The Spectacle of Entertainment
Part Six: Terrorism and the State
William Brown
Let us look at the example of the still-unclaimed 19 April 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The first round of news reports were swift, confident and unanimous in their conclusion that the bombing -- like the 1992 bombing of the World Trade Center -- must have been, indeed could only have been, the work of Islamic fundamentalists sponsored by one irrationally "anti-American" Middle Eastern state or another. These reports were just as quickly, confidently and completely "proved" to be wrong: the bombing was actually (allegedly) planned and executed by a few "white" men closely associated with the far-right American militia movement. That is to say, the bombing wasn't part of an external, off-to-the-side plot to attack and terrorize the citizens and government of the U.S., but part of an inconceivable, internal, right-down-the-middle plot to attack and terrorize. As a result, the story has long since ceased to be a daily or even weekly opportunity for outrage, speculation, denunciation and calls for justice, unlike the O.J. Simpson trial. There are no leaks of prejudicial information. This bizarre, nearly complete disappearing act has taken place despite the facts that -- as we heard so many times during the Cold War -- internal enemies are, in general, far more insidious and dangerous than external enemies, and that these particular internal enemies are apparently well-trained, well-armed and confident that (our) God is on their side. It is clear that certain "rogue elements" in the widespread militia movement have declared a holy war against the United States government and the illuminist "new world order" of which it is supposed to be a tool. Perhaps the authorities do not want to reveal the extent and degree of coordination in the war against the U.S. government between all of America's militias, Ku Klux Klans, Men Against Women groups, armed "white supremacist" groups, Aryan Nations and so forth, for fear no doubt of alarming the general public.
There is a profound symmetry between the two unproven scenarios for the planning and execution of the bombing. Whether it was Islamic fundamentalists from Iran or Christian fascists from Michigan who did it, the state will write and tell the story of the bombing in either case. The conclusion of this story will always be the same, no matter who the antagonists are: the protagonist (the state) will always use the story to justify and reinforce its monopoly on violence. Certainly the state would prefer the antagonists to be irrational "foreigners" rather than irrational American citizens, despite the fact that the state itself is the ultimate supplier of weapons, funding and training for both groups. For one thing, according to the ideology of the country, irrational Americans cannot possibly exist, except in the delusional and disinformative ravings of communists, leftist radicals, anarchists, so-called "politically correct" academics and other irresponsibile elements. For another, it is far more damaging to "national security" if one proves (or even suggests) that the ultimate source of the irrational Americans' weapons, funding and training is the very same United States government to which they are so violently opposed, than if one suggests (or manages to prove) that the U.S. government is the ultimate source of the weapons, funding and training of irrational "foreigners." Note in this context the absolute inability of the state to answer, not to mention disprove the militiamen's apparently illogical and paranoid claim that it was in fact the United States government that bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City with the intent of creating a pretext for the suppression of the militias. There are great dangers for the government if it tries to contradict such an unanswerable lie, rather than simply ignoring it. For the fact of the matter is that the bombing has indeed produced more, stronger and more secretive "anti-terrorism" measures. In short, the bombing has been smoothly integrated into the long-term process by which -- to quote from a 1948 CIA text -- "citizens of the United States will have to accustom themselves to the ubiquitous presence of the powerful secret police needed for protection against sabotage and espionage." It would, no doubt, be impossible today to specify or describe which "powerful secret police" the writer had in mind at the time, or to indicate what organization that secret police force has evolved into over the course of the last 47 years.
Miraculously, our powerful and ubiquitous anti-terrorist secret police force has shown itself to be quite powerless to stop the numerous attacks reputedly made since 1978 by the terrorist(s) the FBI has dubbed "the Unabomb." Originally an indication that several apparently unrelated bombings were in fact related to one another, the name today reinforces the notion that there can only be one (or "una") bomber, and not several of them, working in concert. The Unabomber, we are told, identifies his own bombs with the initials "FC," short for "Freedom Club" -- not "Fuck Computers," as had been reported in some publications -- which is said to be the name of the organization to which he says he belongs, though the authorities claim that he is a proverbial "lone gunman." Perhaps he has had such a long career because his work is so useful, on so many levels, to the society of the spectacle, and not simply because he is an especially cautious and cunning criminal "genius." We are allowed to know that he crafts his bombs in certain unique and apparently archaic ways, that he targets certain "important" figures in the business and academic worlds, and that he, like any good surrealist, likes to keep things "interesting" by calling in bogus bomb threats.
Most importantly, we are allowed to know that the Unabomber is an anti-technology anarchist and a writer of long thereotical texts, much like John Zerzan, whom -- the NY Times is strangely happy to tell us -- he apparently admires. In December 1985, the Unabomber tried to explain the aims of the FC in an open letter to the S.F. Examiner, which never printed it.
1. The aim of the Freedom Club is the complete and permanent destruction of modern industrial society in every part of the world. . . .A real hash this is, composed of leftover bits and pieces of populism, situationism, pop anarchism, long-discredited anthropological/religious illusions, and post-1960s "movement" theory. It gives every indication of being thrown together by a graduate student-turned-FBI agent who decided to "put to good use" all the subversive little books published in Semiotext(e)'s "foreign agents" series in the 1980s, but not to give up his dreams of making it big in the straight world.2. The hollowness of the old revolutionary ideologies centering on socialism has become clear. Now and in the future the thrust of rebellion will be against the industrial-technological system itself and not for or against any political ideology that is supposed to govern the administration of that system. All ideologies and political systems are fakes. They only result in power for special groups who just push the rest of us around. . . .
3. No ideology or political system can get around the hard facts of life in industrial society. Because any form of industrial society requires a high level of organization, all decisions have to be made by a small elite of leaders and experts who necessarily wield all the power. . . . Even if the motives of this elite were completely unselfish, they would still HAVE TO exploit and manipulate us simply to keep the system running. Thus the evil is in the nature of technology itself.
4. Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society.
5. The Freedom Club is strictly anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-leftist. . . . This does not imply that we are in any sense a ring-wing movement. We are apolitical. Politics only distracts atention from the real issue.
In June 1995, in the course of negotiating the publication of a manifesto of more than 35,000 words, the Unabomber declared,
Penthouse is basically an entertainment magazine that contains also some serious commentary. In such magazines the serious commentary to some extent serves as part of the entertainment. We are down on the entertain industry because it is an "opium of the masses" (see paragraphs 147, 156 of our manuscript). So we don't like the idea of playing footsy with that industry by allowing our writings to be used as entertainment. Therefore, if possible, we'd like to get our stuff published somewhere other than in Penthouse.If his manifesto is published somewhere "respectable" (he himself puts the word in quotation marks), the Unabomber claims that he is quite willing to stop his murderous campaign against modern industrial society in general and the managers of computer culture in particular. He is said to have admitted that he only started to kill people when he realized that it was the only way the aims of the Freedom Club could be achieved: "in order to influence people, a terrorist group must show a certain amount of success." In a certain limited sense, he is correct: no one pays serious attention to the motivations of the hundreds of thousands of (no doubt) like-minded, anonymous virus-programmers, computer hackers, software bootleggers and counterfeiters who attack the information economy every day from within its circuits. But in a broader sense, he is dead wrong: in part thanks to the Unabomber, no one has focused on the real "real issue," that is to say, on the facts that 1). the spectacle of information -- though it can do without this or that individual -- cannot do without a steady, cheap and dependable supply of electricity to run the computers and the air-conditioing systems that allow them to function efficiently; 2). this electricity must somehow be generated and distributed in mass quantities; and 3). the mass production of electricity depends on technologies that, with the exceptions of solar and hydroelectric power generation (the latter widely used in China), destroy or quite seriously pollute the environment.
Significantly, we are told nothing of importance about what the Unabomber's alleged targets really have in common, save for the tautology that they all were determined by the Unabomber to be important managers of the unfettered rule of the computer. Thus we are encouraged to believe that each of his targets were unfortunate and unrelated victims, that is, innocents selected for no other reason than the fact that they happened to be associated with computers in the mind of the Unabomber, who hates computers. Precisely because he is (portrayed as) an outsider to the computer industry, the general public seems to believe that the Unabomber cannot possibly know with any certainty that the people he's targeted are in fact the people who "deserve it" the most. This would seem to be the heart of the spectacle's critique of terrorism: though it might have valid points to make, it kills innocent people; that is to say, it confuses the general structure (which might be indirectly guilty of committing certain regrettable but understandable "mistakes" and "oversights") with the innocent participants who make up the general structure and cannot be held personally responsible for the damages "unintentionally" caused by it. And yet it is the general structure that directly benefits from the terror produced by the Unabomber's spectacular murders of individuals.
In the course of describing home security systems -- that is, one of the three big puritanical perks that are now increasingly given to corporate executives -- the New York Times has recently stated that "the Unabomber, the escalation of workplace violence and a general fear of crime" have all made executives more concerned about their personal safety. Of course, there have arisen a variety of businesses that provide "security" for these harassed executives, both on the job and at home. The wonderful thing about home security systems, private chaffeurs and bobyguards trained in defensive tactics, and so forth is that -- though these provisions no doubt make one painfully conscious on a day-to-day basis of how little one can actually enjoy the rewards of being a member of the ruling class -- they are tax deductible expenses (they are private expenses that can be subsidized by the public, though the public derives no benefits from them). All an executive or a company needs is a threatening letter or two from a recently laid-off employee or someone who has been seriously injured by a faulty product for the IRS to look favorably on the security measures that might be taken in response. The problem, of course, with such letters is that they must be traceable to someone in particular; thus, they cannot easily be faked. Indeed, most perpetrators of "workplace violence" and "crime" generally speaking would prefer to remain anonymous and untraceable. But what if a threatening letter is signed "FC" and authoritatively attributed to the Unabomber? It wouldn't matter to the person threatened or the IRS if such a letter was faked or not: the damage done by the so-called Unabomber is an undeniable fact, and so nobody would question the wisdom of using a letter that purports to have been written by him as a reason for taking the very best in high-end, tax-deductible security measures. Ironically (or perhaps quite significantly), the only people for whom fake "FC" letters pose a problem are the professional investigators/reporters (the FBI and the New York Times) and the members of the Freedom Club itself. As the Unabomber stated just a few months ago, "No communication from FC should be accepted as authentic unless it is verified by means of our secret identifying number, which is known only to the New York Times and the FBI." There's a truly suspicious echo here of the "secret" PINS (personal identification numbers) we all use to convince the banks' automatic teller machines that we should be allowed access to our funds and information about our accounts.
But one doesn't need a taste for "conspiracy theory" to see that, if the Unabomber didn't exist, it would have been necessary and expedient to invent him. Ideally, he would be selected and trained according to the progression signified by the words misguided, provoked, infiltrated, manipulated, taken over and subverted;
he would have to be someone who could be thenceforth trusted to kill only those people who were expendable or perceived by the managers of the information economy to be internal "de-stabilizers" of it, without knowing that this was in fact what he was doing; he would have to have excellent and continuing access to the latest personnel records; and he would have to have excellent security measures of his own, so that he could evade detection and arrest for a period of time long enough for his actions to be truly effective on all intended levels. Just as long as he was a diligent worker who believed in the value of what he was doing, it wouldn't necessarily matter if he had been originally motivated by anti-ideology ideologies, for the state wins in any case. Perhaps the recent publication in the mainstream press of excerpts from his texts indicates that, whether he knows it or not, his personal mission has been or will soon be completed. But he will eventually, of course, have to be eliminated and replaced by another theorizing terrorist, for "the great game" of social control is never ended.
Part Seven: The 21st Century
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