THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BOMB AND THE FAR RIGHT
The previous chapter touched partially on right-wing terrorism, but a broader survey is warranted, especially when it comes to the extreme right. A good example of this violence is the Black Hundred from Russia. These individuals carried out numerous assassinations before the beginning of World War I. Assassinations by the far right continued after the war across Europe. Hitler was a big advocate for them: “Heads would roll,” he said, “ours, or the others.” Later, when he was taken to court after a spate of assassinations committed by the Nazis, he tried to mitigate his words by saying they were hyperbole intended to force an ideological confrontation. The Nazis, according to Hitler, prioritized constitutionality and the rule of law. The idea that Hitler might approve of someone who dared break the law, causing reckless death and mayhem, was anathema to the values of the Nazis. Hitler had to maintain this façade because of his leadership role. Joseph Goebbels, for his part, argued that “whoever defended his own Weltanschauung with terror and brutality would one day gain power,” and that political decisions depended on the common person out in the streets, not those in government offices. Goebbels, much like Hitler, was a populist, and he thought it important to win over the masses. That was the only way they would take power. With people, they could disrupt state functions and opposition party meetings, and conquer the street. And, of course, part of this involved using terrorism, taking inspiration from Mussolini: “Terror? Never. It simply is social hygiene, taking those individuals out of circulation like a doctor would take out a bacillus.”
Mussolini, the erstwhile socialist, in his younger days remarked, “Il proletario deve essere psicologicamente preparato all’uso della violenza liberatice.”1 This concept of psychologically liberating violence was a hallmark of his Fascism, and he contrasted it as a progressive. What his enemies did was nothing more than stupid reactive violence: “the Socialists ask what is our program? Our program is to smash the heads of the Socialists.” Violence for both Mussolini and the Nazis had a political element, but it was no longer revolutionary in scope and aim. There were no assassinations, no sabotage. This was violence of the masses—or hyper-democratic, if you will—designed to express the people’s will by intimidating opponents. They claimed self-defense, noting they only engaged in terrorism after others had done them ill. But even the right wing saw the value in the doctrine of the left-wing anarchist of the previous century. The Nazis exploited their violence to enrapture the media. Whenever they committed attacks, newspapers had to print what they had done, and of course this catapulted the Nazis to new heights in Germany’s political imagination. This small group, lacking any elite support, soon became the leading party in Germany. Goebbels, the master propagandist, of course was the mastermind behind this strategy. In his “conquest of Berlin,” he gave the example for others to copy his style.
Why were the Nazis and the Fascists so committed to this violence? These were the heady years after the first great war, and many of their members were veterans of these conflicts. They saw how might made right, or so they believed. The struggle for power made violence permissible. Much like the populists in the final years of the Roman Republic, these individuals saw legalism as a make-believe obstacle that could be overcome by sheer force. There was no room for polite debate or persuasion. The enemy was liberal democracy, and this system had to be destroyed. Again, the socialist undertones reemerged in how they sought to destroy this system, something promulgated both by Mussolini and the Nazis during the Kampfzeit. Count Helldorf, during a trial against Nazi storm troopers, remarked “that it was quite absurd to accuse them of having attacked Jews, for they were fighting against the capitalist system, which was represented, after all, not only by Jews.”
The Nazis and the Fascists were large organizations, however, so the targeted small-scale terrorism that characterized the left-wing groups from the previous century was not present. The ones who did practice it, though, identified with the smaller extreme right wing. This is a catchall term for these individuals and does little to convey their strategy. The Organisation Consul, a German Freikorps movement, practiced systemic terror as a manifestation of radicalism, not conservatism, as they cared little to defend the ongoing German capitalist system. Others, like Ernst von Salomon, were conservatives who thought little about human life: “We killed whoever fell into our hands, we burned whatever could be burned.… The march into an uncertain future was for us sufficiently meaningful and suited the demands of our blood.” Nihilism prevailed in many of the extreme right-wing circles. Walther Rathenau was not killed because of what he represented or because of his role as foreign minister. On the contrary, they had respect for him. Rathenau was killed because he was too important a symbol and his death would reverberate more so than others. This “duel between giants” was prominent among Central European terrorists. The Freikorps plotted the death of General Hans von Seeckt, who led the Reichswehr, the main military body in Germany until 1935, while Hungarian fascists sought to kill the interior minister, a man of the right. The Iron Guard in Romania killed two conservative prime ministers in the 1930s as well. These were not left-wing individuals. These were firmly in the establishment and seemed to share their values. What mattered was the symbolism of their deaths.
While the Central European example spread throughout the continent, there was still enough variety to identify noticeable differences among the various right-wing terrorist groups of this era. In Hungary, the Arrow Cross included many criminals, and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization degenerated into a Mafia-style group after shedding its patriotic motives. Over time, the IMRO would perform assassinations for the highest bidder and later participate in the drug trade. By contrast, Romanian nationalists remained committed to their values. The Iron Guard always kept its youthful image, identifying their members as “legionnaires,” seeking to bring back the old values of Romanian society: religion, patriotism, and all those ideals that were swept away with modernity. Their problem was that they identified as Christians, for whom the act of forgiveness mattered, but the nation could not be saved by acting like proper Christians. Sometimes murder was necessary, but it had to be followed immediately by expiation. They also adopted the anarchists’ ideology of propaganda by the deed, taking it to heart and making it part of their strategy. They thought violence, when used properly, had a moral component that made it legitimate. They also seemed to revere death, writing songs saying, “Legionnaires are born to die,” or “Death is a gladsome wedding for us.” This bloodlust and worship of death made them similar to the anarchists with their suicidal impulse.
What is interesting about the previously discussed groups is that they all were protesting the ills of modern Europe. This was true of both the left and the right. They railed against the political parties of their era and the control of wealth by a select few, calling them a plutocracy. The right needed a way to distinguish itself from the left, and the way it accomplished this was through the use of patriotic and religious symbolism. Terrorists from all over the world looked to the past for guidance and inspiration. In Japan, the cult of the samurai, which had existed well into the nineteenth century, inspired terrorists in that country. These individuals had an interesting trajectory. Many of them started as anarchists or identified as “lovers of the native soil,” before coming to support the annihilation of the Western style of life. They formed groups like the League of Blood and separated themselves from all their known contacts, much like Nikolai Ishutin and Sergey Nechaev, to restore the traditions of Japan. Of course, these terrorists were political pawns like so many throughout history. The military saw value in these men terrorizing Japanese society, and it made the notion of a more aggressive military policy palatable to the political classes. Furthermore, the example of these terrorists wishing to preserve the honor of Japan served as a moralizing force, which further pressured politicians into supporting Japan’s “historical mission” of greatness throughout East Asia and the world.
Terrorism was a variegated phenomenon in Europe during the years before World War II. In France, the targets were mainly universities. The far right enjoyed employing journalism to menace professors they deemed offensive and playwrights who wrote scripts they saw as profane. Some smaller groups practiced a more intense and violent form of terrorism, such as the CSAR, which eventually expanded the repertory of terrorism in France to include murder. This type of terrorism belies the typical view that extremist groups dislike the press. There was no such easy relationship with the press in the case of the Austrian Nazis or the Japanese terrorist groups. They viewed journalists and the press alike as hostile enemies that needed to be destroyed. An early advocate of Austrian terrorism wrote, “One kills these dogs by shooting or poisoning them, every means is right,” an idea his coconspirators agreed with and which manifested itself in their plots to poison journalists. In Finland, the Lapua did not kill, but they engaged in kidnapping and torture. After roughing up their victims badly, they made sure the message was received in Russia.
The Fascists rarely engaged in terrorist plots against individual targets. In Italy, they were notorious for making their victims drink castor oil, but this was not a frequent thing they did. In Germany, Walther Rathenau and Matthias Erzberger were indeed killed, but this was not to advance a coherent political program like the anarchists. There were exceptions to this. In 1924, Fascists killed opposition leader Giacomo Matteotti, and, ten years later, in 1934, Austrian Nazis killed Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss during an attempted coup d’état. While an effective and deadly tool, the far right in both Italy and Germany seemed to shirk assassination as a tool because they did not find it effective. Carl Schmitt explained why when he wrote on the “political soldier”: “The ethics of the Sermon on the Mount applied to the private enemy, the inimicus, not to the hostis, the public foe.” Contrary to the liberal-democratic thinkers of the time, the fascists did not believe discussion and debate would resolve the differences plaguing the different political parties. They viewed politics as a struggle, but somehow recognized, almost out of instinct, that “love your enemies” was not applicable to politics. Yet, in this warped worldview, terrorism played a minor role.
Some terrorist groups did develop their own doctrines to explain their worldview somewhat, but the value of these statements and manifestos were of limited use if the goal was an understanding of all terrorist activities. There were many things that radicalized and mobilized people to cause harm during that era. The aforementioned IMRO and the Croatian Ustasha were established by patriots, but later became political pawns for foreign powers that wished to sow havoc in their countries. The IMRO understood its numerical inferiority relative to the task at hand and recognized the importance of having foreign backers to help them achieve their independence goals. The Croatians similarly ceded Dalmatia to their Italian overlords with the hope that this would facilitate their cause. This lack of doctrinal rigidity meant that the IMRO eventually degenerated into a band of glorified hit men, with the Bulgarians exploiting them to fight their rivals, and the Croatians engaging in indiscriminate terrorism throughout Yugoslavia. The reality aside, these individuals thought such foreign interference was still useful in helping them achieve their goals of independence. Yet given how depraved their actions became later on, there is debate as to whether any of this emerged from legitimate political convictions or if it was merely depraved social behavior.
Indeed, at times, terrorists of the far right engaged in something called instinctive terrorism, a form of violence that arose from generational hatred between various national groups. These individuals lacked ideological doctrine but understood the propaganda value of violence. This was the case with the Ukrainians in eastern Poland and the peasants in Schleswig-Holstein. They had that innate insight that during times of extreme crisis, like the Great Depression, the most effective way to register political protest was not by airing one’s grievances but through the use of violence. They still had enough political sense to separate the two approaches to avoid being scrutinized by authorities and to maintain plausible deniability. They would often create two distinct groups—a moderate political one that sought traditional means of protests and the more violent direct-action groups. Since the beginning of time, people have been making love and cooking without the help of textbooks, and the same principle applies to terrorism. Certainly, there were times that these terrorists of the extreme right combined their violence with a well-considered strategy, but this was normally figured out on a post hoc basis, after the conflict had been initiated. When these discussions did occur, there was usually bitter debate, which engendered more squabbling. But terrorism also took place without precise doctrine and systematic strategy, with only hazy notions about the direction of the struggle and its aim. Like Faust, the terrorists could truly claim, “Im Anfang war die Tat”—in the beginning there was the deed.
The similarities between terrorists on the left and the right were many. They understood the value of propaganda of the deed; they disliked democracy, liberalism, and their attendant institutions; they sought reform or revolution by any means possible, regardless of the outcome; they saw themselves as heaven-sent. Even Carl Schmitt, quoted earlier, understood these connections. The same individual, considered the most preeminent jurist for the Nazis, came to praise Mao and other leaders of the left in his work on partisans. Schmitt, like many contemporary terrorists, believed that it was a tool that could undermine and destroy from within the governance and the broader systems of a nation. The SS regarded their mission as quasi-divine and viewed themselves as “chosen” to purge the world of any and all evil and sin that existed. The Narodovoltsy were pained to kill people and suffered intense remorse from their actions. The fascists lacked that moral compunction, because they truly did see themselves as purifying the world. The anarchists, also believers in propaganda by the deed, thought similarly. Émile Henry, the man who bombed Café Terminus, boldly proclaimed, “There are no innocent bourgeois.” Others who shared his worldview came to despise all humans, saying none could be innocent. Yet there is something to be said about the Narodnaya Volya and its view on life, compared to later fascists. These former individuals understood their government to be intractable and incapable of reform without the impetus provided by terrorism, as the regime had outlawed most forms of political activity. When there were venues for debate and means of reforming the system without violence, they condemned this violence. After the assassination of President Garfield, they denounced his murder specifically because they believed in a free and nonviolent society. They were optimistic about life—the right-wing terrorists were not.
The foregoing is largely a highly compressed survey of two chapters of The History of Terrorism, originally published some forty years ago. What happened during the four decades that have passed since then remains well remembered. Some of the events and developments will be described in detail in the following pages. Others have been fully and competently described and need no repeating. Forty years ago, terrorism was mainly found in Europe and Latin America. There were a few instances elsewhere such as the Palestinian conflict and later on also in the Caucasus. But over the years, terrorism in Western Europe died out, and it also faded away in Latin America, with the last of the terrorist groups there fading from the scene in Colombia in 2016. On the other hand, there was a great upsurge of terrorist operations in the Middle East and other Muslim countries. Following the Russian and American invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda came into being, and the invasion of Iraq led to circumstances that facilitated an expansion of terrorist operations. Syria became the major battlefield, and terrorism also appeared in African countries such as Nigeria, where it had been, on the whole, unknown.
The new terrorist groups that appeared expanded their activities worldwide. Noteworthy also was the fact that they engaged in a great deal of propaganda, often successfully, which led to the radicalization of local Muslim communities in Europe and America. Major attacks in American and European cities are well remembered, ranging from 9/11 to the attacks in Madrid, Paris, London, Copenhagen, and other European cities. These events prominently figured in the media, often overshadowing all other news. However, the political attacks were quite limited. No government was overthrown as the result of these attacks, and few if any new converts joined the Muslim communities. Some thousands of radicalized young men and women proceeded to the battlefields in the Middle East and other Asian countries, but more than a few returned, disappointed, to their native countries after a couple of months or years. The issue of terrorism had become a major political force, but at the same time, its limits clearly appeared. How far would it advance or retreat from its position? How great was its staying power? These issues will be discussed in the sections that follow.