Terrorism and philosophy: new mental maps

It is a sad reality of our days that Islamic extremists have made several attacks on European ground. When they are not bloody massacres as in France (where they showed particularly accurate and coordinated arrangements), those conducted by a single individual who turns out later to be a person "problematic" (as in Germany for the McDonald's massacre where the attacker apparently was a young victim of bullying) there are equally blind spots that make difficult to believe the mere and simple official version. Version that is still accepted by common people for a different set of reasons: trust in government, patriotism but also simple apathy too.

All the terrorists die, killed by police who intervenes after on the scene, as a modern furious Orlando (and vindictive) but unfortunately depriving us of the possibility of questioning the direct author of the crime. In other words: in any case die who would have the most interesting things to say.

For someone we live in times so insecure that they require special laws and limits to our freedom: an inevitable price to pay for damage limitation and stay alive. Less free but more alive is therefore an acceptable formula for those who are willing to sacrifice the freedoms cost us decades of social struggles. But are we really determined to deprive us of our freedom for some remnant of security? Benjamin Franklin's judgment in this regard is perfunctory and without appeal.

On our behalf, we asked some questions to the Italian philosopher Diego Fusaro, so as to better understand this situation.

Q) All the recent attacks have been directed against people ordinary and defenseless: clearly this makes up the desired result. According to you, there are other reasons in the choice of targets?

A) If in all the attacks on time you go to hit ordinary people, workers, students, employees, temporary workers and lately also country priests, of course it arouses suspicion that never once being affected the financial centers of power, the centers of relocation, of politics. Except that they repeat to us every day that is Islam, it would seem rather it is a class struggle that dominants carry out against the dominated to destabilize them, terrorize them, cause them to fear and avoid class conflicts.

Q) Riches are always a minority and live in isolated enclaves, protected, easier to defend...

A) Of course, riches are protected and protect themselves. They are heedful, more difficult to attack and then they are never to suffer these attacks. But, in my opinion, you can also say that these attacks have not to hit the rich: they have to strike the poors because they are always in terror and accept their desperate situation without making claims.

Q) I mean, why kill those who pays you? The terrorists have not attacked the power centers of Saudis, Qataris, Israeli, US. They never attacked Wall Street or the City of London. It is elementary gratitude?

A) More than gratitude is that this terrorism is good to the class struggle because it serves exactly the Power (I do not mean that it's the Power to organize it) that definitely benefits from it because it terrifies the servants, because it shifts the focus from class struggle to the enemy Islam, from Marx's class struggle to Huntington's clash of civilizations and then somehow breaks the conflict. This terrorism arises in a conflict between Islamists and Christians and the conflict never goes from bottom to up, towards the finance and the capital.

Q) Benjamin Franklin said that anyone who gives up freedom in exchange for security deserves neither the one nor the other. According to you, is this phrase still relevant?

A) Franklin was absolutely right, more than ever true today. Today they use the security to take away your freedom: is the security-paradigm, as I call it with Michel Foucault. Under which they are taking away one after the other our freedoms justifying this choice not neutral with the terror, in the name of security.

Q) How to get out of this situation?

A) To overcome this situation you must recategorise reality, returning to sender the maps that he would like us to use, draw new maps of reality, new readings and thus new readings of terrorism which evade the official version, and that they will be therefore ignored as conspiracy, as anything that challenges the official view or dominant.

Q) The materials killers are always the jihadist terrorists but among those moral, is there not even the satisfaction of a continuous carnivore carpe diem, which lacks of backbone and force the Western homo videns?

A) It goes on to say that the culprit is Islam but from the Islamic point of view this is pure nihilism, empty and with no values, therefore has nothing to do in my opinion with the Islamic and Christian religion. It's just a way to disqualify religions: there is often talk of religious war but on the other hand is a war to religion, which is under attack by the dominant economic capital that does not want religions of transcendence and wants only the monotheism of the market.

Q) The murdering of the French priest, slain in church during the Mass, could be shaking the West from its slumber?

A) I do not know if the West will shake from the torpor: surely it is a fact of concern, fear, a fact that must be condemned. It's a very serious thing. I mean, he's a priest, yes, is the Christian religion, but it is also a common man, one of the people, a priest of the province. He's not a high priest who is at the top: do not forget the class struggle, here, the bottom  against the top.

Costantino Ceoldo - Pravda.Ru freelance

Prof. Diego Fusaro web site: 

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