Kamikaze in Austin
The tragedy in Texas today has set the internet ablaze. A small plane was flown into an IRS building in Austin. Hopefully all those inside will survive. Joe Stack, the pilot, left a message on his website ebbededart.com (the site has been removed) but the manifesto is making it’s way around the net. Some are calling him "insane", "crazy", or a "domestic terrorist" while others have started groups on Facebook that sympathize and even applaud his actions. Such is the state of the American social and political divide.
Any act of violence perpetrated by individuals, groups, or governments is reprehensible.
Those "in the know" have realised for a long time that acts of terrorism around the world are carried out by those who believe, or are led to believe, that they are marginalised, disenfrachised, or desperate. After reading Stack’s manifesto it is apparent that he felt that way. The news hacks debating his sanity are not even scratching the surface of the deeper issue. As long as we in the West simply believe that suicide terrorists are all insane we will never win a war on terror.
The seeds of terrorism are sown in the fields of desperation.
I broadly agree with a lot of what you write here, but it’s a generalisation too far when you state:
There are clearly a whole host of situations where acts of violence are justified and far from reprehensible. That most acts of violence are indeed unjustifiable isn’t in question, but surely you’re not condemning self-defence or resistance against tyranny?
Comment by Jim Bliss — March 25, 2010 @ 4:50 pm
Thanks for the comment Jim, by definition an “act of violence” would not be considedred in a case of self defence; however, under law once you have defended yourself and then you beat your attacker to death, you can be charged with homicide.
Resistance against tyranny? very subjective concept, wouldn’t the violence just escalate in that scenario? And who ends up being the victor? The most violent, either way it is reprehensible in my view.
Comment by Caoimhin — March 28, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
Actually, Caoimhin, by definition an act of violence is “any behaviour which is intended to hurt, injure or kill”. If someone is rushing towards me or my loved ones brandishing a weapon and clearly intending to do damage, I don’t feel it would be reprehensible for me to pick up the nearest heavy object and take a swing at them with it. Yes, I am intending — very clearly — to hurt the attacker. I am engaging in violence. By definition.
And lest I be accused of getting too hypothetical, let me point out that I have been in that position. I encountered two young men attacking a woman as I walked home one night in London. I shouted at them to stop. One of them ran away, the other ran towards me carrying a knife. As luck would have it, I was beside a skip containing waste from a building site. When I swung that piece of wood, make no mistake, I was very clearly intending to hurt the guy. My actions were not reprehensible but they were violent.
More generally, I don’t accept — for example — that the every act of sabotage carried out by the French resistance during the WW2 occupation of France was ‘reprehensible’. Nor that those who travelled to Spain to fight against Franco were acting reprehensibly. Which is not to say that no members of the French resistance or the Spanish International Brigades acted reprehensibly, only that I think you’re wrong to classify all violence against the forces of fascism as being “morally objectionable” (which, by definition, is what ‘reprehensible’ means).
I’d even — perhaps more controversially — suggest that clear acts of violence carried out by people suffering certain psychotic illnesses would not fall under the banner “reprehensible” as they are beyond the realm of morality (though that maybe clouds the debate a little, so I won’t expand on it).
Basically I’m simply suggesting that blanket statements like “all violence is reprehensible” are dubious and unhelpful at best and downright wrong at worst. There are certain subsets of ‘acts of violence / behaviour intended to cause harm’ which can be justified under almost any moral philosophy you choose (with the odd exception) and are therefore not reprehensible.
Comment by Jim Bliss — March 28, 2010 @ 8:28 pm