General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Any thoughts on who might do an attack like this and not claim responsibility? [View all]alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)It's a dying art form, this claim of responsibility...
But seriously, I think there's something to non-claims. The claim of responsibility is premised on the singularity of the event - this event is a specific thing, a reprisal, a warning, or whatever. The new terrorist organizations know they can't get specific leverage from events - unlike the liberation armies of old, they don't consider events instructive but simply destructive. The old school liberation army types considered themselves teachers of the people: we need this terrorism to teach you to see things our way. From the Red Brigades to the Weathermen to the PLO and everybody in between, these groups believed that their acts could teach. So the acts are always accompanied by a discursive adjunct - the writing that goes along with the event, the explanation of the pedagogy of the attack.
The new terrorist organizations are completely detached from the people (they are terrorizing). They operate more in the mode of total war. The terrorist act for them is not a singular event with a teaching purpose, but simply another attack in a long and ongoing war. It would be as silly for them to claim responsibility for it as it would be for the Allies to claim responsibility for every bombing raid over Germany. You don't claim responsibility in an ongoing war, precisely because no attack stands on its own, and the attacks operate by attrition, not pedagogy. Once terrorism was transformed from the ideological groups seeking to instruct to the pure enemy conducting total (asymmetrical) warfare, the claim of responsibility declines as a rhetorical form. It's unnecessary. You're meant to know who's attacking you.
The old terrorism, ironically enough, sought persuasion, consensus; it was, in this sense, rhetorical. The new terrorism is purely coercive; it has no need of rhetoric, since it doesn't seek to persuade, but to force.
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