Language and Action

WE seem to be in the throes of a global civil war. There are terrorists in every country of the non-Communist world, resembling interlocking industrial directorates, or successive classes of graduates from the same guerrilla school. In fact, though, the numerous groups operate for disparate motives and objectives. The three Angolan groups are fighting, not for independence—which they already have—but for the choice of a new dependence. Palestinians want a world without Israel. Baader-Meinhof dynamiters in Germany believe in violence as the deserved comeuppance of everything that exists. Japanese terrorists long to involve themselves in death-defying extremism. Ireland seems to require no specific reasons for violence. Moluccans shoot Dutchmen because they hate Indonesians.

Once urban warfare proved to be feasible, it did not take much for sundry elements of discontent to start “expressing themselves” in this harmless way. In fact, there is no civil war, only a guerrilla chaos; no concerted action, only the spread of a bad habit. It does appear to be a unified whole chiefly because the terrorists all speak the same language. Revolutionary Marxism has provided a common idiom not for the proletarians but for the psychopathic malcontents of all countries. The availability of this language is one of the salient political facts of our time. Discontent, often nothing more than a sullen emotion, draws from Marxism its purpose, target, and method. Marxist jargon provides both apparent justification and practical organization.

WE seem to be in the throes of a global civil war. There are terrorists in every country of the non-Communist world, resembling interlocking industrial directorates, or successive classes of graduates from the same guerrilla school. In fact, though, the numerous groups operate for disparate motives and objectives. The three Angolan groups are fighting, not for independence—which they already have—but for the choice of a new dependence. Palestinians want a world without Israel. Baader-Meinhof dynamiters in Germany believe in violence as the deserved comeuppance of everything that exists. Japanese terrorists long to involve themselves in death-defying extremism. Ireland seems to require no specific reasons for violence. Moluccans shoot Dutchmen because they hate Indonesians.

Once urban warfare proved to be feasible, it did not take much for sundry elements of discontent to start “expressing themselves” in this harmless way. In fact, there is no civil war, only a guerrilla chaos; no concerted action, only the spread of a bad habit. It does appear to be a unified whole chiefly because the terrorists all speak the same language. Revolutionary Marxism has provided a common idiom not for the proletarians but for the psychopathic malcontents of all countries. The availability of this language is one of the salient political facts of our time. Discontent, often nothing more than a sullen emotion, draws from Marxism its purpose, target, and method. Marxist jargon provides both apparent justification and practical organization.