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This kiss for the
by date Send
whole world
by category Comment Wednesday, February
22, 2012
by keyword
by author 01/12/2005 Who actually owns
Physical Dramaturgy: Ein
by country The radical loser "intellectual
property"? The
Dramaturgie im zeitgen�ssischen
› Magazine Roundup Hans Magnus Enzensberger looks GermanTanz media that
ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein
defend the concept of
at the kind of ideological trigger hei�es Eisen. Idealerweise sind
intellectual property as
› About required to ignite the radical loser - "real" propertyDramaturginnen und Dramaturgen
are the
whether amok killer, murderer or w�hrend der Erarbeitung eines
› Service & Contact first to appropriate such
St�cks die besten Freunde der
terrorist - and make him explode rights, and they are
more
› Sponsor us using this idea as a
I. The isolated individual defensive weapon.
With lawmakers
It is difficult to talk about the loser, and extending copyright laws
and new structures
it is stupid not to. Stupid because emerging on the
Adam Zagajewski
there can be no definitive winner and internet, intellectual
because each of us, from the A defence
property poses a seriousof ardour
megalomaniac Bonaparte to the last challenge to the public Adam
In honour of
domain. A Zagajewski
survey of thereceiving the
beggar on the streets of Calcutta, will Jean Am�ry Prize for
German media
meet the same fate. Difficult because landscape European by Thierry essay writing, we
to content oneself with this Chervel publish Zagajewski's
metaphysical banality is to take an read more
easy way out, as it ignores the truly
explosive dimension of the problem,
the political dimension.
Europe's cultural journals
Instead of actually looking into the at your fingertips
thousand faces of the loser,
sociologists keep to their statistics:
median value, standard deviation,
normal distribution. It rarely occurs to
them that they themselves might be
among the losers. Their definitions are
like scratching a wound: as Samuel
Butler says, the itching and the pain
only get worse. One thing is certain:
the way humanity has organized itself
– "capitalism", "competition", "empire",
"globalization" – not only does the
number of losers increase every day,
but as in any large group,
fragmentation soon sets in. In a

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chaotic, unfathomable process, the Suddenly we know

cohorts of the inferior, the defeated, we are many
the victims separate out. The loser Wednesday 4th January,
may accept his fate and resign 2012
himself; the victim may demand Why
satisfaction; the defeated may begin the
preparing for the next round. But the
radical loser isolates himself,
becomes invisible, guards his
delusion, saves his energy, and waits Russian youth have
tolerated the political
for his hour to come.
situation in their country
for so long and why they
Those who content themselves with are no longer tolerant.
the objective, material criteria, the The poet Natalia
indices of the economists and the Klyuchareva explains
the background to the
devastating findings of the empiricists,
protests on Bolotnaya
will understand nothing of the true Square in Moscow on
drama of the radical loser. What December 10th. Image:
others think of him – be they rivals or Leonid Faerberg
brothers, experts or neighbours, read more

schoolmates, bosses, friends or foes –

The Republic of
is not sufficient motivation. The radical
Europe
loser himself must take an active part,
Tuesday 20 December,
he must tell himself: I am a loser and 2011
nothing but a loser. As long as he is
Thanks to Radoslaw
not convinced of this, life may treat
Sikorski's speech in
him badly, he may be poor and Berlin, Poland has at
powerless, he may know misery and last joined the big
defeat, but he will not become a European debate about
radical loser until he adopts the restructuring the EU in
connection with the euro
judgement of those who consider
crisis. The "European
themselves winners as his own. Reformation"
advocated by Germany
Since before the attack on the World does not mean that the
Trade Center, political scientists, Holy Roman Empire of
the German Nation will
sociologists and psychologists have be established in
been searching in vain for a reliable Europe, but instead – let
pattern. Neither poverty nor the us hope – the Republic
experience of political repression of Europe. By Adam
Krzeminski
alone seem to provide a satisfactory
read more
explanation for why young people
actively seek out death in a grand
Brown is not red
bloody finale and aim to take as many
Tuesday 13 December,
people with them as possible. Is there 2011
a phenotype that displays the same
characteristics down the ages and
across all classes and cultures?
No one pays any mind to the radical
loser if they do not have to. And the
feeling is mutual. As long as he is Filmmaker and theatre
alone – and he is very much alone – director Andres Veiel
he does not strike out. He appears disagrees with the
parallels currently being
unobtrusive, silent: a sleeper. But
drawn between left-wing
when he does draw attention to and right-wing violence
himself and enter the statistics, then in Germany. The RAF is

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he sparks consternation bordering on the wrong model for the

Zwickau neo-Nazi
shock. For his very existence reminds
group, the so-called
the others of how little it would take to "Brown Army Faction"
put them in his position. One might responsible for a series
even assist the loser if only he would of murders of Turkish
just give up. But he has no intention of small business owners.
Unlike the RAF, this
doing so, and it does not look as if he
group never publicly
would be partial to any assistance. claimed responsibility for
their crimes. Veiel is
Many professions take the loser as emphatic - you have to
the object of their studies and as the look at the biographies
of the perpetrators. An
basis for their existence. Social interview with Heike
psychologists, social workers, social Karen Runge.
policy experts, criminologists, read more
therapists and others who do not
count themselves among the losers Legacy of denial
would be out of work without him. But Tuesday 29 November,
with the best will in the world, the 2011
client remains obscure to them: their
empathy knows clearly-defined
professional bounds. One thing they
do know is that the radical loser is
hard to get through to and, ultimately,
Germany has been
unpredictable. Identifying the one
rocked by the
person among the hundreds passing disclosures surrounding
through their offices and surgeries the series of neo-Nazi
who is prepared to go all the way is murders of Turkish
more than they are capable of. Maybe citizens. In the wake of
these events, Former
they sense that this is not just a social
GDR dissident Freya
issue that can be repaired by Klier calls for an honest
bureaucratic means. For the loser look at the xenophobia
keeps his ideas to himself. That is the cultivated by the policies
trouble. He keeps quiet and waits. He of the former East
Germany, where the
lets nothing show, which is precisely core of the so-called
why he is feared. In historical terms, "Brown Army Faction"
this fear is very old, but today it is was based. And
more justified than ever. Anyone with demands that East
Germans finally confront
the smallest scrap of power within
a long-denied past.
society will at times feel something of (Photo: © Nadja Klier)
the huge destructive energy that lies read more
within the radical loser and which no
intervention can neutralize, however Nausea in Paris
well-meaning or serious it might be. Monday 14 November,
2011
He can explode at any moment. This In
is the only solution to his problem that
he can imagine: a worsening of the
evil conditions under which he suffers.
The newspapers run stories on him
every week: the father of two who response to the arson
attack on the offices of
killed his wife, his small children and
the Parisian satirical
finally himself. Unthinkable! A magazine Charlie Hebdo
headline in the local section: A Family on November 2, Danish
Tragedy. Or the man who suddenly critic and semiotician
barricades himself in his apartment, Frederik Stjernfelt is
nauseated by the

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taking the landlord, who wanted opinions voiced against

the publication,
money from him, as his hostage.
especially in the British
When the police finally gets to the and American media.
scene, he starts shooting. He is then Why don't they see that
said to have "run amok", a word Islamism is right-wing
borrowed from the Malayan. He kills extremism?
read more
an officer before collapsing in the
shower of bullets. What triggered this
Just one pyramid
explosion remains unclear. His wife's
Monday 10 October,
nagging perhaps, noisy neighbours, 2011
an argument at the pub, or the bank
cancelling his loan. A disparaging
remark from a superior is enough to
make the man climb a tower and start
firing at anything that moves outside
the supermarket, not in spite of but Activist and author,
precisely because of the fact that this Andri Snaer Magnason
massacre will accelerate his own end. is among the Icelandic
Where on earth did he get that guests of honor at this
year's Frankfurt Book
machine pistol from? Fair. His book and film
"Dreamland" is both an
At last, this radical loser – he may be ecological call to
just fifteen and having a hard time with action and a polemic.
"The politicians took one
his spots – at last, he is master over
of the most beautiful
life and death. Then, in the parts of Iceland and
newsreader's words, he "dies at his offered it to
own hands" and the investigators get unscrupulous
down to work. They find a few videos, companies," says the
author in a critique of his
a few confused journal entries. The
native country. By
parents, neighbours, teachers noticed Daniela Zinser
nothing unusual. A few bad grades, read more
for sure, a certain reticence – the boy
didn't talk much. But that is no reason Dark side of the
to shoot dead a dozen of his light
schoolmates. The experts deliver their Monday 3 October 2011
verdicts. Cultural critics bring forth In
their arguments. Inevitably, they speak their
of a "debate on values". The search book
for reasons comes to nothing.
Politicians express their dismay. The
conclusion is reached that it was an "Lügendes Licht" (lying
light) Thomas Worm
isolated case.
and Claudia Karstedt
explore the darker side
This is correct, since the culprits are of the EU ban on
always isolated individuals who have incandescent bulbs.
found no access to a collective. And it From disposal issues to
energy efficiency, the
is incorrect, since isolated cases of
low-energy bulb is not
this kind are becoming more and more necessarily a beacon of
frequent. This increase leads one to a greener future. By
conclude that there are more and Brigitte Werneburg
more radical losers. This is due to the read more
so-called "state of things." This might
refer equally to the world market or to Lubricious
puritanism
an insurance company that refuses to
Tuesday 30 August,
pay. 2011

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The
But anyone wishing to understand the
radical loser would be well advised to
go a little further back. Progress has
not put an end to human suffering, but malice of the American
it has changed it in no small way. Over media in the case of
the past two centuries, the more Dominique Strauss-
successful societies have fought for Kahn is a symptom of
sexual uptightness that
and established new rights, new
borders on the sinister,
expectations and new demands. They and the feminists have
have done away with the notion of an joined forces with the
inevitable fate. They have put religious Right to see it
concepts like human dignity and through. We can learn
much from America, but
human rights on the agenda. The
not when it comes to the
have democratized the struggle for art of love. By Pascal
recognition and awakened Bruckner
expectations of equality which they read more
are unable to fulfil. And at the same
time, they have made sure that Much ado about
inequality is constantly demonstrated Sarrazin
to all of the planet's inhabitants round Monday 22 August 2011

the clock on every television channel.

As a result, with every stage of
progress, people's capacity for
disappointment has increased
accordingly.
Published a year ago,
"Where cultural progress is genuinely the controversial book
"Deutschland schafft
successful and ills are cured, this sich ab" (Germany is
progress is seldom received with doing away with itself)
enthusiasm," remarks the philosopher by former banker and
Odo Marquard (book): "Instead, they Berlin Finance Senator
Thilo Sarrazin sparked
are taken for granted and attention
intense discussion.
focuses on those ills that remain. And Hamed Abdel-Samad
these remaining ills are subject to the asks: what has the
law of increasing annoyance. The Sarrazin debate
more negative elements disappear achieved beyond
polarisation and insult?
from reality, the more annoying the And how can Germany
remaining negative elements become, avoid cultivating its own
precisely because of this decrease in classes of "future
numbers." foreigners"?
read more

This is an understatement. For what

Economic giant,
we are dealing with here is not
political dwarf
annoyance, but murderous rage. What
Wednesday 3 August,
the loser is obsessed with is a 2011
comparison that never works in his
Germany's growing
favour. Since the desire for recognition
imbalance between
knows no limits, the pain threshold economic and political
inevitably sinks and the affronts competence is
become more and more unbearable. worsening the
The irritability of the loser increases European crisis and
indeed the crisis of
with every improvement that he
Nato. The country has
notices in the lot of others. The ceased to make any
yardstick is never those who are political signals at all

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worse off than himself. In his eyes, it is and demonstrates a

conspicuous lack of
not they who are constantly being
responsibility for what
insulted, humbled and humiliated, but takes place beyond its
only ever him, the radical loser. own borders. This smug
isolationism is linked to
The question as to why this should be strains of old anti-
Western and anti-
so only adds to his torment. Because
political, anti-
it certainly cannot be his own fault. parliamentarian
That is inconceivable. Which is why sentiment that is pure
he must find the guilty ones who are provincialism. By Karl
responsible for his plight. Heinz Bohrer
read more

But who are these omnipotent,

Sound and fury
nameless aggressors? Thrown back
Monday 11 April 2011
entirely on his own resources, the
answer to this nagging question is Budapest is
beyond the isolated individual. If no shimmering with culture
but Hungary's nationalist
ideological program comes to his aid,
government is throwing
then his search is unlikely to extend to its weight about in
the wider societal context, looking cultural life, effecting
instead to his immediate surroundings censorship through
and finding: the unjust superior, the budget cuts and putting
its own people in the
unruly wife, the bad neighbour, the top-level cultural
conniving co-worker, the inflexible positions. Government
public official, the doctor who refuses tolerance of hate
to give him a medical certificate. campaigns against
Jews and gays has
provoked the likes of
But might he not also be facing the Andras Schiff, Agnes
machinations of some invisible, Heller, Bela Tarr and
anonymous enemy? Then the loser Andre Fischer to raise
would not need to rely on his own their voices in defence
of basic human rights.
experience: he could fall back on
But a lot of people are
things he heard somewhere. Few simply scared. By
people have the gift of inventing a Volker Hagedorn
delusion for themselves that fits their read more
needs. Consequently, the loser will
most often stick to material that floats The self-
freely within society. The threatening determination
delusion
powers that are out to get him are not
Monday 28 March, 2011
hard to locate. The usual suspects are
foreigners, secret services, A
Communists, Americans, big
corporations, politicians, unbelievers.
And, almost always, the Jews.

Dutch action group for

For a while, this kind of delusion may
free will wants to give
bring the loser relief, but it will not be all people the right to
able to actually pacify him. In the long assisted suicide. But
term, it is hard to assert oneself in the can this be achieved
face of a hostile world, and he can without us ending up
somewhere we never
never entirely rid himself of the
wanted to go? Gerbert
suspicion that there might be a van Loenen has grave
simpler explanation, namely that he is doubts.
responsible, that his humiliation is his read more
own fault, that he does not merit the

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esteem he craves, and that his own Revolution without

life is worthless. Psychologists call this guarantee
affliction "identifying with the Monday 21 February,
aggressor". But what is that supposed 2011
to mean? It certainly has no meaning Saying revolution and
for the loser. But if his own life is freedom is not the same
worthless, why should he care about as saying democracy,
the lives of others? respect for minorities,
equal rights and good
relations with
"It's my fault." – "The others are neighbouring nations. All
responsible." These two claims are this has yet to be
not mutually exclusive. On the achieved. We welcome
contrary, they reinforce each other. the Arab revolution and
will continue to watch
The radical loser is unable to think his with our eyes open to
way out of this vicious circle, and it the potential dangers.
constitutes the source of his terrible By Andre Glucksmann
power. read more

The only way out of the dilemma is to Pascal Bruckner

and the reality
fuse destruction and self-destruction,
disconnect
aggression and auto-aggression. On
Friday 14 January, 2011
the one hand, at the moment of his
explosion, the loser for once The French writer
experiences a feeling of true power. Pascal Bruckner wants
to forbid a word. Which
His act allows him to triumph over sounds more like a
others by annihilating them. And on typically German
the other, he does justice to the obsession. But for
reverse of this feeling of power, the Bruckner,
"Islamophobia" is one of
suspicion that his own existence might
"those expressions
be worthless, by putting an end to it. which we dearly need to
banish from our
As an additional bonus, from the vocabulary". One asks
moment he resorts to armed force, the oneself with some
trepidation which other
outside world, which has never
words we "dearly need"
wanted to know anything about him, to get rid of: Right-wing
takes notice of him. The media make populism? Racism?
sure he is granted an enormous Relativism? By Alan
degree of publicity – even if it is for Posener
read more
just 24 hours. Television spreads
propaganda for his act, thus
encouraging potential imitators. For
minors, as shown by events in the
United States in particular, the
temptation this represents is hard to
resist.

The logic of the radical loser cannot

be grasped in terms of common
sense. Common sense cites the
instinct of self-preservation as if it
were an unquestionable fact of nature,
to be taken for granted. Whereas in
fact, it is a fragile notion, quite young
in historical terms. Self-preservation is
referred to by the Greeks, by Hobbes

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and Spinoza, but it is not considered

as a purely natural drive. Instead,
according to Immanuel Kant, "the...
first duty of the human individual
towards himself in the quality of his
animalness is self-preservation in his
animal nature." Only in the nineteenth
century did this duty become an
inviolable fact of natural science. Few
deviated from this view. Nietzsche
objected that physiologists should
avoid, "fixing the instinct of self-
preservation as the cardinal instinct of
an organic being." But among those
who would always rather survive, his
words have always fallen on deaf
ears.

The history of ideas aside, humanity

never seems to have expected
individual lives to be treated as the
supreme good. All early religions set
great store by human sacrifice. Later,
martyrs were highly valued.
(According to Blaise Pascal's fatal
maxim, one should "only believe
witnesses who allow themselves to be
killed.") In most cultures, heroes
acquired fame and honour for their
fearlessness in the face of death. Until
the mass slaughter of World War I,
secondary school pupils had to learn
the notorious verse from Horace
according to which is sweet and
honourable to die for one's fatherland.
Others claimed that shipping was
necessary, but not staying alive;
during the Cold War there were those
who shouted "Better dead than red!"
And what, under perfectly civilian
conditions, are we to think of tightrope
walkers, extreme sports, motor racing,
polar exploration and other forms of
potential suicide?

Clearly, the instinct of self-

preservation is not up to much. The
remarkable fondness of the human
species for suicide, down the ages
and across all cultures, is proof
enough of this. No taboo and no threat
of punishment have been able keep
people from taking their own lives.
This tendency cannot be quantified.
Any attempt to grasp it by means of

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statistics will fail due to the huge

number of unrecorded cases.

Sigmund Freud tried to solve the

problem theoretically, on an unstable
empirical basis, by developing his
concept of the death drive. Freud's
hypothesis is expressed more clearly
in the familiar old wisdom that
situations may arise in which humans
prefer a terrible end to (real or
imagined) terror without end.

II. The collective

But what happens when the radical

loser overcomes his isolation, when
he becomes socialized, finds a loser-
home, from which he can expect not
only understanding but also
recognition, a collective of people like
himself who welcome him, who need
him?

Then, the destructive energy that lies

within him is multiplied – his
unscrupulousness, his amalgam of
death-wish and megalomania – and
he is rescued from his powerlessness
by a fatal sense of omnipotence.

For this to take place, however, a kind

of ideological trigger is required to
ignite the radical loser and make him
explode. As history shows us, offers of
this kind have never been in short
supply. Their content is of the least
importance. They may be religious or
political doctrines, nationalist,
communist or racist dogmas – any
form of sectarianism, however
bigoted, is capable of mobilizing the
latent energy of the radical loser.

This applies not only to the rank and

file but also to their commanders,
whose attraction is based in turn on
their own self-definition as obsessive
losers. It is precisely the leader's
deluded traits in which his followers
recognize themselves. He is rightly
accused of being cynical and
calculating. It is only natural that he
should despise his followers. He

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understands them all too well. He

knows they are losers and, finally, he
thus considers them worthless. And
as Elias Canetti put it half a century
ago, he therefore takes pleasure in
the idea that if possible, everyone
else, including his followers, should
meet their death before he himself is
hanged or consumed by fire in his
bunker.

At this point, alongside many other

examples from history, one cannot
help being reminded of the National
Socialist project in Germany. At the
end of the Weimar Republic, large
sections of the population saw
themselves as losers. The objective
data tell a clear story. But the
economic crisis and mass
unemployment would probably not
have been enough to bring Hitler to
power. For that to happen, it took
propaganda aimed at the subjective
factor: the blow dealt to people's pride
by the defeat of 1918 and the Treaty
of Versailles. Most Germans sought to
blame others: the victorious powers,
the "global Capitalist-Bolshevist
conspiracy" and above all, of course,
the eternal scapegoat, Judaism. The
tormenting feeling of being in the
position of the loser could only be
compensated for by pursuing an
offensive strategy, by seeking refuge
in megalomania. From the outset, the
Nazis entertained delusions of world
domination. As such, their goals were
boundless and non-negotiable. In this
sense, they were not only unreal, but
also non-political.

Consulting a map was never going to

be enough to persuade Hitler and his
followers that the struggle of one small
European country against the rest of
the world was hopeless. On the
contrary. The radical loser has no
notion of resolving conflicts, of
compromise that might involve him in
a normal network of interests and
defuse his destructive energy. The
more hopeless his project, the more
fanatically he clings to it. There are
grounds to suspect that Hitler and his

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followers were interested not in

victory, but in radicalizing and
eternalizing their own status as losers.

Their pent up anger discharged itself

in a war of unprecedented destruction
against all those others who they
blamed for their own defeats. First and
foremost, it was a matter of destroying
the Jews and the opponents of 1919.
But they certainly had no intention of
sparing the Germans. Their actual
objective was not victory, but
elimination, downfall, collective
suicide, the terrible end. There is no
other explanation for the way the
Germans fought on in World War II
right to the last pile of rubble in Berlin.
Hitler himself confirmed this diagnosis
when he said that the German people
did not deserve to survive. At a huge
cost, he achieved what he wanted –
he lost. But the Jews, the Poles, the
Russians, the Germans and all the
others are still around.

The radical loser has not disappeared

either. He is still among us. This is
inevitable. On every continent, there
are leaders who welcome him with
open arms. Except that today, they are
very rarely associated with the state.
In this field too, privatization has made
considerable advances. Although it is
governments which have at their
disposal the greatest potential for
extermination, state crime in the
conventional sense is now on the
defensive worldwide.

To date, few loser-collectives have

operated on a global scale, even if
they were able to count on
international flows of cash and
weapon supplies. But the world is
teeming with local groupings whose
leaders are referred to as warlords or
guerrilla chiefs. Their self-appointed
militias and paramilitary gangs like to
adorn themselves with the title of a
liberation organization or other
revolutionary attributes. In some
media, they are referred to as rebels,
a euphemism that probably flatters
them. Shining Path, MLC, RCD,

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SPLA, ELA, LTTE, LRA, FNL, IRA,

LIT, KACH, DHKP, FSLN, UVF, JKLF,
ELN, FARC, PLF, GSPC, MILF, NPA,
PKK, MODEL, JI, NPA, AUC, CPNML,
UDA, GIA, RUF, LVF, SNM, ETA, NLA,
PFLP, SPM, LET, ONLF, SSDF, PIJ,
JEM, SLA, ANO, SPLMA, RAF, AUM,
PGA, ADF, IBDA, ULFA, PLFM,
ULFBV, ISYF, LURD, KLO, UPDS,
NLFT, ATTF ...

"Left" or "Right", it makes no odds.

Each of these armed rabbles calls
itself an army, boasts of brigades and
commandos, self-importantly issuing
bureaucratic communiqués and
boastful claims of responsibility, acting
as if they were the representatives of
"the masses". Being convinced, as
radical losers, of the worthlessness of
their own lives, they do not care about
the lives of anyone else either; any
concern for survival is foreign to them.
And this applies equally to their
opponents, to their own followers, and
to those with no involvement
whatsoever. They have a penchant for
kidnapping and murdering people who
are trying to relieve the misery of the
region they are terrorizing, shooting
aid workers and doctors and burning
down every last hospital in the area
with a bed or a scalpel – for they have
trouble distinguishing between
mutilation and self-mutilation.

But none of these mobs has been

able to keep up with globalization. In
cases where their ideological
exploitation focuses on national and
ethnic conflicts, this is only natural.
But since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, groups seeing themselves in
the tradition of internationalism have
forfeited the support of a superpower
in terms of propaganda and logistics.
Under the pressure of global capital,
they have abandoned their fantasies
of world domination and now claim
only to represent the interests of their
local clientele.

Since this cut-off point, only one

violent movement has been capable
of acting globally – Islamism. It is

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undertaking a large-scale attempt to

siphon off the religious energy of a
world faith with around 1.3 billion
believers that is not only still very
much alive, but which even in purely
demographic terms is also expanding
on every continent. Although this
Umma is subject to much inner
fragmentation and badly affected by
national and social conflicts, the
ideology of Islamism is an ideal
means of mobilizing radical losers
because of the way it amalgamates
religious, political and social motives.

A further promise of success lies in

the movement's organizational model.
Turning its back on the strict
centralism of earlier groupings, it has
replaced the omniscient and
omnipotent central committee with a
flexible network: a highly original
innovation that is entirely of its time.

Besides this, however, the Islamists

are perfectly happy to plunder the
arsenal of their predecessors. It is
often overlooked that modern
terrorism is a European invention of
the nineteenth century. Its most
important ancestors came from
Czarist Russia, but it can also look
back on a long history in Western
Europe. In recent times, the left-wing
terrorism of the 1970s has proved a
source of inspiration, with Islamists
borrowing many of its symbols and
techniques. The style of their
announcements, the use of video
recordings, the emblematic
significance of the Kalashnikov, even
the gestures, body language and
dress, all this shows how much they
have learned from these western role
models.

There is also no mistaking other

similarities, such as the fixation with
written authorities. The place of Marx
and Lenin is taken by the Koran,
references are made not to Gramsci
but to Sayyid Qutb. Instead of the
international proletariat, it takes as its
revolutionary subject the Umma, and
as its avant-garde and self-appointed

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representative of the masses it takes

not The Party but the widely branching
conspiratorial network of Islamist
fighters. Although the movement can
draw on older rhetorical forms which
to outsiders may sound high-flown or
big-mouthed, it owes many of its idées
fixes to its Communist enemy: history
obeys rigid laws, victory is inevitable,
deviationists and traitors are to be
exposed and then, in fine Leninist
tradition, bombarded with ritual insults.

The movement's list of favourite foes

is also short on surprises: America,
the decadent West, international
capital, Zionism. The list is completed
by the unbelievers, that is to say the
remaining 5.2 billion people on the
planet. Not forgetting apostate
Muslims who may be found among
the Shiites, Ibadhis, Alawites, Zaidites,
Ahmadiyyas, Wahhabis, Druze, Sufis,
Kharijites, Ishmaelites or other
religious communities.

III. The spectacle

In one respect, however, the Islamists

are without doubt a twenty-first-
century phenomenon: where their
understanding of the media is
concerned, they leave their
predecessors far behind. Earlier
disciples of terror also relied on
"propaganda through action", but the
kind of worldwide attention achieved
today by a nebulous grouping like Al
Qaida was not granted to them.
Trained by television, computer
technology, the Internet and
advertising, Islamist terror now gets
higher viewer ratings than any football
World Cup. The all-important
massacres are staged in Hollywood-
inspired style, modelled on disaster
films, splatter movies and science
fiction thrillers. This too is evidence of
a dependency on the hated West. In
the media output of terrorism, the
Society of the Spectacle as described
by the Situationists comes into its
own.

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More momentous still, however, is the

strategic use of suicide attacks, an
invincible weapon that cannot be seen
by surveillance satellites and which
can be deployed practically anywhere.
It is also extremely cheap. In addition
to these advantages, this form of
terror also exerts an irresistible
attraction on the radical loser. It allows
him to combine destruction and self-
destruction at the same time as acting
out both his megalomaniac fantasies
and his self-hate. Cowardice is the
last thing he can be accused of. The
courage that is his hallmark is the
courage of despair. His triumph
consists in the fact that he can be
neither fought nor punished, since he
takes care of that himself.

Contrary to what the West appears to

believe, the destructive energy of
Islamist actions is directed mainly
against Muslims. This is not a tactical
error, not a case of "collateral
damage". In Algeria alone, Islamist
terror has cost the lives of at least
50,000 fellow Algerians. Other
sources speak of as many as 150,000
murders, although the military and the
secret services were also involved. In
Iraq and Afghanistan, too, the number
of Muslim victims far outstrips the
death toll among foreigners.
Furthermore, terrorism has been
highly detrimental not only to the
image of Islam but also to the living
conditions of Muslims around the
world.

The Islamists are as unconcerned

about this as the Nazis were about the
downfall of Germany. As the avant-
garde of death, they have no regard
for the lives of their fellow believers. In
the eyes of the Islamists, the fact that
most Muslims have no desire to blow
themselves and others sky high only
goes to show that they deserve no
better than to be liquidated
themselves. After all, the aim of the
radical loser is to make as many other
people into losers as possible. As the
Islamists see it, the fact that they are
in the minority can only be because

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they are the chosen few.

Experts around the world are not the

only ones wondering how the Islamist
movement has been able to recruit so
many activists with its promises, far
outdoing its secular rivals. No clear
answer is in sight. All that is clear is
that there must be explanations in the
history of the Arab civilization that
brought forth the world religion of
Islam. This civilization reached its
apogee at the time of the Caliphate. At
this time, it was far superior to Europe
in military, economic and cultural
terms. The Arab world views this
period with misty-eyed nostalgia; even
today, 800 years later, it plays a
central role in the consciousness of
the region. In the intervening period,
the power, the prestige, the cultural
and economic weight of the Arab
world has been in continual decline.
Such an unparalleled demise is a
puzzle and a sore point, generating an
acute sense of loss. The Indian-born
Muslim poet Hussain Hali (1837-1914)
expressed this in his epic poem The
Ebb and Flow of Islam:

"The historians doing research today

whose scientific methods are
magnificent,
who plumb the archives of the world
and explore the surface of the earth –
the Arabs fuelled the fire in their
hearts,
their rapid gait was learned from the
Arabs."

Looking down from this high ground,

Hali describes the decline over time,
in several stanzas, the last of which
reads:

"We are neither trustworthy

government officials
nor proud towards courtiers,
we do not earn respect in the
sciences,
nor do we excel in crafts and industry."

It is not easy to put oneself in the

position of a collective that has
experienced such a downfall

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extending over a period of hundreds

of years. No wonder the blame is put
on a hostile outside world in the form
of the Spaniards, the Crusaders, the
Mongols, the Ottomans, the European
colonial powers and the American
empire. But other societies such as
India, China and Korea have suffered
no less under the rule of invaders and
from the attacks and raids of foreign
powers. But in spite of this, they have
successfully faced the challenges of
modernity and risen to become
important players on a global scale.
The question therefore inevitably
poses itself as to the endogenous
causes of the downfall of the Arab
world. As long as this question
remains unanswered, the Arab world's
enormous scientific, technical and
industrial deficit will remain
unexplained and inexplicable.

The Arab world's sense of pride is hurt

not only by military inferiority to the
West. Far worse is the impact of
intellectual and material dependency.
In the last 400 years, not a single
noteworthy invention was made by the
Arabs. Rudolph Chimelli quotes one
Iraqi author as saying: "If an Arab had
invented the steam engine in the 18th
century, it would not have been built."
No historian would contradict him.
This means that for any Arab who
cares to think about it, the very objects
on which everyday life in the Maghreb
and the Middle East depends
represent an unspoken humiliation –
every fridge, every telephone, every
power socket, every screwdriver, not
to mention hi-tech products. Even the
parasitic oil states, frittering away their
future security, are obliged to import
the technology from abroad; without
Western geologists, drilling experts
and civil engineers, fleets of tankers
and refineries they would not even be
capable of exploiting their own
resources. In this light, even their
wealth is a curse that constantly
reminds them of their dependency.
Not including the revenue from crude
oil, the economic performance of the
entire Arab world today counts for less

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than that of a single Finnish

telecommunications company.

The Arab world has proved similarly

unproductive where its political
institutions are concerned. Imported
forms of nationalism and socialism
have failed everywhere, and
democratic stirrings are routinely
nipped in the bud. Of course, blanket
statements of this kind can only aim to
say something about the state of the
whole. They tell us nothing about
individual capabilities, that are subject
the world over to the genetic normal
distribution. But in many Arab
countries, anyone who expresses
independent ideas puts their own life
at risk. Which is why many of the best
scientists, engineers, writers and
political thinkers live in exile, a brain
drain that can certainly be compared
with the exodus of Jewish elites from
Germany in the 1930s, and which is
likely to have similarly far-reaching
consequences.

Although the methods of repression

that are customary in Arab countries
refer back to the traditions of oriental
despotism, in this field too, the
unbelievers have proved
indispensable as teachers. From
machine pistols through to poison gas,
they invented and exported all of the
weapons that have been used in the
Arab-Islamic world. Arab rulers also
studied and adopted the methods of
the GPU and the Gestapo. And of
course, Islamist terrorism is also
unable to do without such borrowings.
Its entire technical arsenal, from
explosives to satellite telephones,
from aircraft to television cameras,
comes from the hated West.

That such an all-encompassing

dependency should be experienced
as unbearable makes perfect sense.
Especially among displaced migrants,
regardless of their economic situation,
the confrontation with Western
civilisation leads to a lasting culture
shock. The apparent superabundance
of products, opinions, economic and

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sexual options leads to a double bind

of attraction and revulsion, and the
abiding memory of the backwardness
of one's own culture becomes
intolerable. The consequences for
one's own sense of self-esteem are
clear, as is the urge to compensate by
means of conspiracy theories and acts
of vengeance. In this situation, many
people cannot resist the temptation of
the Islamists' offer to punish others for
their own failings.

Solutions to the dilemma of the Arab

world are of no interest to Islamism,
which does not go beyond negation.
Strictly speaking, it is a non-political
movement, since it makes no
negotiable demands. Put bluntly, it
would like the majority of the planet's
inhabitants, all the unbelievers and
apostates, to capitulate or be killed.

This burning desire cannot be fulfilled.

The destructive energy of the radical
losers is doubtless sufficient to kill
thousands, maybe hundreds of
thousands of innocent civilians and to
cause lasting damage to the
civilization on which they have
declared war. One indication of the
potential impact of a few dozen
human bombs is the level of day-to-
day controls that has come to be the
norm.

But this is actually the least of the

losses to civilization resulting from
terrorism. It can create a general
atmosphere of fear and trigger
counter-reactions based on panic. It
boosts the power and influence of the
political police, of the secret services,
of the arms industry and of private
security operatives; it encourages the
passing of increasingly repressive
laws and leads to the loss of hard-won
freedoms. No conspiracy theories are
required to understand that there are
people who welcome these
consequences of terror. There is
nothing better than an external enemy
with which to justify surveillance and
repression. Where this leads is shown
by the example of Russian domestic

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policy.

The Islamists can consider all this a

success. But it makes no difference to
the actual power relations. Even the
spectacular attack on the World Trade
Center was not able to shake the
supremacy of the United States. The
New York Stock Exchange reopened
the Monday after the attacks, and the
long-term impact on the international
financial system and world trade was
minimal.

The consequences for Arab societies,

on the other hand, are fatal. For the
most devastating long-term effects will
be born not by the West, but by the
religion in whose name the Islamists
act. Not just refugees, asylum seekers
and migrants will suffer as a result.
Beyond any sense of justice, entire
peoples will have to pay a huge price
for the actions of their self-appointed
representatives. The idea that their
prospects, which are bad enough as it
is, could be improved through
terrorism is absurd. History offers no
example of a regressive society that
stifled its own productive potential
being capable of survival in the long
term.

The project of the radical loser, as

currently seen in Iraq and
Afghanistan, consists of organizing
the suicide of an entire civilisation. But
the likelihood of their succeeding in an
unlimited generalization of their death
cult is negligible. Their attacks
represent a permanent background
risk, like ordinary everyday deaths by
accident on the streets, to which we
have become accustomed.

In a global society that constantly

produces new losers, this is
something we will have to live with.

The article originally appeared in

German in Der Spiegel on November
7, 2005.

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Hans Magnus Enzensberger is one

of modern Germany's most interesting
and celebrated writers. Among his
books of poetry are "The Sinking of
the Titanic" and "Mausoleum". His
prose works include "Europe, Europe"
and "Civil Wars".

Translation: Nicholas Grindell.

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