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The Terror Norm
by Ean Frick

This article originally appeared on the web site of SYNTHESIS, an organisation dedicated to the preservation of individual sovereignty.

In this era of late capitalism, we are bombarded with the constant threat, the perpetual fear, itself just a part of the whole, of terror or rather its theorized form: terrorism. The degree to which this terror (i.e. the fear of terrorism) has saturated the daily lives of Americans and to a lesser degree the rest of the world requires that the phenomenon of terrorism, the terrorist act, and perpetual terror are examined in a manner different from the traditional, misleading, and often hypocritical discourse from which it is normally found. When dissecting this phenomenon it must be broken down into three parts to fully distinguish the independence with which each part acts which make up the whole of the experience of terrorism.
 

The Greater Terror

First it must be said that the real terror of any terrorist attack lies not in the act itself but the way in which the act is disseminated through culture behind the mask of “informing the public” of the incident. The amount of people actually terrorized by the act itself is always invariably smaller than those terrorized by the coverage of the act. For a contemporary example one need look no further than the originator act of the current terror to see this. While 9.11 the act terrorized more people than is normally associated with the terrorist act given previous examples, it comes to the equational conclusion when considering the global terror perpetuated by the dissemination of the act. The people terrorized by the act were New Yorkers who witnessed the act plus those onboard the three planes, this number is somewhere in the thousands. For most people who recall the event, their terror came from the way they received the information of the act. Orwellian voice overs breaking the monotony of daily radio programming as well as in schools and workplaces across the country (breaking the monotony of everyday work as well), the closing of many workplaces which is seen as synonymous with something outside the normal and thus a panic or disaster of some sort, the onslaught of images of the act in a style simulating information overload to stress the seriousness of the act(and even more so its implications).
The number of people subjected to the terror of dissemination is somewhere in the millions if not billions when considering global implications of information dissemination. Those who were terrorized by the act note how it resembled something like a big budget Jerry Bruckheimer film(the Onion properly satirized this). In other words, the act of terror, the supposed real, resembled a simulation of a terror act, just as those witness to the terror of dissemination were subjected to simulation of the act ad nausea. So if the greater terror comes from dissemination of the terror act, what then of the act itself?

The Terrorist Act

While many terrorist groups justify themselves by respective ideologies, be it nationalist, religious, or revolutionary, the actual act always accomplishes the same thing: cause an X degree of terror and upset the daily monotony of late capitalism. The terrorists know that they will be judged by their actions by not only those who witnessed the act but also the dissemination. Those who view their act are their audience. The terrorists also know that a certain degree of their audience will strongly disagree with their act. But it would not be an act of terrorism if it did not upset and therefore challenge something.

The very act of terror thus demands a reaction, a criticism. For otherwise it would be seen as acceptable by whatever system it is trying to attack. The terrorists have defined themselves against their critics.

When examined this way, the role of the terrorist in society is synonymous with that of the artist. While clearly part of society, they distinguish themselves against it or part of it by a performance in which a daily monotony is momentarily disrupted so they can push their own ideology against a prevailing one.

So underneath every passamontagna is a performance artist. Each act is rehearsed and then performed. Symbolism is often utilized, as with the case of 9.11 where the WTC towers were targeted not so much for their actual importance to Western capital but their symbolic purpose. The IRA made a habit of blowing up statues of monarchs and other members of the British ruling class who symbolized the colonial rule of Ireland.

Perpetual Terror

Some people argue that something changed on Sept.11, that there was at least one fundamental change in the everyday life of America, something which transcended subjective realities. It is in the opinion of the author that the 9.11 attacks represent the first time America was hit on her soil in the postmodern age, meaning the attack had been ‘predicted’ in the images of pop culture reality years before the actual attack took place.

In the age of Pearl Harbor this certainly wasn’t the case. Also when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred Americans as a whole were not subjected to an onslaught of imagery of the attack which soon replaced the real event with hollow spectacle. However I think this ‘culturally defining’ moment was signaled earlier by Baudrillard in his writings on the first Gulf war where he put forth the idea that, at least for Westerners, the war didn’t occur except on TV. The most significant change that the attacks have had on the American masses is the Spectacle’s attitude change from America: the Invincible to America: Potential Target. Granted the American public was under constant terror attack from the media with its hype of school shootings, child molesters, the crimes of poor black people, and AIDS patients/drug fiends, but by general consensus America was a safe place to live when compared with the non-Western world.

Post-9.11 the terror officially became the norm. All of a sudden America went from being the invincible to a nation where we could be attacked anywhere, at any time, by anyone. Soon afterwards the massive regrouping of the government bureaucracy known as Homeland Security established the color codes so as citizens we now know to what degree the terror norm is. Now to turn on the news and hear about terror attacks is to be expected, to not hear about terror would be strange. But this indoctrination of American citizens to the terror norm goes much further than just the news. The day of the attacks on the London tube, I was going to work on the Boston subway system and before I was even in the station I could hear the recorded message that they began playing in the T (Tube system – Ed) since 9.11 which goes a little something like this: "Now more than ever, its important be aware” it then continues to encourage T riders to basically spy on fellow passengers and report anything “suspicious”, as if terrorists just sit on the T with a stick of dynamite all shifty eyed. I remember thinking that I felt like Winston Smith.

It wasn’t until I actually got to my job when I learned about the London attacks. But the terror precautions, the relentless terror awareness, which in a Marxist sense constitutes a kind of terror consciousness indicative of the Trotskyite roots of many Neocons, were already in affect. There didn’t need to be an attack on the London tube to justify the measures being taken on American subway systems, the terror norm was already in effect. By now the actual, the terrorist act has become merely secondary to the stripping away of the “rights” granted us by the liberal state. As for the “War on Terror”, even more fantasy, the grand epic to justify the new monotony of the terror age, the forces of good, Umerica, Bush/Blair, the West, liberal capitalism, Freedom, etc. battle the Fantomas-like figures of terror, unfreedom(if they hate us for our supposed freedom what are they for?), the Other, etc. But all this is just an update from the monotony of everyday life under America the invincible to the monotony of a state of perpetual terror, but it is a monotony none the less.

As human beings we are inherently free and don’t need the granting of rights by any governmental body to ensure this, we are also mobile beings who by nature are not entrapped by any schedule other than biological cycles, if the ruling elites want to maintain their control they will have to come up with a new plan once the fear instilled by the terror monotony wears thin.