Climate of Fear (5 page)

Such extremism could not stay localized for long. We have only to recollect that some of the leaders of this new insurgency cut their teeth in the struggle for the liberation of Afghanistan, a struggle that triumphed with the expulsion of Soviet forces of occupation from that nation, then recollect that such mujahideen are pitted against a regime whose leaders are also veterans in the bruising war of liberation against French colonialism. And the consequence of these antecedents for global politics? The end of the notion of a nationalist war that would remain strictly within national confines. Perhaps such a notion had long since dissipated—only not much notice was paid at the time—dispelled by the Vietnam War, a war that sought no more than the liberation of its land from the domination of foreigners.

Regarding that war, I must express a puzzle. Vietnam, then known as Indochina, fought two wars of liberation, first from France, which she defeated at the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu, then from the United States, which felt that she knew a thing or two that France did not. No one can forget the saturation bombing carried out by the United States in the latter stages of the war—a brutal assault that was actually described by the president, Richard Nixon, as an exercise to bomb North Vietnam to the negotiating table—nor the earlier barrage of defoliants whose effects have yet to wear off completely in that nation, the deadly chemical weapon napalm, with horrendous images of inhuman disfiguration permanently seared on world memory. Now, the puzzle is this. I find it curious that the North Vietnamese, victims of two world powers in rapid succession, did not ever consider designating the entire world a war arena where innocents and guilty alike would be legitimately targeted. Not one incident of hijacking took place during those wars, neither did the taking of hostages, or the random detonation of bombs in places of tourist attraction or religious worship. United Nations agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations, appear to have enjoyed the respect due to neutrals in conflict. Most unbelievable of all, however, was the aftermath of that war, the now ritual encounters between U.S. veterans and their former enemies in an embrace of reconciliation.

Certainly, during the entire Vietnam wars, it would have been an excessive claim to suggest that the world was trapped in a climate of fear. While we may dispute in the end what lessons must be drawn from this contrast, what remains certain is that it is one that needs to be closely studied. In the fifth lecture of this series, “ ‘I Am Right; You Are Dead,' ” we shall take this up again. Certainly we cannot ignore the antecedent histories of such peoples, their philosophies, and their religions. The same observation may be made, albeit in a different vein, of the antiapartheid struggle that was waged with no less commitment and intensity against a ruthless foe. The oppressed black people of South Africa did not pronounce the outside world guilty of the crime of continuing to survive while a majority race was being ground to earth by an implacable machinery of racist governance. There are hidden lessons in these studies in contrast, lessons that may enable us, after acknowledging the principal sources of the current climate of fear, to seek remedies that go beyond the rectification of the glaring and sustained conduct of global injustice.

It is always easy enough to address the material factors of conflict, and we do know that in most cases, such will be found as the primary causes. They can be identified and grasped, and usually provide a basis for negotiation even in the most intense moments of conflict. Nations fight over land, over water supply and other material resources, and, in civil wars, also over political marginalization—these are accessible causes of discontent, cogent in their manifestations. They go to the heart of a people's sense of social security and need for survival. Intermeshed with these, however, but not so intricately as to be totally inseparable, is a much neglected factor in its own right—the quotient of power, the will to dominate, to control, that strange impulse that persuades certain temperaments that they can realize their existence either individually or collectively only through the domination of others. We are speaking here of that phase when a struggle moves beyond its material causes—to restore parity within an exploitative order or whatever—and becomes one that is dedicated to the seizure and exercise of raw power. It goes to the heart of the phenomenon of those dictators who, long past their creative usefulness, still cling ruthlessly to the seat of power, a contemporary instance of which can be seen in the pitiable condition of the once revolutionary, now merely embarrassing ruler of Zimbabwe, whose rule is sustained today not by popular acceptance but by the agency of terror.

Let us not therefore limit the thrill of power only to its structured manifestations. The territorial—that is, the physical expression—of the will to dominate is only part of the story. There is also its furtive exercise, one that, often outgunned and outmaneuvered, may even give up all interest in territorial control but will not give up the craving for domination. We may liken it to that now-commonplace technological gadget known as the remote control, one that incidentally plays such a lethal role in the explosive dialogue of today's parties of conflict. We are speaking of the thrill of power by means other than actual governance, power as a pursuit in its own right, an addictive concentrate, extract, or essence. It is a realm that need not be anchored in material grounds, remains a pursuit in its own right, craved for its own sake. The conduct of the child taunting and circumscribing the motions of a captive insect, or the well-known antics of the school bully—these are early forays into the laboratory of power, from which a taste may develop into major assaults on entire communities. The complementary emotion of the victim—insect or school pupil—that the tormentor loves as his reward is, of course, the expression of fear, accompanied by an abject surrender of volition.

I believe that it is time to confront a heightened reality—heightened, because not exactly new—and to include the factor of power, the instinct to power, among the motivating components of the human personality and social movements, an unquantifiable element that has always governed much of social and nation relationships. History concedes to exceptional figures, past and present—Alexander, Suleiman, King Darius, Chaka the Zulu, Ataturk, Indira Gandhi, etc.—the temperaments of nation builders as well as nurturers of power. That latter impulsion is not glossed, either by historians or by the psychoanalysts of supermen and -women. What differs in our contemporary situation is that the relishing of power is no longer an attribute of the outstanding, exceptional individual, but is increasingly accessible even to the nondescript individual whose membership in a clique, or activities on behalf of the Chosen, more than fulfill this hunger for a share in the diet of power.

Is it strictly out of a commitment to the moral law—
Thou shalt not kill
—that the extreme antiabortion crusader in the United States stalks and kills abortion doctors, patients, and innocent passersby, sometimes operating from within a network of protective cells? Or is there also an element of the thrill of membership in a quasi-state, exercising a form of power that transcends all mainstream social accords? We shall turn more fully to the theme of the Chosen in the fifth of these lectures.

For now, let me assure you that if you wish to observe the face of power at its most mundane, you do not have far to seek. You do not need to pay to see Marlon Brando in his role as the Godfather at the head of a Mafia combine. That face is omnipresent—from the clerical assistant on whom the emergence of a critical file depends to anonymous members of an unacknowledged terrorist organization in the United States known as the IRS—the Internal Revenue Service. Simply be on the receiving end of a letter of demand from that body to construct on your retina the driven personality of the writer!

Actually, that ogre has long since been displaced in my personal encounters—at least temporarily—by one of the new creatures of the heightened state of alert that now prevails in countries like the United States. These days, after you have checked in and gone through all the security checks, you may find yourself at the departure gate being subjected to a final, detailed check of your person and your baggage. That selection is mostly a random one, carried out by the computer. However, in other airports or, more accurately, with certain airlines, it is an airline security official who decides your fate, either immediately before or after you have passed through the baggage-screening section. That individual, who presumably is trained not only in human but in document psychology, looks you up and down like some strange insect species, takes another look at your passport, weighs it in one hand or in both, and takes another look at you. She does not ask you any questions; all decisions are based on that dual inspection—of you and your documents. She pauses—there is a long queue behind you but she pauses a long while—to let you know that your fate is in her hands. Then, with the most contemptuous toss of her head, she indicates that you may go through, or . . . step aside and join other lesser beings who are huddled, waiting to be stripped to their barest essentials. Don't take my word for it, go and see these individuals at work. There are a hundred ways I can think of—most of them actually polite and humane— whereby you can let a voyager know that you are about to subject him to some inconvenience, but for a laudable cause. No, these individuals let you know, in advance, that what you are about to experience is indignity, and that they, and they alone, are the powers that force-feed you this diet of humiliation.

I regret to have to inform you—and political correctness can go take a jump—that the nastiest, most obviously power-possessed officials that I have encountered in this manner have all been women, mostly between the ages of twenty and thirty, and—black! Perhaps the perennial war of the sexes is a factor, tied to the additional complication of the history of racism in the United States; I leave it to sociologists to look into this experience for me and offer their own explanations. All I do here is testify from experience—and on oath!

Let me not fail, simply for reasons of a deep, subjective, murderous loathing, to pay tribute to the creature to whom the modern crown of furtive power rightly belongs: the domination freak whose warped genius creates those invisible, proliferating Frankensteins from his dingy computer den and sends them in virtual space to invade and destroy the work of individuals and institutions. These aberrants are without an ounce of hatred in their veins, with no wrong to avenge, no cause to promote, with no physical or territorial ambition, indeed with no motivation other than the lust for power over unknown millions, both the meek and the powerful, the affluent and the deprived, the professor and the school pupil alike. I refer, of course, to none other than the cybernerd, whose depredations we all must have felt at some time or other, or barely escaped. The most recent of these, like Mr. “I am God” the Maryland sniper, is not without a message for his captive world—“Have the guts to call the name of Jesus” is the subject line of the stalking horse on which his cannibal creation rides to wage his war of destruction on the unsuspecting.

It takes little imagination to picture this figure at his computer with, literally, the whole world at his fingertips, locked in a competitive lust with unknown others for the power to inflict the maximum injury on humanity. Usually youthful, European or Asian—so report the cybersleuths—and again, PC be damned, this individual is of course impelled by a genuine passion for discovery, but the space between that motion of a technological curiosity and the gesture that launches a virus on the world is the space that separates the explorer from the conqueror, the adventurer from the imperialist, the revolutionary from the dictator: it is the space of pure, unadulterated ecstasy of power.

Power, alas—even in its comic vein—is neither abstract nor metaphysical in its impact on society. The axis of tension between power and freedom continues to propel the very motions of personality development, social upheaval, and nation conflicts. We must stress yet again that the urge to dominate may be the product of existing realities. Where such realities are not addressed, the political space is left fallow, enabling the calculating hand to fan the winds of fear. Some of these actualities may expand to threaten the peace of the world. Are they new, or are they simply the accentuation of well-known anomalies in nation relations? I began my remarks by deliberately identifying one such contributory breeding ground, Algeria. In forthcoming lectures, we shall touch on others—such as the Middle East—look into causes and effects, and perhaps even venture into speculations over possible solutions. I intend to proceed on the premise—one that I think is easy to agree upon—that humanity would rather work to dispel a climate of fear than live within it, and I assume also that we are equally agreed that, at this moment of speaking, we are well and truly enveloped in it. For now, let me devote the remaining time to taking us on a few turns along the axial relationship between power and freedom.

Science-fiction literature, of which I used to be an avid fan—I still am, it's just that I do not have as much time to indulge in it as I once had—is most instructive, as are films in the same genre. Take
The Day of the Triffids,
where plants attempt to take over human society, or those films of alien body-snatchers, that most subversively imaginative way of taking over the key elements in a community, its government, progressively taking over the nation by assuming the physical shapes of a nation's ruling cadre. (Can we swear, by the way, that George Bush and Osama are not aliens in human shape?)

We may ask the question: in such fictions, what is the most basic element that twangs a chord of trepidation in the human viscera? Where does the reader, or viewer, identify most viscerally with the characters in this literary or cinematic genre? What gives that piquant edge to one's apprehension in much of science-fiction and horror literature? I suggest that it is very simply the notion of coming under the control of another being, of finding oneself dominated by an alien force, an alien bundle of values, sensibilities, tastes, agenda, beliefs, and direction—in short, being robbed of one's social anchor. Apart from a fear of the loss of identity to those goblins from outer space—with heaven knows what nasty habits—one recognizable source of that repulsion is, very simply, the ancestral adversary of human freedom that we designate “power.” The goblin has taken over control of our existential volition.