Symbolism and Terrorism: The Cultural Selection of Targets

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Symbolism and Sacrifice in TerrorismJ. Dingley & M. Kirk-SmithPublished online: 08 Sep 2010.

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Symbolism and Sacrifice in Terrorism

JAMES DINGLEY and MICHAEL KIRK-SMITH

This article compares an ETA shooting incident in the Basque lands with an IRAbombing in Northern Ireland with the aim of examining the often overlooked role ofsymbolism in ethnic nationalist terrorist acts. The study of symbolism is importantbecause it plays a part in impelling the terrorist to act and then in defining the targetsof their actions. And one of the most important symbolic acts is that of sacrifice,particularly the blood sacrifice whereby acts of violence link with religion and withman’s collective being.

The article examines how the importance of symbolism to ethnic nationalistterrorist arises from the particular cultural, social and religious milieu in which theylive. This analysis suggests that the terrorist act itself is symbolic of the terrorist causeand should not be only understood in purely rational ‘means-ends’ terms.

Like Rosaldo’s ‘why’ to the headhunters, the ‘but how can that be?’of Itziar’s women is ultimately the recognition of an irresolvablequestion. One can take as models of writing Evans-Pritchard’s (1963)analysis of Shilluk regicide or Dostoyevski’s literary treatment ofRaskalnikov or Wittgenstein’s objections to Frazer about themetaphors of ritualized killing – manhood, terror, self-consciousness,mystical order, sacrifice. The thing itself, the sacramental literalnessof the sacrificial act, cries out against any final interpretation.

Zulaika, 1988, p.342.1

The Itziar Shooting

One day in 1972, Carlos, a local bus driver in the Basque village of Itziar,was gunned downed in front of a party of women and children whom he wasdriving to a neighbouring village. Although rumoured to be a policeinformer no one really had any evidence. He simply maintained goodrelations with the authorities. Carlos was shot by young terrorists from ETAwho he had grown up with and, like him, were fellow Catholics. Thewomen who witnessed the shooting knew and liked both perpetrators andvictim. Distraught, the women returned to the village asking the balefulquestion ‘But how can that be?’.2

Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.13, No.1 (Spring 2002), pp.102–128PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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The Omagh Bombing

Like Itziar’s women the people of Omagh no doubt asked the same questionafter the bombing of their town on Saturday 15 August 1998, when 29people were killed and over 300 injured in the worst single bombing of theNorthern Ireland ‘Troubles’.3

The bomb was planted by the ‘Real’ IRA, a group of dissident membersof the Provisional IRA (PIRA) who had split from them over the PeaceProcess. Many commentators saw the bombing as exceptional because itwas planted by a splinter group, however, nearly all involved werepreviously members of PIRA; indeed, its leader is reputed to be the formerquatermaster general (in charge of arms and logistics) of PIRA.4 The ‘Reals’were only continuing to do what PIRA had been doing for 30 years. It wasPIRA that had changed tactics, whereas the ‘Reals’ considered themselvesas following the real and true path of the IRA.

The only difference about Omagh as a bombing incident was the numberof casualties; a result of the bomb being planted in the wrong place bymistake. The mistake was probably due to the inexperience of those placingthe bomb rather than any muddle at the planning stage. For some reasonthey panicked at the last moment and placed the bomb in an area that shouldhave been safe for evacuees from the original intended target.5

For the rest of this article we intend to ignore the number of casualtiesarising from the mistake but, rather, concentrate on the intended nature ofthe bombing as a symbolic act whose consequences made it much morebloody than was intended.

Why Did They Do It?

Both the Itziar and Omagh incidents fitted into the established historical andcontemporary patterns of these terrorist groups. Both seemed inexplicableto contemporary observers - ‘But how can that be?’ Namely, what was theirpurpose? This question goes right to the heart of so much terrorism andlinks not only the people of Omagh with Itziar, but also with most victimsof terrorism, the wider community and their governments. The short answerto the question ‘But how can that be?’ is that we do not know. The purposeof this article is to attempt some explanation for why ethnic separatists suchas the IRA (in all its forms) and ETA, would carry out such apparentlypurposeless acts of violence, and why they continue to do so.

We suggest that positing a rational and causal ‘means-end’ calculationmay not be a sufficient explanation for all terrorist acts by themselves. Anunderstanding of how terrorists think on a subjective and culturallydetermined level is also required, where visions, images, emotional statesand experiences overlap and induce each other and find their representation

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in symbols. Causality is at least partly sub-conscious, and originates oremerges from the type of culture the terrorists represent and are part of. Thisaspect of ethnic separatist violence is often overlooked in much of theliterature on terrorism.6

Ethnic terrorist violence must also be understood in symbolic terms, bywhich we mean the act itself, rather than just the deliberate selection ofsymbolic targets. The nature of these symbolic acts requires an understandingof the interaction of key elements, namely, the terrorists’ social backgrounds,their religion and their ethnic nationalism, and place of sentiment andemotion in their belief systems. (And one of the most important symbolic actsin many societies is the sacrifical act of violence.) These key elements andtheir interactions will now be discussed and then synthesised to give apossible understanding as to why such acts can be committed.

The Elements of Ethnic Terrorism

As outlined above, our explanation will be guided by (i) the terrorists’ socialand religious backgrounds, (ii) their inter-relationship with theircommunity, (iii) the interaction between nationalism and religion, and, (iv)terrorism and religion. These elements are chosen since they are the mostfrequently referred to elements involved in the formation of ethnic nationalidentity.

Social and Religious Backgrounds

The religious and social characteristics of PIRA may be compared withthose of the Basque separatist group, ETA. ETA and PIRA not only havebroadly similar socio-religious profiles, but utilise similar tactics andstrategies and pursue similar ethnic/nationalist separatist goals.7 Also, bothETA and PIRA activists are overwhelmingly Catholics and, indeed, areoften direct recruits from Catholic social and religious organisations.8 Whilemany activists may no longer be practicing Catholics their formative yearsand socialization were almost entirely Catholic and they still continue tolive in almost entirely Catholic milieux. The idealism that led them to joinETA and PIRA was thus formed in a Catholic milieu. As the former high-ranking PIRA activist Sean O’Callaghan recalls:

The Irish Catholic Church was the single most influential institutionin daily life. ...

We learned that God and Irish nationalism marched hand in handto a tune shrouded in mystery but which was always clear to thefaithful. We were taught, over and over again, as part of our dailyschool routine, that Irish Catholics were special to God.9

104 SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES

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While O’Callaghan was a Southern Catholic his experience would havebeen little different to Catholics living in Northern Ireland. Not only doNorthern Catholics have their own separate school system but it is alsoprovided by the same Catholic ‘orders’ as in the South, for example, theChristian Brothers, and the effects of this are well documented in studiessuch as Worlds Apart.10

O’Doherty charts the pervasive influence of such an education onrepublican thought:

But for the Christian Brothers schools to have an effect in moulding afuture generation of republicans, it wasn’t even necessary that thoseschools taught the traditional yearning for a revolution against Britishrule; there was already a marked correspondence between traditionalCatholicism and republicanism, as if they shared the same template.11

Numerous studies of the PIRA and ETA have pointed to the mainly workingand lower-middle class origins of its members, both now and historically.12

They appear less intellectual or well educated than contemporary Europeanterrorist groups.13 However, while their political rhetoric can be quitesophisticated it is often lacking in any real analysis of the economic, socialand political consequences of their political goals.14

Two features characterise the communities from which the terrorists arerecruited. First, they are small and intimate, and also relatively isolated andself-sustaining.15 These factors facilitate internal control and support.Second, they are overwhelmingly Catholic and most ETA and PIRAmembers are Catholics. Catholicism is an essential part of their socialidentity and political idealism and it dominates their everyday lives andmuch of their consciousness.16

It may be argued that such small homogeneous, isolated, Catholiccommunities, with limited exchange with the outside world are notenvironments conducive to a rational intellectual analysis of complexeconomic and political situations, especially amongst people with relativelylesser education. (This point can also be argued almost as strongly in relationto Protestant/Loyalist communities in Northern Ireland.)17 Rather, such anenvironment is likely to induce introspection and self-defence mechanisms.18

The above conflation of small intimate communities and strong religiousaffiliation would also fit in with a long tradition in the social sciences,particularly social anthropology, which identifies the source of religion inthe collective. First developed in the sociology of Durkheim19 it is anaccepted strand in sections of social anthropology to see in the collectivemuch of what is holy and sacred.20

Thus, we argue that Catholic and parochial attitudes dominate the (ETAand PIRA) terrorists’ social milieux. This in turn leads to a culture


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dominated by religion and its images, introspection and a defensivenessagainst the external environment. Such would be particularly true if thatenvironment was dominated by alternative religious or secular imageswhich threatened a community’s subjective sense of being. Consequently asimple religious type message, a political metaphor, is better received andunderstood than a complex political analysis. This should shift our analysisto what Douglass and Zulaika refer to as: ‘... communal intersubjectivity,sensitivity to political metaphor, and awareness of the logic of ritualperformance’.21

The Community and the Terrorist

Such small, homogeneous, isolated, Catholic communities are furthercharacterised by large and interlinked matriarchal families, with a highlytraditional communal way of life.22 In rural areas this equates strongly withthe typical social structure of peasant society, an ideal (peasant culture) thatis carried over into urban Catholic communities via the ideals of ethnicnationalism. (That such ideals may not sit easily with the experience ofurban Catholics is attested to by the different levels of support and thedifferent attitudes of activists in rural and urban areas. The attachment ofBasque and Northern Ireland Catholics to their relative nationalisms ismuch less solid in urban Bilbao or Belfast and tends to be confined to veryspecific inner city districts.)23

But it is precisely the ideals of a traditional rural (peasant) societynationalist (ethnic) separatist terrorists are often fighting to preserve.24

Hence, the community, while it may formally disapprove of terroristmethods, will approve of the their aims, for community and individual arealmost inseparable under such circumstances and experience the same senseof threat.25

Although the women of Itziar asked the question ‘How can it be?’ noneof them informed on the assassins. By this, they indicated an understandingand even an acceptance of the act. Most of the women, and their families,attended Carlos’ funeral, but showed no remorse for the killing by implicitlycondoning it. Similarly, Sinn Fein, as representatives of a large proportionof the community, had condemned the Omagh bombing but still did notcooperate with the security forces in apprehending the terrorists, neither didother members of the Republican community.26 Although one mustremember that the simple threat of terrorist intimidation would also play amajor role, we would argue that that alone is insufficient and that there is adeeper moral/communal legitimation of the act.

The community and the terrorists are part of the same culture and cannotbe disentangled. By their reaction, the community, despite being the


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victims, are still giving implicit support to the terrorists and this allows theterrorists to attribute meaning to their acts. Condemnation still mingled withan ‘understanding’ of the perpetrators. This may be why ETA and the PIRAhave lasted so much longer (over 30 years) than the average westernterrorist group of around 2–6 years.27

Here we argue that the terrorist is a product of, and typical of, theircommunity. The terrorist cause is reflective of the wider communal fears.Thus, what they do is understood and has meaning in their community, evenif the acts are regretted. The terrorist and the community have the sameorientation and subjective interpretation of an outside world and itsrelationship to their community (again, the same may also be argued inconnection with Loyalists in Ulster).

Nationalism and Religion

Religious violence and nationalist violence are often separated out in theliterature on terrorism as two separate categories implying separate analysisand explanation. We suggest here that this separation may limit anunderstanding of the ‘world view’ or rationale of many terrorist groups.Much of the literature on nationalism, particularly its ethnic separatistvariant, goes to great length to stress its religious dimension.28 As Smith29

observes, most ethnic groups appear to evolve around a religious core. Thebackground and consequences of this relationship will now examined.

From its origins in the late eighteenth century, ethnic nationalism hasbeen imbued with a religious dimension. Johann Herder (1744–1803),Johann Fichte (1762–1814) and Georg Hegel (1770–1831) (the ‘Romantic’German philosophers central to the ideas of ethnic nationalism) all regardedthe existence of separate ethnic nations as part of God’s divine plan.30 Theyand their philosophy were strongly imbued with ideals of Lutheran Pietismthat led them to see the nation as part of God’s revealed truth on earth anda means to earthly salvation. The national will was God’s will and God’swill was not revealed in an headcount, that is a popular mandate, but inexperiential revelations that came not to all but only to those involved in‘the struggle’. (Conversely, the alternative unification nationalisms, such asthe UK, from which ethnic separatists wish to separate, were associatedwith irreligion and materialism.)

Part of God’s revelation was a result of inner experience and knowingwhich came through involvement in the struggle. ‘Sturm und Drang’ was animportant aspect of ethnic and romantic nationalism. It created heightenedexperience, awareness, of being closer to divine forces, but inevitablyfurther removed from material realities.31 The ethnic group was conceivedof as something pure, primordial and uncontaminated, with none of the


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contrived and superficial elements of civilization. So too was struggle andviolence, action not politics:

Such an action mentality substantiates perfectly Nietzsche’scontention that agency is the result of doing, that no agent exists apartfrom the acting out itself, that the doing is everything. Action havinga semantic autonomy of its own, power is embedded in situatedpractices and there is no other legitimation but performancecontingency.32

Politics was crafty and manipulated, false and deceitful and consequentlylacked legitimacy, action was pure and the purest act was violence. Violencebrought man back to nature and his inner self of emotion and beingunmediated by calculation, thus ‘propaganda by deed’.

Violence was thus holy, a spiritual and sacred act, as is still attested to inmodern social anthropology: as Girard wrote in his landmark book, ‘I haveused the phrase “violence and the sacred”; I might as well have said“violence or the sacred”. For the operations of violence and the sacred areultimately the same process.’33 While this was not the explicit philosophy ofHegel, Fichte or Kant it was how their ideas were used and manipulated byRomantic nationalists. Kant’s moral imperative that invoked the concept ofinner states of knowing and being was originally addressed to quite differentends but taken up by the Romantics and perverted into an eulogy of peasantlife, a particularly influential example of this being the case of Herder.34

Equally, Hegel’s advocacy of the nation state was used to legitimate theexistence of different ethnic groups. Ethnic groups became identified with aprimordial existence of pre-civilization, of naturalness and back to nature.A peasant life-style and values, culture and language which had local colourwas eulogised at the expense of artificial civilization with its restraint anddiscipline, its cosmopolitan and industrial, that is, unnatural, ways.35

Using this background, we can now start to interpret a cause of (ethnic)violence. It is precisely the clash that is found in the ethnic terrorist violenceof Northern Ireland or the Basque lands. In both, the ethnic experience ofbeing Irish or Basque as against being British or Spanish is couched in termsof traditional peasant culture against an encroaching industrial culture.36

A devout Catholicism is opposed to an encroaching Protestantism and/orsecularisation. Ever since the days of Marx, Durkheim and Weber, insociology,37 this has implied a metaphor for pre-industrial society asopposed to industrial, mystical as opposed to rational culture and emotionas against calculation.

This also helps explain the harder attitudes toward nationalism andviolence found in rural as against urban areas. It is these areas that are mostunder threat from modernizing industrial civilzation. Urban Basque and


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Irish Catholic nationalists are more likely to be integrated into the valuesand culture of industrial society, or at least feel ambivalent about peasantvalues and culture. Thus in commenting on Eamonn de Valera’s (one of thegreat icon figures of modern Irish Republicanism) 1937 Constitution in theSouth of Ireland Foster comments:

Articles 40, 41 and 45 of de Valera’s constitution implied or declaredthat a woman’s place was in the home; the image of rural utopianismwas incompatible with an industrialized female workforce or, it mightbe added, with any industrialized workforce at all.38

Such an analysis also fits in with the arguments concerning religiousviolence and terrorism developed by authors such as Rapoport orJuergensmeyer.39 Their ideas of religious violence being wrapped up incompeting struggles of cosmic truths where violence and sacrifice are partof the process leading to rebirth and salvation may now be seen as politicalmetaphor. Small worlds (communities) built on tradition and unthought outpatterns of behaviour in cosmic battle with a larger encroaching anddisruptive external world, built on rationally thought out premises.

Much of the literature on religion also stresses its emotional impact androle in individual’s lives.39 Emotions are a strong element in religion, andalso in ethnic identity. Emotions are regarded as natural and spontaneous,and by analogy similar to the ethnic group, and therefore eulogised.Consequently, it is not surprising to find religion and ethnic nationalismstrongly entwined, where the emotional rewards of a mystic salvation canbe opposed to the threats posed by a rationalizing civilization.

Not only is this the case in Ireland and the Basque lands but it may alsobe seen in Algeria and Egypt,40 Muslim countries that have attempted to‘modernise’ but have failed to provide the material rewards and stability,and hence emotional stability, promised. Hence men resort to what theyknow will provide them with emotional stability and react violently (bothemotionally and sacredly) to that which disturbed their emotions (profanedtheir sacred).

As Zulaika on the Basques41 or Boyce and Lyons42 on the Irish haveconsistently shown, it is an ethnic separatism that espouses peasant values,first given a political form by the German Romantics of the late eighteenthcentury, that is the essence of their nationalism. (Peasant here refers to asocio-economic structure and culture and is not intended as any pejorativereference.) There is a fundamental clash of peasant and industrial cultures,of a life in which religion is a core feature and of a life in which rationalismis a core feature.43

While Irish nationalists proclaimed themselves to be noble peasants(something of a major contradiction for the Catholic nationalists of Belfast


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and Londonderry) Ulster Unionists proclaimed themselves industrialworkers.44 Similarly Basque separatists are distinguished from the industrialworkers in Basque cities like Bilbao.45

Nationalism, particularly its ethnic variant, contains many of the samefeatures as organised religion; icons and symbols, ceremony and ritual,myth and mystery are all used to create a sense of oneness and inclusion, ofall being part of the same nation. A spiritual integration that is replicated inus all being of ‘the one god’, a sense of collective being and sharing thatincludes all believers and excludes all unbelievers. Above all an inner andemotional experience of ‘being’, not a calculated and rational one. And bothinvolve major elements of sacrifice and suffering at the core of theirexperience.46

This emphasis on emotive experience in ethnic nationalism helps toexplain the splits within both ETA and the PIRA between their Marxist andnon-Marxist wings. Marxist attempts at rational and materialist analysis ledthem to call off their ‘armed struggle’ and left them as bitter opponents ofthe non-Marxist wings who alone continued their violence.47

As many authors have observed, ethnic nationalism has a great appealfor non-intellectual activists and where a simple communal lifestyle isprevalent.48 It is a philosophy that appeals to societies fearing theencroachment of modern (industrial) civilisation. Here religion is also adominant feature of life and where the more violent nature of rural life, suchas hunting and animal slaughtering, generates a more sanguine attitude toblood shedding.49 Such societies are also dominated by formal religion, asin Ireland and among the Basques.

The (ethnic) nationalism associated with separatist terrorism is, weargue, also a religious-type experience whose core values of mystery,emotion and purity reflect a peasant way of life. Peasant and religious(communal) values are being threatened by the modern rational values thatdenigrate emotion and experience for rational (individual) calculation. (Thecommunal nature of peasant society can also be replicated in inner-cityghetto areas where tight-knit communities with close kin networks maygenerate a ‘village’ type world.) Such a peasant society and values are alsopart of a culture that utilizes images of violence, sacrifice and sufferingwhich reflect key aspects of peasant life.

Terrorism and Religion

There is a long relationship between terrorist violence and religion. Thisinvolves the traditional nature of the community, the symbolic importanceof religion, and the impact of the emotive and sacrificial aspects of religion.These elements will now be examined.


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History

It is useful to begin by recalling the founding fathers of sociology, notablyEmile Durkheim (1858–1917), Max Weber (1864–1920) and Karl Marx(1818–83). They witnessed the first wave of modern industrialisationencroaching upon traditional peasant society.50 In both Germany and Francethey noted the phenomenon of small peasant societies being disrupted bymodern industrial society, the often violent nature of peasant society and thecentral role religion played in them. Thus, they too witnessed the type ofevents behind the rise of Basque and Irish nationalism.

One of Durkheim’s great contributions was to draw attention to the holynature of the collective and to the role that suffering and sacrifice played inreligion and collective affirmation. These are themes still dominant in muchcontemporary social anthropology.51 Durkheim, Weber and Marx wereacutely aware of the central role of religion in all social life and the demandsand attacks that modern civilisation made on traditional societies andspiritual values; for example, Marx’ reference to the idiocy of rural life.52

Ethnic Violence and Religion

As already discussed, there is a strong correlation between ethnicity andreligion and much ethnic violence appears where modernity and traditionalsociety meet and clash. This is where secularising and individualisingcivilisation confronts religious and communal lifestyles. And this isprecisely the point made by many observers of the Irish and Basqueconflicts.53 Ethnic terrorism may thus often be seen as representing aconflict between religious-based traditional societies and modernisingrational ones, two different cultural imperatives.

Many modern commentators remind us that some of the earliest acts ofterrorism were religion-based.54 Also many of the most violent and lethalmodern terrorist groups are religious, such as the Islamic fundamentalistgroups or the Punjabi Sikhs. ‘Jihad’ is an extreme example of a commonphenomenon, since most religions instruct against profanity, that whichdesecrates the sacred. Many of the greatest acts of violence and war havebeen carried out in God’s name, such as the Crusades and the Thirty YearsWar (1618–48). Religion appeals to a transcendental authority that cannot bejudged in modern secular terms of material calculation. God’s will is not tobe comprehended solely in earthly terms, although material signs can oftenbe observed, but his displeasure can be felt, experienced via the emotions.

Just as plagues and natural disasters were often interpreted, in the past, assigns of a deity’s wrath so disruptions to the traditional and timeless patternsof close-knit communal or peasant life are interpreted today. A lifestyle thatis felt and ordered in an unthinking manner and built around close communal


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activity is felt to be crumbling under the incursions of modern, industrial,rational (Godless) ways. While more overt signs of Godly displeasure can beseen in deserted farms and high rates of unemployment.

Zulaika highlights the problem in his discussion of the baserria inBasque society. The baserria is the traditional communal farm-come-homestead, the cornerstone of traditional Basque peasant society andeconomy woven together into a cultural lifestyle that was more than ameans of earning a living:

The decline of the baserri life-style has been viewed by many as thedecline of Basque language and culture. Recent industrialization hasimposed on rural society radical departures from the ‘traditional’modes of life. Basque perception of a survival threat to their collectiveidentity and the fight to preserve that identity are intrinsicallyconnected to this dramatic transformation.55

One attempt to overcome the decline of the baserri, which were uneconomiccompeting against modern industrial agro-business, was to introducecooperatives to enable collective survival. However, they failed dismally asmost baserri farmers chose to ignore them. The reason was simple: to beeconomically effective the cooperatives needed to impose the very rational(industrial) disciplines of quotas, regular deliveries, accounting and profitand loss analysis that the baserri culture was fighting against in the firstplace. A similar problem had also affected cooperatives (creameries) andother attempts at agricultural improvements in pre-independence Ireland:

... as when proposals to establish a co-operative creamery in theCounty Limerick town of Rathkeale on non-party lines were greetedwith the ringing declaration that Rathkeale ‘is a nationalist town –nationalist to the backbone – and every pound of butter made in thiscreamery must be made on nationalist principles, or it shan’t be madeat all’.56

The very fact that the above quote refers to an incident 100 years ago andmirrors an attitude in contemporary Basque society attests to thetraditionalism of ethnic nationalism. And this was in an Ireland the essenceof whose nationalism and separatism (from the UK) Hoppen notes as:‘... their dream was – at the deepest level – always portrayed in terms of anidealized conception of “traditional” rural values and attitudes of mind’.57

The very things that were being introduced to help save the communitywere in fact symbolic of the threat to the community, the admission ofprofaning impurities, of modern culture. The sacred was being profaned, theGods were being offended and needed to be assuaged and the (holy)collective required cleansing. The Gods required a ritual sacrifice to


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appease their hurt which would also act to ritually cleanse the community.This, we suggest, is the essence of much ethnic political violence andterrorism; a ritual sacrifice, an offering up that will appease the God andpurify the disrupted community. A symbolic act, as Girard observes: ‘Thepurpose of the sacrifice is to restore harmony to the community, to reinforcethe social fabric.’58

The act of sacrifice is to recall the collective back to its ‘true’ self, thatwhich is sacred. To recall the community away from the corruptinginfluences of modern (outside, non-ethnic) life that are disrupting theunthought out patterns of traditional culture. For Cohen it also has anotherpurpose for the individual actor carrying out, or participating in, thesacrifice which is: ‘... not to induce magically a reaction in someone else,but to induce or sustain a state of mind in its perpetrator’.59

It is not surprising then to find that many terrorist activists are thuspeople who feel oppressed more by socio-economic and cultural changes,rather than any empirically-defined act of oppression. Thus Zulaika60 pointsto the high proportion of ETA activists who come from ‘failed’ baserribackgrounds. Stewart61 writes of a ‘shatter belt’ around the borders ofUlster, where ‘modern’ Ulster clashes with ‘traditional’ Ireland. Theirviolence is a (partly) symbolic act against an incursionary world and theirvictims are sacrifices that attempt to cleanse their community of a profanity.(In Ulster the cleansing aspect may also be applied to Loyalist violence whoact against incursionary worlds as seen in the movement of Catholics intoProtestant areas and jobs.)

Conflation of Ethnic Nationalism and Religion

The Irish Republican and Basque Nationalist traditions are heavilyconflated with Catholicism and always have been. In graffiti and wallpaintings of Republican areas in Northern Ireland one sees the dailyconflation of Republican nationalism and Catholicism.62 The imagery andsymbols of oppressed Ireland utilise Catholic imagery and symbols, such asMother Ireland and the Virgin Mary, suffering and supplicant. As the formerIRA activist Sean O’Callaghan recalls of his schooldays:

The Virgin Mary was an Irish colleen. Padraig Pearse and the otherrebel leaders executed by the British after the Easter rising of 1916were painstakingly interwoven with images of Christ and Catholicmartyrs into a seamless mix of blood sacrifice for faith andfatherland’.63

It is the symbolic relations between the two that are more striking thanthe concrete representations. The icons of Catholicism become the symbols


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of republicanism. (A similar case can be made for Ulster Loyalists and theiruse of Protestant symbols, but less so, as they tend to have fewer religioussymbols, the bible as the revealed word of God stands alone in the UlsterProtestant psyche.64)

In a like manner Zulaika observes of his villagers:

The youth of Itziar, directly or indirectly involved in the violence, aswell as the Itziar spectators of such violence, have all been schooledin reading visual images basically in the iconic mode of their church’sreligious imagery.65

Their church, of course, being the Catholic church. From the beginning ofthe nineteenth century, in Irish nationalism, there was an overt conflationwith Catholicism: thus Boyce notes the nineteenth century reference toCatholics as ‘The Irish, Properly So Called’.66

The Leader of the 1916 Easter rising, Patrick Pearse, from whom themodern IRA claims direct descent and legitimacy, totally conflated hisnationalism with his Catholicism, as the Australian historian MacDonaghcomments:

The Irish people was he wrote, like the Christian soul, made in God’simage and likeness; ... national freedom bore the same four marks asthe divine religion in its unity, sanctity, catholicity and apostolicsuccession.67

Indeed, the 1916 rising, the most significant event in modern IrishRepublicanism, was conceived almost totally in the sacrificial and symbolicterms of Irish Catholicism. In this interpretation, the act alone counted, pureand undefiled, an image impossible to erase, implanted in peoples’ minds itcarried its own message. It was its own act of revelation and not to berationalised into any cunning scheme of political calculation, an heroic andsacrificial gesture that offered ritual roles for actors and an image ofsalvation, as MacDonagh noted. It was a symbolic act aimed at evoking aspirit of rebellion by invoking the sacrificial image of Christ on the cross asa role model for national redemption.

Similarly, Zulaika writes of the iconic communication of ETA politicsthat operates on a kind of transcendental level:

... the ETA kind of politics makes parliamentary politicians appearhopelessly superficial and flawed, for theirs is the communication ofmerely conscious talk, which inevitably leads to lying – they attemptto define Truth only verbally or consciously. In several Basque folktales, to the question what is truth? The response is kaka zarra (oldshit).68


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Action is truth, violence and sacrifice testify to a truth (of the existenceof the nation) that transcend the superficial deals and compromises of thepoliticians (the Good Friday Agreement). As Christ sacrificed himself onthe cross for God’s truth so must men sacrifice themselves for the nation’struth. As Arthur writes of the 1981 hunger striker Bobby Sands:

... he could expect to be dead by Easter – both a secular celebration ofdestruction and renewal, as well as of a Holy Beginning – if hisdemands were not met. His inspiration extended back to Christ: ‘Nogreater love hath a man than to lay down his life for his friends.’ Theimagery and the symbolism were politico-religious in character.69

The sacred character of the nation implies the same ritual and symbolicsacrifices as religion. It recalls the collective to the truth of its communalorigins. In this way the bombing of Omagh could be seen as recallingrepublicans to their national truth and to eschew the falsehoods of politics.The shooting of Carlos was an act of ritual sacrifice since Carlos symbolisedcontact with the outside (modern) world and a warning to others who wouldprofane the sacred by establishing similar relations. Both were symbolicacts, sacrifices, to the God.

Summary

Terrorist acts of violence are incomprehensible in purely rational terms of‘means-end’ analyses, but are redolent of cultural imagery, expressingthings that could not be spoken.

Emotion and Religion

Durkheim emphasised the role of ceremony, of communal acts, of real andsymbolic sacrifices, that heightened people’s sense of being and awareness.This actually induced, in his analysis, a mass hysteria that transformed theindividual.70 Emotional involvement and commitment are central featuresand most religions evolve around it. They involve invoking strong images of a transcendental order, emotions and feeling states that defy earthlyrational explanation. The ‘mystery’ of trans-substantiation in the CatholicMass is not to be explained, but it transposes the individual.

The Mass is a symbolic act whereby one participates in the act ofChrist’s sacrifice. So, Arthur argues,71 was the involvement of thecampaigners for the hunger strikers in 1981 in Ireland, participating in theirsacrifice and becoming part of the one communal body. Particularlyimportant was the role of women, mothers suffering as the Virgin Mary (oneof Catholicism’s strongest icons) did for Jesus. A truly religious-likeexperience where one man’s (self) sacrifice acted to recall and reawaken in


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the collective a true sense of oneness and being and active involvement, ofparticipation for all.

The hunger-strikes (1981) became the catalyst for the political fortunesof PIRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein. They led to increased communalsolidarity within Catholic communities, but, significantly, increased thosecommunities’ distance from the state and the Protestants.

Religion, through metaphor, ceremony and ritual, helps set up anemotionally orientated/approach to significant aspects of man’s place in theworld, particularly his national identity. This integration of emotion andsymbolism, central to both religion and nationalism, may be formative ingiving terrorists non-rational causal grounds to act. They channel theirresentment at the loss of a traditional way of life that gave them a place inthe world and meaning into symbolic acts of sacrifice.

The study of religion has long emphasised the emotional role that itplays in life. Particularly the role of ceremony, ritual, icons and symbols isemphasised, to induce emotional sentiments and to recall images and statesof mind. Many early studies of religion emphasised the role of ritual andceremony to induce an intensely emotional experience. As Marett puts it‘savage religion is not something that is so much thought out as dancedout’.72 The act induces an emotional state that is religion, belief, the cause.And dancing also implies a rhythm, an order, a transcendent structure tomovement and act that is (consciously) unthought out.

Durkheim specifically equated religion and society (i.e., nation or ethnicgroup) which in turn implies order and rhythm to movement (structural-functionalism), with religion as the symbolic representation of society.Thus, religious acts may become emotional responses to social demands,recalling the need for community and cooperation, and symbolicrepresentations of the society and its values.

Marett’s dancing out is ‘act’, inducing an emotional state which whencarried out in company with others intensifies the emotional experience.The worship of images, or icons, plays a similar function, by concentratingon the image, as does the performance of ritual. By inducing the emotionalstate one is able to make the shift from the rational to the non-rational worldin which ordinary explanation and legitimation is no longer required.Emotional states are induced and emotions satisfied via religion.

In both Irish and Basque nationalism religion plays a central role indefining the national experience, so just as religion is acted out so one’sethnic identity is acted out. Just as sacrifices and rituals to the gods are anacted out commitment and affirmation so too are terrorist acts on behalf ofthe ethnic community.

As Durkheim73 described religious ceremony and communal worship asa kind of mass emotional experience that transformed the individual, placed


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them on a different emotional level, so Zulaika observes the same in Basquepolitical culture:

Massive political demonstrations may also reach a climax in whichthe participants are ‘transformed’ into a different psychic state asmanifested in singing, shouting, or facial expressions – these, too, areritual occasions on which the purely conventional is surpassed by theactual embodiment of emotional and psychological states.74

Religion, while about many things, is also about emotion and non-rationalbehaviour. Explanation that goes beyond rational calculation and satisfies atan emotional level. Acts are to be understood on that emotional level, withsymbols and images recalling the emotional experience to others. Feelingsof understanding, not rational analysis, that transcend the material andcalculable and recall higher things.

Symbols, Image and Sacrifice

Image, as Zulaika reminds us,75 is important in the essentially peasantsocieties from which much of PIRA and ETA recruit. These arenon-intellectual communities where rationalising intellectualism is not afeature of life, indeed it is part of what they are against. In such societiesmen tend to conceptualise in images and symbols and these may be relatedmerely by proximity rather than causal association. This is evidenced by theparticularly strong use and worship of icons and statues, for example, theMadonna of Itziar,76 or the crucifix in their religion. (Ulster Protestantism isalmost intensely non-iconic, the bareness of its churches come as quite ashock to outsiders, many do not even have a cross on their altar.)

Within the imagery and symbolism of religion, the notion of sacrificerequires special attention in the context of terrorist violence. Nearly allreligion involves the elements of sacrifice and suffering,77 and this is nodifferent in Catholicism. The suffering of Christ on the cross and Hissacrifice for man’s redemption are central features in Catholicism. Theblood sacrifice recalled via the ceremony and ritual of the symbolic drinkingof Christ’s blood and the eating of His body in the sacraments and as acollective act of worship are central to the Catholic experience. Redemptionvia the blood sacrifice is a major and compelling image in the mind of IrishCatholics, who also attend Catholic schools and live in exclusively Catholicneighbourhoods.

The relation of the religious blood sacrifice may now be related by theterrorists to their own blood sacrifices. This may occur via a process akin tothat of psychoanalytical transference,78 whereby strong emotions aretransferred from one object to another, or via a more cognitive route


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whereby the two types of sacrifice are recognised, consciously orunconsciously, to have similar affect-laden underlying schema.79

Schemata are powerful memory structures (similar in form to labellingtheory in sociology) that affect our perceptions of objects, our memory forevents and even our thought processes. The simple idea behind schematatheory is that our mental representation of the world is arranged in discretememory packets. It has been shown that whenever people witness events orread a story, schemata cause them to misperceive or mis-remember events;even children as young as three years old are subject to schemata. Thusschemata colour our whole perception of the world. They are memorystructures used for determining our perception, memory and action. Whatgives schemata added power is that they are outside of our consciouscontrol, they are automatically invoked by cues in the world. The meremention of a term or sight of an object will automatically evoke a wholeassociated scenario in recipients’ memories.80

If one equates the nation with religion, as ethnic nationalists andterrorists, we suggest, tend to do, then the nation too demands its sacrifices(as the First World War and, more recently, Bosnia and Kosovo haveshown). The sacrifice heightens tension and awareness, it focuses attentionand recalls greater transcendental forces that make demands of mortal men,blood sacrifice is the overall schemata. The greater the sacrifice the moresanctified and holy the cause, the more intense the experience, the more itrecalled its people to the cause.

Images of passion and suffering are central to most national myths – thelong struggle and sacrifices made for independence. Icons and imagesoperate via schemata. (Interestingly, in Ireland the Loyalists have their ownblood sacrifice in images of the First World War, particularly the Battle ofthe Somme, 1916, where the Ulster Division suffered over 5,000 casualtieson the first day alone.)81

It is plausible that such images from religion and nationhood becomeconflated in the mind and form an emotive message based on association,not logical cause-effect relations. In discussing the role and nature of‘bertsolari’ (rhyming couplets of poetic form that are central to the Basquecultural tradition), Zulaika comments:

In this succession of images a syntax of causals and conditionals isunwanted. The expressive power lies precisely in the discontinuity ofthe images, in their not being linked in a causal process, in theelliptical yet metaphorically successful connection of imagesbelonging to different domains of experience. Causality here isellipsis. A bertso is not composed of ‘because’ propositionalconnectives but simply has a next line with the same rhythm andrhyme. ‘Why’ they are connected is ‘because’ they are part of thesame bertso.82


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Similarly, images of Christ’s sacrifice, suffering and passion may mixwith images of ‘our suffering people’ and need no causal analysis to implythe act. Terrorists and their community both understand the analogy directlythrough their common culture and shared schema. This understoodsymbolism may lie behind the community’s implicit acceptance of terroristviolence and provide the terrorists with an emotive, if not rational, rationalefor violence. Thus O’Doherty writes:

Republicanism and Catholicism are both about the reward forsacrifice. The true Catholic and the true republican give up theirordinary lives to heroic self-sacrifice for the attainment of a promisedland. For the Catholic the promise is of an eternity of bliss, for therepublican the promised land is the republic, a new Ireland which isimagined to be the restoration of a pure and ancient Ireland,uncontaminated by British influence.83

The purpose of the sacrifice is to link the unconnected, of Catholic salvationand republican purity. As Levi-Strauss has observed: ‘Sacrifice seeks toestablish a desired connection between two initially separate domains.’84

Sacrifice is the symbolic link between the different schemata, and thesacrificial act is the terrorist one:

In terrorism, as in ritual, the means-end relationship between actionand effect is closer to the symbolic logic of magic than to the rationallogic of mechanical linkages.85

Acts of terrorist violence we now argue can be seen as symbolic acts thatrecall images, or schemata, that in turn recall ideas of a culture or way oflife under threat. It is an emotional recall of conflated images, a symbolicrepresentation of transcendental forces (a social order or culture above theindividual). The social order itself is not clearly enunciated but rather a feltexperience, a rhythm of life, an emotional state of oneness betweenindividual and community. Such a state is felt as part of a naturaltranscendent order (the religious experience) and utilises the religioussymbols it knows to recall its members to defence of that order. Sacrificeand suffering are those major symbols and the message is understood.

A Synthesis

Implicit and explicit in much of the text so far has been the idea thatterrorists only operate successfully because they have a certain level ofcommunity support. Indeed, both terrorist and community seek to defendthe same interests, experience the same transcendent order and recognisethe same symbols. They experience the same things in the same way and


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share the same emotions, thus symbolic acts of sacrifice are commonlyunderstood. Consequently the community understands the terrorist act, inthis lies its symbolic power and its ability to recall the community to anhigher order and set of values.

What terrorist and community share is a religious and parochial outlookthat creates a distrust, even fear, of the outside world and change, and thisis felt on an emotional rather than an analytical level. These are alsocommon themes in separatist nationalisms, and religious fundamentalism.Consequently, change may be felt as a kind of emotional suffering and loss(this can also equate with some real material loss transmogrified) that issymbolically recalled via sacrificial acts. Some of the most importantsacrificial acts are those of violence, which symbolically strike out at theforces of profanity that defile the sacred way of life, a blood cleansing. Inthis way acts transcend normal, that is, rational interpretation, as they arethere to recall believers to the ‘holy’ cause, the unthought out rhythms ofnatural (peasant) life.

The above analysis implies an emphasis upon a structural-functionallevel of interpretation in the idea of unthought out rhythms of life. A recentmajor study of the conflict in Northern Ireland, by Ruane and Todd,86 hasbrought back to academic attention the idea of structural patterns ofrelationships between Catholic and Protestants as central to anunderstanding of the problems there. However, what is strange, given thatone of the authors (Ruane) is a sociologist is the failure to develop thestructural analysis above simple levels of political structures of power anddomination.

What we are suggesting is that social structures exist that areantipathetical to each other and that these, in turn, are grounded in differentsocio-economic systems and their ideals. The ideals being often representedin symbols that represent different types of structured consciousness, in turnreflecting different interests. In Northern Ireland these achieve, verybroadly, a symbolic representation in Protestant and Catholic which in turnrepresent industrial and rural (peasant) socio-economic structures. Althoughit is much more problematic for many Catholics who are increasinglyassimilated into Northern Ireland’s industrial socio-economic system87

(previously much more the preserve of the Protestants.88) Indeed, the veryassimilation of Catholics may well be seen as the major threat against whichthe Republican (Catholic) activist is battling. Something similar may wellbe at work in the Basque lands, where industrialising ‘Spanishness’confronts traditional rural Basque society.

The question raised in the introduction was how could terrorists carryout atrocities such as the Omagh bombing and the Itziar killing. Drawingtogether the discussions on the elements above, we are now in a position to


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give a plausible, if partial, explanation for some of the motivations behindsuch terrorist violence. Taking together the key elements of theirbackgrounds and belief systems, we suggest that a self-supportinginterpretation of their acts is generated which allows them to justify past,present and future violent actions. As already noted, mass support is notassociated with the typical terrorist campaign, although some degree ofcommunity toleration is essential for a successful one.

What might be the basis of such an interpretation? Violent acts, such asOmagh, would give an experience of being responsible for the deaths andmaiming of innocent people, the opprobrium of the community at large, andan isolation from external societal norms. These may lead to an high levelof emotional turmoil and concentration. Within ethnic terrorism, asdiscussed above, religion and nationalism are inextricably linked.Therefore, a plausible channel for a re-interpretation is the highlyemotionally charged symbolism provided by their Catholic religion relatingto the suffering and sacrifice necessary for redemption and salvation.

Using this readily available model as a metaphor, they may reinterprettheir actions as related to three forms of suffering and sacrifice necessary toachieve their goal.

First, their own ‘self-sacrifice’, namely, by incurring society’s rejectionof them.

Second, their emotional suffering at causing the deaths and physical andemotional suffering of innocent others.

Third, the death and suffering of innocent others may be reinterpreted asa necessary ‘blood sacrifice’ in achieving Irish unity for PIRA and Basqueindependence for ETA.

In summary, the heightened emotions caused by the aftermath of theiractions may be channelled into a religious-type experience, from which theycan draw, through a process of analogy or transference, the justifications fortheir actions. Further, in cases like Itziar and Omagh, they may even stillretain a degree of community understanding from their own ethnic group,being blamed at a tactical level only and not at the level of causalresponsibility.

Conclusion

PIRA and ETA are not advancing an argument based mainly on quantifiablerewards and benefits; the ethnic separatist movement is notable, as a groupseeking political autonomy, for its lack of analysis of the real cost(especially economic) of its nationalism. It is a holy ‘war’, similar to that ofthe Islamic fundamentalists, except that paradise is brought down to earth inthe form of a nation uncorrupted by alien impurities and oppression. The


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appeal of much ethnic nationalism is not about rationally quantifiable andcalculable rewards (which is not to say that there are not rational reasons fornationalism). Thus, as Whyte says about Northern Ireland:

... that the conflict is so intractable because it is not economic.Economic conflicts about the share-out of material benefits arebargainable: conflicts about religion and nationality arenon-bargainable and therefore much harder to resolve.89

This also explains the importance of symbols, both symbolic targets andsymbolic sacrifices, in nationalist type political violence – symbolsrepresent the nation and its ideal. Symbols not only represent the nation butalso help define it and mark out its boundaries. Symbols communicateimportant ideas of collective identity and being, they thus become verypotent ways of galvanising collective sentiment and implying forms ofbehaviour.90 This was why the Irish Civil War 1922–24 (far more brutal thanthe preceding insurrection against the UK, 1919–21) was fought almostentirely about the symbolic trappings of the new Irish Free State when it hadall the substance of independence.91

A ‘common sense’ expectation is that in the face of the popular opinionof their community and their peers, terrorists, such as the Omagh bombers,will feel remorse for their actions and reject violence. However, theargument here is, on the contrary, that they may not feel remorse or call offtheir campaign, at least not for these reasons. They may recognise that acertain amount of opprobrium has attached to their organisation and try tochange its name or image, or even start a new organisation with none of theadverse conotations. However, their attitudes to violence and the sufferingthey cause will not be affected since it symbolises and sanctifies so much oftheir cause. This hypothesis is supported by reports that the Omagh bombers(the Real IRA) were in talks with Continuity IRA about a merger92 and haveresumed their campaign in 2001.

Many attempts at explaining terrorist behaviour concentrate on purelyrational explanations in terms of traditional ideas of strategy. Indeed, forSmith,93 a core problem is to how to explain PIRA behaviour that appears toconform to no conventional strategic rationale. In contrast, we haveattempted to explain their behaviour as, at least in part, non-rational.Separatist terrorism is itself representative of separatist (ethnic) nationalism,which, in turn, is representative of a reaction against the rationalisingtendencies of modernisation. The terrorists’ political agenda is partly arejection of modernising rationalism and their acts are symbolic expressionsof the non-rational. Violence is to be understood as much as a symbolicstatement as a rationally calculated act. Such an appreciation requires not somuch deductive reasoning as intuitive understanding, as there may be noobvious logical connection between act and outcome.


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Thus, we proffer an explanation for why such seemingly senseless actstake place, even when they appear counter-productive to outsiders. ‘Whatpurpose does it serve?’ is a frequently asked question after many outrages.The purpose we present is that of acts of defiance, a statement of rejection,also an act of sacrifice and ritual cleansing. These are symbolic acts and arenot to be analysed according to normal political behaviour. Their aim is tomake a statement and to become a focus of people’s attention, to affectemotional states and to recall people to their cultural/religious origins. Assuch, it implies a sympathetic relationship between act, actor and audience;that the audience knows what the symbol means and how they shouldrespond.

By audience we imply, here, not the ‘outside’ audience of non-nationalists or ‘oppressors’, but the audience of the actors’ own group. Whilea terrorist act is directed at outsiders as well, it is also directed at the homegroup, just as religious sacrifices are aimed at warding off evil spirits theyare also aimed at the spiritual renewal or reinforcement of the believers. Inthis sense the terrorist acts as the priest and faces two ways, not one.

The idea of a sympathetic audience lay behind the fact that Itziar’swomen regretted the killing of Carlos but no one informed. Part of theparadox in the question of ‘how could this be?’ lay in their own tolerationof an act they regretted. Similarly in Omagh, for all the condemnation of thebomb no one, especially republicans, thought of informing on the bombers,even though their identities were reliably rumoured to be known.94 Sinn Feinwas very equivocal when asked if any information it had on the bomberswould be passed on to the security forces. The act was ‘understood’, evenby many of its victims. Thus the act could be justified, even legitimated,while at the same time condemned. The shooting of Carlos and the bombingof Omagh (even if its casualties were a mistake) were both symbolic actswhose symbolism was understood by their target audience.

For Carlos it was a case of his contacts with the outside world, both as abus driver linking Itziar with the outside and as a contact with the stateauthorities, that was important. He symbolised the incursion of the outsideworld into Itziar and the disruption of their traditional ‘felt’ way of life.Similarly, the ‘Real’ IRA saw the talks and the ‘peace process’ ascompromise, as giving into and accepting the non-Irish influences, theculture and values of an outside world that had to be ritually cast out. Bothwere symbolic acts to recall men to their roots and origins and to remindthem of the dangers of external incursions, such as facilitated via theProvisionals’ agreement to involvement in talks.

Perversely the unintended tragedy of Omagh may well have an oppositeeffect to that which outsiders might expect. The very suffering and anguisharoused both in and by perpetrators and victims may well turn it into an


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even bigger blood sacrifice and hence symbolic barrier than was expected.Both Catholic nationalist and republican terrorist understand the symbolsand will interpret them according to their cultural empathy, providing acommon bond, even if the act is regretted. A primary purpose of the terroristact is to influence just as much the sympathetic community as the‘oppressor’ forces.

In this appreciation one can find important insights for a successfulanti-terrorist strategy – breaking the sympathetic link. To create anenvironment in which no audience can ‘understand’ terrorist acts. Thisimplies breaking the cultural and emotional links between terrorists andaudience which in turn brings one back to the origins of the conflict inethnic and religious campaigns. It is the threat to known cultures and waysof life that leads to the violence and its understanding in the first place.There is thus a need to comprehend the wider economic and social causesbehind the violence if one is to do anything more than call a temporary haltto it.

Much contemporary work on political violence tends to see terrorist actsas strategic choices which emphasise ideas such as the PIRA’s ‘long war’strategy.95 Although it is pertinent to understanding terrorist organisationsand behaviour it often overlooks the emotive, cultural and subjectiveaspects behind terrorist behaviour. Equally, much research tends towardsthe narrative and empirical, looking for patterns of behaviour. Suchapproaches, being essentially atheoretical, consequently have limited valuefor effecting interventions.

We suggest the need for an alternative and complementary approach bysuggesting a theoretical explanation for terrorist acts that moves beyondstudying ‘what’ happens to ‘why’ it happens and by so doing trying tounderstand the mentality and motivations of terrorists. This could assist indeveloping preventative strategies in the first instance as well as insightsinto how to negotiate with and counter terrorist activists.

NOTES

1. J. Zulaika, Basque Violence (Univ. of Nevada Press 1988).2. Zulaika (note 1) pp.83–5.3. The ‘Reals’ emerged in 1997 as hardline PIRA men who were against the peace process

strategy. The term ‘Real’ was an appellation of the press and reflected the way dissidentmembers of PIRA tried to present themselves as the real IRA continuing the real strugglewhen arguing their case in republican circles. See The Economist, 22 Aug. 1998, pp.22–3.

4. Confidential security source.5. Confidential security source.6. Two recent, and very good, authors in this vein are, M.L.R. Smith, Fighting For Ireland

(London: Routledge 1995); or C.J.M. Drake, ‘The Role of Ideology in Terrorists’ TargetSelection’, Terrorism and Political Violence 10/2 (Summer 1998) pp.53–86.


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7. See Zulaika (note 1); R. Clark, The Basque Insurgents (Univ. of Wisconsin Press 1984).Smith, Fighting (note 6); J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army, The IRA (Dublin: Poolbeg 1990).Tim Pat Coogan, The IRA. (Glasgow: Fontana 1989); M.Taylor and E.Quayle, Terrorist Lives(London: Brassey’s 1994).

8. Zulaika (note 1) on the Basques or Malachi O’Doherty, The Trouble With Guns (Belfast:Blackstaff 1998) on the IRA.

9. S. O’Callaghan, The Informer (London: Corgi 1999) pp.34–5.10. D. Murray, Worlds Apart (Belfast: Appletree 1985). This charts the nature and effect of

segregated education in Northern Ireland where Catholics have their own separate, from thestate, schools system.

11. O’Doherty (note 8) p.19.12. Clark (note 7); Zulaika (note 1); O’Doherty (note 8); J. Darby, Intimidation and the Control

of Conflict in Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1986); Tom Garvin, TheEvolution of Irish Nationalist Politics (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981).

13. James Dingley, ‘The Terrorist – Developing a Profile’, International Journal of Risk,Security and Crime Prevention 2/1 (1997). C.A. Russell and B.H. Miller, ‘Profile of aTerrorist’, Terrorism 1/1 (1997).

14. James Dingley, ‘A Reply to White’s Non-Sectarian Thesis of PIRA Targeting’, Terrorismand Political Violence 10/2 (Summer 1998) pp.106–17.

15. D. Eversley, Religion and Employment in Northern Ireland (London: Sage 1989). Clark(note 7); Darby (note 12); O’Doherty (note 8); and Zulaika (note 1).

16. This point is stressed very strongly by both O’Doherty (note 8) on the IRA and Zulaika (note1) on ETA. See also Jonathan Tonge, Northern Ireland: Conflict and Change (HemelHempsted: Prentice Hall 1998) and Rosemary Harris, Prejudice and Tolerance in Ulster(Manchester UP 1986).

17. See Steve Bruce, The Red Hand (Oxford: OUP 1992) and The Edge of the Union. (Oxford:OUP 1994) on Ulster Loyalists/Protestants.

18. A.P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Routledge 1985) discusseshow lying is developed as a means to defend small communities. The community is seen asthe greater truth to be defended against outside truths that may well disrupt it. Defensiveness,not rational analysis is the key imperative. A similar point was constantly made by EmileDurkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (NY: Free Press 1964) in his discussions ofcollective life, that when under threat they tend to a greater insularity and defensiveness andpressurise individuals to a collective conformity. In social-psychology I.L. Janis, Groupthink(Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1982) makes a similar point in relation to the psychology ofgroup behaviour.

19. Durkheim (note 18) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (NY: Free Press 1995);Steve Lukes, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work (London: Peregrine 1975).

20. Cohen (note 18). R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1977),The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP 1989) and Brian Morris AnthropologicalStudies of Religion (Cambridge: CUP 1987)

21. J. Zulaika and W.A. Douglass, Terror and Taboo (London: Routledge 1996).22. Clark (note 7); Darby (note 12); O’Doherty (note 8); Zulaika (note 1).23. For discussions on the rural/urban divide see Clark and Zulaika (note 7); Eamon Collins,

Killing Rage (London: Granta 1998)24. On the nature of ethnic nationalism see, L. Greenfeld Nationalism, Five Roads to Modernity

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 1993); E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford:Blackwell 1983); A. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell 1986); E.Kedourie, Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1993); T.H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism(London: Pluto 1993); E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism (Cambridge: Canto 1992).

25. See Cohen (note 18) and Durkheim (note 19) particularly for discussions on the nature of theindividual in pre- industrial society. Also A. Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory(Cambridge: CUP 1971); R.A. Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition (London: Heinemann1970).


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26. The Independent (London), 9 Sept. 1998 reports that known members of the ‘Reals’ werewarned by PIRA as to their future conduct, but there is no mention or hint of anyoneinforming on the bombers to the security forces.

27. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (London: Gollancz 1998).28. Greenfeld (note 24), Kedourie (note 24), A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood

(Cambridge: CUP 1997) A. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin 1991).29. Smith (note 24).30. Kedourie (note 24); Greenfeld (note 24).31. Ibid.32. Douglass and Zulaika (note 21) p.76.33. Girard (note 20) p.258.34. J.M. Lyon, ‘The Herder Syndrome’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 17/2 (1994).35. See Greenfeld (note 24) particularly on the German Romantics.36. D.G. Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1991); R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland

(London: Penguin, 1989); Garvin (note 12) on Ireland and Clark (note 7) and Zulaika (note1) on the Basques.

37. See Durkheim (notes 18 and 19) or Max Weber, The Theory of Social and EconomicOrganization (NY: Free Press 1964) and Giddens (note 25).

38. Foster (note 36) p.546.39. See Morris (note 20) or M.B. Hamilton, The Sociology of Religion (London: Routledge

1995).40. Martha Crenshaw, ‘Political Violence in Algeria’, Terrorism and Political Violence 6/3

(Autumn 1994) pp.261–80.41. Zulaika (note 1). 42. Boyce (note 36); F.S.L. Lyons Culture and Anarchy in Ireland (Oxford: OUP 1982). 43. This was central to the origins of sociology in the nineteenth century, see Giddens (note 20),

A. Swingewood, A Short History of Sociological Thought (London: Macmillan 1984) orNisbet (note 25).

44. Foster (note 35); P. Gibbon, The Origins of Ulster Unionism (Manchester UP 1975).45. Clark (note 7); Zulaika (note 1).46. Greenfeld (note 24) indicates the importance of suffering as an expression of nationalist

experience. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso 1991) explains theimportance of all being able to imagine the same experience as essential in manufacturing anational identity. The two then combine as being able to imagine the same suffering andsacrifice.

47. Clark (note 7); J. McGarry and B. O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland (Oxford: Blackwell1995).

48. Hobsbawm (note 24); Gellner (note 24).49. Durkheim (note 18) and in Suicide (London: Routledge 1970) made these points over 100

years ago.50. Nisbet (note 25); Swingewood (note 39), Giddens (note 25), or, for a really detailed analysis

of the transition in one society see Eugen Weber Peasants Into Frenchmen (Stanford UP1976).

51. Girard (1977 & 1989) (note 20), and Cohen (note 20).52. S. Ramet, ‘Nationalism and the Idiocy of the ‘Countryside: the Case of Serbia’, Ethnic and

Racial Studies 19/1 (1996). This provides an excellent analysis of the relationship betweenpeasant values, religion and ethnic nationalism within the context of Marx’s view of theidiocy of rural life. Where militant Serb nationalism and religious observance is a ruralphenomenon and has comparatively low support in the one major urban area – Belgrade.

53. A.T.Q. Stewart, The Narrow Ground (London: Faber 1989) Garvin (note 12); Clark (note 7)and Zulaika (note 1). Also J.D. Medrano, ‘Patterns of Development and Nationalism: Basqueand Catalan Nationalism Before the Spanish Civil War’, Theory and Society 23/4 (1994).


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54. Hoffman (note 27) or David Rapoport ‘Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three ReligiousTraditions’, American Political Science Review 78/3 (Sept. 1984) pp.658–77.

55. Zulaika (note 1) p.103.56. K.T. Hoppen Ireland Since 1800 (London: Longman 1999) p.109.57. Hoppen (note 56) p.110. See, also, F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (Glasgow:

Fontana 1973). Particularly the references to Sir Horace Plunkett, promoter of agriculturalcooperations.

58. Girard (1977) (note 20) p.8.59. Cohen (note 18) p.90.60. Zulaika (note 1) pp.117–21.61. Stewart (note 53).62. Cohen (note 18); A.D. Buckley, Symbols in Northern Ireland. (Belfast: QUB, Institute of

Irish Studies 1998). L. Bryson and C. McCartney, Clashing Symbols (Belfast: QUB, Institutefor Irish Studies 1994); B. Loftus, Mirrors, William III & Mother Ireland (Dundrum: PicturePress 1990).

63. O’Callaghan (note 9) p.35.64. Bruce (note 17).65. Zulaika (note 1) p.277.66. Boyce (note 36) Chapter 5.67. Oliver MacDonagh States of Mind (London: Allen & Unwin 1983).68. Zulaika (note 1) p.313.69. P. Arthur, in David Apter (ed.) The Legitimization of Violence (London: Macmillan 1997).70. Durkheim (notes 18 and 19), or Lukes (note 19).71. Arthur (note 69).72. Quoted in Hamilton (note 39) p.45.73. Durkheim (notes 18 and 19) Lukes (note 19).74. Zulaika (note 1) p.314.75. Zulaika (note 1).76. Ibid.77. Girard (1977) (note 20).78. J. Strachey (ed.) The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol.24 (London:

Vintage Books 2001).79. F.C. Bartlett, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology (Cambridge:

CUP 1932); A.P. Abelson, Psychological Status of the Script Concept, AmericanPsychologist 36/7 (1981); F.T. Fiske, ‘Schema Trigger Affect, in F.T. Fiske and M.S. ClarkAffect and Cognition: the 17th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition (Hillsdale:Erlbaum 1982).

80. K. Nelson, ‘Characteristics of Childrens Scripts for Familiar Events’, paper presented atAmerican Psychological Association, Montreal (1980).

81. T. Hennessy A History of Northern Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1997).82. Zulaika (note 1) p.219.83. O’Doherty (note 8) p.20.84. Claude Levi-Strauss The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld 1972) p.225.85. Douglass and Zulaika (note 21) p.76.86. J. Ruane and J. Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland (Cambridge: CUP

1996).87. Fionnula O’Connor, In Search of a State (Belfast: Blackstaff Press 1993).88. Hoppen (note 56) or L Kennedy and P. Ollerenshaw (eds.) An Economic History of Ulster

(Manchester UP 1985). 89. J. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon 1991) p.192.90. On the role of symbols in collective behaviour see Apter (note 69); Cohen (note 20); Bryson

and McCartney and Buckley (note 62).


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91. See D.G. Boyce (ed.) The Revolution in Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1988); Lyons(note 57) or Foster (note 36).

92. The Sunday Times, 8 Aug. 1999, pp.1–2.93. Smith (note 6).94. The Independent, 9 Sept. 1998, p.1.95. See Smith (note 6); Hennessy (note 81).


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Symbolism and Terrorism: The Cultural Selection of Targets

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Transcript of Symbolism and Terrorism: The Cultural Selection of Targets