REPLICA SUICIDE

During the Cold War there was a more or less clear set of rules. There was more equilibrium in the world, there was the Good and the Evil (whichever you considered your country to belong to).

Then there came a different order of things. A single world order. The Western hegemony has dominated. The Good, the open, the free has dominated, many of us would say. But the fact is that the principle of duality always and unavoidably breaks through, challenging this single order. And if the globalized world has no geographic opponent, an opponent of another sort will arise. As put by French philosopher Jean Baudrillard in The Spirit of Terrorism , the dominant globalized civilization will turn against itself, become its own antagonist, its own enemy. This is why the new war is that against the ghostly counterparty, the terrorist, who comes from the same milieu as his target and who often dies from his own attack.

The same goes for state terrorism. If indeed Russian federal forces stand behind the recent killings and poisonings that have shaken the world, their operation has not been performed according to a clear set of rules on the chess board, where the white try to outwit the black. The operation was performed by ghosts, who, even if ever disclosed, will most probably deny belonging to any particular party and fail to declare any political principles. Because no such principles, no integrity stand behind what we call Russia. The only single entity existing today is one globalized world.

The ghostly assassins pretend to have committed a crime against the image of Russia and the Russian government, while their actions will most probably only enforce the line of total control taken up by their country's leaders today, and - whether they are aware of it or not - encourage the total control tendencies already in fashion in the globalized world in general. The more ruthless and cynical the attacks, the more total control, the more domination, and in turn, the more forces trying to terrorize and corrupt that domination from within.

All ghostly assassins are faceless, bodiless and their self-realization is fulfilled through one channel only - the media imagery of their destructive deeds. But it is not the deeds themselves, but the prospect of their repetition that plants fear in our hearts. And their multiplication in the media models that repetition. We have long since begun to think on the level of imagery rather than on the level of reality. In Russia , any official comments on Litvinenko's death came only once his death had been legitimized as an image-event in the rest of the world. To quote Baudrillard once again, reality has become jealous of fiction, and we eagerly transfer ourselves to the fictional world of a James Bond movie today, just like we did to a science fiction film in September 2001, thinking up catastrophic special effects and consequences, that are as well largely imaginary.

Everything has turned to shadows - the murderers and the story behind the murders, told with the help of immaterial shadowy images. And it must be stylish and movie-like, otherwise we consider it boring and our attention will drift to yet another satellite channel. That is what all terrorists keep in mind. Their deeds must be more exciting than fiction.

What they perhaps don't keep in mind is that they are an indivisible part of what they assassinate. As a great ghostly army, they are our own suicidal fantasy. The recent Russian murders, just like the attacks on the twin towers five years ago, are symptoms of today's triumphant global dominating single order attempting suicide, and the Russian replica of that single order – attempting a little replica suicide of its own.

 

This column has been largely inspired by The Spirit of Terrorism by Jean Baudrillard.