Trust Between Society and Regime

Reviewing the twists and turns of 19th century Russian protests against Tsarist rule, Solzhenitsyn examines the considerations relevant to how an historical tipping point turns out:

И таких моментов, когда вот, кажется, доступно было умирить безумный раздор власти и общества, повести их к созидательному согласию, мигающими теплоранжевыми фонариками немало расставлено на русском пути за столетие. Но для того надо: себя — придержать, о другом — подумать с доверием. Власти: а может, общество отчасти и доброго хочет? может, я понимаю в своей стране не всё? Обществу:

а может, власть не вовсе дурна? привычная народу, устойная в действиях, вознесенная над партиями, — быть может, она своей стране не враг, а в чём-то благодеяние?

Нет, уж так заведено, что в государственной жизни ещё резче, чем в частной, добровольные уступки и самоограничение высмеяны как глупость и простота. [октябрь шестнадцатого — книга 1, 70-71, on Solzhenitsyn.ru.]

Several such moments, when there was some chance of ending the mindless strife between the regime and society, of bringing them together in creative collaboration, twinkle like warm orange lights along Russia’s path over a century. But for it to happen, each side would have had to restrain itself and try to trust the other. The regime would have had to think: “Maybe there is some good in what society wants. Maybe there are things we don’t know about our country.” And society would have needed to think: “Perhaps the regime is not entirely bad. The people are used to it, it is firm in its actions, it stands above parties, perhaps it is not its country’s enemy but is in some ways a blessing.”

But no, in the life of states even more than in private life, the rule is that voluntary concessions and self-limitation are ridiculed as naive and stupid. [Willets, Tr., November 1916, 60-61.]

Individuals truly made a difference, it seems, in the sad story of Russian regime zigzagging efforts to reform then repress then reform and popular impatience with that zigzagging. Key terrorists trying to assassinate tsars and the highly contradictory attitudes of several key tsars constituted critical personal contributions…if considered in relation to each other. Whether or not any single person on either side, acting on his own, could have tipped Russia away from revolution and set it firmly on the path of moderate reform is far more dubious. Be that as it may, the larger point is the clarity, in retrospect, of historical tipping points with fundamental significance for the lives of tens and hundreds of millions for a century or more into the future–tipping points that could have gone either way, had people only conjured up the wisdom to behave in rational ways entirely within their collective power.

States Cannot Live Without War

In a buried room adjoining a trench, two Russian soldiers facing the German invaders steal time to debate   not the mere issue of why WWI has exploded in their faces but why war exists at all. Sounding like teachers chastising a wayward student, Solzhenitsyn’s characters not only lay out the dual role of states as the causal agent of war and simultaneously the protector of people from their evil selves but seem to put Solzhenitsyn’s great (self-perceived) predecessor firmly in his place: “war and peace” (a dilemma for “superficial minds”) is not the issue; the issue is the nature of man. What better place to discuss the nature of man than in a trench during World War I!

Мира без войн — пока ещё не бывало. За семь, за десять, за двадцать тысяч лет. Ни самые мудрые вожди, ни самые благородные короли, ни Церковь — не умели их остановить. И не поддавайтесь лёгкой вере, что их остановят горячие социалисты. Или что можно тсортировать осмысленные, оправданные войны. Всегда найдутся тысячи тысяч, кому и такая война будет безсмысленной и не имеющей оправдания. Просто: никакое государство не может жить без войны, это — одна из его неизбежных функций….

Войнами — мы расплачиваемся за то, что живём государствами. Прежде войн — надо было бы упразднить все государства. Но это немыслимо, пока не искоренена наклонность людей к насилию и злу. Для защиты от насилия и созданы государства….

В обычной жизни тысячи злых движений из тысячи злых центров — направлены во всякие стороны безпорядочно, против обижаемых. Государство призвано эти движения сдерживать — но оно же плодит от себя новые, ещё более сильные, только одно направленные. Оно же временами бросает их все в единую сторону — и это и есть война. Поэтому дилемма мир—война — это поверхностная дилемма поверхностных умов. Мол, только бы войны прекратить, и вот уже будет мир. Нет! Христианская молитва говорит: мир на земле и в человецех благоволение! Вот когда может наступить истинный мир: когда будет в человецех благоволение! А иначе будут и без войны: душить, травить, морить, колоть под рёбра, жечь, топтать, плевать в лицо….

Истинная дилемма: мир—зло. Война — только частный случай зла, сгущённого во времени и в пространстве. И тот, кто отрицает войну, не отрицая прежде государств, — лицемер. А кто не видит, что первичнее войны и опаснее войны всеобщее зло, разлитое по человеческим сердцам, — тот верхогляд. Истинная дилемма человечества: мир в сердцах — или зло в сердцах. Зло мирового сознания. А преодолеть зло мирового сознания — это не антивоенная демонстрация, пройтись по улице с тряпками лозунгов. Преодолеть — на это отпущено нам не поколение, не век, не эпоха, но вся история от Адама до Второго Пришествия. И даже за всю историю, всеми совместными силами мы так ещё и не сумели одолеть. И упрекнуть вы можете не того студента, и не того священника, кто добровольно пришёл в воюющую армию, — естественно прийти туда, где страждут многие, — а того, кто не борется со злом. [Александр Солженицын, КРАСНОЕ КОЛЕСО, УЗЕЛ II, Октябрь Шестнадцатого on Solzhenitsyn.ru.]

At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, no yet the Church–none of them has been able to stop it. And don’t succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state’s essential functions….

In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses–but it generates others of its won, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction–and that is war. So then, the dilemma of peace versus war is a superficial dilemma for superficial minds. ‘We only have o stop making war and we shall have peace.’ No! The Christian prayer says “peace on earth and goodwill among men. Otherwise even without war men will go on strangling, poisoning, starving, stabbing, and burning each other, trampling each other underfoot and spitting in each other’s faces….[Willetts, Tr., November 1916, 52-3.]

The real dilemma is the choice between peace and evil. War is only a special case of evil, concentrated in time and space. Whoever rejects war without first rejecting the state is a hypocrite. And whoever fails to see that there is something more primitive and more dangerous than war–and that is the universal evil installed into men’s hearts–sees only the surface. Mankind’s true dilemma is the choice between peace in the heart and evil in the heart. The evil of worldliness. And the way to overcome this worldliness is not by antiwar demonstrations, processions along the streets with signs bearing slogans. We have been granted not just one generation, not just an age, not just an epoch, to overcome it, but the whole history from Adam to the Second Coming. And throughout history our combined forces have failed to overcome it. You could rightly reproach neither the student nor the priest who voluntarily joined the fighting army–they naturally went where so many others were suffering–but those who do not struggle against evil. [54.]

Evil mandates coercion, which permits abuse of power.

Complexity Rolling Over Hubris

Why did the massive Tsarist army collapse in the face of German attacks during the long years of trench warfare? Solzhenitsyn offers a concise explanation at the beginning of November 1916 with timeless relevance for leaders whose hubris gets them entangled in complex historical processes they cannot control:

…так заклинилась позиционная война, что и перевеса использовать было нельзя: на целых армейских участках всё связалось и окостенело. Так усложнились, возвысились все решения войны, что нельзя было и пошевельнуться меньше, чем целым фронтом. Оставались — поиски и демонстрации. [Октябрь Шестнадцатого 27 on Solzhenitsyn.ru.]

…trench warfare had reached such an impasse that neither side could exploit local superiority. In whole Army sectors there was deadlock and paralysis. All military decisions had become so complicated, and were referred to such remote heights, that nothing smaller than an Army Group could bestir itself. All that was left was raids and maneuvers.[H.T. Willetts, Trans., November 1916 (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 16.]

In appearance simplicity itself – Germans facing Russians and no one can move – but over time, the situation would transform itself into real complexity, a complexity out of which would emerge Soviet Communism. The “great men” did have a choice…at the beginning; they had the choice of whether or not to set the system in motion. By so doing, however, they gave up their freedom of choice, choosing to enter a realm beyond their capacities to manage, choosing to surrender their freedom of choice. And the red wheel of fate rolled over them all.

Missed Tipping Point

With tipping points being missed on all sides, how easily history could have turned out differently!

С хлебом-солью встречали немцев и донские станицы….Разве от нас — через глушь советской пропаганды, через толщу гитлеровской армии — легко было поверить, что западные союзники вошли в эту войну не за свободу вообще, а только за свою западно-европейскую свободу, только против национал-социализма, получше использовать советские армии, а на том и кончить? Разве не естественней было нам верить, что наши союзники верны самому принципу свободы — и не покинут нас под тиранией худшей?.. Правда, именно эти союзники, за которых мы умирали и в Первую Мировую войну, уже и тогда покинули нашу армию в разгроме, спеша обернуться к своему лагополучию. Но опыт слишком жесток, чтоб усвоиться сердцем. [27-8 in solzhenitsyn.ru.]

The Germans were met with bread and salt in the villages on the Don. The pre-1941 population of the Soviet Union naturally imagined that the coming of a foreign army meant the overthrow of the Communist regime—otherwise it could have no meaning for us at all. People expected a political program which would liberate them from Bolshevism. From where we were, separated from them by the wilderness of Soviet propaganda, by the dense mass of Hitler’s army—how could we readily believe that the Western allies had entered this war not for the sake of freedom in general, but for their own Western European freedom, only against Nazism, intending to take full advantage of the Soviet armies and leave it at that? Was it not more natural for us to believe that our allies were true to the very principle of freedom and that they would not abandon us to a worse tyranny? . . . True, these were the same allies for whom Russians had died in the First World War, and who then, too, had abandoned our army in the moment of collapse, hastening back to their comforts. But this was a lesson too cruel for the heart to learn. [Gulag Vol. 5, 30 in Archive.]

 

Certain Errors Were Committed

Leaders are innocent; only groups do anything.

Ещё так у нас умеют говорить с лёгкой тенью на челе: «да, были допущены некоторые ошибки». И всегда — эта невинно-блудливая безличная форма — допущены, только неизвестно кем. Чуть ли не работягами, грузчиками да колхозниками допущены. Никто не имеет смелости сказать: коммунистическая партия допустила! бессменные и безответственные советские руководители допустили! А кем же ещё, кроме имеющих власть, они могли быть «допущены»? На одного Сталина валить? — надо же и чувство юмора иметь. Сталин допустил — так вы-то где были, руководящие миллионы? [Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago Vol. 5, 15 in Solzhenitsyn.ru.]

Then again, some of us are very good at saying—and a shadow flits over our faces—”Well, yes, certain errors were committed.” Always the same disingenuously innocent, impersonal form: “were committed”—only nobody knows by whom. You might almost think that it was by ordinary workers, by men who shift heavy loads, by collective farmers. Nobody has the courage to say: “The Party committed them! Our irremovable and irresponsible leaders committed them!” Yet by whom, except those who had power, could such errors be “committed”? Lump all the blame on Stalin? Have you no sense of humor? If Stalin committed all these
errors—where were you at the time, you ruling millions? [Archive.]

Slippery Slope of Dictatorship

The slippery slope from a just and peaceful society to a repressive dictatorship or an aggressive expansionist state, a garrison state, or even an imperial presidency begins with subtle and innocent-sounding steps. Just imagine, for example, the state security potential of  a small and “useless” pastoral community! It all begins with thinking not in terms of self-sufficiency or happiness or justice but of expansionist and coercive opportunity.

Однако, никакое народное развитие еще никогда не шло, не ид?т и будет ли когда-либо идти? — без сопутствования мыслью военной и мыслью тюремной.

Мысль военная. Нельзя же каким-то безрассудным монахам просто жить на просто острове. Остров — на границе Великой Империи и, стало быть, надо воевать ему со шведами, с датчанами, с англичанами, и, стало быть, надо строить крепость со стенами восьмиметровой толщины и воздвигнуть восемь башен, и бойницы проделать узкие, а с колокольни соборной обеспечить наблюдательный обзор.³

Мысль тюремная. Как же это славно — на отдельном острове да стоят добрые каменные стены! Есть куда посадить важных преступников и охрану с кого спросить есть. Душу спасать мы им не мешаем, а узников нам постереги. [Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Vol. 2, Ch. 2, on lib.ru.]

 

However, no development ever took place in the past, -nor takes place in the present — and it isn’t clear that it will ever take place in the future — without being accompanied by military thought and prison thought.

Military thought: It was impermissible for some sort of feckless monks just to live on just an island. The island was on the borders of the Great Empire, and, consequently, it was required to fight with the Swedes, the Danes, the English, and, consequently, it was required to build a fortress with walls eight yards thick and to raise up eight towers on the walls, and to make narrow embrasures in them, and to provide for a vigilant watch from the cathedral bell tower.

Prison thought: How glorious — good stone walls standing on a separate island! What a good place to confine important criminals — and with someone already there to provide guard. We won’t interfere with their saving their souls: just guard our prisoners! [http://www.archive.org/stream/Gulag_Archipelago_II/Gulag_Archipelago_II_djvu.txt.]

Self-Building Systems

The Soviet prison-camp [gulag] archipelago began with individual “islands,” but these islands imposed costs–which surely the State should not bear(!) and simultaneously offered opportunities–which surely the State should not forego! So, in good capitalist fashion, the prisons began selling cheap labor. As Solzhenitsyn put it:

And the malignant cells kept on creeping and creeping. [Archive.]

А злокачественные клеточки ползли и ползли. [lib.ru.]

And in no time the Soviet innovation of a socialist labor camp in Siberia (in contrast to the capitalist political camps the tsars had established in Siberia) had metastasized into a full-blown system:

Millions of miles of barbed wire ran on and on, the strands criss-crossing one another and interweaving, their barbs twinkling gaily along railroads, highways, and around the outskirts of cities. And the peaked roofs of ugly camp watchtowers became the most visible landmarks in our landscape, and it was only by a surprising concatenation of circumstances that they were not seen in either the canvases of our artists or in scenes in our films.

Миллионы километров колючей проволоки побежали и побежали, пересекаясь, переплетаясь, мелькая весело шипами вдоль железных дорог, вдоль шоссейных дорог, вдоль городских окраин. И охлупы уродливых лагерных вышек стали вернейшей чертой нашего пейзажа и только удивительным стечением обстоятельств не попадали ни на полотна художников, ни в кадры фильмов.

The genius of the Soviet invention was that this incredibly complicated new system for protecting and enriching the State, once started with a simple sample, invented itself…and that is why eager politicians need to think carefully before trying something new.

Managed Consensus

Political consensus sounds great: a society must, after all, rest on a foundation of accord to function reasonably. Such is the theory, and the theory is correct…in theory. In practice, however, a “consensus” may be forced, may be a pretense…a means of survival. It may be that the enemies of society retain, after their overthrow, such power as to destroy from behind the curtain whatever they left standing while striding the stage. So everyone looks at the ground and accepts the humiliation of a set of taboos–the criminal elite shall henceforth and forever more be protected by a taboo against judging or learning from the past. :Humiliation yes, but still perhaps better than civil war…perhaps. The price of peace is corruption of the political soul of society.

Referring to the deal that persuaded the military dictatorship to allow a hobbled democracy to limp forth from the nightmare dictatorship of Pinochet, Moulian explains:

El consenso es la etapa superior del olvido….

Los desacuerdos respecto a las caractgeristicas del desarrollo socioeconomico impuesto por la dictadura militar aparecen desvaneciendose, desde el momento mismo que la banda presidencial paso de las manos de Pinochet a las de Aylwin….

El anuncio y continua glorificacion del consenso, la gran novedad discursiva del Chile Actual, tiene estrecha relacion con las estrategias de blanqueo, con la construccion…del milagro de Chile. Ese milagro consiste en la demostracion de que se podi pasar de la desconfianze y de la idiosidad del periodo de la lucha, al acuerdo perfecyto de la transicion. Todas las elites, con la notoria exception de algunas pocas ‘cabezas calientes,’ habrian actuado en estado de gracia, inspirados por la razon….

La politica ya no existe mas como lucha de alternativas, como historididad, existe solo como historia de las pequenas variaciones, ajustes, cambios en aspectos que no comprometan la dinamica global….

Esa situacion de bloqueo era la resultante del ‘encierro institucional,’ de haber negociado la entrada en una ‘jaula de hierro,’ lo que restringia absolutamente el campo de la historicidad. [Tomas Moulian, Chile Actual 37-41.]

“Deaf cover-up [Глухая закрытость, or 'silence'], as another thinker who experienced “managed consensus” laced with protective (for the elite) taboos put it:

Silence was already confidently shaping our history. [Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago 465]

Глухая закрытость уже уверенно формировала нашу историю.

Solzhenitsyn pointed out in the preface to his Gulag Archipelago masterpiece both the cost and the justification for exposing the sins of the past:

By an unexpected tum of our history, a bit of the truth, an

insignificant part of the whole, was allowed out in the open. But

those same hands which once screwed tight our handcuffs now

hold out their palms in reconciliation: “No, don’t! Don’t dig up

the past! Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye.”

But the proverb goes on to say: “Forget the past and you’ll

lose both eyes.” [The Gulag Archipelago, Preface, x in The Christian Identity Forum.]

Неожиданным  поворотом  нашей   истории  кое-что,  ничтожно  малое,  об

Архипелаге этом выступило на  свет. Но те же самые руки, которые завинчивали

наши наручники, теперь  примирительно выставляют ладони: “Не надо!.. Не надо

ворошить прошлое!.. Кто старое помянет — тому глаз вон!” Однако доканчивает

пословица: “А кто забудет — тому два!” [lib.ru.]

How can the mistakes of the past be corrected if one “glorifies consensus” to the point of whitewashing the crimes of former rulers, making the assumption (without so much as a glance) that they acted “in good faith?” Society, the “free marketplace of ideas,” and the future become imprisoned in an “iron cage” [jaula de hierro]. The managed consensus becomes the foundation of a managed dictatorship.

Impunity or Purification?

Referring to the horrors of the Pinochet dictatorship but speaking on behalf of many societies abused by their rulers, Tomas Moulian makes the case that impunity, albeit sounding like a generous way of “moving forward,” actually condemns a society to continuing the evil it should instead exorcise by public, official condemnation of both the responsible leaders and the abusive principles that guided them:

el lenguaje de la politica no es un hable commun, sino un codigo cigrado, trucado, es un metadiscurso….Por que esta atrapada esta politica en el silencio, en las medias palabras, en la hipocresia?

Porque no ha habido una purificacion del karma de diecisiete anos de terror. Chile Actual [WM: Chile during the first decade after Pinochet] esta basado en la impunidad…A traves de una condena simbolica, totalmente desproporcionada respecto a la naturaleza del crimen imputado, Contreras due perdonado de suverdadera responsabilidad, de la autoria intelectual del plan de exterminio de la izquierda….

Esa impunidad es una manifestacion demasiado expresive de la desigualdad, de la capacidad de los poderosos de sobrepasar la ley sin temor al castigo….

de la inocencia por parte de los hechores de crimenes masivos [Chile Actual 66-70].

Punishment of the guilty leaders may inevitably follow this exorcising of the abuse of power, but punishment is merely a by-product of a process of political cleansing whose purpose is to free society from the moral and legal shackles of past evil. The policies, language, and symbols of leaders who abused power must be decoded, their hypocrisy exposed, their principles dissected…and a new, honest political vocabulary accepted in order for society to be capable of debating honestly about its future course of action. Oppression must not be called “peace;” aggression must not be called “defense” or “preventive war;” the slaughter of political opponents must not be called “security;” terror must not be excused simply because used by the state; the theft of homes by criminal bankers with the protection of laws written to conceal misbehavior by the wealthy must not be called “capitalism;” managed democracy must be called “dictatorship;” bailouts must be recognized as “corporate socialism;” the planned impoverishment of the middle class must be recognized as “class war.” Without clear public condemnation of the sins of leaders past, the population and leaders of the future will not be free of the shadow of the past. They will not be able to think.

Managing Democracy in an Iron Cage

Forty years ago, the gullible citizens of the U.S. sat quiescent as the Washington power elite and an infamous faction of academic economists inspired, protected, and applauded the massacre of Chilean democracy. Back then, in the heyday of the post-New Deal U.S. revolution not just of rising expectations but also achievements, the good quiescent U.S. citizens would never dreamed that the neo-liberal ravaging of Latin democracies on behalf of corporate bottom lines was a chicken that could ever come home to roost. Today, the distant story of Pinochet and, perhaps more pregnant with meaning for the U.S., the all but unknown (in the U.S.) difficulty Chileans had coming to terms after his departure with not just Pinochet’s barbarism but his “management” of their democracy is beginning to appear more and more like a dress rehearsal. Call them neo-lib or neo-con, the elite attack on the irritating trend toward popular democratic action that went overboard in the Chilean dress rehearsal with the physical slaughter of democratic activists has appeared far more sophisticated in its current U.S. version.

At Princeton, U.S. political scientist Sheldon Wolin has been laying out for us the theory for a decade in terms that go far to reveal both what happened in Chile and what subsequently became more and more visible in the U.S.:

One shouldn’t expect empire to promote liberty, participation, or equality other than as versions of economic opportunity. The object of its managed democracy is not to persuade the citizens but, depending on the objective, to neutralize or incite them. Managed democracy is not the creature of a tyrannical majority—as the Founders feared. On the contrary. Managed democracy thrives not on active suppression but on an electorate so evenly divided as to prevent the formation of a strong majority will. While an evenly divided electorate stymies the formation of effective majorities, it enhances the power of corporate lobbies, that is, of determined, single-minded, lavishly financed minority wills that operate independently of electoral results. Near deadlock diminishes the legislature’s ability to exercise vigorous oversight of the executive and opens the way for an unprecedented assertion of executive power,especially if a legislature is riddled with corruption. [Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Incorporated, 250 as quoted in Scribd.com.]

Note that Wolin wrote before the defeats of the Madison worker rights protest movement or the defeat of the Occupy Movement or Citizens United’s base commercialization of elections or the smooth continuation of billionaire domination of U.S. financial governance despite Obama’s election and Obama’s re-election.

As for the Chilean dress rehearsal, while all educated people surely have at least a vague sense that Pinochet was a brutal dictator with the deaths of thousands on his hands, the story of the continuing hold his cold-hearted technocratic governing system that placed economics before people is one to which all U.S. citizens who have lost their jobs or had their homes stolen via robosigning since 2008 should pay careful attention.

Chilean political scientist Tomas Moulian described the Chilean version of Wolin’s “managed democracy” as democracy in an “iron cage” [jaula de hierro].

Nuestra ‘democracia moderna’ se fundamenta a traves de esta serie concatenada de proposiciones: a) en el principio era el caos del Estado demo-populista, b) ese caos fue la consecuencia de la politica ‘decisionista’, …c) por ello es menester que las decisiones sobre los intercambios economicos sean adoptadas a traves de un mecanismo automatico, el del mercado y, por lo mismo, es menester que la politica este subordinada a la economia, qu la ‘soberania’…sea transferida al mercado….

El objetivo…es preservar al neocapitalismo de los avatares e incertidumbres de la democracia….la ‘democracia protegida’….

La minoria, no solamente es protegida contra los abusos de la mayoria, es transformada en lo que no es, en fuerza mayoritaria. [Tomas Moulian, "La democracia actual como 'jaula de hierro'," 45-46 in Chile Actual: Anatomia de un mito, Arcis University 1998.].

“Managed democracy” means “protected democracy,” which really means “elite rule protected from democracy.” Leadership of the army is protected from democratic interference by the will of the people; a very useful and profitable war on terror is protected; a generation-long transfer of wealth from a rising middle class being impoverished to further enrich the already super-rich is protected.

When the elite prevents the formation of a “strong majority will,” whether by waving the bloody flag of war, scaring the populace with tales of evil aliens, or preoccupying gullible masses with fake political debate and trite scandals, it opens the door to long-lasting restructuring of the avenues of power. Legislators get bought, laws get redesigned in committee, regulators get kidnapped, corporate leaders run back and forth through the revolving door, scapegoats get punished to protect the guilty leaders, and–amid fervent calls for reform–underlying principles are quietly pushed under the rug. Rulers who order or wink at mass murder, war crimes, grand theft bailout, or the undermining of Constitutional guarantees are treated with courtesy, then ignored. All that is “in the past,” don’t be a troublemaker; it’s time to move forward. And the door of the iron cage stays firmly shut until the lock rusts and the key no longer turns.

The Pattern of Islamophobia

Two parties required the same new myth as the means to their very different goals. Bin Laden, lacking any means of directly threatening Western power and achieving his desired caliphate, and the Western imperialist military-industrial complex, lacking justification for continuing to exist with the fall of the Soviet Union. Whether the two parties intentionally colluded or just blindly worked in tandem, each served the other in raising Islamic radicalism to be the new monster to be slain. In the event, bin Laden set a trap by pretending to be all-powerful, while the Western militarists leaped eagerly into the trap, reaping short-term profits as their greed undermined the West’s long-term security. And all the while, who was watching and warning the blind West that Western support for barbaric Algerian generals would define a horrifying new historical pattern setting the tone for the coming 21st century?

En fait, l’effondrement de la polarisation du monde, et donc la chute du mur de Berlin à titre symbolique, ouvraient la porte à des théories fumeuses, mises en avant par les Américains de type Fukuyama et Huttington (sic). La disparition de l’Ennemi était insupportable et la désignation du nouvel ennemi, nécessaire. L’islamisme radical, qui n’est que la réponse à un échec généralisé, faisait parfaitement l’affaire en devenant cause intrinsèque, puis le glissement se fit peu à peu vers l’islam tout court.

It was easy. Bin Laden seems to have recognized all too clearly the simplistic cowboy nature of Americans and the sad weakness of both their courage and their intelligence:

…il suffit de quelques phrases bien placées pour introduire la peur du chaos dans les esprits les plus éclairés et susciter chez eux des règles et des dogmes simples, qu’ils pourront suivre sans avoir à reconsidérer les choses à chaque tournant….

…le manichéisme, le dogmatisme idéologique, le simplisme, la paresse intellectuelle, la répugnance à tout auto-examen poussent la France entière à préférer définir l’islam, d’une manière définitive, à partir de sa «nature permanente», qui ferait de tout musulman, sur quatorze siècles, de Samarkand à Casablanca…un être identique, égorgeur de femmes, ontologiquement hostile à l’Occident. La France et ses intellectuels ont perdu les sens et la mémoire. [Etienne Bruno, Les verites qui font mal a l'Algerie, Liberation 2/24/95.]

On the tenth anniversary of the American adventure in Iraq, it seems impossible that we could have so quickly forgotten the lessons of France’s earlier military, financial, and moral entanglement with Algerian fascists.

Contingency

If life works more by tracking environment than by climbing up a ladder of progress, then contingency should reign. [Wonderful Life 300.]

This remark by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould refers to evolution, not daily life, though it is not immediately obvious why it should not apply to both. Just as some people are conceited enough to imagine our species to be the culmination of evolution, some have the same attitude toward democracy. Gould argued that contingency rather than fitness in some absolute sense is closer to the real explanation for why humans even came into existence. Might democracy also just happen at the moment to fit some arbitrary and temporary contingency, some quirk in the socio-political environment? Gould asked what evidence exists suggesting that the species that survived the Cambrian were “qualified” to do so by superior fitness and answered, “None.” What evidence is there that democracy is more fit to survive than other forms of government? A French line of thinking argues that Europe is returning to feudalism. Emergent, self-organizing Muslim rebels show many signs of learning faster than Western armies or Western democracies. Is human governance climbing a ladder of progress or just tracking the environment? To the degree that the latter is true, democracy may go the way of Hallucigenia.

But the analogy with evolution breaks down with the recognition that we are watching and tinkering with the evolution of governance. Perhaps the key question is whether we are doing so primarily to ensure that democracy becomes the fittest method of governing by maximizing its ability to learn and adapt in order to balance faith to its principles and survivability or, on the other hand, whether we are watching and tinkering for, e.g., private gain. The possibility of, say, elite warping of democracy for self-enrichment is an extreme case. The evolution of democracy could also be influenced by perfectly sincere efforts to perfect democracy that end up making it more fit but only for the current environment…at the fatal expense of long-term fitness. Leaving aside the obvious evolutionary example of Tyrannosaurus Rex, a social example is the trap so well explained by Mark Elvin that Chinese farmers had gotten themselves into by the 19th century: they had maximized the benefits of traditional manpower-intensive agriculture in response to an exploding population that China could, just barely, feed itself as long as everyone focused on traditional agriculture. The system worked but left no excess resources for shifting to machine-based agriculture; China was trapped in the old-fashioned system and thus suffered greatly when times changed. One could be excused for wondering if Western democracies today are becoming trapped in an addiction to parliamentary procedure and petty argumentativeness at the expense of actually dealing with real social problems.

Black or White

The human mind, according to some philosophers, is a “dichotomizing machine,” as Stephen Jay Gould reminds us in “The Late Birth of a Flat Earth”…as in that ultimate cognitive weapon of mass destruction “we are good and they are evil” that so effectively abolishes all discussion of possible third alternatives. Bush and Co. were right about one thing: that, at least in the dichotomizing minds of Bush and Co., there really was a link between Hitler and Islamic political activism. It was not the history, the behavior of the two that were linked but the image of the two in the minds of a certain class of Americans—the “dichotomizers.” If indeed human minds are designed to dichotomize, then perhaps this gross oversimplification of reality is not their fault. And I will not dwell on the further irony that Hitler’s fundamental sin–of attempting to exterminate a whole category of humans solely because he, the Great Dichotomizer, judged “them” to belong to a different and therefore (in the mind of a person capable of perceiving only two categories at a time) “bad” category—was itself a sin of dichotomizing.

So seldom is reality composed of precisely two categories that it might be a useful homework assignment for repentant dichotomizers to make a list of cases in human history when a situation can accurately be described as consisting of precisely two classes. It would, I predict, be a short list.

In practice, dividing the world into black and white oversimplifies and thus excludes by definition a vast range of potentially invaluable alternatives. Human civilization is “colorful.” Its magnificence lies in its complexity, in its variability, in the range of alternatives explored. Consider just pathos, one color in the rich palette of human emotions. Consider just two marvelously different examples of human pathos – Russian folk songs at their most tearfully yet proud heights of nationalistic and nature worship (one can almost hear Solzhenitsyn or Tolstoy softly praising “the land”) and the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. And that’s just two examples of one emotion, and emotion is just one of a multitude of categories of the human experience. If human behavior were to be colored, we would have to discover more colors than human eyes have ever seen. To toss out all that beautiful array of alternatives, leaving only the two extremes would effectively destroy human civilization. One may almost say that black and white are the only two colors that, for the human experience, do NOT exist…except in our minds, when we are not thinking.

Worse, dichotomizing contains an inherent bias against considering any potentially correct alternative: it erases all rational options, leaving us with only the two extremes, which are themselves almost by definition both wrong choices, if not the two worst possible choices. Conquest and slavery are both wrong choices. Look what slavery did to the Old Southern Aristocracy! Nor was it so cool for the slaves. And the barbarians didn’t get much out of Rome after they burned it. For an obvious and more modern example, look at what the conquest of East Europe did to the USSR or, indeed, what the conquest of Iraq did to the U.S.

Even more, the whole exercise is a set-up, for in any situation, any individual is almost certain to see the obvious unacceptability of one of the extremes: “Life or death?” “Success or failure?” “Conquest or slavery?” These are trick questions. The reality might be: “Would you prefer success for five minutes, followed by eternal failure, or humiliating failure for five minutes, followed by a gradual climb toward success? Or…” But no, that would be far too complex for a poor dichotomizing human mind. Just choose A or B (and we know you would never choose B…hah, hah, hah). So, my fellow Germans, would you prefer to slaughter your Jewish neighbors or see your nation perish? So, my fellow Americans, would you prefer to launch a permanent war on terror across the globe, sparing no expense, or would you rather be responsible for allowing a global Caliphate to destroy human civilization? Don’t get a headache…it’s easy: just choose A…or B.

Ironically, then, in the end, dichotomizing, far from focusing our minds on the essential choice in fact eliminates all choice. What “choice” is there between life and death?!? The pie is either mine or yours. If yours, I go hungry and lose. If mine, I eat it all and lose by getting indigestion (just look at the U.S. strategic position in Iraq [or Afghanistan] today). And I won’t even breathe the word “Pakistan.”

In the physical world, two choices may, at some level, really exist (drive straight off a curving road…or curve). In the arena of human affairs, don’t you believe it. Yet the list of politicians who seem totally wedded to a dualistic view of politics is a bizarrely long one.

In another essay, Gould observes:

Among the organizing dualities of our consciousness, change and constancy stand out as perhaps the deepest and most pervasive….no organizing construct of the mind can be more socially and politically influenced than our transient preference for either change or stability as the essential nature of the universe. [“Lucy on the Earth in Stasis,” 134.]

“Change or constancy” might make a great book title, but basing one’s personal view of life or a country’s foreign policy on such a simplistic set of choices does raise questions about the level of human evolution. Given the obvious complicatedness of every arena of human knowledge, most certainly including global governance, one can only respond in amazement, “Why two?” The very simplicity of two and precisely two alternatives should make everyone suspicious. Does anyone know of anything in life that is actually that simple?

The point is not so much to question the cognitive capacity of humans as to sensitize us all to ask what the real number of basic alternatives might actually exist for a given arena. Gould’s own priceless contribution, for evolution, immediately raises a further complication: he did not just hypothesize that evolution is characterized by both change and constancy but further argued that the two alternatives operate on very different time scales, with constancy typically lasting a very long time and change occurring rapidly (punctuated equilibrium). The relevance of punctuated equilibrium theory to world affairs has been noted in recent years by at least a couple researchers but not well publicized, much less internalized into public policy making. In any case, we now have two dimensions:

1. The number of alternatives;

2. The time-scale of the alternatives.

Things are obviously more complicated than they might seem, suggesting that a lot of work remains to be done to develop any sort of realistic theory about the sort of fundamental choices that need to considered in order to make decisions effectively in a given arena.

A political scientist may be forgiven for envying the cognitive sophistication of evolutionists, who have now, well, evolved to the point of debating such topics as the balance between change and constancy.  Analogous thinking in international relations theory of course exists, e.g., in discussions of the rise and fall of empires, the evolution of new political systems, and the role of revolutions (our own evolutionary punctuation), but mind-numbing dichotomizing between “good” and “evil” continues to cause the needless deaths of thousands of innocent people who are far too busy with the real complications of life to engage in such superficial nonsense.

Lacking a theory of alternative definition that would inform us of the number and nature of the major alternatives policy-makers need to consider in order, say, to lay out rational policy choices for engaging Iran or tackling global warming, what is the next step? Can we poorly evolved dichotomizers even manage to conceive of more than two fundamental alternatives?

In addition to “victory” and “defeat,” I propose “exploration.” Darwin’s finches have in recent decades been found to evolve longer or shorter beaks in quick response to a few seasons of weather shift that affected the size of seeds. The finches “explored” their changing environment and once the weather returned to normal, a few generations sufficed to shift the size of newborn finch beaks as well. Explore the margins of your environment but be prepared to pull back. Undertake an imperial adventure when you feel strong, withdraw when you meet insurmountable force—without either victory or defeat. Barbarians burning Rome is not the only alternative to endless expansion. Indeed, is not exploration of the decision-making space the most fundamental form of behavior? Don’t decision-makers spend most of their time trying ideas for marginal gain, leaving victory and defeat for the occasional risk-taker? But those very same decision-makers will speak as though victory were essential for the survival of “our way of life,” and here is the bad part: they do not just speak that way for public consumption; they actually implement policy that way. Foreign policy is far too often designed to compel the destruction of the opponent’s “way of life,” often leading to mutual disaster. Policy-makers actually appear to believe that “victory” and “defeat”—in reality both extremely unlikely outcomes—are the only two possible choices.

But please do not blame me for all this. The whole train of thought was provoked by Gould, after all…an evolutionist, wouldn’t you know. And that, for a political scientist, is the most ironic point of all, for the least evolved aspect of human civilization is how we govern ourselves. Speaking of biological evolution, recall that, for us dichotomizers, two alternative hypotheses and only two, obviously, exist – either A. life is evolving from low quality to higher quality OR B. evolution does not exist. Other choices (such as life evolving randomly in response to environmental pressures, such that no progression, e.g., from simple to complex, from bad to good, from stupid to intelligent can be assumed) do not exist. Speaking of governance, Christian and Jewish Germans cannot form one society. A small band of extremists cannot be brought to justice in open court and humiliated before all mankind by allowing them to convict themselves by their own words, nor can a single remaining superpower possibly afford to admit some measure of responsibility for any of the links in a long chain of circumstances over 500 years of Western superiority over a weakened Muslim culture that led to a small band of extremists striking out with the only weapons they had. The complexity of the sentence alone, much less its meaning, makes it obvious that it offers a ridiculous theoretical alternative. And now you see the brilliance of the human mind: it’s really very simple, you see, our way or the highway.

Taking Negative Results Seriously

Stephen Jay Gould, being a paleontologist, thinks about evolution. His genius is that he carries this line of thinking to its embarrassing logical conclusion, asking “How evolved are we?”

What if our conceptual world excludes the possibility of acknowledging a negative result as a phenomenon at all? What if we simply can’t see, or even think about, a different and meaningful alternative? ["Cordelia's Dilemma," in Dinosaur in a Haystack (NY: Harmony Books, 1995, 126).]

Obviously, anyone can see a negative result. When you fail, you know it. So, what is he getting at? Imagine two classes of stuff, as perceived by some theoretical brain: Class I contains Phenomena, which deserve serious consideration, analysis, explanation; Class II contains events that are deemed unique, bizarre, chance occurrences to be tossed aside. After all, one does not “explain” every pothole in a dirt road. Potholes are part of the nature of dirt roads – deal with them! Now imagine what happens if someone, say, the leader of some hypothetical superpower, classifies a defeat as Class II and therefore maintains current strategy on the assumption that the defeat meant nothing and thus in no way implied a weakness in the failed strategy. The great theoretical leader could be correct. No strategy works perfectly forever! But what if he mistakenly put a Class I outcome into the Class II box? He would be condemned to repeat the failure. In practice, any decent leader would obviously learn pretty fast, right? No one would insist on a strategy that consistently returned failure after failure, right? Anyone would call such a person an idiot. Gould is raising a serious question when he asks if, instead, the cause might be an evolutionary failure of humans.

Sometimes people see the pattern of failure and correct it; sometimes they don’t, so perhaps Gould’s stark and unsettling question can be reformulated:

Are there conditions (e.g., group think, self-interest) that lay a thick layer of smoke over patterns of failure, and, since the answer to that question seems pretty obvious, is there a genetic/evolutionary reason we think like that?

Hall of Mirrors

Reflections are both real and false. Reflections derive from reality but transmit it in altered form. No inspection of the reflection alone can reveal the original reality. Destroying the reflection has no impact on the reflection’s source.

Algerian reflections:

Aujourd’hui, le préfet Rémy Pautrat ne se souvient pas avoir rencontré Nicole Chevillard. Il l’a affirmé devant la Cour d’assises spéciale qui rejugeait Rachid Ramda le 23 septembre dernier avant de le réitérer fort sèchement à la journaliste dans les couloirs du palais de justice. Mais ce n’est pas tout à fait ce qu’il avait dit à Bakchich qui l’avait contacté en 2007 sur le même sujet. A propos de la rencontre avec Nicole Chevillard et du financement de l’étude de la DST, Rémy Pautrat avait effectivement indiqué ne pas se rappeler s’il avait ou non rencontré la journaliste même s’il était tout à fait plausible qu’il l’ait aidée à l’époque à la demande de la DST. « De tels modes de financement sont classiques » avait-t-il même précisé au sujet de son complément d’étude.

Au sujet des dires du général Lamari, le préfet Pautrat a en revanche indiqué à Bakchich ne pas avoir recueilli ses confessions en personne. Mais il a raconté que l’un des principaux patrons de la DST, Raymond Nart, avait, lui, bien rencontré le général Smaïn Lamari. Et que ce dernier lui aurait expliqué que lors d’une embuscade, les forces spéciales algériennes avaient arrêté un groupe du GIA. Avec la délicatesse qui caractérise la sécurité militaire algérienne, ils avaient exécuté l’ensemble du commando. « A l’exception de Djamel Zitouni, le futur émir du GIA. Celui-là, avait confié Smaïn Lamari, on l’avait bien en main ». Raymont Nart n’a pas, à ce jour, confirmé ces informations.

Si les vantardises du général Lamari ne relèvent pas de la légende urbaine, il va sans dire que la question du rôle des services secrets algériens dans les attentats de Paris, l’affaire des moines de Tibhirine et de la prise en otage de l’Airbus d’Air France en 1994 se pose alors très sérieusement : tous ont été revendiqués par Djamel Zitouni. [Bakchich 10/14/09.]

 

Italian reflections:

The Moro Commission raised the issue of P2′s role during the Moro kidnap [sic] in its majority report. It highlighted he presence of lodge members at the head of the security services and the fact that the organization represented political and material interests that would have been severely threatened if Moro’s policy of accommodation with the PCI had been implemented….failures and omissions of the security apparatus….very grave examples of negligence….’which appear to be inexplicable unless they were motivated by a desire not to see a positive conclusion to the drama or by a substantial lack of interest in what was happening.’ [Philip Willan, Puppetmasters 230.]

Pecorelli describing the kidnapping of Aldo Moro: “The primary objective is without doubt that of removing the Communist Party from the area of power, just when it is preparing to take the final step into a direct participation in the government of the country. It is a fact that there are people who do not want that to happen.“[235.]

What Choice Do They Have?

Dictators radicalize the apolitical. It is not about Islam; it is about repression and injustice.

Dans leur ecrasante majorite, les Algeriens sont plus enclins a la democratie, a la vie occidentale et a la societe de consommation qu’a l’ascetism de la chari’a. Main voila, cette democratie qui leur donnerait la liberte, qui leur garantirait la justice, qui leur assurerait le droit au respect, aui leur permettrait d’aspirer a un travail, a un logement – toutes choses qu’its savent a portee de programme politique – cetter democratie-la leur est proscrite et ile l’ont parfaitement compris. Ils savent que ce a quoi on les convie est un simulacre de democratie; et a choisir entre ce simulacre a la chari’a, une proportion significative de la jeunesse prefere sans hesitation la seconde option, synonyme a ses yeux de justice et de dignite retrouvee. [Francalgerie  187.]

Radicalizing Political Islam

Historical details shine much light on the answer to the burning issue of the degree to which Islamic politics and democracy may be consistent, suggesting that the appropriate question may instead concern the conditions under which any reform/protest movement is likely to evolve in a democratic direction. Uneducated commentary tends naturally to focus on high-profile events–electoral reverses, coups, massacres–that may well obscure more than they explain. The behavior of the Algerian state toward Islamic political activists during the crucial formative period between the legalization of independent political parties with the adoption of a new constitution on 2/23/89 (resulting from the military dictatorship’s massacre of protesters the previous October) and the January 1992 military coup in response to the December 1991 electoral victory of the main Islamic party raises the question of whether or not any Algerian reform movement at that time would have been allowed by the military-intelligence power behind the throne to participate freely in politics.

Repression of the Press. Even as the moderate, secular reformist Hamrouche regime was ending the legal state monopoly on information and promoting press freedom in the spring of 1990, the Algerian Parliament was enacting harsh legislation to repress journalists who spread information that might be considered offensive or having negative impact on state security or national unity, a set of conditions vague enough to cover any criticism of any thin-skinned official. Reformers could participate in elections, but woe be to any journalist who reported campaign rhetoric critical of the current rulers!

Financial Discrimination Against Reformist City Governments. But the Islamic movement was remarkably capable of communicating its message without a free media and ran an effective electoral campaign for the June 1990  municipal elections, the first formal step following the enactment of the new constitution toward the construction of Algerian democracy. The response of the military-intelligence elite to Islamic democratic action was to change the laws to remove power from mayors before the elections. After the June electoral victory of the Islamists, the center blocked financial resources for communities where Islamists were taking control of local government. [Francalgerie, crimes et mensonges d'Etats 174-178.]

Military Planning to Annul Elections. Internally, the military regime was even more determined to prevent democracy. Army leadership passed the word to mid-ranking officers that the Islamists would be tolerated only so long as they received less than 30% of the vote in anticipated legislative elections. By the end of 1990, Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar had submitted to the civilian government a secret plan to prevent the democratic takeover of an Islamist regime. [171-173.] Attention of the military elite focused on stopping reform to retain power, rather than on the quality of governance.

One can imagine the lessons that such behavior taught the new Islamic democratic activists.

The First War on Terror

John Dinges defines Pinochet’s “grand idea” as follows:

that the threat of terrorism and extremism is sufficient reason to justify torture, murder, and the derogation of judicial systems protecting individual liberties [The Condor Years, 262.]

Briefly, the threat of terrorism and extremism justifies terrorism and extremism.

And Dinges, writing in a book with a copyright in 2004 (!), spells out why we should care about a decades-old scandal at the tip of South America:

What happened during the Condor Years was the first formalized international alliance to fight a war on terrorism. As such, they provide a template of pitfalls and tragedies that should be examined honestly and understood if we are to avoid complicity with similar human rights violations in future alliances and future antiterrorist campaigns. The cautionary lesson of Operation Condor and the massive military repression against their countries’ own citizens is to be found in the way the United States exercises its leadership of the countries it gathers into its coalition against terrorism. The echoes of the past are already to be seen in the current war on terrorism: the massive pooling of intelligence, the compromised intelligence relationships, the gleaning of intelligence from the torture centers run by our allies, and even targeted, cross-border assassinations. Add secrecy, demands for internal loyalty among U.S. citizens and officials, and the dismantling of mechanisms of accountability. Combine with good intentions, high moral language, and the implacable will to prevail in a world struggle in which America’s place in the world is perceived to be at stake. The echoes cannot be mistaken by those who care to listen. [253.]

Less than a decade after Dinges wrote, it is clear that few cared to listen — in the U.S., thus falling into the trap of the state terrorists. In Chile the same was of course true for a time: Chilean sociologist Tomas Moulian notes in 1997 “the compulsion to forget” [la compulsion al olvido] [Chile Actual 31]. Since that writing, of course, Chileans have rejected that compulsion so carefully engineered by Pinochet.

Revolutionary State Terror

Of the two basic types of state terror–that against external targets and that against domestic targets, that directed against one’s own people seems the most tragic, but that is a subjective perspective. Whether it is tragic or a great accomplishment depends on how one views the state sponsored project (probably a revolution) being defended. In the end, states–more precisely, regimes–like themselves, not “their” people. Regardless of one’s opinion about any particular act of state terror against the domestic population, terror is key to ambitious projects, be they state-sponsored revolutions (e.g., post-1917 Russia, Pinochet’s destruction of democratic Chile, Boumedienne’s subversion of Algeria’s popular war for independence for the people, the social reversal the Taliban seeks in Afghanistan, or the U.S. super-rich plot to impoverish the middle class [entailing harsh suppression of the Occupy Movement]). It may be worth noting that state terror also has its uses simply for defending the status quo (e.g., Mubarak vs. Tahrir Square), but that is another story. Concerning state terror to implement a revolutionary change, Chilean sociologist and specialist on the Pinochet era Tomas Moulian notes:

Las dictaduras revolucionarias, que son un tipo especifico y diiamos ‘superior’ de dictaduras, nacen de la poderosa aleacion entre Poder normativo y juridico (derecho), Poder sobre los cuerpos (terror) y Poder sobre las metes (saber)….lo que tiene peso decisivo es el terror… [Chile Actual, Arcis Universidad, 1998, 22.]

A revolutionary dictatorship arises from the conjunction of legal power, power over bodies, and power over minds, with the key being the power over bodies…i.e., terror.

This very pessimistic view of politics may inspire one to search for counter-examples, but supporting evidence is not hard to find. One nice story arguing for an alternative to Moulian’s dark assessment might be the rise of popular recognition in the West that black-skinned folks were human. Slavery was peacefully brought to a halt in England, following which dramatic progress in peaceful evolution of popular attitudes in the U.S. occurred during the 1840s and 1850s. Thanks to Garrison, Douglas, and a host of less famous radicals leading a society whose politicians were as usual dragging behind, “revolutionary democracy” appeared to be working, but of course we all know the sad ending–it would require a war of conquest by Lincoln to shove change down the throats of the Southern landowning aristocracy, so even this story ends up supporting Moulian. As for the above mentioned Algeria, its colonial and post-colonial history support Moulian in spades. But the most elegant evidence is provided by Solzhenitsyn’s Law As a Child chapter reviewing the imposition of state terror by the conquering Red Army from 1917 on. One might imagine that the Algerian generals, the Chilean generals,  the Argentine colonels, and Sherman in Georgia were all holding Solzhenitsyn’s analysis in their left hands as they terrorized their people with their right. Moulian definitely has his finger on a pattern.

 

Extremism Provokes Extremism

Commenting on the first two years of the Algerian civil war that began in January 1992 with the military coup, Algerian journalist Abed Charef describes how extremism provokes extremism, marginalizing the moderates:

…l’Algerie s’est retrouvee prisonnieredes deux courants les plus extremes. Le courant islamiste le plus radical s’est lance dans un terrorism sanglant, rejetant tout compromis possible, d’un cote. Le pouvoir, de l’autre cote, prisonnier de sa propre logique de confrontation, a refuse d’ecouter les partisans de voies medianes, se laissant enfermer dans un discours proche de celui des ‘eradicateurs’. Entre les deux, les partis qui avaient recueilli le plus de voix aux elections, totalement prives de canaux d’expression, soumis a une terrible pression, ont ete totalement etouffes. La veritable bipolarisation entre le systeme et le FIS s’est imposee. [Algerie: Le grand derapage, 429.]

C’est alore le regne de l’activisme le plus radical, peu propice aux idees et a la reflexion.

This provides one of the clearest arguments in favor of even the most temporary and superficial steps away from violence: the very existence of violence is the greatest obstruction to its elimination. One need not see the road to peace; it is not necessary that any of the current political actors even genuinely desire peace. Nonetheless, what peace needs to take root is at least some temporary interruption of the vicious cycle of rising extremism.