The Dialectics of Terrorism: A Marxist Response to September 11

Abstract

We have entered a reality zone already captured by its opposite: unreality. It is a world where nobody really wanted to venture. It is a world where order has given way to disorder; where reason has given way to unreason; where reality is compromised by truth; where guilt is presumed over innocence; where the once noble search for explanations has been replaced by a dizzying vortex of plastic flags, stars and stripes rhinestone belts, coffee klatch war strategists, Sunday barbecue patrioteering, militant denunciations of war protestors, a generalized fear of whatever lies ahead, xenophobic hostility, and point-blank outrage. Soccer moms in sports utility vehicles festooned with images of Old Glory park in dimly lit alleys and then slink into the local sex shop in search of red, white, and blue thongs for couch potato husbands strangely rejuvenated by daily doses of carnage, courtesy of CNN. Public school teachers across the country eagerly prepare new courses on Western civilization. Politicians sporting American flag lapel pins plan ways to purge domestic political dissent. Hollywood producers hunker down in their studios and plan new Rambo films. Retired generals shine in their new roles as political consultants, pronouncing the scenes in Afghanistan as invariably &dquo;fluid,&dquo; which is a giveaway that they do not know much more than their interviewers, and probably less. Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz basks in the national limelight again, this time advocating the use of &dquo;torture warrants&dquo; in specified circumstances when the issue of &dquo;time&dquo; is crucial. Their reason paralyzed by fear and replaced by the logic of mob fury, American citizens eagerly give up their right of habeas corpus