This article was downloaded by: [University of Hong Kong Libraries]

On: 03 October 2013, At: 02:53

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Terrorism and Political Violence

Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftpv20

Righteous Political Violence and

Contemporary Western Intellectuals
a
Paul Hollander
a
Department of Sociology , University of Massachusetts , Amherst ,
Massachusetts , USA
Published online: 14 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Paul Hollander (2013) Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western
Intellectuals, Terrorism and Political Violence, 25:4, 518-530, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2013.814491

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2013.814491

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
 Terrorism and Political Violence, 25:518–530, 2013
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0954-6553 print=1556-1836 online
DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2013.814491

Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary

Western Intellectuals

PAUL HOLLANDER
Department of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
Massachusetts, USA
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

Modern political violence has been increasingly preceded or accompanied by

elaborate ideological justifications, devised, in part, by intellectuals motivated by
their own political beliefs and commitments. Many idealistic intellectuals have been
especially sympathetic toward political movements and systems that have promised
to carry out far-reaching social transformations. These movements and systems have
often relied upon violent means to accomplish their goals. The political partisanship
of many Western intellectuals necessitates a revision of their idealized conception.
These issues are dealt with in the context of the intellectuals’ attitudes toward
Nazism, communism, and present-day Islamic radicalism.

Keywords communism, ends and means, idealism, ideology, intellectuals,

Islamic radicalism, Nazism, political belief, political violence, theory and practice

Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without

his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in
foreign democracies where people were free to say whatever they wished.
—Thomas Sowell1

No historian would deny that the part played by crimes committed

for personal motives is very small compared to the vast populations
slaughtered in unselfish loyalty to a jealous god, king, country, or polit-
ical system.
—Arthur Koestler2

Modern political violence has been increasingly accompanied or preceded by

ideological-philosophical justifications. Material interest, conflict over scarce
resources, or simple intergroup hatred has not been sufficient to legitimate political
violence in our times. Apparently, the scale and intensity of modern political violence,
or a lurking public unease with its more unvarnished, naked varieties, created a need
to legitimate violence in new, more elaborate ways. Political propaganda has played a
major part in this endeavor, seeking to make this type of violence more acceptable, or
to motivate people to engage in it.

Paul Hollander is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University

of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of 10 books translated into many languages.
Address correspondence to Paul Hollander. E-mail: hollanderaz@yahoo.com

518
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 519

Numerous intellectuals have been enlisted or volunteered to help devise such

justifications. Their endorsement of political violence—qualified or openly
expressed—has often been rooted in the idealistic conviction that such violence,
and especially its revolutionary variety, would help to create a greatly improved
society, or could strengthen, or defend one in the making.
The intellectuals’ willingness to tacitly support or contribute to the justification
of political violence has also been assisted by their occupational skills and dispo-
sition, and their devotion to ideas, including those that might legitimate such viol-
ence. Moreover, their idealistic disposition allows or prompts the subordination of
means to ends and the dissociation of ends and means. At last, their often future-
oriented outlook and capacity for abstract thinking makes it easier to ignore or
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

overlook the actual, immediate consequences of the use of such violence.

I will discuss in the following some widely-held conceptions of intellectuals
which are relevant to their political attitudes and beliefs. There are many indicators
(but no quantifiable proof) that the majority of Western academic intellectuals,
especially in the humanities and social sciences, are disposed to left-of-center
political attitudes and beliefs. The propositions and generalizations of this essay
apply mainly to them.

Modifying the Idealized Image of the Intellectual

Understanding the intellectuals’ occasional support of political violence requires
rejecting entrenched stereotypes of their social and political roles and shared attributes.
Misapprehension of the potential relationship between intellectuals and political
violence originates in a conception of intellectuals that overlooks, or excludes the possi-
bility of their involvement with morally dubious causes and actions. A reexamination of
the character of intellectuals and the still prevalent misconceptions of their attributes
will help to understand why many of them have been capable of supporting and
endorsing political violence that had little or no redeeming value or justification.
Being or becoming an intellectual is largely a matter of self-selection and
self-definition. It is an elusive, troublesome, and yet indispensable concept; there are
no self-evident and widely accepted credentials, processes of certification, activities,
or occupations that indisputably define the intellectual. The vagueness of the concept,
as well as the sheer number of people who can claim intellectual status due to the
expansion of higher education, make it even more difficult to find a widely agreed-upon
definition of what exactly an intellectual is, and to distinguish between intellectuals and
aspiring, quasi-, or pseudo-intellectuals. Seeking to establish the defining traits of
intellectuals, it is more fruitful to focus on their distinctive preoccupations, mindset,
or aspirations, rather than on their education or formal qualifications.
It is has been accepted that, as Karl Mannheim proposed, the defining charac-
teristic and calling of intellectuals is their commitment to the interpretation of the
world.3 What qualifies them for this role, apart from their own motivation, is not
clear. Most definitions and discussions of intellectuals converge in the related
proposition that they are concerned with ideas of moral, ethical, or cultural signifi-
cance, rather than the pursuit of specialized knowledge. In short, moralizing is the
major preoccupation of intellectuals and the source of their sense of identity and
self-esteem. These moralizing impulses lead them to the role of the social critic. These
attitudes reflect both an idealistic disposition and an elitist sense of entitlement, that
entails belief in their capacity for superior discernment in social and political matters.
 520 P. Hollander

In their most appealing incarnation intellectuals have been perceived as fearless

social critics, iconoclastic interpreters of ideas, deeply and unconditionally commit-
ted to personal, political, and intellectual freedom and especially to free expression,
as well as selfless promoters of the common good. Such is a conception of
intellectuals that used to be widely held among educated people.
This is not to deny the concurrent existence of strong anti-intellectual trends,
especially in the United States. The negative conceptions of intellectuals emphasize
their sense of entitlement, elitism, and power hunger, as well as their impaired sense
of reality and rationale.
Most writers seeking to define intellectuals4 note that intellectuals share a
questioning disposition and are possessed of strong critical impulses, as well as that
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

they are generalists, not specialists. These propositions raise a number of questions:
Can the ‘‘true (i.e., critical) intellectuals’’ be found among those who support the
status quo—the powers that be—or must intellectuals be defined as congenital
questioners of the existing social-political arrangements and holders of power? Must
they be outsiders consumed by the ‘‘unmasking impulse,’’ who refuse to take their
social-political-cultural environment and the existing distribution of power for
granted? Can a ‘‘true intellectual’’ be employed by a government or political party?
Could a true intellectual be an active participant in a revolutionary or other political
movement? The answers to such questions will depend on the position taken toward
particular governments or political movements.

The Politicization of Intellectuals

There was a time when it was thought that intellectuals are well advised to abstain
from political involvements, when their proper attitude was considered to be an
Olympian detachment from political engagement. Intellectuals used to be seen as
thoughtful men and women distinguished by their capacity to reason, who possessed
a skeptical and critical disposition, and were mindful of the consequences—both
intended and unintended—of political action. Julien Benda designated intellectuals
as ‘‘all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims’’ and
who believe that ‘‘my kingdom is not of this world.’’5
Mannheim attempted to provide a social scientific foundation for the idealized
and rather favorable conception of intellectuals as truth-tellers and reliable observers
of the social world. He proposed that their diverse social origins account for these
admirable qualities and capabilities, that being recruited from different strata of
society frees them of class or group interest that is bound to distort perceptions of
the social and political world. These intellectuals of diverse social origins and back-
grounds were supposedly ‘‘unattached,’’ ‘‘rootless,’’ ‘‘detached,’’ and ‘‘marginal,’’
and therefore ‘‘disinterested.’’ They could rise above class position and its attendant
blinders—resembling Marx’s conception of the proletariat who was credited with a
privileged access to truth—understanding social realities, although for different rea-
sons. Mannheim’s intellectuals were capable of greater objectivity, penetrating social
criticism, and a better grasp of reality because they were supposed to be independent
and disinterested outsiders, not because they were victims of capitalist exploitation
ennobled by suffering.6
There has never been an empirical foundation for Mannheim’s ideas concerning
intellectuals, but they had a certain theoretical plausibility. In any event, Mannheim
overlooked the fact that shared social background or class origin is not the only
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 521

basis of shared group interest and the attendant distorted perception of social and
political realities.
Alienation (which, of course, overlaps with being an outsider) is part of the more
recent, politicized conception of intellectuals. It has also been considered an impor-
tant source of insight, truthful social criticism, and concern with social justice, as well
as a precondition of authenticity. Little attention has been paid to the possibility that
alienated or outsider status can also be a source of distorted perceptions of the social
and political world.
Since the 1960s, new and powerful academic-intellectual subcultures have
developed, especially in the United States, with their own social, cultural, and polit-
ical norms that stimulate, nurture, and reward new styles of conformity associated
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

with political correctness.7 As a result of these developments, alienation and the rejec-
tion of existing society can no longer be associated with dissent, non-conformity, or
daring or innovative social criticism. Estrangement has become normative, a new
form of conformity.
Another new development has been the growth (or perhaps only the new recog-
nition) of the craving for community, moral certainty, and sustaining beliefs among
intellectuals. Increasingly, political commitment has replaced skepticism, and the
wish to believe has overwhelmed the commitment to unbiased social criticism.
Despite these developments, the felt marginality of intellectuals has survived, regard-
less of their vastly improved social and political status and economic opportunities,
including job security. In the academic world the concept of ‘‘tenured radicals’’ cap-
tures these paradoxical conditions.8
It is possible that the politicization of intellectuals and the growing emphasis on
their role as righteous critics of society has also been a response to the need to find a
satisfactory sense of identity in societies permeated by identity problems.
In the twentieth century, an increasing number of intellectuals began to embrace
political commitment and engagement, assuming the role that came to be designated
more recently as that of the public intellectual.9 This development may also be seen as
the intellectuals’ transformation into the new, secular (or secular-religious) moraliz-
ing elite largely replacing the clergy. The public intellectual is by definition a morali-
zer, crusader, truth-teller, and uncompromising critic of injustice and hypocrisy of
every kind. This process has been associated with secularization, and the decline of
the moral authority and power of churches and religious authority figures. As the role
of public intellectuals has become more popular and respectable, so has the taking of
controversial public stands. With the passage of time, the latter has become quite
standardized, less controversial, and largely risk-free in Western societies. The appeal
of the role of public intellectual is probably also connected to the pleasures and
benefits of garnering publicity, visibility, and recognition.
Once intellectuals become politicized, as many have, some of them conclude that
political conflicts and struggles often call for violent solutions or resolutions—that
making the proverbial omelet requires the breaking of eggs. Hence modern political
violence has been increasingly accompanied or preceded by ideological-philosophical
certainties and justifications.

Legitimating Righteous Political Violence

The handling of the notoriously problematic relationship between ends and means is
the key to understanding the attitude of intellectuals toward political violence, as it is
 522 P. Hollander

the key to understanding the justifications of large-scale political violence in

general.10 Subordinating means to ends is the most obvious and common resolution
of this dilemma. But some intellectuals go further and make a virtue of necessity
(if that is what it is) by taking pride in their willingness to embrace questionable
means. What Nathan Leites said about the early Soviet revolutionaries applies
to the attitudes of some highly politicized Western intellectuals at a later time:

The Bolshevik must eschew free floating empathy. . . . Bolsheviks share the
feeling expressed by a character in Dostoevsky’s Raw Youth: ‘‘It doesn’t
matter if one has to pass through filth as long as the goal is magnificent.
It will all be washed off . . . afterward . . .’’ Bolshevik doctrine rejects the
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

virtue of empathy with and pity for all human beings. . . . The feeling of
distress of others would reduce one’s capacity to perform those acts
which would ultimately abolish it . . . instead of feeling guilty about the
suffering which one imposes on others . . . one attempts to feel self-
righteous about directly and actively imposing suffering on others—for
the sake of the future abolition of suffering.11

Thus engaging in, or endorsing, political violence can become the proof of
idealistic individual commitment, of the willingness to subordinate the individual
to the Collective or the Cause. Correspondingly, the obligatory attempt to unite
theory and practice—the hallmark of authentic commitment—becomes the psycho-
logical basis for legitimizing violence. Authenticity, fervently desired by intellectuals,
is attained when words and deeds, or theory and practice become united, such as in
the actions of the guerilla fighter, the assassin, or the suicide bomber.
Acts of terror can be endorsed (reluctantly or with a clear conscience) by idealistic
intellectuals when terror is redefined as righteous, liberating acts of political violence,
and is relabeled as an ‘‘armed struggle,’’ a ‘‘liberation struggle,’’ or ‘‘martyrdom
operations’’ (when self-destruction is involved). No one endorses terror per se. No
intellectual (or anyone else) would openly support terror if it were understood to refer
to the undiscriminating slaughter of innocent civilians. Intellectuals are most likely to
contribute to political violence—intentionally or unintentionally—when they create
or endorse a worldview or a view of history in which righteous violence plays an
important and useful part by promoting social and political change. Marx’s idea of
the class struggle was one such contribution; the neo-Darwinian racism of Nazi ideo-
logues another; and the Islamic view of a world divided between devout Muslims and
depraved infidels is yet another highly consequential view of the world. The deepest
source of the political commitments of idealistic intellectuals is an idealized vision of
the world, or a particular society, that ought to exist and could come into existence, if
proper actions are taken. The thoroughly committed, idealistic intellectual believes
that there are realizable alternatives to the injustice, sordidness, depravity, or irration-
ality that surround him or her. The same committed intellectual has a clear concep-
tion and conviction of what or who prevents the world from becoming just,
benevolent, coherent, harmonious, and rational: it is the various evil entities or forces
which can be identified and eradicated.
The attribution of idealism to intellectuals is not universally accepted; it has
also been proposed that this idealism is not genuine but a facade under which lurks
a consuming desire for power. I do not doubt that many intellectuals may indeed
be attracted to power, but I also believe that their power hunger, or sense of
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 523

entitlement to power, and their idealism are thoroughly intertwined. It is not easy
to determine which comes first: the appetite for power that looks for and finds some
respectable justification for itself, or a free-floating idealism that leads to the convic-
tion that the idealistic goals cannot be attained without power, or without the harsh,
unhesitating application of force whenever this becomes necessary.
Intellectuals sometimes contribute to political violence more directly by partici-
pating in the creation or elaboration of conceptions of the enemy and of political
evil, and thereby implicitly or explicitly justifying the eradication of this evil by
violent means. Participation in the creation of propaganda that justifies political
violence by dehumanizing and stereotyping ‘‘the enemy’’ or the potential victims
of this violence is clearly incompatible with widely accepted conceptions of the roles
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

and attributes of intellectuals.12 Both Nazi and communist propagandists compared

their victims to vermin or beasts that had to be eradicated; in Islamic fundamentalist
discourse, Jews are often referred to as ‘‘monkeys and pigs.’’13
During World War II, the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg made significant contribu-
tions to highly emotional anti-Nazi propaganda, which demonized Germans; George
Orwell worked for the BBC; and American sociologist Edward Shils was active in the
U.S. Office of Strategic Services. I am not suggesting that the ideas and actions of
Ehrenburg, Orwell, and Shils were morally equivalent to each other. The services pro-
vided to the government by Orwell and Shils did not deprive them of their capacity for
reasoned, independent judgment. It is harder to say the same about Ehrenburg, who
had a long record of subservience to the Soviet authorities. Comparing these cases
leads us once again to the problem of means and ends, to which we will return below.
Intellectuals’ endorsement or tacit acceptance of political violence has at times
been stimulated by ambitious, large-scale social engineering undertaken for the pur-
pose of radically remaking societies. This was attempted in the former Soviet Union,
in China under Mao, and in Cuba under Castro. Many Western intellectuals
accepted the official explanation and justification offered for such violence, allowing
them to remain non-judgmental, or even supportive of the measures being taken.
Perpetrators of this type of violence usually alleged that it was defensive and used
as a last resort, supposedly directed at internal enemies conspiring to sabotage the
lofty policies undertaken to remake society.
The endorsement of such social engineering projects also tends to be associated
with a future orientation—another essential component of the justification of polit-
ical violence—since its ultimate benefits should only become apparent at a later time
when the virtuous, purified, and harmonious society will at last emerge.
Another type of political violence many Western intellectuals have been inclined
to endorse is the violence of the perceived ‘‘underdog.’’ This type of violence is more
expressive and symbolic, intended ‘‘to make a statement’’ and draw attention to grie-
vances or a cause. Jihadist violence, and especially that perpetrated by suicide bom-
bers, belongs to this category. The violence of secular, leftist guerrillas also attracts
sympathy as the guerillas, too, are often perceived as the heroic, under-armed
‘‘underdog’’ confronting the huge, well-armed military forces of some repressive
government. The Vietcong, Castro’s guerrillas, and the Sandinistas belong to this
category. They had a special appeal because they represented the vanguard of revol-
utionary movements that aimed for the redistribution of power and the total trans-
formation of their societies.14 The apparent or imagined moral superiority of such
guerrilla movements may also be related to intellectuals’ aversion to modern mass
society. As I have argued elsewhere:
 524 P. Hollander

Guerrilla warfare and guerrilla violence are not routine and resist
routinization, and thus present a welcome contrast to modern mass
society and its bureaucratized violence. . . . The violence of the guerrilla
is an integral part of his way of life: It is more spontaneous, impulsive,
exciting, adventurous, and . . . authentic.15

Revolutionary violence has a particular appeal for intellectuals since it is the most
ambitious and idealistic kind, a type of violence that promises to remake society
as well as the human beings dispensing this violence. Raymond Aron wrote:

The myth of the Revolution . . . fosters the expectation of a break with the
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

normal trend of human affairs. . . . A revolution seems capable of chan-

ging everything. . . . To the intellectual . . . reform is boring and revolution
exciting. . . . Revolution provides a welcome break with the everyday
course of events and encourages the belief that all things are possible.16

The seeming passion, spontaneity, and risk-taking associated with invigorating

revolutionary violence enhance its appeal for romantically inclined intellectuals.
Norman Mailer wrote:

In Cuba hatred runs over into the love of blood; in America all too few
blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here. . . . You [Castro] were
aiding us . . . in that desperate silent struggle we have been fighting with
sick dead hearts against the cold insidious cancer of the power that
governs us, you were giving us new blood for fight.17

Mailer contrasted repellent impersonal repression with an impassioned, manly,

authentic fight that was purified by ‘‘blows struck into flesh.’’ Hence the reverence
toward the guerrilla fighter and the contempt for the impersonality of mechanized
war waged, for example, from high-flying planes against an unseen enemy, as was
the case during the Vietnam War. Such aversion to modern mechanized violence
may reflect a broader and deeper rejection of modern, industrial society. By contrast,
participation in revolutionary violence was seen by Western intellectuals such as
Mailer as an impressively authentic act which overcomes the haunting gulf between
theory and practice, word and deed.
The endorsement or rejection of political violence by intellectuals also depends
on who may be using violence and at whom the violence may be directed, rather than
on its quality, quantity, or consequences. The violence associated with good inten-
tions and carried out by the perceived underdogs is treated differently from the viol-
ence unrelated to (putative) higher purposes and carried out by discredited groups or
entities. Needless to say, what constitutes good intentions or a higher purpose, as
well as the definition of the underdog, is not self-evident. These points have become
especially contentious in our times, as the competing claims of victimhood have mul-
tiplied. Also controversial is the question of what type of political violence can be
defined as defensive, since notions of collective self-defense have also expanded.
For the Nazis, the extermination of Jews was a matter of self-defense, convinced
as they were that only their complete extermination would protect the Aryan race
from the threat the Jews’ very existence represented. Nazi intellectuals—including
academics elaborating and disseminating theories of racism—subscribed to the belief
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 525

in the inherent moral inferiority and dangerousness of Jews and implicitly legitimated
their extermination. The involvement of the German academics in this process of
indoctrination was especially noteworthy:

Apart from the scholars who served the regime as individuals, several
special research institutions and publications were created as instrumen-
talities in Germany’s war against the Jews. No discipline of science that
could be of use to the regime failed [to serve the regime —P.H] . . .
[including] physical and cultural anthropologists, philosophers, histor-
ians, jurists, economists, geographers, demographers, theologians,
linguists, and medical men. . . . Anti-Jewish science of the Nazi era was
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

no insular, self-contained branch of knowledge . . . it was embedded in

the whole of German scholarship which had placed itself at the service
of the Third Reich.18

Soviet communist or Maoist ideologues also claimed that the various incarnations of
their political enemies were a serious threat to the society they sought to create, and
devoted considerable resources to their hostile depiction. Such a depiction usually
preceded the liquidation of these enemies. More recently, Islamic fundamentalists
and radicals have claimed to be facing lethal threats from the ‘‘Zionists,’’ the
‘‘Crusaders,’’ and other ‘‘infidels.’’ Demolishing the World Trade Center and bomb-
ing the London subway and places of entertainment and buses in Israel and other
parts of the world were supposedly undertaken as defense measures. For their
perpetrators, these acts of murder and destruction were also a matter of honor,
helping to restore collective self-respect in the Islamic world.

Ends and Means

Whether engaged in legitimating or performing acts of political violence, most
human beings, including Western intellectuals, sooner or later confront or collide
with the dilemma of ends and means. Heinrich Himmler, for one, felt compelled
to address the dilemma ends and means in order to reduce the shocking and poten-
tially demoralizing impact of confronting the actual process of ridding the world of
designated undesirables. His reflections also suggest that even those committed to
subordinating means to ends—and therefore convinced of the superior importance
of the ends—may entertain some squeamishness and flickering doubts. He said to
an assembly of SS group leaders presumably involved in executing the Final
Solution:

I shall speak to you here with all frankness on a very serious subject. We
shall now discuss it absolutely openly among ourselves . . . we shall never
speak of it in public. I mean . . . the extermination of the Jewish people.
It is one of those things [of] which it is easy to say, ‘‘ . . . That’s clear, it
is part of our program, eliminating the Jews . . . we’ll do it.’’ And then
they all come along, eighty million good Germans, and each has his
decent Jew. . . . Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses
lying together, five hundred or a thousand. To have gone through
this and yet . . . to have remained decent, this has made us hard. This is
 526 P. Hollander

a glorious page in our history that has never been written and never shall
be written.19

Himmler here implicitly acknowledged two problems in connection with carrying

out the Final Solution. One was that many Germans apparently knew ‘‘decent Jews’’
and did not support their killing; the second problem was moral and psychological,
the impact of witnessing the physical aspects of the Final Solution, the spectacle of
the dehumanized, brutalized inmates awaiting death, or the piles of corpses (includ-
ing children, women, and the elderly) of helpless civilians—people whom it was dif-
ficult to perceive as posing lethal threats to Germany and the building of a better
world. The implication of Himmler’s oration is that human softness or squeamish-
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

ness has to be overcome in order to create a better world by carrying out the unap-
pealing but ultimately essential task. The determination to do so was proof of
‘‘decency,’’ integrity, or high moral standards.
The moral reasoning displayed by Himmler is very similar to that of the old
Bolsheviks:

Bolsheviks do not consider the chance of attaining certain goals to be les-

sened by the . . . use of means which are at extreme variance with them . . . .
the Party must accept as a matter of course any expedient degree of
discrepancy between means and ends . . . [it] must be prepared to inflict
any amount of deprivation on any number of human beings if this
appears ‘‘necessary.’’ . . . The refusal to use necessary bad means appears
to the Bolshevik an expression of stupidity; or an imperfect dedication to
the great goal; or as self-centeredness which keeps one more concerned
with not touching dirt and not feeling guilt than with transforming the
world.20

Lenin summed it up more tersely: ‘‘When trees are felled, splinters fly,’’21 and ‘‘It is
altogether unforgivable to permit oneself to be frightened or unnerved by ‘field hos-
pital’ scenes. If you are afraid of wolves, don’t go into the forest.’’22 More recently,
Alexander Yakovlev put his finger on the connection between the ideals of Marxism,
its advocacy of class struggle, and Soviet political practices:

. . . this special ‘‘class’’ morality which flouts universal human norms leads
to indulgence of any action. . . . Moral criteria are simply not appropriate
under the conditions of a revolutionary coup d’etat; they are ‘‘revoked’’ by
the brutality and directness of class warfare . . . the idea that one should
not fear creating victims in the course of serving the cause of progress . . . is
is very characteristic of Marx. . . . Belief in the inevitability of the coming
communist world served to justify the numerous and senseless victims of
the class struggle . . . terror is the way of remaking human material in the
name of the future.23

The reflections of Yakovlev confirm the crucial precondition of large-scale political

violence: the unwavering belief that it serves justifiable and attainable ends. Equally
indispensable is the capacity to dissociate unappealing or even repellent means from
glorious ends—the conviction that the means will not taint the ends, as Himmler,
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 527

too, believed. George Lukacs summed up the proper attitude of the committed, rev-
olutionary intellectual toward righteous political violence:

The highest duty for communist ethics is to accept the necessity of acting
immorally. This is the greatest sacrifice that the revolution demands of
us. The conviction of the true communist is that evil transforms itself into
bliss through the dialectics of historical evolution.24

Present day Jihadist-Islamic violence is distinguished by the combination of political

motivation, religious legitimation, a suicidal dimension, and an open, public glorifi-
cation of what its perpetrators consider ‘‘righteous’’ violence.
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

Islamic Beliefs and Jihadist Violence

There are some notable similarities between the Western intellectuals’ view of the
relationship between communist ideals and political practices (including violence)
during the Cold War, and their present-day assessments of the connection between
Muslim religious beliefs and Jihadist violence. It may be recalled that many Western
intellectuals used to argue that Marxism had nothing to do with ‘‘actually existing’’
communist systems, which merely used and misused it for purposes of legitimation—
a point of view that gained further popularity after the fall of Soviet communism. By
the same token, at the present time, many Western intellectuals argue that Islam is a
‘‘religion of peace’’ that has nothing to do with the kind of violence that is legiti-
mated by and committed in the name of Islamic beliefs. It is far more plausible to
suggest that while one may dispute the precise connections between these two sets
of ideas and the political practices (violence included) that they inspired, it is appar-
ent that there was and is some connection between the ideas and the practices in each
case, insofar as the ideas provided legitimacy and confidence for the designers and
executors of violence.
The sympathetic or ‘‘non-judgmental’’ views of some Western intellectuals con-
cerning Islamic political violence (directed primarily at Israel and the United States
or its allies) have a number of likely explanations. One is the sympathy with the
Palestinian cause and the victimhood of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. This
sympathy creates the disposition to see the violence used to further the Palestinian
cause as righteous, defensive, rationally instrumental, and of the last resort. Violence
of this type is virtually self-legitimating.
It is these so-called ‘‘root causes’’ of Islamic violence widely embraced by Western
liberal and left-of-center intellectuals that form the basis of the Westerners’
non-judgmental or sympathetic position. The root causes referred to are the suffering
and injustice that Israel and the United States have supposedly inflicted on the Arab
countries (and the United States—on the entire world). For Noam Chomsky and
many other intellectuals, the root cause of all evil, and the justification of the violence
to combat such evils, is the United States, capitalistic greed, and the associated global
inequalities. As Paul Berman wrote, ‘‘The greed of American corporations, and the
long history of American greed in the past, sufficed to explain every last astounding
act of suicide terror.’’25
The alleged root causes encourage the moral reevaluation and redefinition of
acts of terror. Thus, according to Gore Vidal, ‘‘the U.S. is the most corrupt
political system on earth’’ and bin Laden was merely ‘‘responding to U.S. foreign
 528 P. Hollander

policy.’’26 Frederic Jameson proposed that ‘‘the Americans created bin Laden.’’27
Norman Mailer considered the World Trade Center a symbol of capitalistic
privilege and inequality: ‘‘Everything wrong with America led to the point where
the country built that Tower of Babel which consequently had to be destroyed.’’28
Susan Sontag proposed that 9=11 was ‘‘an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed
super power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and
actions.’’29
Moral equivalence was often invoked to mitigate acts of terror such as 9=11.
Michael Mandel, a Canadian law professor, thought that ‘‘The bombing of
Afghanistan is the legal and moral equivalent of what was done to the Americans
on September 11.’’30 Eric Foner of Columbia University was not sure ‘‘which is more
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City [on 9=11] or the apocalyptic
rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.’’31 American filmmaker Oliver
Stone equated the Palestinians dancing in the streets in celebration of 9=11 with
the crowds rejoicing at the news of the French and Russian Revolutions.32 Barbara
Kingsolver wrote: ‘‘. . . the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship,
violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia. . . . Whom are we calling terrorists here?’’33
Such sentiments notwithstanding, suicide bombings aimed at civilians are diffi-
cult to exonerate, explain, or accept; as a rule, they are not outright or unequivocally
justified but rather treated as regrettable but understandable responses to odious
Israeli or American policies. Paul Berman paraphrased rationalizations of this kind
of violence in this way:

. . . there has got to be a rational explanation. Perhaps some unspeakable

social condition has provoked the murderous impulse. Perhaps small
groups of exploiters or imperialists, through their terrible deeds, have
driven thousands or even millions of people out of their minds. Perhaps
a population has been humiliated beyond human endurance. Unbearable
social conditions might well breed irrational reactions—though in such a
case the irrational reactions ought not to be seen as irrational. . . . Suicide
terror had its defenders. . . . At the antiglobalization march in Washington
some of the participants chanted, ‘‘Martyrs not murderers,’’—a grisly
chant, whose meaning was: The murders are not murders and the killers
are heroes. Some of the defenders were intellectuals. . . . Each new act of
murder and suicide testified to how oppressive were the Israelis . . . with
every new atrocity, the search was on to find even larger accusations to
place at Israel’s feet.34

At the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York in 2002, ‘‘the crowd burst into
applause’’ following the speech by an Egyptian novelist who defended ‘‘a young
Palestinian woman who had just committed suicide and murder.’’35 Also typical
are the attitudes of prominent Western public intellectuals such as Ian Buruma
and Timothy Garton Ash, who took an uncritical—and even sympathetic—attitude
toward Tariq Ramadan, a major European spokesman of Islamic causes. Ramadan
refused to condemn outright the stoning of adulterous women, proposing instead a
‘‘moratorium’’ on this practice. At the same time, both of these writers repeatedly
criticized and ridiculed Hirsi Ali Ayan, the courageous critic of Islamic extremism
who had faced death threats in Holland, her adopted country. Buruma called Ayan
an ‘‘Enlightenment fundamentalist.’’36
 Righteous Political Violence and Contemporary Western Intellectuals 529

The non-judgmental or sympathetic Western intellectuals conceive of the Islamic

suicide bombers and other terrorists as the underdog confronting with the military
might of Israel and the United States. Suicide bombings thus become heroic acts
when—it is argued—there are no other forceful responses available to the sufferings
inflicted upon the innocent by these two countries. Suicide bombings also impress
some Western intellectuals because they represent the ultimate linkage of belief
and behavior, the apex of authenticity. Sontag wrote that 9=11 ‘‘was not a ‘cowardly’
attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty.’’’ She expressed far more anger at the Bush White
House than at the terrorists.37
It has not been my intention in this essay to propose that Western intellectuals as
a whole have been major instigators of political violence, and especially terror, in our
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

times or in the past. Those among them who have contributed to the legitimacy
of political violence have, for the most part, done so indirectly, by creating climates
of opinion in which certain types of political violence were either ignored, excused, or
rationalized—either as necessities, or on the grounds of serving a higher purpose.

Notes
1. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 2.
2. Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up (New York: Random House, 1978), 77.
3. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge,
trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (San Diego: Harcourt, 1936).
4. Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet
Union, China, and Cuba, 1928–1978 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 40–49.
5. Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969),
43–44.
6. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (see note 3 above).
7. Political correctness amounts to a set of left-of-center attitudes, beliefs, and
injunctions influenced by the therapeutic orientation that has developed since the 1960s. PC
is mainly concerned with regulating racial, ethnic, and sexual relations and attitudes but also
finds expression in matters which at earlier times were not considered politically relevant, such
as sexual orientation, taste, and attitudes toward the natural environment.
8. Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1990).
9. Richard Posner, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001).
10. Islamic suicide bombers do not agonize about the relationship between ends and
means since they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the cause. How many of
them might qualify as intellectuals, is, of course, another matter. In any event, there is an
important difference between people willing to destroy themselves in the course of destroying
their enemies and those who wish to preserve their own lives while seeking to eradicate evil.
11. Nathan Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1953), 208, 106,
348, 352.
12. What complicates matters further is that there is no agreement about what constitutes
propaganda as distinct from a reasoned attempt at persuasion. Orwell did not cease to be an
intellectual on account of working for the BBC. However, this proposition is based on my
belief that the BBC was quite different from Nazi or Soviet instruments of propaganda.
13. See Qur’an 5:60, 2:65, 7:166 in Maulana Muhammad Ali, The Holy Qu’ran
(Columbus, OH: Islam Lahore, 1917); see also Sayyid Qutb, In the Shade of Qu’ran (Leicester,
UK: Islamic Foundation, 2001), IV: 170.
14. See also Paul Hollander, ‘‘The Appeal of Revolutionary Violence: Latin American
Guerrillas and American Intellectuals,’’ in Paul Hollander, ed., The Survival of the Adversary
Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1988), 207–232.
15. Ibid., 219.
16. Raymond Aron, The Opium of Intellectuals (London: Secker & Warbug, 1957), 35,
42–43.
 530 P. Hollander

17. Norman Mailer, The Presidential Papers (New York: Putnam, 1968), 69–70.
18. Max Weinreich, Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes
against the Jewish People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 240.
19. Quoted in Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership
(New York: Pantheon, 1970), 115.
20. Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (see note 11 above), 105, 109, 114–115.
21. Eugene Loebl, My Mind on Trial (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 56.
22. Quoted in Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (see note 11 above), 105.
23. Alexander Yakovlev, The Fate of Marxism in Russia (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1993), 11, 17, 29, 38.
24. Quoted in Daniel Bell, ‘‘First Love and Early Sorrows,’’ Partisan Review, November
4, 1981, 547.
25. Paul Berman, The Flight of the Intellectuals (New York: Melville House, 2010), 151.
Downloaded by [University of Hong Kong Libraries] at 02:53 03 October 2013

26. Gore Vidal, New Statesman, October 15, 2001, 18–19.

27. Quoted in Tony Judt, ‘‘America and the War,’’ The New York Review of Books,
November 15, 2001, 4.
28. Norman Mailer quoted in ‘‘Notebooks,’’ The New Republic, November 26, 2001, 8.
29. Susan Sontag, ‘‘The Talk of the Town,’’ The New Yorker, September 24, 2001, 32.
30. Michael Mandel, ‘‘This War is Illegal,’’ The Globe and Mail, October 9, 2001.
31. Eric Foner, ‘‘11 September,’’ London Review of Books 23, no. 19 (2001): 20–25.
32. Stone quoted in ‘‘Voices of Reason? Not in Hollywood,’’ The Boston Globe, October
23, 2001.
33. Kingsolver quoted in ‘‘Notebooks,’’ New Republic, October 22, 2001.
34. Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York: Norton, 2003), 122, 130, 134, 135.
35. Ibid., 131.
36. Quoted in Paul Hollander, ‘‘Ambivalent in Amsterdam,’’ National Interest
(November=December 2006); see also Berman (see note 25 above).
37. Sontag, ‘‘The Talk of the Town’’ (see note 29 above), 132.