselves are germs. This is the materialization of a metaphor. The issue now isn’t just to produce simulacrums, neither to replace reality with simulacrums. The issue now is to produce reality.

As Thacker notes in his article, this matter is already under discussion by Italian left-wing writers, who are trying to clarify the relationship between life and politics by using the term “Biopolitics”. Maurizio Lazzarato, for example, introduces the concept of substituting the workers’ physical force with the ability to exercise politics based on their body, and holds this substitution to be a fundamental characteristic of the postindustrial society. We can already speak about the conversion of the workforce into a product, an aspect that makes Paolo Virno highlight the Marxist theory’s prophetic significance with regards to the function of the Capital. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri go even further, considering “Biopolitics” to be a notion identical with the entirety of society’s productive and reproductive activities. Antonio Negri, in particular, brings the issue back to its Platonic foundations, constantly asking what “Biocontrol” means and what its mechanisms are.

As always, the gap between American “directness” and European contemplativeness remains unbridged, although it is most certain that Europe needs a lot more effort to face against its medieval self lingering on the other side of the Atlantic. The medieval connection of notions with diseases and diseases with sorcery may be eliminated, but its arguments have archaic powers which America still possesses in surplus.

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STATE AND INSANITY

“Nature (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people’s safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, - 91 -

the pacts and covenants, by which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together, and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced by God in the Creation”23.

The above text could very well come from the written confessions of a man suffering from paranoia (or, as people back in the 19th century would have said, a madman). This is to say a man who, despite the impeccable coherence of his reasoning, develops ideas and beliefs utterly incompatible with any notion of reality.

Unfortunately for us Men, Aristotle’s rational animals, the words above are included in the prologue of the famous book called Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, published in 1651 by Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher and founder of the modern State and political philosophy.

As a consequence, we ought to stand with absolute respect before the work of a man who had absolutely nothing to do with insanity, considering that his work is the basis of education for millions of political scientists. This could very well be an insignificant coincidence that has assumed alarming proportions because of its fragmentary quotation, which the signor of this here essay may have included with deceptive intent.

Let us say that there is no subtext to it, then. Thomas Hobbes was not paranoid. The paranoid man is tormented by ideas of pursuit; he is unreasonably convinced that everyone is plotting against him, bent on his final demise, weaving conspiracies to hurt him, and that others are vicious, aggressive and unworthy of trust. The English philosopher? He just wrote down a book in which he made a testimony of “reality”: Men are by nature egoists, lustful, avaricious, aggressive, and ever ready to annihilate each other until no Man has been left upon the face of this world! This is why we need a Leviathan, a dreadful 23. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes.

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State –monarchical or democratic− that will safeguard social peace and thus, the prosperity of its citizens, even if it does so through fire and brimstone.

The bottom line is: The only way to make a rational distinction between the ideas of a paranoid man and the ideas of a philosopher –especially a political philosopher− is to examine their referentiality. It is like saying that insanity points out to nothing other than itself and refers solely to its own value as insanity, while philosophy –especially political philosophy− always points out to something else, its reference being the settlement of the issue of human coexistence. Therefore, if Leviathan is political philosophy and not a symptom of insanity, this is due to the fact that in a way it offered a solution to 17th century merchants who on the one hand desired the dissolution of feudalism and the kingship that supported it, yet on the other hand, they had no intention whatsoever to let the commoners do as they pleased. The matter of the State could very well be solved on the basis of forming a new power, which would be tailored to their size, but would retain its absoluteness. And since Hobbes’s ideas could nurture a new reality into existence, then they could not be discarded as merely the rantings of a madman.

Nevertheless, all the States subsequently created on the grounds of the English philosopher’s ideas, as well as those that could very well justify their existence on the grounds of human “malevolence”, produced immeasurable amounts of insanity. In an organized fashion, yes! In a coherent manner, yes! But they were never, ever healthy! In reality, what they did was regularize civil war, constant violence, and the violation of Man’s fundamental rights. They elevated insanity to power and after they became reality, once again with the approval of philosophers (as the German philosopher Hegel declared, what is rational is real and what is real is rational), they created a brand new field of insanity: That of questioning of the State and the social views it tries to impose.

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YORGOS BLANAS Greek poet [Athens, 1959 - ] He has studied Library Science. Among other jobs, he has worked in Advertising and as a librarian. Besides poetry, he is also engaged in translating and text editing, on a regular basis. He often writes articles for the Athenian press and various literary magazines.

CONTENTS Α UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF TERRORISM PRAEFARIUM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 HOMER, KANT, AND SOME ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY . . . . .11 THESEUS AND THE ANCIENT FACES OF TERRORISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 THE TERRORISM OF THE ARENA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 THE TERRORISM OF THE GROUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 THE PROPHET TERRORIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 THE WALLACHIAN PRINCE, THE GREEK COMMUNISTS, AND GUTENBERG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 THE TERRORIZED TERRORIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65 THE TERRORISM OF THE ANCESTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 THE VIZIER, THE POET AND THE HASHISH-EATER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 EXCURSUS THE “DISEASE” OF WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87 STATE AND INSANITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91

THE DIGITAL EDITION (E-BOOK) A UNIVERSAL HISTO RY OF TERRORISM OF YORGOS BLANAS TRANSLA TED BY ALEXANDROS TSANTILAS WAS TYPESET AND PAGED IN JUNE 2013 FOR VAKXIKON.gr PUBLICATIONS