Religious violence and the logic of all-out war
By Mark Vernon on Wednesday, August 17 2011, 07:52 - In the news - Permalink
With a seminar on religious violence approaching at the weekend, I've been reading Mark Juergensmeyer. One of his big points about 9/11 was how the government response to the atrocity turned a terrorist attack into a cosmic war - a conflict that understands itself via the symbolism of the apocalypse. It allowed a rich eccentric extremist called bin Laden to present himself as winning against America. The conflict ramped up exponentially, and left the political sphere to become perpetual.
He contrasts that with how the government responded to Timothy McVeigh, which was to treat him as a terrorist, plain and simple, a strategy that starved his following of any oxygen. He also points to the success in Northern Ireland, where the British government learnt from its mistakes, reached a strategy that refused to escalate the violence, and so paved the way for a political solution. Religion could feed hope rather than rage.
Anyway, it was striking to read this as David Cameron was announcing an 'all-out war' on gangs. Paul Mason took to the streets and asked gang members what they made of it. There'll be 'big war' was one response, 'bigger war than already'. There's the logic. Never can they have felt so important, provoked, thrilled.
If Juergensmeyer is right, the metaphor of war is all wrong. Criminality is quite adequate.
(Image: Burnt out van, Hackney, Alasdair)
Comments
To be fair to Cameron (I know it is hard!) his response has to be acceptable to a number of different constituencies. The "war" metaphor is obviously an offering to certain elements of his party and those concerned with what was originally seen as his indecisive response. Policing often uses the "w word" to signify it is getting tough with targeted criminals. And campaigns which are obviously not militaristic often do the same. "War on Want"; "War on poverty", etc.
In addition, there is Cameron's more frequent insistence that the actions were plain criminality. He has not (despite the rhetorical flourish of mentioning water cannon and apparently shipping one over on the ferry from Northern Ireland) urged the deployment of more militaristic hardware. The government is not being panicked into taking much more of a hands-on approach to disorder. This might of course be due to the fact that the Met have got so much dirt on the cabinet that they have been forced to back off, but it is more likely that moderates in the Home Office have convinced Cameron that his best bet is a continuation of fairly liberal tactics, coupled with a bit of examplary justice. Beyond that, he can rattle sabres in order to maintain his credentials with those who like that sort of thing.
As for Paul Mason, I suspect any approach to youth "on da streets" would get a similar response. I can't imagine looters ever saying in such circumstances that they are happy with a raft of meliorative government initiatives, and that they would desist from rioting, subject to review.
Fair enough, though playing to constituencies is precisely what got Bush et al into seriously deep trouble. And I'd say that the metaphor of 'war' in War on Want etc functions in an entirely different way because of the context.
Of course that's right about youth too, though not inconsistent with fanning the flames of combative fantasies too, I'd have thought...
Interesting post, and I hope you will tell us more about the seminar.
See also the work of Rene Girard and his school on religion, the sacred and violence, and his theory of the escalation of violence to extremes unless blocked by either a scapegoating act or by an equally dramatic and cathartic renunciation of violence. We had a wonderful example of the latter last week when the bereaved father Tariq Jahan appealed to his community to renounce vengeance and stop the cycle of violence.
Success in Northern Ireland? The British government took a long time to learn from its mistakes. If they had only listened to Gladstone