Islamic Extremism: Violence Vs. Power

The assassination of U.S. President William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901.

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A lot is written about Islamic extremists on this site - and a lot of it is meant to not only rightly attack the extremists but malign all Arabs and Muslims in a blatantly racist hate-post.

Islamic extremism is real, there can be no doubt about that. And too many of them are all too willing, nay eager, to use violence in the pursuit of their goals. But the hype of Islamic extremism is unfounded and we should never fail to understand such extremism and violence in context.

Just because people can commit awesome - I, of course, use that world exclusively in a positive - i.e. technical - sense - attacks does not mean they are politically relevant. The term 'Islamofascism' is a false reading. Fascism was a highly influential ideology that commanded the loyalty of tens of millions and swept into power several governments whom changed the face of history - Nazi Germany, Franco's Spain, and Mussolini's Italy to name the most prominent.

In contrast: Islamic extremists live in caves, their supporters rank in the hundreds and they have absolutely no mass appeal. 19 men brought down the World Trade Center and one man killed U.S. President William McKinley back in the early 1900s, both attacks were stunning. But just as anarchism was not a popular movement in the past neither is Islamic fundamentalism today. In the early 1990s, anarchists brought chaos through high-profile assassination. European leftists engaged in numerous attacks of terrorism in the 1970s - including killing the Italian prime minister - but none of these movements mattered in the long run. Politically insignificant groups can commit high-profile and mass killings, but that does not change the first part: politically insignificant.

Terrorists resort to violence in order to gain media attention because their appeal is so low and their relevance is non-existent that they would not command attention any other way. In other words: terrorism is the tool of the weak. September 11 was horrific and it was the work of 19 men. 19 men. We should not forget that. Bin Ladin's supporters can fit into a cave. We should not forget that. Islamic extremism is a new phenomenon on the world stage and in the long run it will have no affect. It has made a lot of noise and caused a lot of death, but it is not a force of historical revisionism. The proper analogy is not with European fascism, but with anarchism and radical leftism. We should never lose sight of the fact that politically trivial groups need only a few men to shock the world. And we should never confuse such acts with politically significance. That is a false reading and free societies suffer under such misunderstandings for it leads to fear and freedom-destroying expansion of state power in the name of 'security'.

All extremists need to resort to violence because they lack power, if they had real influence they would not need violence. But they seek to compensate for the lack of support by being loud demagogues and occasionally using violence. This is what Hanna Adrent wrote about in explaining the dichotomy between violence and power: if you use violence it is because you do not have power, and if you have power you do not need violence. In other words: Extremists seek to make headlines because they lack power.

They explode buildings and kill heads of states because they lack the ability to convince others. So they resort to terrorism.

That terrorism, of course, needs to be meet with resolve, but never losing sight of the context.