Fanaticism
Fanaticism
...We will later examine the causes of such a situation, which has a planetary character. As a French official reminded us, it is religious dignitaries who decide on "fatwas", acts of holy war. They believe they are directly inspired by God. Thus, we find ourselves facing people who function as in biblical times, or in ancient Babylon, or in Assyria. In these countries, at times when acts of cruelty have always amazed historians, it must be remembered that war decisions were not made by "politicians" but "directly inspired by gods", or a god. The king or war leader who launched the operations did not feel in the least responsible, as for example "this decision had been suggested to him during a dream". There are also decisions that, historically, were based on drawing lots:
- What should I do? Negotiate or go to war against my neighbor?
...The vulnerability of the opponent is perceived as an effect of divine will: "If our opponent is vulnerable, or even completely unarmed, it is because our god has placed him in our hands". If we do not enter into this "religious logic" which propels us thousands of years back, nothing is understandable with our western criteria. ...There is then a decision-making and action chain. Religious leaders are deeply convinced of accomplishing the will of their god. Those who submit to them are also convinced they are the intermediaries of a divine will, which their leaders transmit to them. There are "sacrificers" and the "sacrificed". In a recent TV report, a manufacturer of explosive vests destined to equip Palestinian suicide bombers was questioned in his cell. He was asked why he himself would not go and sacrifice. His answer:
- Everyone has their job. My job is to design and manufacture explosive vests, the suicide bombers' job is to use them.
He could have added:
- Our Ayatollahs do not have to sacrifice themselves. Everyone is in the place assigned to them by God. The suicide bombers will actually be the most rewarded in our paradise. If I were ever ordered to become a suicide bomber, it would not be a problem for me. Explosive vest manufacturer, suicide bomber: it's all the same. As for our Ayatollahs, they are also in their place. There must be a mobile phone to receive the voice of God. That's their job.
...The psychological profile of the "armed arm" of this action is particularly important to understand. One might be surprised by the "level of culture and education" of many suicide commandos. It would be a very serious mistake to believe that these commandos are only recruited from disadvantaged environments, from desperate people, from people without a future. Among the members of recent (and future) commandos are people who, due to the studies they have done, or their family situation, could have occupied comfortable positions in their society, or in a foreign country. We then come up against the general problem of fanaticism, which escapes all logic. Its key is conditioning, which, as we have seen, acts from childhood. It is the same conditioning that could produce Nazis, Red Guards, and now the fundamentalists. At the base, there is obviously a feeling of distress, a general questioning of the individual about the meaning of his life, of life. This distress can be objective (poverty, total absence of future prospects) or subjective. It can also be induced, provoked. The reaction is then to abandon all psychological and decision-making autonomy to a leader, whatever he may be. It can be an Ayatollah, or a Guru, or a politician, a "Fuhrer", a fanatic priest (as was the case during the religious wars of the past, or ... the Crusades). A psychological contract is then established between the leader and his disciples. The disciples manufacture and strengthen their leader, who, if he does not act with interest and cynicism, and feels "responsible for his flock". The leader models the thoughts of his disciples. At the base there must be a religious or (and) political ideology, often condensed in a text, a book constituting "the fundamental thought". How could millions of men, who had sometimes received sophisticated education, have given their lives based on texts, raw or reinterpreted, so simplistic? The answer is that the text is not important. What is important is the effectiveness of the brainwashing, whatever it may be. No person in the world, including you, me, is safe from such a phenomenon. The "human mind" can indeed be compared to a ship's bridge. A "personality" (our conscious self) receives information through its sensory organs. It witnesses scenes, reads texts, hears words spoken, directly or through any media. It has a certain psychological and decision-making autonomy, which depends on its level of education, and the conditioning it has undergone since childhood. This autonomy is relative because decisions are made in relation to moral reference points that depend on cultures: respect or non-respect of others, of oneself, the sense of sacrifice, the "giving of oneself", "courage", "cowardice", submission, dominance, individualism or the impossibility of existing outside a social group, subjective perception of one's interest, or clan or ethnic interests, "level of humanism or universalism", opposed to racism or sectarianism, "ethnic horizon", where "the other" begins, "the enemy", vision of post-mortem existence, motivating (reincarnation, "the response of the sacrificed in a paradise", hope for a better life in an afterlife, or even simple masochistic nihilism, desire to annihilate oneself to definitively escape one's personal problems). The range of psycho-social references is very broad. Nevertheless, only a relatively small percentage of "free choice" emerges from this set, the rest being a matter of conditioning. In the past, religious messages were the main vehicle for these, complemented by specific tribal or ethnic speeches. Today, the media, vehicles of violence and sadism, bear enormous responsibility. Rambo, among others, has turned against its authors. Many viewers found that the explosion of the trade center resembled "Independence Day". Indeed, it seemed like special effects. ...No one is surprised that an individual, wherever he is on this planet, can witness, in a ritualized way, ten murders a day, simply by turning on his television. No one is surprised that children's toys can be in the image of very diverse destruction weapons. No one is surprised that a place where a nuclear weapon was tested was given the name of a swimsuit (Bikini). How could a French engineer have titled a book in which he recounted the history of nuclear armament in our country "Next to my bomb". How could Edward Teller casually nickname the hydrogen bomb: "My baby". How could scientists, within the Manhattan Project, have given names taken from religious speeches to preliminary nuclear experiments for war actions. The first "H" assembly had been named "The Kaaba", well before Muslims were perceived by Americans as a potential enemy. While the USA is a nation in principle Christian, the code name for the first nuclear explosion had been "Trinity" (the Trinity). Why this systematic taste for blasphemy? To better understand the psychology of the scientist collaborating with the military: link. ...There is therefore a "doctrinal body". I may surprise you by saying that it could be replaced by any text at all. Returning to the image of the human personality, we return to that of the command bridge, the ship's helm, this ship being a ... man. The human personality seems to us (to us, westerners) to be made of one piece. But it seems as if, "inside a human head", several levels of the self are discussing. There is the conscious self, which "reasons" with what it thinks is "its logic". There is the unconscious self, which functions with another, which integrates the experience lived by the individual since birth, unconsciously accumulated. There is the ethnic self, specific. There is the educational self (education received, readings, media conditioning). Any decision made during a life is the result of a "debate" between the different components of the human personality. This is only a western view. Mystics of all kinds will add an inspiration, whether founded or not: it is not for us to decide on such a metaphysical question. ...The fanatic chooses to renounce his own autonomy and beyond his responsibility as a human being. A leader or leaders then decide for him. This abandonment can be likened to a abandonment of duty, "the commander abandoning his helm". By abandonment, we must also include its corollary: a psychological invulnerability, a guarantee of invulnerability. The invulnerability then brings the comfort of a structure, with the reassurance of group support. By feeling he belongs to a multitude, the human being makes the sacrifice of his personality, and possibly of his life. ...Subjectively, this price seems light to him. The leader, in a way, does the same, as he himself merges by perceiving himself as an emanation of a group and a propagator of a thought. One can then speak of auto-hypnosis. Having once approached a sect inspired by Hinduism (the Ram Shandrah sect), not as a member but in the intention of retrieving one of my friends, I was able to see the essential mechanisms of a sect's functioning. The key is "non-thinking". In some, this non-thinking takes the mask of "meditation". To meditate is to "empty oneself", to stifle the flow of disturbing thoughts, the real background noise preventing "the spirit" from manifesting within individuals. One could say, anyway, that emptying one's thoughts can have good sides. When people are tormented by objective or subjective anxieties, the act of "emptying themselves", even for just a few moments, hours, or minutes, can only do them good. Any psychologist would agree with this idea. ...Whether this Spirit exists or not is another question. It is not for us to pronounce on the reality or unreality of any metaphysical phenomenon. We simply analyze the result. In some mystics, this practice will lead to a simple detachment from the world, to renouncing a sexual life, to the "pleasures of this world". This is asceticism, which can go as far as medieval mortification. One could call them passive mystics. "They merge in their communication with the invisible", seeing only a strictly personal experience. Some think that physical pain brings one closer to "the Spirit" (the medieval flagellants). The danger is much greater where proselytism begins (abandoning offspring, parents, any family or social cell, giving one's goods to the sect, making one's person, one's skills, one's talents available for the sect's interests). ...The sect leader can quickly acquire a schizoid or paranoid structure, if he does not already have it. There are "mystics" or "laymen". There are ideological messages that resemble religious texts surprisingly. ...Let's move on to the essential mechanism, of a hypnotic type. There is no hypnosis without abandoning vigilance, without renouncing all objectivity in favor of subjectivity. I will cite a personal experience, which anyone can repeat. It is an experience of voluntary abandonment of decision-making freedom, which is translated by being taken over by a third party. When I was a student at the École Supérieure de l'Aéronautique de Paris, in the sixties, one of our classmates had come across "a hypnosis manual" with which he played a lot, he said, by conducting experiments with his sister. We decided to participate in experiments (innocent in content). The first step was to create a relative sensory isolation (standing, motionless, eyes closed, in a place not subject to sound influences). In such a situation, after ten to twenty minutes, one "loses footing". The sensation of verticality, the topology of the place, fades: one sways. Near oneself, once one is in this atmosphere (silence, eyes closed), a manipulator then delivers an injunction, using the most convincing voice possible. The "game" consists of emptying one's head, getting rid of all thoughts, which could block his message. This is essential "for the successful operation". People who practice apnea know how to empty their heads, simply because any mental activity, whatever it is, consumes oxygen. While one deliberately lowers one's defenses, the "hypnotist assistant" (who can be anyone) repeatedly delivers his message. It will work better if, subjectively, his tone, his arguments are convincing and his voice "warm". This man then places the person, who has deliberately decided to be the subject, in a situation of suggestion. An order devoid of moral connotation, like raising one's arms, will penetrate more easily into the "unoccupied mind" of the subject, if this order does not trigger any defensive "moral-socio-immunological" mechanism. When one participates in this strange experience, the result of the experience can occur after a variable time: from a few minutes to thirty minutes or an hour. It depends on the subject's ability to "lower his mental defenses" and on the hypnotist's ability to be convincing. Any external noise, any laughter, any incongruous thought brings the subject back to "square one". What matters is to realize that any individual who would participate in this "game" would, after some time, see his arms escape his own will for a more or less long time. For me, it lasted one or two seconds, after thirty minutes of being hammered like this:
- Your arms are light. See, you can't hold them. They rise. You can't hold your arms. Let them go up!
...It's as if the body, in vain questioning the "decision-making bridge", had said, during the whole experience:
- What am I doing? There's a guy ordering me to raise my arms. It's been hammering my brain for twenty minutes. Is there anyone up there to tell me what I should do?
...The key phenomenon is the change of connection to the order-giving structures. In the follower, it is the subjugation to the four wills of a guru. In sects, it is recommended to meditate in front of a photo of the Guru, if possible at 1/1 scale, so that an extremely perverted unconscious imprinting occurs. ...The absurdity of the orders, their immorality, especially on a sexual level, no longer matters. The personality has been somehow disconnected, put out of circuit. The effectiveness of such a method obviously depends on many factors, the suggestibility of the subject, the "aura" of the guru, the charisma of the leader, the dictator, and ... the pressure of the group. Because the pressure linked to the group multiplies the power of the leader. . The intellectual and cultural level of the individual does not come into play. People who are very unrefined can be difficult to suggest. Others, apparently more intellectually equipped, can quickly fall. I was surprised to find in this sect I had entered, fanatical intellectuals and ... members of the CNRS, colleagues I knew!
...We have spoken of a simple psychology experiment. Imagine the result when this is tinged with political ideology, with religiosity. There is then total adherence. With hindsight, one can wonder how intelligent people could have been seduced by texts as silly as Mein Kampf or ... the Little Red Book (which, personally, I never managed to finish, so bored I was. Yet, in France too, we had our "Maoists"). But the content is unimportant. Slogans, verses, mantras, orders can function as hypnotic instruments. I had a housekeeper who had joined the Japanese-origin sect Nishiren, Shosu, established in many countries, whose only practice consists in repeating a single "word": Nàm Yoho, Renge Kyo. Only the followers are taught that the repetition of this magical word will effectively mold their soul, ensure their salvation, etc. Most of them don't even know the exact meaning (...).
...It all depends on the effects of such a practice. A "stylite", who has taken refuge on top of a column, sealed in his silence, does not disturb anyone. Unless, having become a "star", an exceptional person through this behavior, he attracts followers. Paradoxically, the member of a sect, by depersonalizing, desperately seeks to exist, even in a collective sacrifice!
...These days, we heard on television former Palestinian suicide bombers, whose action had failed due to a technical failure of their equipment, testify. Their faces reflected a kind of inner peace, calm, serenity. - Would you do such a gesture again? - Only God knows the answer.
...A significant answer. It's as if the individual was answering "why do you ask me to express a feeling, an opinion, when I have, at the level of my individuality, ceased to exist?"
...The public poorly understands this mental invulnerability. Don't we say that someone has "become armored"? For the fanatic, anything that does not come from his "cell", his group, his or his religious leaders, can only be a lie, a manipulation. Mentally, he recites phrases from his holy book, interpreted by his thought masters, slogans, mantras, phrases from the Little Red Book, to block this "perverse" thought. Edgar Morin spoke of this invulnerability of French communists, after the war of 39-45, when news arrived about pogroms, internment camps, gulags, purges, mass deportations. Nothing of all this could be true. It could only be "pure inventions of the bourgeois press".
...Another idea to keep in mind is a "snowball effect". The number multiplies the phenomenon, almost exponentially. We saw it with Nazism. Many European intellectuals amused themselves with the antics of the young Nazi party and the grand demonstrations of this ridiculous "Mr. Hitler". Suddenly, the mayonnaise took and everything started to turn, in less than ten years. The opposite is also true. After that war, Nazism did not completely die out, but entered a phase of rapid recession. No one, in Germany, had been Nazi, apparently. This is what René Girard calls mimetism. The effect is dangerous. Another element of fanaticism, noted by Girard, is the importance of the scapegoat, an individual or an ethnic group literally demonized. It is him or her who allows the group to "cleanse" itself of its guilt, its fear, its anxieties. The sacrificed martyr reunites the communities. The individual or ethnic scapegoat focuses the energy of the individuals. Hitler had very well used this against the Jews. In French far-right tendencies, the "bougnoule" constitutes an "ideological pole". When one does not know exactly what to fight for, it is easier to fight against something. During the McCarthy era, communism had the face of Satan. Previously, in the deep south, it was the blacks who provided this image to the Ku Klux Klan. Today, for the Muslim fundamentalists, America is "the Great Satan".
Addition of October 11, 2001: The newspaper L'Express in its issue 1722 of September 27 - October 3, 2001 published the testimony of a son of an SS, who preferred to remain anonymous. This text, page 100, was titled "My father, this SS". It is a Frenchman whose father, who is now deceased, had joined at the end of autumn 1943 when the regime was already beginning to collapse, in order to go fight on the Russian front, in the "Das Reich" division. There were thousands of French people, committed to the Nazi cause, who did the same, forming a "legion" where many were killed in combat. In his testimony, this man talks about a father "in love with Saint-Simon, Proust and Teilhard de Chardin" and the answer that he gave him when he asked why he had joined this conflict and if he had been afraid of dying: "I was a fanatic. It was absolutely indifferent to me". After his unit had been decimated, he had managed to escape death and had been imprisoned in Fresnes prison, after being arrested by the French. Many of his comrades in arms had been shot, which left him, according to his own admission, completely indifferent: "I had chosen my side, I was ready to die". "Everything about him was smooth. He had no doubt about his mission. Nothing could have made him deviate from his path. It was his job, like others go to the office", said the witness, his son.
...People often provide in their speech the keys to their attitude. This French SS one day confided to his son:
- I loved to be a brick in a wall.
...The symbol is very explicit. A brick is an element of an entity called "wall". Considered individually, it is not functional, it is devoid of meaning. However, integrated into a wall, it takes all its strength. Thus, the fanatic's approach starts from his impossibility to exist as an individual. This situation is too uncomfortable for him. He finds no way to fit into the world in which he lives, neither by developing his own talents, nor by starting a family, nor by building something by himself. This individual life seems simply unbearable to him. The existence through a collective entity seems to be the only solution, and this integration approach, which imposes itself as absolutely imperative, comes before the ideological or moral content of the group to which he adheres. He is, in fact, perfectly capable of changing. Wilhelm Reich, German psychologist, attracted by the psychoanalytic movement (by the way, died mad in the United States) had been in communist groups in the 1930s. He had been surprised to see how easily German Communist Party cadres could suddenly become cadres of the SS party, swapping an "idealism" or another, apparently diametrically opposed. In fact, the ideological content was of little importance. What these people had sought above all in these two types of structures "was to be a brick in a wall". Such an attitude implies the dissolution of the personality. The man becomes a number, totally identifies with his function in the structure. He no longer has any personal idea, no longer has to make the effort to acquire one. Long ago, a very entertaining film: "Fanfan la Tulipe", had been produced, Gérard Philippe sharing the lead with the plump and mischievous Gina Lollobrigida. In the scenario, Fanfan joined the army to be closer to the thoughts of the beautiful girl, daughter of a recruiting sergeant. During this scene of enlistment, Fanfan heard the sergeant's speech, which essentially said:
- If you want to think of nothing and let the king take care of it for you ....
...This sentence struck me. It can be declined in any ideology or fanatic movement. One could just as well say:
-* If you want to think of nothing and let (Hitler), (Stalin), (Mao), (the local Ayatollah), (the Guru) take care of it for you...*
...All of this is interchangeable. The ideological or religious content, the goals pursued are unimportant, only the adherence, the fusion in the group counts. The brick lost in the wall no longer has to express itself as an individual, a démarche which had until now seemed so painful, unbearable. The SS obeys orders, that's the essential. The Chinese fanatic, at the time when Perrefite had so well described it in his book "The day when China awakens", responds like an automaton by reciting a "quote from Chairman Mao". The fundamentalist will cite a verse from the Quran, according to the interpretation that has been given to him. But, most of the time, he does not feel at all bound to answer, because that is not his function. An inscription can appear on a wall, which a brick will only bear a fragment, or even nothing at all. Thus, questioned, the "brick" can only answer "read what is written on the wall to which I belong". For this "brick", the essential is not the inscription, but the fact of belonging to a wall, of being "conform to something, to a model, of merging into a group, of dissolving into an ideology, into blind belief. It is perfectly understandable the expression "it seems like you are talking to a wall". Strictly speaking, this is exactly what happens when one tries to discuss with a fanatic.
...Everything that tends to dissolve the personality of individuals, their critical sense, their distance from situations is potentially dangerous for them and for others. Thus, there is no difference between a sect, a totalitarian political movement, a religious current where fanaticism and intolerance have developed.
...This integration of a "brick in a wall" can lead to several effects. In sects, the goal may be prosaically fraud, the exploitation of a mass of adherents by an oligarchy, financial or sexual exploitation, or both at the same time. We have spoken of a wall. One could specify by evoking an edifice made of an arch. The guru, the leader, the spiritual leader becomes the keystone. It also does not exist in isolation, it only holds by virtue of the converging forces, which it itself directs, which are its focal point and which are communicated to it by the stones of the edifice. In its own way, the "keystone" also loses its personality, its individuality. It is nothing more than an element of the structure that it has both created and which has "raised it to the top". The leader creates the group and the group creates the leader. Each validates the other. If the group disintegrates, the leader loses all legitimacy, ceases to play a resonating role. If the keystone disappears, the edifice disintegrates. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. A protein is much more than the sum of the atoms that make it up. Disintegrated, disorganized, the former edifice becomes unrecognizable. If the "message" conveyed by such an edifice, such a group, could be assimilated to an inscription on a wall or the very form of the edifice, when it disintegrates, the message ceases to be readable. It is then useless to question individually, bricks, stones or debris, since the entire edifice made sense. This is why we have always been so surprised by the sudden disappearance of the discourse of groups that may have exerted a significant pressure on history, after their disintegration (the word must be taken literally here). It is not simply a renunciation, but the loss of the ability to express oneself. Only the whole made sense.
...The behaviors of the "bricks" can be varied. Their function can be to serve as a harem for a Guru, to collect funds for the sect, but also to participate in a powerful expansionist movement (Nazism, Islamic fundamentalism), acting in the most violent way possible. The theme of the suicide commando can then be part of the "mission", since individual interest, the instinct of self-preservation have been completely annihilated. There is no difference between the behavior of this French Nazi, mentioned above, designated to go to the Russian front at a time when everything was already decided, which equates to a suicide mission, and that of one of the members of the following groups:
**A suicide commando of Hezbollah parading in southern Lebanon in February 1997. **
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