The Logic of Terrorism

It is not hard to understand it once you uncover its premises

By Olavo de Carvalho
“Época” (São Paulo, Brazil), Oct 6th 2001

In every terrorist plan that is worth its name there is a continuity between the advance preparation of the atmosphere, the attack itself, and then the taking advantage from its effects. Communist jargon calls such attacks "armed propaganda". The reason is obvious: their goal is not as much a specific military result as the spectacular ostentation of fear. In order to achieve this goal, the attacks must articulate themselves with unarmed propaganda, which anticipates, guides and multiplies its effects.

The biggest discharge of armed propaganda of all times has been flung against the WTC and the Pentagon a few days after the première, in the other side of the planet, of the unarmed propaganda show promoted by the United Nations, at the Conference of Durban, to demoralize Israel and the United States. Once the towers had fallen, it was time to start taking advantage from it. So a worldwide campaign was set up, with Fidel Castro on board, to cast upon the victim the responsibility for the attacks and to deny -- for the first time in human history -- the right of an attacked country to react, by pressing it to relinquish to the UN the authority to decide about its own national destiny.

The ideological identity of scene directors in both shows, in the one preceding the attack and in the one that followed it, is exactly the same: the international left, entrenched in the UN and strengthened by the exclusion of the U.S. of the Human Rights Committee. Thus, the major premise and the conclusion of the syllogism are very clear. Bringing to light the implicit minor premise is an easy task, but one that becomes difficult when so many voices, exploiting the inherent ambiguity of Islamic terrorism, strive to stress its religious identity in order to cover up its political one. From a religious point of view, bin Laden’s group belongs to one of the last bulwarks of religious conservatism in the world. Politically, it teams up with the international left. If the political face of terror reveals the unity between armed and unarmed propaganda, completing the syllogism, its religious face differentiates and separates them, disguising the minor premise. That is why so many people in the media rather try to associate bin Laden to Islam, which has nothing to gain from its terrorist actions, than to the world left, which has everything to gain from those actions.

When bin Laden says that there is a plot to initiate a war between the West and Islam in order to benefit Israel, he lets the truth be seen at the bottom of his lie. The plot does exist, but from such a war Israel could not expect anything but its own destruction. The same goes to the U.S. and to Islam. The only one who stand to benefit is the international left, and it does not even have to wait to reap its profits. By hitting with an Islamic hand and by pretending to be a friend of the victim in order to usurp its right to react, it is already winning fivefold: it shuns its guilt from unarmed propaganda; it throws one against the other the Jewish-Christian and Muslim religious conservatisms; it gains ammunition for new media campaigns; it wins another round in its five-decade fight to give the UN the status of world government, and still writes on the U.S. account the debts for its monstrous global ambitions -- all this without the need for showing itself upon the stage except in the role of guardian of peace. Never before the question "Quia bono?" ("Who stands to gain from the crime?") had such an eloquent answer.

Some additional data might contribute to make it even clearer. Why organize a Conference against Racism in a country which is undergoing "ethnic cleansing" against the white minority, if this very item was excluded from the agenda? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But there is a method in apparent absurdity. South Africa, governed by a communist party, has very close connections to the Taliban and to Cuba, headquarters of world terrorism. And according to Anthony LoBaido -- one of most experienced foreign correspondents in the country --, Durban’s elite is infested with Muslim radicals who sympathize with bin Laden, among which the chief of police and the local Interpol agent. The outflow of unarmed propaganda could not have sprung from a more fertile ground.