The Courage of Hopelessness by Slavoj Zizek

Author:Slavoj Zizek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2018-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

TERRORISTS WITH A HUMAN FACE

A closer look at some of the ‘terrorists’ provides another surprise. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, the 31-year-old French man of Tunisian descent who, on the evening of 14 July 2016, drove a rented truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice and killed eighty-four people, was known to police only in connection with common-law crimes such as theft and violence – intelligence services held no record of any radical Islamist links. Working as a delivery driver, he acted as if he was fully integrated into normal daily and professional life, when, all of a sudden, his life began to disintegrate, and a descent into petty crime and violence led to the self-destructive terrorist act. Other cases follow a similar pattern – just recall Hasna Aitboulahcen, the woman who was supposed to be one of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks: she also led a ‘modern’, secular life and converted to hard Islam only in the last three months before the attacks.

The most outstanding case in this series is Salah Abdeslam, the Paris terror suspect who was arrested in March 2016 in Brussels. The first thing that strikes the eye is that he is no Mohammed Atta, no figure of solemn and austere ‘inhuman’ fanaticism, but fully ‘human’ in the usual meaning of the word: he displays all ordinary weaknesses (he is reported to cry often) and is a kind person, smiling a lot, fond of music and dance, drinking and other aspects of joie de vivre. Born in Belgium, Abdeslam is a French citizen of Moroccan descent who was employed by STIB-MIVB (the Brussels public transport company) as a mechanic from September 2009 to 2011; it is not clear why he was sacked (perhaps it was due to repeated absences, or criminal acts), but from December 2013 Abdeslam was the manager of a bar in Molenbeek that was frequented by Maghrebian customers and was a centre of drug dealing. In short, Abdeslam comes from a fully integrated family, had a permanent job, and was taking part in ordinary daily life – so why did he radicalize himself? His life story forms a kind of Hegelian triad: ordinary working citizen, descent into drugs and criminal subculture, then final descent/ascent into religious terror…Is the reason provided by another terrorist shot in Paris, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who, in a video clip promoting ISIS, addresses his viewers with a simple question: are you satisfied with your life? Is this all you want, or do you strive for something more, a more profound engagement that would make your life not only meaningful but also more dynamic, adventurous, fun even? (Incidentally, that’s why the solution is not to establish refugee communities in our big cities. Terrorists as a rule come from such places; they stand for the second generation rebellion of children against their well-integrated parents. Their problem is not a lack of integration: they react to integration into Western society as such, a society they consider decadent.)

We should here avoid falling for the

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