[Reader-list] Celebrity Terrorism: Propaganda of the Deed

[Paul Miller]

I just thought I'd pass this on. Interesting take on the media  
response to Mumbai attacks.

A brief collage:

Nobody appears to have heard of the Deccan Mujahideen - perhaps  
because they have never existed. Taken from the French phrase  
"propagande par le fait"  and an early proponent of "propaganda by the  
deed" was the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818-1857), who  
wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from  
deeds and not the other way around." Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), in  
his "Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) stated that  
"we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for  
this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible  
form of propaganda." The Mumbai attacks sprang up as an almost self- 
organizing anti-system response. No one is sure of what the agenda  
was, or why the deed was perpetrated.

Paul


The age of 'celebrity terrorism'

By Paul Cornish
Chairman, Chatham House's International Security Programme

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7755684.stm

Quite apart from the scores murdered and the hundreds injured, what  
the Mumbai terrorists really wanted was an exaggerated - and  
preferably extreme - reaction on the part of governments, the media  
and public opinion.

In these terms, the attackers received as much attention as they could  
possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described  
as a very significant terrorist success.

The attack received saturation coverage in the world's media from the  
outset.
One of the gunmen involved in the Mumbai attacks
The gunmen did not disguise their identity, but their cause is murkier

Almost within minutes, television screens showed harrowing scenes of  
pools of blood where people had died or been injured, hotels ablaze,  
Indian army snipers firing at distant targets, and CCTV images of the  
attackers.

Especially disturbing, hostages and survivors reported that certain  
nationalities had been identified by their passports and taken away  
for execution.

No matter how obscure, every detail of this multi-point, sustained  
attack was soon being pored over by terrorism experts, trying to fit  
the carnage in Mumbai into one template or another.

Unanswered questions

So the speculative - and often tendentious - questioning began.

What were the tactics of the terrorists? What weapons did they have  
and where could they have got them? How much planning and preparation  
would have been necessary for a military-style operation of this sort?  
Who were the terrorists - where were they from and what did they want?

The Mumbai attacks have dominated the airwaves
Who was the mastermind behind the attacks? And did the attacks have  
the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-style operation. Was it all part of the  
global jihad against the West?

This is precisely how terrorism is meant to work - the terrorist's  
action must always be complemented by the target's reaction in order  
to complete the scene.

How the attack is carried out, and what is done to whom, matters no  
more - and often rather less - than the way the attack is received,  
and the impact accorded to it.

The impact has indeed been instant and extensive, reaching into the  
worlds of politics, business and even sport, and on all levels -  
internationally, regionally and nationally in India.

Adding meaning

But, for all the horror of the Mumbai attack, there might have been  
much less to it than first met the eye, and a hasty and exaggerated  
response might have played more of a part, and given more meaning to  
the attack than it should.

Nobody appears to have heard of the Deccan Mujahideen - perhaps  
because they have never existed.

Perhaps it was not so difficult after all to plan and execute this  
attack: small arms and hand grenades are not hard to find, boats are  
scarcely specialised equipment, and Mumbai is a vast, open city with  
more than enough soft targets.

	

These individuals indulge in terrorism simply because they can, while  
their audience concocts a rationale on their behalf
Perhaps we do not know enough about where the perpetrators are from,  
because they could have come from almost anywhere?

The terrorists were willing to show their faces on CCTV. Was this  
suicide for martyrdom - as in New York and Washington in 2001, and  
London in 2005 - or suicide for celebrity, as in Columbine in 1999 and  
Virginia Tech in 2007?

And perhaps so little is known of the terrorists' cause, because they  
simply did not feel the need to have one.

The attack in Mumbai was obviously planned - but "military-style  
planning" (whatever that means) is probably not necessary for the mass  
murder of unarmed and unsuspecting civilians going about their  
business in crowded railway stations and restaurants.

This could also have been a plan which had a large gap where mission,  
cause or vision statement ought to have been.

But no matter. The terrorists might have assumed, quite correctly as  
it happens, that the world's media and the terrorism analysis industry  
would very quickly fill in any gaps for them.

Writing the narrative

The character of modern terrorism is widely understood to have been  
shaped by a mid-19th-Century idea known as the "propaganda of the  
deed" - a strategy for political change in which the message or cause  
is contained within, and expressed by the violent act.

In a novel twist, the Mumbai terrorists might have embarked on  
propaganda of the deed without the propaganda in the confident  
expectation that the rationalisation for the attack - the narrative -  
would be provided by politicians, the media and terrorism analysts.

A soldier stands in front of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai
The attacks were a strike at the city's symbolic buildings
If so, then Mumbai could represent something rather different in the  
history of terrorism, and possibly something far more disturbing even  
than global jihad.

Perhaps we have come to the point where casually self-radicalised,  
sociopathic individuals can form a loose organisation, acquire  
sufficient weapons and equipment for a few thousand dollars, make a  
basic plan of action and indulge in a violent expression of their  
generalised disaffection and anomie.

These individuals indulge in terrorism simply because they can, while  
their audience concocts a rationale on their behalf.

Welcome to the age of celebrity terrorism.

The invitation to the world's D-list malcontents reads as follows: No  
matter how corrupt your moral sense, how contorted your view of the  
world, how vapid and inarticulate your ideas, how talentless you are  
and how exaggerated your grievance, an obsessive audience will watch  
your every move and turn you into what you most want to be, just  
before your death.