Terrorismo islamico, omofobia e Terrore Rivoluzionario

Un essere umano è dotato di libero arbitrio. Può usarlo per scegliere tra il bene ed il male. Se può solo fare il bene oppure il male, allora è un’arancia meccanica, nel senso che ha l'apparenza di un organismo di bell’aspetto, colorato e succoso, ma in effetti è solo un giocattolo a molla che può essere caricato da Dio o dal Diavolo o, visto che ormai sta progressivamente rimpiazzando entrambi, dallo stato onnipotente.

Introduzione di Burgess all’edizione americana di “Arancia Meccanica” del 1986

L’idea che il mondo attuale sia corrotto così radicalmente da rendere impossibile qualunque miglioramento e che proprio per questo motivo il mondo che ad esso succederà debba portare con sé la perfezione assoluta e la liberazione definitiva, questa idea è una delle più mostruose aberrazioni dello spirito umano. La ragione sana suggerisce piuttosto: quanto più il mondo attuale è corrotto, tanto più lungo, difficile e incerto è il camino che lo separa dall’agognato regno della perfezione.

Leszek Kolakowski, “Lo spirito rivoluzionario”, 1982, p. 21

Quello che in tempo di pace viene considerato immorale, ingiusto, dannoso per la collettività, in tempo di guerra cambia di segno, si trasforma in valore positivo e viene perciò stimolato e incoraggiato. Non uccidere, non mentire, non tradire, ecc. sono tutte massime che devono essere ribaltate durante un conflitto lungo e radicale per il bene della collettività; inoltre deve essere sviluppata in tutti i modi una mentalità aggressiva, bellicosa, spietata se occorre. In altre parole la guerra crea un “nuovo universo morale” con regole e valori specifici che sono in contrasto profondo con quelli dell’universo morale dell’epoca in cui la società è in pace. Inoltre la guerra produce una mentalità manichea che porta a scomporre il mondo in amici e nemici e a guardare con sospetto gli stessi membri del gruppo di appartenenza, se questi manifestano in qualche modo un ardore sufficiente o addirittura riserve morali sulla lotta in atto.

Luciano Pellicani, “I rivoluzionari di professione”, 2008, p. 215

Nel 1921 Ernst Jünger osservò molto acutamente che la morte è la realizzazione ideale di una credenza, il suo complemento e completamento. Lo stesso vale per la fede di un terrorista: il contenuto conta poco, la convinzione è tutto. Essere degni del sacrificio della propria vita è la dimostrazione della propria superiore qualità e dell’immacolatezza del proprio spirito, cioè della propria sacralità. Il terrorista è un homo sacer, “nuda vita”, per riprendere un tema già sviluppato dal filosofo Giorgio Agamben. La sua condizione eccede quelle contemplate dal diritto umano e da quello divino: può uccidere senza essere accusato di omicidio e la sua morte volontaria è rituale per antonomasia.

Ma se di ritorno del sacro si deve parlare, allora è bene chiarire che sarebbe meglio concentrarsi su alcune sue componenti come “il magico”, “il sublime” e “l’epico”. La mitologizzazione della quotidianità si accompagna al titanismo di militanti che realmente credono di cavalcare la Storia, e di poter dare l’avvio alla rigenerazione palingenetica della civiltà (islamica, cristiana, giapponese, europea, ecc.). I fondamentalisti di ogni sorta semplificano la realtà fino a trasformarla in una caricatura di sé stessa, una funzione ad uso e consumo delle loro credenze ed intendimenti.

Il tempo e lo spazio ordinari evaporano nella loro coscienza rituale che si fonda sulla credenza millenarista che sia possibile accelerare l’avvento di un grande rivolgimento epocale che restituirà ai “puri” il ruolo di guide spirituali delle masse, assimilate all’immagine di un gregge di pecore disperso ed in attesa di un benevolo ma energico pastore. Tempo, spazio ed Ego si fondono nella comunità di destino che preannuncia la venuta di una nuova era e di una nuova umanità. Più che di religione sarebbe opportuno parlare di religiosità, o comunque di religione politica (e religione dell’Ego), per molti versi affine a quello che rappresentarono il nazi-fascismo ed il comunismo del secolo scorso per milioni di persone.

Questo sconsiderato riformismo ultraradicale non analizza le questioni sul tappeto prendendo in considerazione l’umanità per come è ora, con i suoi pregi e difetti, i suoi limiti e le sue potenzialità, ma per come dovrebbe essere, e per forza di cose sarà, quando l’onda fondamentalista avrà spazzato via la società materialista ed individualista dominante. Questa stessa ideale configurazione dell’umanità è il pretesto che giustifica il sacrificio di un certo numero di persone (terrorismo), o l’uso di determinati gruppi umani come capri espiatori (es. i Rom).

Accanto alla storia ordinaria, i militanti fondamentalisti costruiscono e mettono in moto una Storia “Nobile”, provvidenziale, ed una visione della vita totalizzante, cultista, dove tutto va esperito in maniera ed in misura assoluta e dove l’inversione o la sospensione o l’accelerazione – a seconda delle esigenze – dello scorrere del tempo restituirà all’ordine delle cose la sua integrità originale. È un’immagine confortante e sedativa, nonché gratificante per l’ego di chi, perdente radicale, si trova improvvisamente proiettato sul palcoscenico mondiale dove, per parafrasare Calvino, non un gesto e non una parola vanno sprecati, perché si è dalla parte del riscatto, della rettitudine, della purezza, in un mondo degradato, depravato ed impuro. L’istinto, l’emozione, l’intuito, la fede sopprimono la ragione: chi deve operare per migliorare la propria esistenza deve usare il cervello, chi si aspetta di essere salvato, deve solo attendere con fiducia, oppure andare incontro ad una morte “eroica”.

Questo dovrebbe risultare chiaro a chiunque si sia reso conto del fatto che lungi dall’essere espressioni specifiche di una rivitalizzazione dell’Islam “tradizionale”, i movimenti fondamentalisti musulmani sono in realtà una reazione estremamente moderna all’evento epocale che è stata la fine della Guerra Fredda e della contrapposizione ideologica tra comunismo e capitalismo. Molti di questi estremisti pensano e parlano come i militanti anti-imperialisti del secolo scorso e gli anarchici di fine Ottocento che condannavano la modernità occidentale; oppure come gli indignati più zelanti.

L’obiettivo non è quello di recuperare un presunto idillio confessionale e sociale dell’umma dei tempi dei loro nonni e bisnonni, né quello di costruire uno stato islamico di tipo fascista, ma piuttosto quello di islamizzare la modernità e di porre rimedio alla perdita delle identità collettive, spazzate via dall’irrompere del cosmopolitismo individualizzante. In questo senso le analogie con altri movimenti fondamentalisti ebraici e cristiani, ma anche, come detto, con ideologie politiche radical-populiste del passato e del presente, sono davvero numerose ed impressionanti. Basti pensare che Osama Bin Laden iniziò la sua carriera di sovversivo combattendo per la liberazione dell’Afghanistan dall’imperialismo sovietico negli anni Ottanta.

Nel gennaio del 2008 è stata pubblicata sul prestigioso settimanale britannico “The Observer” una brillante inchiesta di Jason Burke, uno dei giornalisti di lingua inglese più competenti in materia di fondamentalismo islamico, avendo trascorso molto tempo sul campo, intervistando militanti islamici e combattenti afgani. Quest’inchiesta riesaminava le sue esperienze ed i dati riguardanti il profilo psicologico e sociale degli appartenenti alle cellule del terrorismo islamico inglese raccolti in questi anni dalle unità anti-terrorismo europee. I risultati sono stati spiazzanti per molti. Chi si aspettava che i terroristi fossero in genere poco più che adolescenti, e quindi più esposti al rischio di plagio, ha appreso che l’età media dei militanti britannici era di 29 anni. Chi riteneva che l’indottrinamento nelle moschee fosse un fattore decisivo si è dovuto ricredere: il ruolo degli istigatori non sembra essere quello di inculcare nei giovani il fanatismo religioso, tanto che la gran parte dei militanti è accomunata da un’abissale ignoranza dei fondamenti coranici e della politica internazionale. In genere non si tratta di maestri religiosi ma di conoscenti leggermente più vecchi, a volte amici, altre volte parenti. Le fonti governative rivelano che meno del 10 per cento delle attività degli estremisti sono ricollegabili ai luoghi di culto. La povertà non è un fattore scatenante. Meno del 20 per cento dei militanti proviene da ambienti disagiati, anche se in genere tutti si percepiscono come sottoimpiegati. Né si tratta necessariamente di figure asociali: un terzo di loro è sposato e circa un quarto di loro ha almeno un figlio. Almeno uno su tre ha conseguito la laurea o una specializzazione equivalente mentre molti altri, nel momento in cui si sono lasciati coinvolgere dal radicalismo islamico, erano studenti, spesso di discipline tecniche e scientifiche, in special modo ingegneria ed informatica.

Quasi sempre la spinta finale è fornita dall’esperienza di un fallimento professionale e dalla percezione di un rigetto xenofobo. Spesso il passo successivo è il rifiuto della religiosità apolitica dei genitori e l’adesione alle correnti più politicizzate dell’Islam, che sembrano più rilevanti e più adatte a rispondere agli interrogativi dei nostri tempi.

C’è il caso di Shiraz Maher, un normale studente dell’Università di Leeds, con gli stessi interessi dei suoi pari età.  Tutto questo fino all’11 Settembre, un evento che lo costringe a prendere posizione: “Le regole del gioco erano cambiate…Improvvisamente mi ritrovai a pormi delle domande a proposito dell’Islam, della mia identità e del mondo, come non mi era mai capitato prima”. Alcuni giorni dopo l’attacco Maher fu avvicinato da un attivista di nome Hizb ut-Tahrir, un laureato in scienze politiche alla sua stessa università, solo pochi anni più vecchio di lui, che vestiva elegantemente, all’occidentale, e che sosteneva di conoscere il Corano a memoria. Hizb ut-Tahrir “sembrava avere tutte le risposte”, ci spiega Maher, sorpreso dalla sua comprensione del desiderio di spassarsela, di ballare e fumare spinelli, anatema per i frequentatori della moschea. Ma per Hizb ut-Tahrir non c’è problema: “Se non fosse divertente la gente non lo farebbe”. Così Maher pensa tra sé e sé: “Ecco qui qualcuno di successo che sa parlare la mia lingua”, cioè il linguaggio del riscatto musulmano, assalito dal capitalismo, dalle armi e dalla cultura occidentale. Come dichiarano due giovani intervistati musulmani, Ahmed e Mohammed, “c’è un piano anti-islamico. Non vogliono che diventiamo forti. Ci vogliono spingere in basso, nella povertà, umiliandoci. Ci chiamano terroristi ma anche loro sono terroristi”. Molti infatti, guardando le immagini dell’invasione dell’Iraq, hanno cominciato a sensibilizzarsi alla causa dei musulmani nel mondo, decidendo di volerli aiutare quantomeno economicamente. Altri facevano parte di bande che cacciavano via gli spacciatori dai loro quartieri e quindi erano già pronti a menare le mani. Altri ancora vedono la jihad come una scelta di vita romantica, gloriosa, avventurosa, clandestina, ribelle che ha il valore aggiunto di ricreare attorno a loro un ambiente familiare, fatto di persone che la pensano come loro e che comprendono le loro ansie e desideri.

Questo li isola progressivamente dal mondo. È un distanziamento decisivo perché rafforza la determinazione dei militanti ed impedisce che i loro pensieri siano “disturbati” da punti di vista alternativi o informazioni dissonanti. In seguito, una volta “entrati nel giro”, molti vengono spediti in Afghanistan come carne da cannone, ufficialmente per “farsi le ossa” (Burke, 2004). Ne ricaviamo ancora una volta l’impressione che la fede in una salvezza ultraterrena in quanto tale abbia ben poco a che fare con questi fenomeni. Ben più rilevante sembra essere il divario tra le legittime aspettative di migliaia di giovani e le reali prospettive di avanzamento sociale, che ormai ha superato la soglia di relativa tolleranza. Altrimenti non si spiega la forte concentrazione di insegnanti, funzionari pubblici, medici, ingegneri, ecc.

Sono gli scarti di un settore pubblico umiliato da governi nazionali laici di paesi arabi che non hanno saputo rilanciare l’economia e sono stati costretti ad operare tagli sostanziosi (Antoun, 2001). Sono gli scarti della modernità e sono affatto moderni, sganciati da una specifica comunità tradizionale di riferimento, dalla famiglia, dal passato, dal territorio, si sentono credenti rinati come parte della più grande ummah globale, Al-ummah al-islamiyyah, la comunità islamica transnazionale. Gesù invitava ad abbandonare famiglia, amici e casa per unirsi a lui, i terroristi giapponesi e quelli islamici sono pronti a farlo, ma la loro idea di redenzione personale e collettiva è diametralmente opposta. Sono pronti a compiere un qualche atto sensazionale che risuonerà sui media internazionali, rendendoli immortali. Non sono interessati a mobilizzare le masse, non pensano a riforme politiche, non intendono dedicare la loro vita all’assistenza ai disagiati o all’insegnamento della fede, non gradirebbero morire in qualche valle sperduta dell’Afghanistan, in un mercato iracheno, o ad un posto di blocco israeliano. Una morte troppo anonima per degli uomini con le loro competenze e talenti. Come tutti i perdenti radicali, i terroristi jihadisti contemporanei sono dei megalomani narcisisti che bramano la “bella morte” e gli “onori” della cronaca e, se possibile, desiderano che ciò avvenga nei luoghi simboli del glamour occidentale, anche perché la loro rinascita nella fede avviene quasi sempre in Occidente, dove le loro certezze dottrinarie, ossia i pilastri della loro tradizione culturale, sono messi a dura prova. Quando dichiarano di identificarsi con le vittime dell’imperialismo occidentale stanno mentendo a se stessi. Non v’è alcun processo di immedesimazione in corso, non v’è empatia nelle loro parole e nei loro atti. Se fosse così andrebbero ad aiutare la gente verso la quale dichiarano di nutrire una così profonda compassione. Ma non è così. Provano compassione solo per se stessi, esattamente come gli euroterroristi degli anni Settanta. Sono loro le vittime della modernità, del sistema, dell’umiliazione dell’Islam. Sono loro che non sono riusciti ad essere all’altezza delle proprie aspettative ed ora, per mascherare il proprio egoismo e le ferite interiori, ma anche per cancellare il senso di personale disfatta, si creano una falsa coscienza. In questo modo precipitano nell’idolatria, che è prima di tutto idolatria di se stessi, che nasce dal bisogno di mitizzare il proprio percorso esistenziale, proiettandolo sullo scenario globale di un immaginario scontro cosmico.

Come tutti i militanti radicali del passato e del presente, chiedono a Dio ed alla Storia quel che non hanno saputo ottenere da se stessi. Ma la loro è una battaglia privata, non collettiva. Le istituzioni religiose e quelle nazionali li hanno delusi, hanno fallito il loro compito di addomesticare la modernità risacralizzandola, ri-incantandola, per usare la terminologia weberiana. Per questo il loro rapporto con Dio è immediato, diretto, la loro religiosità fanatica proprio perché fondata su basi deboli e strumentali. Sono indifferenti alle grandi questioni teologiche che potrebbero solo soffocare il loro grande fervore ideologico. Non cercano una guida spirituale ma un coordinatore, un esperto di logistica, un’occasione per morire “alla grande”. Anch’essi, o forse loro più di tutti, esperiscono la vasta crisi delle religioni, quella che Ratzinger, nel 2004, definiva “lo sgretolarsi del cristianesimo”, che è anche lo sgretolarsi delle altre due religioni monoteistiche e del buddismo, dell’induismo e dello scintoismo, ecc. Mentre milioni di fedeli si radunano nei grandi meeting, sempre meno sono quelli che si ritrovano per pregare nei giorni designati e quelli che dedicano la loro vita all’apostolato. Questo perché si è giunti alla dissociazione finale tra cultura di appartenenza ed affiliazione religiosa, alla dispersione delle comunità tradizionali - fittizie ma in precedenza universalmente percepite come reali – ed alla ritribalizzazione della società attorno ai trend della moda ed a nuovi simboli di identificazione etnica. Nuove comunità immaginate che, condannate fin dalla nascita ad un’esistenza effimera sotto i colpi dell’apertura delle culture, delle società e delle menti che rappresenta la globalizzazione, reagiscono con l’irrigidimento dottrinale, o la violenza, alla loro manifesta gracilità. Lo jihadismo è una delle espressioni più note di questa ritribalizzazione e scomparirà nel giro di una generazione, per ricomparire dopo qualche decennio, quante le condizioni saranno favorevoli alla risurrezione della mistica dell’”eroismo fondamentalista”. In altre parole i fondamentalismi non sono reazioni difensive di culture tradizionali sotto assalto, non sono il risultato di uno scontro di civiltà, perché non esistono civiltà che si possano scontrare.

La destra pone l’accento sullo scontro di civiltà. La sinistra, come di consueto (e in certi casi non senza valide ragioni), punta l’indice contro le sperequazioni sociali. In realtà i rivoltosi non erano giovani poveri e senza speranza di riscatto ma figli sottoimpiegati di genitori piccolo-borghesi, non sempre musulmani, che impiegano le tecniche pedagogiche della generazioni precedenti, contadine, in una società che non sa cosa farsene. Questi figli ritenevano di poter ambire a qualcosa di più della carità pulciosa e mortificante di un paese che ufficialmente nega il razzismo ma nei fatti non può cancellarlo con un tratto di penna. Amano appassionatamente il proprio paese europeo, al punto da detestarlo quando questa li rifiuta, come succede negli amori non corrisposti. In realtà, quindi, i militanti e “potenziali terroristi” sono giovani di buona cultura che si sentono sradicati, discriminati, esclusi da una società che non è disposta ad accettarli per quello che sono (non semplice manodopera a basso costo) e cerca di imporre loro un certo modello di buon cittadino senza nel contempo usare lo stesso trattamento pedagogico-discriminatorio nei confronti dei non-musulmani. Di conseguenza questi giovani musulmani frustrati, come i loro omologhi giapponesi di Aum-Shinrikyo, s’imbarcano nella ricerca di una causa per la quale lottare, per dare un significato più profondo e saldo alla propria esistenza. Meglio sarebbe aiutarli a sentirsi integrati e non necessariamente omologati, costruendo luoghi di apprendimento e di culto, ma anche d’incontro con la gioventù non musulmana, piuttosto che spingerli tra le braccia di chi ha interesse a fomentare la violenza interculturale ed interreligiosa.

Se espandiamo gradualmente questo tipo di prospettiva arriviamo a capire che la loro reazione è per molti versi analoga a quella di Alex DeLarge, il protagonista di Arancia Meccanica di Anthony Burgess, che aveva ben compreso come lo Stato era del tutto indifferente alla sua esistenza, se non nella misura in cui questa non doveva in alcun modo minare l’armonia sociale. Le autorità rimangono interdette di fronte al comportamento antisociale di un amante della musica classica, un tratto generalmente associato ai “cittadini al di sopra di ogni sospetto”: “Hai una bella casa qui, dei genitori buoni e amorevoli, non hai un cervello da buttare. C’è un qualche demone che si impadronisce di te?”. Le risposte di Burgess sono ambigue, equivoche. Ma di Alex DeLarge è pieno anche il mondo non-islamico. Pensiamo ad esempio ai massacri nei college americani: Jonesboro, Arkansas; Pearl, Mississippi; Springfield, Oregon; Paducah, Kentucky; la Columbine High School di Littleton, Colorado; Conyers, Georgia, e poi Fort Gibson ed il massacro del Virginia Tech, perpetrato dal ventitreenne Cho Seung-Hui. Più recentemente un giovane finlandese, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, ha massacrato nove persone nella sua stessa scuola dopo aver diffuso online un manifesto radical-ecologista nel quale esaltava il pensiero del controverso e misantropico intellettuale finlandese Pentti Linkola e dichiarava che il suo credo Social-Darwinista lo spingeva a passare all’azione a tutela dell’ambiente, sperando di servire da modello per altri ed augurandosi che “la morte dell’umanità arrivi al più presto”. E poi c’è Breivik. Il numero di vittime di questi “terroristi fatti in casa” non si avvicina chiaramente a quello prodotto dai loro “colleghi” islamisti, ma stiamo comunque parlando di decine e decine di vite innocenti falciate in nome di un disagio esistenziale personale.

Chi ha analizzato gli scritti ed i video di questi giovani assassini ha potuto constatare che l’uccisione di massa dei propri compagni di scuola ed insegnanti ed il tentativo di distruggere gli istituti da loro frequentati erano motivati dalla convinzione che quelli, e non altri, fossero i responsabili del proprio malessere e senso di oppressione. Un ragazzo spiega che ci sono due modi per diventare famosi a scuola. La via del successo e la via dell’irrisione: “in pratica avevi paura di essere deriso per tutto quel che facevi perché se facevi una cosa fuori dell’ordinario, e ci si aspettava che nessuno facesse qualcosa del genere, avrebbero riso di te, ti avrebbero preso per i fondelli, e non avresti potuto far parte del gruppo. Così, poi, diventavi un escluso” (Klein, 2006).

In questo modo si viene a creare un sistema di sorveglianza benthamiano: un panopticon degno del Grande Fratello (quello letterario) che vede tutto e controlla tutto, sanzionando ogni devianza, nel vestire, nel comportamento, nei gusti, nella forma fisica, nel pensare, e così via. Stabilito un ideale ipermascolino ed iperfemminino al quale aspirare, tutti gli studenti sono costretti a misurarsi con esso, rendendosi conto della propria inadeguatezza e della propria fallibilità (Cook, 2000). Ecco la testimonianza di uno dei sopravvissuti alla strage di Columbine (15 morti, 23 feriti), riferendosi ai due omicidi, Dylan Klebold e Eric Harris: “Certo che li prendevamo per il culo. Ma che cosa altro ti aspetti quando vieni a scuola con certe pettinature e con delle corna sul cappellino?  Non erano solo gli atleti; facevano schifo all’intera scuola. Sono un branco di froci…Se ti vuoi liberare di qualcuno, in genere li prendi in giro, così tutta la scuola li chiama froci” (Gibbs & Roche, 1999, p. 48). In un video registrato la notte prima della sparatoria, Harris si sfoga dicendo “la gente mi prende costantemente per il culo per la mia faccia, i miei capelli, le mie camicie”, mentre Klebold aggiunge “vi ucciderò tutti. Ne ho abbastanza della vostra merda”, dove per “merda” s’intende il bullismo, l’essere spintonati, chiusi negli armadietti, il diventare bersaglio dei lazzi e delle ingiurie, dei sassi e delle lattine, l’essere chiamati froci tutto il tempo. Il risultato è l’aggressività maschile verso gli altri (eterodiretta) e l’aggressività femminile verso se stesse (autodiretta, come l’anoressia e la bulimia, l’automutilazione ed i ferimenti volontari, i tentativi di suicidio, ecc.).

Luke Woodham, di Pearl, Mississippi, dopo aver ucciso la madre che lo insultava e due studenti della sua scuola, ferendone altri sette, disse allo psichiatra che lo esaminava che non era pazzo: “Sono arrabbiato…non sono viziato o pigro; perché l’omicidio non è debole od ottuso; l’omicidio è cazzuto ed audace. Ho ucciso perché la gente come me viene maltrattata ogni giorno” (Chua-Eoan, 1997, p. 54).

Così, paradossalmente, anche un atto di protesta estrema come la violenza indiscriminata – così “virile” e totalitaria – serve solo a rinforzare il sistema di oppressione, ribadendo la naturalezza e correttezza degli standard di normalità imposti dalla società. Nessuna ragazza è finora entrata nella sua classe con delle pistole sparando all’impazzata e l’automutilazione maschile è piuttosto rara. Così non è un caso che molti studenti coinvolti nelle sparatorie abbiano scelto di farsi giustizia da soli dopo essere stati rifiutati da una ragazza: la loro mascolinità era stata messa in dubbio ed i ragazzi erano a rischio di essere accusati di inadeguatezza sessuale o di omosessualità latente.

Apocalypse - religion and violence

The Greek word apokalypsis translates as “revelation, the unveiling of what was hidden or secret.” The Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, is a book of apocalyptic prophecies, describing the Second Coming of Christ, also predicted in Matthew 25, Luke 21, and John 16, who will establish a one-thousand year kingdom on earth (Apoc. 20: 1-6), until the Last Judgment.

The author of Revelation, which was most likely written in the first century A.D., identifies himself as John, a Christian exile on the Greek island of Patmos. The book was not readily accepted in the scriptural canons. Like other similarly popular prophetic writings in the genre of Jewish and Christian revelatory literature – viz. the nearly coeval Jewish “Book of Enoch” and “Apocalypse of Ezra”, or the apocryphal “Apocalypse of Paul” and “Apocalypse of Peter” – the Book of Revelation tends to be symbolically and semantically florid, and therefore susceptible to multiple, controversial interpretations. This is the reason why several early Christian theologians and prominent Eastern Roman bishops like St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom expressed opposition to or reserved judgment on its inclusion in the New Testament.

Eventually, while other apocalyptic texts were discarded as heretical, the Book of Revelation gradually gained wider acceptance in the West, but not in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Martin Luther, an ambitious reformer as well as a skilled theologian, was by no means confident that the doctrinal content of the book was compatible with the orthodoxy of the Christian message: “I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it”, he declared in the preface to various editions of the New Testament, from 1522 to 1527, adding that his spirit “could not accommodate itself to this book”, one where “Christ is neither taught nor known.” The vengeful Jesus of Revelation, lashing out against the hedonism and debauchery of a decadent world - which was possibly part of a rhetorical strategy in John’s fierce indictment of the Roman Empire and was certainly meant to infuse an eschatological hope in thousands of discouraged Christian believers persecuted by the Roman authorities - seems indeed to have little relation to the peaceful and compassionate Jesus of the Gospels.

Apocalypticism and the War in the Middle East

A literal interpretation of Revelation is today exceedingly popular among millions of American fundamentalists, who believe that they have access to an infallible source of truth. Many of them hold that the signs of the imminent Apocalypse can no longer be ignored and that they can foresee the time of its occurrence through a meticulous reading of Revelation. According to a 2002 Time-CNN poll, only one third of the U.S. population denied the reliability of the Book of Revelation. The “Left Behind” series of novels about the Tribulation before the Second Coming of Jesus has sold 60-odd million copies since the mid-1990s (Gates, 2006). Other polls show that Apocalypse-inspired Christian Zionism influences the worldview of several million Americans and that as many as 25 million Americans hold that the establishment of the State of Israel has been a God-sanctioned act, resting on the authority of biblical prophecies.

Millions of fundamentalist Christians are strong supporter of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and many even look forward to an escalation that would involve Israel and Iran. This is because 9/11 has invigorated the hopes of endtimers that the clash between “Judeo-Christian” and Muslim “civilizations” will lead up to the Rapture – when the faithful will be swept into heaven, a belief that stems from a rather arbitrary, fundamentalist interpretation of the Scriptures – and, subsequently, to the catastrophic clash of the armies of good and evil on the plains of Armageddon, an unidentified location in the Middle East (Wojcik, 1996).

Apocalypticism and Reformation

The rather baffling pervasiveness and persistence of the apocalyptic imagery in American culture attests to the foresight of those founders of the Christian Church who feared that the incendiary tones and content of John’s prophecy could be misinterpreted or misused. This trend contrasts rather markedly with the scarcity of apocalyptic motifs in contemporary European culture, where they have been on a downward slide since as early as the Renaissance, with the partial exception of a vibrant, albeit fleeting revival with National Socialism. Now they are only embraced by a disaffected minority. Italian historian Augusto Placanica once remarked that, in Europe, the apocalyptic paradigm only survives in the inmost recesses of the human mind, “in our whispers, in what we say with the most embarrassed discretion: what we dare think, but dare not say” (Placanica, 1990, p. 317).

One is tempted to suggest that contemporary millenarian extremism among Christian fundamentalists in the United States falls along a historical continuum from the first messianic movements of medieval Europe, in the eleventh and twelfth century, through the early sixteenth-century Anabaptist revolt in the Westphalian city of Münster, and to the seventeenth-century apocalyptic narratives of Reformation Puritans in New England (Placanica, 1990). The Puritans were set on building the “City upon the Hill,” namely a model community on the cusp between the Old and the New Age, founded on a covenant with God and on the conviction that the whole of history had been leading up to it. This left an indelible mark on American identity and worldview.

But how do we account for the strikingly divergent historical paths followed by Europe and the United States with respect to this phenomenon? Where did this differentiation originate from? What are the specific functions and influences of millennialism in America? Why does apocalypticism show no sign of retreating from American culture?

The different evolution of religious thought and practice in Europe and in the United States may provide a partial answer. Early Calvinists and Puritans maintained that the original sin was transmitted by propagation rather than by imitation: the “iniquity of the fathers” would be visited “upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 5:9). The Calvinist interpretation of the doctrine of the original sin – the transmissibility of Adam’s sin to his descendants – was rigid and inescapable.

In the American colonies, this sometimes translated into determinism and fatalism: since it was widely believed that God would separate the elect from the damned, regardless of individual merits in this life, then certain criminals were regarded as born with a constitutional predisposition to break the law and certain races, such as Native Americans of African slaves, as naturally inferior. Puritan ministers also argued that there would be a limited number of elect, called “visible saints,” which contrasted with the depravity of humankind at large. In sum, while Catholics could redeem themselves through good works, contrition, confession, and penance, which would secure forgiveness, absolution and, ultimately, salvation, Protestants depended on faith alone, and could not easily relieve feelings of guilt. They did not believe in the existence of the Purgatory, where sinners and miscreants were given a further opportunity to purify their souls. Sins were not simply mistakes that could be corrected, but outward manifestations of evil.

Alone before an all-sufficient God, and without celestial intermediaries like angels and saints, the sense of guilt of early Protestants could not be easily expiated. This left them entirely dependent on God and his Law, with the onus of salvation squarely on their shoulders. The direct relationship with the Creator led many to agonize over the hypocrisy of a course of action merely designed to achieve personal salvation. In the words of Luther, “even if it were possible, I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive toward salvation” (Bayer, 1998). Furthermore, the considerable influence of the cosmic misanthropy of Luther and Calvin who were similarly forthright in their portrayal of the mundane human experience as irreversibly wicked and corrupt, meant that Aristotle’s and Erasmus’s equation of rationality and justice was meaningless, if not itself evil. Calvin went so far as to announce that human nature was “not only destitute and empty of good, but so fertile and fruitful of every evil that it cannot be idle” (Bock, 1994). Not hope for a reward, but compliance with divine law would secure salvation. Finally, from a strictly Lutheran standpoint, if the world was spiritually rotten and ruled by the devil, then the most effective way to deal with sin could only be repression: Armageddon would be, as it were, a means to carry out repression on the largest possible scale.

Apocalypticism and American Puritanism

This different theological stance arguably affected the American outlook on social reformism, divine intervention in human affairs, and the larger concerns of social justice (Morone, 2003). Because they espoused the doctrine of divine election, many Puritan settlers lived in a permanent spiritual crisis, their behavior occasionally verging on the hysterical (Erikson, 1966). They confronted the overwhelming fear of being among the ones who had not been chosen by God at the beginning of Creation – the so-called “covenant of grace” – and were not destined to heaven but to damnation, no matter how hard they tried to avoid that by leading an upright life. With this sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, believers were compelled to scrutinize the outcome of their initiatives, so as to detect signs pointing to their election. The urge to assuage the anxiety about their status convinced many that the clearest indication that they were not doomed to punishment would be the morality and success of the entire community. The belief in collective salvation generated the electrifying feeling that the descendants of the first pilgrims had been chosen “en masse” to fulfill God’s purposes and to inaugurate the Kingdom of Christ on earth – “And a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth” (Jeremiah, 23:5).

Ordinary time evaporated as a result of the emergence of this form of mythic and ritual consciousness built around the belief in an impending turning-point in world history and in the ensuing rebirth of human society. Through the injection of a considerable amount of “magic”, “sublime”, and “epic” into a society awaiting its regeneration, selves were transcended in a community of destiny determined to effect epochal changes in the tide of history. They impatiently awaited the coming of a new era, at once within and outside history, and analyzed social issues not in terms of what men actually are but of what they should be, and would eventually be, if the biblical precepts were duly heeded (Gentile, 2006).

The intransigent moralism of American Puritans, their readiness to use even physical punishment against those who contravened strict and absolute sets of moral rules, the pugnacious legalism and stern inquisitiveness, the self-righteous conviction that they possessed the ultimate truth, the excessive moral perfectionism, generated that constellation of values, habits of thought, norms and ideals that were the ultimate source of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which justified American colonialism (Morone, 2003). If the United States were the culmination of history, the New Israel where Christ would gather all his forces, then the alleged cosmic mission assigned to the American people by God himself would be to spread across the world its institutions and underlying principles. America would be assigned a central role in the struggle between good and evil, which was in turn part of God’s Creation. Like all other utopias, the sacred, providential American Mission was intrinsically anti-democratic and anti-humanistic, for it was founded on an ideal configuration of mankind and on the idea of a cosmic fight against evil that could produce hubris, callousness, and supported the use of violent means. There was no such thing as human history, but only the history of divine Providence. Ironically, this intense sense of responsibility towards the whole universe could be turned against certain categories of people who, because of their rebellion against the Creation, were hardly God’s creature like the others: hence witch hunting, lynching and the extermination of Native Americans (Erikson, 1966).

The expectation for renewal generally coexisted with a substantial support for existing institutions. The covenant with God which had established the New Israel prescribed that new members would become part of a holy community and would need to keep to the terms agreed upon with God himself, for the very survival of the community depended on that. Wealth and social station were not the product of historical and political circumstances: they were a vocation bestowed upon a person by divine calling.

This form of religious organicism meant that attempts to change the status quo were blasphemous and immoral. This is why the amalgam of a radical revolutionary position with traditionalism that is so typical of apocalypticism does not, by itself, cause turmoil. Apocalyptic believers, because of their reliance on a millennial hope that shores up political quiescence (viz. Revelation 13:10), are more inclined to withdraw from a corrupt society and sometimes attempt mass-suicide than to pursue revolutionary action to accelerate the advent of God’s kingdom on earth. This was true for the Jonestown community in north-western Guyana, founded by the Californian sect “Peoples Temple”, under the leadership of Jim Jones; for the Branch Davidians of David Koresh, assaulted and decimated by the FBI in the 1993 siege of their community near Waco, Texas; for the Solar Temple, a secret society based in Switzerland and Quebec; for Heaven’s Gate in the western United States, and for the Taiwanese-American sect Chen Tao. Alternatively, harsher confrontations with mainstream society may generate paranoid feelings, so that opposition is seen as persecutory. Their perpetual antagonism to dominant institutions and lifestyles may then lead them to provoke social conflict in accordance with the nihilistic slogan “the worse, the better.” This was the case of the Taborites who, in fifteenth-century Bohemia, formed an army with the intent of purifying Central Europe, of the Japanese terrorist sect Aum Shinrikyo and of neo-survivalists, white supremacists and adherents of Christian Identity like Timothy McVeigh, who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

This millenarian propensity for self-destructive and destructive cruelty is easily explained. The End Times is, by definition, the cathartic event, in that it purifies human society and human souls once and for all. But the original Greek noun kàtharsis means “purge, selection” and the Greek verb kathairèo means “to destroy”, indicating that the line between purification and elimination is very thin. Furthermore, the millenarian mélange of Arcadian and utopian sentiments tends to translate into contempt for the present, the hallmark of those people who feel that they are born too early or too late, and whose emotional attachments and loyalties have been best described by Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: “higher than love of one’s neighbor is love for the remote and for the future” (Nietzsche, 1995).

The neutralization of self-determination, which is inherent in apocalyptic thought, also excuses violent behaviour. Free will is denied: people are held by rather than hold their beliefs and their self-awareness is “only a flickering in the closed circuits of historical life” (Gadamer, 1994). This belief may result in the alienating conviction that humans are helpless spectators of the historical process, whose course cannot be altered by human volition. Active participation in politics to improve things and to transform human consciousness would be pointless, for sinners are locked into their condition and cosmic role, and God controls the unfolding of human history, a cosmic drama consisting in four acts: crisis, divine judgment, the reward of the just and compliant with the eternal life, and the retribution of the wayward, forever consigned to hell.

In the early stages of New England’s Puritan movement, both the original and the restored purity came from elsewhere, not from free and independent human judgment. Free will was sometimes conceived as not in harmony with the construction of a well-ordered society, which should instead be based on the “free” and voluntary submission to the will of God. Thus, apocalyptic thinking was actually detrimental to social reform, because it did not recognize the true value to be gained from personal initiative and from the questionings of received truth. Human plans that were not a response to a divine calling would fall apart, whereas only genuine hope and trust in a divinely predetermined history, together with a great deal of patience, was the key to salvation.

The eschatological character of the apocalyptic spirituality obliged Puritans to grapple with the moral, social and historical implications of the God-given mission. Social integration and confidence were achieved by propagating the conviction that the inhabitants of “New Israel” lived at a time when fundamental changes were looming, and ministers could predict when these would occur. What is more, the chosen ones, through their compliance and purity of motives, believed they could become the agents of the unfolding of God’s plans, and bring forward the Second Coming of the final earthly deliverer, as prophesized by the Book of Revelation.

The political and social order was God-given and could not be called into question, nor could the authority of Puritan ministers be disputed, since they were divinely appointed messengers, and the only recipients of the knowledge of the ultimate Truth. Many among their followers, too afraid of sin and damnation to debate the scope of their religious leaders’ authority, completely surrendered their independent judgment. The only blessed owners of the future, ministers became moral entrepreneurs and moral crusaders, representatives of social groups who could benefit from the creation of deviance and the exclusion of individuals branded as deviants (Erikson, 1966).

Apocalypticism and Christian Fundamentalism

American anthropologist Mary Douglas has convincingly argued that every culture shapes rituals and symbolic boundaries which separate what it deems pure (“normal”) from what is regarded as polluted (“deviant”) (Douglas, 2002). American fundamentalism is a case in point. From the start, it exhibited a number of features that would protect the community from the assault of secularization: a fixation with the idea of original purity, the imposition of rigid and arbitrary symbolical and institutional boundaries, the ritualization of everyday life, the demonization of the internal and external other, the inerrancy of sacred texts, a tendency to bend logic to suit the ostensible divine purposes, oppositional sectarianism, the will to absolute power and charismatic leadership. Hardliners strongly objected to what they believed to be unmistakable indications of moral failure, namely laziness, sloth, waste, poverty, alcoholism, and licentiousness.

Because this apocalyptic logic is characterized by great malleability, doctrinal differences between the North and the South with respect to the understanding and scope of Salvation gradually emerged over time (Goldfield, 2003). Southerners were more likely to believe that human actions were fairly ineffective in terms of personal salvation, compared to God’s will, and privileged divine retribution and social vindication, while Northerners stressed the importance of individual free will for one’s own salvation as well as for the salvation of everyone else. By and large this discrepancy corresponds to the one described by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) with the distinction between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft, which roughly translate as “society” and “community.”

Gesellschaft is the “artificial”, heterogeneous, and competitive social milieu of modern urban society in which ties between individuals are loose and people are held together by personal interest, instrumental rationality, and by the social contract, whereas Gemeinschaft is the “natural”, organic model of society prevailing in rural areas, which are typified by cultural homogeneousness, cohesion, enforced harmony, common objectives, and emotional bonds.

Historically, apocalypticism has served to preserve the attributes of Gemeinschaft/community in modern society. Therefore, it is more likely to affect a comparatively less pluralistic society which values collective good over personal choice, and fatalism over human agency; one that divests the actor of choice in order to restore and consolidate spiritual reassurance and the basis of personal and communal identity: that is, in a “limited-options culture.”

This is what occurred during the first two Great Awakenings, in the 1740s and in the 1820-40s. This is also the reason why literal apocalypticism, or pre-millennialism – espoused by those who believe that the Second Coming will inaugurate the millennium –, which is predicated on the monopoly of truth, irrational fear, inordinate self-righteousness and, in general, a narrow and anxious attitude to life, is poised to dismiss democracy and the rule of law as harmful. The focus is on the period of tribulation preceding the advent of Jesus, on the Rapture of the saints (1 Thess. 4, 17), and on the threat posed by the Antichrist. In the south-eastern states, the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, that is, from a traditional agrarian society to an industrialized society, and from an imminent eschatology to a deferred eschatology, was delayed by about a century. There, the ritualistic, symbolic and spiritual “collective effervescence” of premillennialism persists to this day, as opposed to the more socially progressive post-millennialism advocated by those who believe that an enlightened humankind will inaugurate the millennium and that the Second Coming will occur at the end of this inspired age.

This account for the fact that the United States is, together with Iran, the only country on the planet with a mass-apocalyptic movement. Most significantly, the rise of the two movements historically coincided, as both the Iranian revolution and the founding of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority – a conservative Christian organization with strong apocalyptic overtones – took place in 1979, less than a couple of years before the election of Ronald Reagan, a self-declared believer in Armageddon.

From the perspective of Christian fundamentalists, there is a clear consistency of purpose in their urgent calling for social changes that cannot be procrastinated, their apocalyptic expectations, and the conservative and restorative nature of their movement. Indeed, they all concur to create an all-encompassing vision of life, marking the moral boundaries of the community and reinforcing its collective identity and cohesion. When pursued to its extremes, this logic generates a cultic milieu where everything must be experienced in an all-or-nothing basis and which is highly likely to veer towards dystopian developments (Althouse, 2005).

The threat and the promise of the Apocalypse may be of considerable value for those who are incapable or unwilling to adjust to the changed circumstances of a post-rural and post-industrial society, which is more open, fragmented, heterogeneous, and confusing.

The Apocalypse is therefore a specific social representation that is believed because it is shared, and it is shared because far too many people experience a chronic feeling of discontent, resentment, spiritual hunger, and impending doom. It is one of the possible scenarios of an alternative modernity antagonistic to the diverse, precarious, and unpredictable life which is typical of liberal-democratic societies, one that, all too often, seems outside of one’s control and is apt to provoke cognitive anxiety.

Apocalypticists may feel at ease in presuming that increasing levels of personal freedom, the waning influence of the church, and different styles of parental control can be offset by the suppression of temporality: the approaching end of the world completely neutralizes the relevance of human agency and turns back the clock of history to a time prior to the breach of order, to an age of primordial harmony and reassuring moral discipline where each one would find the right place in the order of things. In all likelihood, they feel much more comfortable in knowing that their sense of defeat and the mystifying categorical mixture that the globalizing process has brought in its train are only contingent. This shared imaginative (and sedative) vision provides ontological security and soothe their anxieties. This probably also explains why apocalyptic movements, like all social purity movements, generally resurface during times of perceived national crisis.

Apocalypticism as a predictive mechanism need not be accurate: predictions are instrumental to the achievement of social cohesion and spiritual fulfillment in troubled times. Many realize that they are better off knowing that the end is near, while clinging to the belief in an ultimate divine justice and interpreting every catastrophe as a welcome sign of the imminent return of Christ. More importantly, given the temporal proximity of the dramatic resolution of the clash between good and evil, believers find particularly rewarding their role as protagonists of a cosmic drama in which their actions would not be wasted but would instead serve a greater purpose. Millennial expectations truly possess them (Northcott, 2004).

Rather paradoxically, given its goal, the belief in the Armageddon thus represents a quest for emotional and psychological satisfaction and for a safe niche, a refuge from the ostensibly greater danger of the moral drift and social degeneration that characterizes secularized modernity. It is a vehicle of world-rejecting purification which enables some people to feel that they are more effectively in control of their own destinies.

REFERENCES

Althouse, Peter, “‘Left Behind’—Fact or Fiction: Ecumenical Dilemmas of the Millenarian Tensions within Pentecostalism,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 13 (2), pp. 187-207, 2005.

Bayer, Oswald, “Freedom? The Anthropological Concepts in Luther and Melanchthon Compared,” The Harvard Theological Review, 91(4), 1998, pp. 373-87.

Bock, Kenneth, Human nature mythology, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Bonazzi, Tiziano, Il sacro esperimento, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1970.

Bostick, Curtis V., The Antichrist and the Lollards, Leiden: Brill, 1998.

Douglas, Mary, Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2002

Erikson, Kai Theodore, Wayward Puritans. A study in the sociology of deviance, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966.

Fath, Sébastien, Militants de la Bible aux Etats-Unis, Paris: Éditions Autrement, 2004.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, New York: Continuum, 1994.

Gates, David, “Religion: the Pop prophets,” Newsweek, May 24, 2006.

Gentile, Emilio, La democrazia di Dio. La religione americana nell’era dell’impero e del terrore, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006.

Goldfield, David. Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Morone, James A., Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, New York: Random House Modern Library, 1995.

Oliver, W. H., Prophets and Millennialists, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1978.

Placanica, Augusto, Segni dei tempi. Il modello apocalittico nella tradizione occidentale, Venezia: Marsilio, 1990.

Tonnies, Ferdinand, Community and Civil Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Wojcik, Daniel, “Embracing Doomsday: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Nuclear Age,” Western Folklore, 55 (4), 1996, pp. 297-33.

Weber, Eugen, Apocalypses. Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial beliefs through the Ages, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Aum-Shinrikyo

In the spring of 1995, the reportedly safest country in the world was shocked by the revelation that the perpetrators of a terrorist attack against Tokyo’s subway which killed 12 and injured approximately five thousand people were talented Japanese students mesmerized by a hodgepodge of Christian and Buddhist millennialism (the belief that a Golden age is about to dawn), Vajrayana tantric techniques, Taoist beliefs in cycles of cosmic recurrence, and Hindu notion of destruction and rebirth, with bits of Nostradamus thrown in. Many found it hard to believe that the highest ranks of Aum-Shinrikyo, the organization that carried out the attack, comprised several relatively young scientists and doctors who, far from simply going along with their guru’s instructions, actually pressed for the adoption of extreme measures towards the “final solution” of all Japanese plights, that is to say, the obliteration of government agencies. The weapon of choice was sarin gas, a cheap and simple chemical developed in Nazi Germany in 1938 and used by Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran.
The man behind all this, Shoko Ashara, was the embodiment of the “banality of evil,” in the sense that Hannah Arendt uses this expression in a letter to the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem. She argues that “evil is never radical…it is only extreme,…it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension…It spreads like a fungus on the surface….Thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its banality. Only the Good has depth and can be radical” (Arendt, 1964).
The Japanese media made an inaccurate portrayal of this terrorist group and concealed the dullness of their worldview, while focusing on an equally trite juxtaposition of “good” and “evil,” “sanity” and “madness,” and “health” and “disease.”
Born as Chizuo Matsumoto in Kyushu in 1955, Asahara suffered from impaired vision due to congenital glaucoma, and was sent to a school for the blind. There, he bullied his blind schoolmates and sought to create a milieu that he could wholly control. He confided to his closest friends his plan to become the Japanese Prime Minister. Then he would set up his own “robot kingdom.”
When he was not prey to his megalomania, Asahara aspired to become a doctor. But he flunked the entrance exams at Tokyo University, and resigned himself to earn his living as an acupuncturist and a healer. He soon became aware that he could not cure his patients through either the Western or the Chinese medical tradition, and gradually turned into an obsessively religious person. When his business failed, he made a trip to India in 1986, as he was determined to attain enlightenment. Later, he claimed he had gained a considerable level of sanctity and command of his magical powers, changed his name to Asahara Shoko, and founded a new religion, christening his sect “Aum Shinri-kyō” – from Aum, “powers for destruction and creation in the universe” and Shinrikyō, “teaching of the supreme truth” –. Approximately 40,000 Japanese and Russians flocked round him to learn his synthesis of Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and biblical scriptures. Like Joseph Goebbels, who in his semi-autobiographical novel, Michael, published in 1929, submitted that “it is almost immaterial what we believe in, so long as we believe in something,” Asahara selectively assembled all that could appeal to young educated Japanese of the 1990s and to himself.
In the course of time his teaching changed tune, shifting towards a more radicalized sectarianism. Asahara warned his disciples of an imminent Armageddon and prophesied that Pluto’s entry into Sagittarius in January 1995 would have catastrophic consequences. The January 17, 1995 disastrous Kobe earthquake strengthened the resolve of his followers. He then inaugurated a segregate community on the slopes of Mt. Fuji, where his ascendancy over his followers increased inexorably. Aum-Shinrikyo initially sought to develop forms of therapeutic treatment aimed at the spiritual salvation of psychologically and physically sick individuals. Over time, however, as Asahara realized that, outside the sect, nobody took him seriously, Mahayana Buddhism, which aimed not only at personal salvation but at the salvation of the whole of humankind, together with messianic and millennial expectations, took the upper hand. The utopian plan to use medicine and science to redeem the world and create a harmonious and peaceful society was falling apart, and the sect’s leaders grew restless and slightly paranoid. If Japanese were indifferent to Asahara’s enlightened leadership, he would make them take notice. As is often the case with utopias, Aum’s goal of achieving total liberation and perfection called for the subjugation and purposeful deception of individuals, who were regarded as essentially incompetent and selfish. When ordinary citizens, by ignoring his call for action, showed that they were not sufficiently prone to self-deception, Asahara and his entourage lost their residual faith in humankind. Like a Nazi ideologue, Asahara claimed that while killing animals was wrong, because they are innocent by definition, human beings, who commit crimes intentionally, should not be spared when they stood in the way of the greater good (Lifton, 1999).
In keeping with this misanthropic tenet, the acolytes of the charismatic leader developed sophisticated techniques for mass-killing and stored weapons and high technology designed to support their plan to annihilate the Japanese government. On June 27, 1994 they carried out the first bio-terrorist attack in history, in Matsumoto, causing a death-toll of seven and injuring hundreds of people. On March 20, 1995, their most infamous action: the assault of Tokyo’s subway network. The terrorists riddled with the tip of their umbrellas several bags filled with sarin gas, but the number of victims was comparatively low thanks to the presence of mind of some travelers who opened the windows and dispersed the gas. On both occasions, a more careful planning and execution would have caused a catastrophe.

The psychology of terrorism

Following the terrorist attack, the celebrated Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami interviewed some of the followers of Aum-Shinrikyo and revealed traits of their personalities that warrant a closer examination (Murakami, 2001). When he was an adolescent, Hiroyuki Kano, an Aum member who was not involved in the attack, was driven by the urge to attain superior knowledge, but nobody seemed to be able to help him fulfill this wish. He spent hours pondering over the most vexed existential questions without reading through a single book, for he did not like reading: “When I read something I just see what’s wrong with the book.” Although he was primarily interested in finding a mathematical demonstration of the soundness of Buddhist philosophy, he conceded that he never got into depth with any study of Buddhism, as “the ones I read didn’t seem very direct in their approach. I couldn’t discover the remedy I was searching for.” When he met the Aum instructors, he was delighted to see that all his questions were answered: “We were told: ‘do this and this will happen.’ No matter what question we had, we got an answer straight away. I was completely immersed in it.”
Another member, Akio Namimura, pointed out that Fumihiro Jôyû, the sect’s spokesman, “could answer any question clearly,” and Mitsuharu Inaba recalls that he was really impressed by what Jôyû said: “It was so clearly stated – the way he used metaphors, for instance…after the sermon he took questions, and his answers were extremely precise, each one perfectly tailored to the person who asked it.” Their lives were greatly improved as they freed themselves from the burden of their responsibilities. For Harumi Iwakura, the way Aum did things made life easier: “they’d give the order and you just did what they said. No need to think for yourself, or worry about every little detail, just do what you’re told.”
These young people were manifestly unprepared to take responsibility for their own action and to grasp the gravity of what they were doing. They candidly pointed out the simplicity of the choices they made, and the eagerness to completely surrender their critical faculties, without spending too much time on considering the morality of their actions. The sort of morally and intellectually numbed people that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor argued he was morally obliged to guide (Dostoevsky, 1912). Those who joined the sect did so in order to withdraw from reality, shut out their fears and misgivings, for they were already estranged from real life. They wanted someone else to cope with the problems of their own lives. For them, relinquishing critical thought, systematized ideas, and ethical concerns in exchange for protection and support was a matter of course.
As a result of their moral obliquity, these cultists thought little or nothing of their victims. A hermetically sealed milieu, dominated by reductionism, narcissism and self-centeredness, disabled their moral faculties. Their absolute moral certainty prevented them from becoming aware of the wickedness of their behavior. The scope of their endeavor was so absolute that they were drawn into a parallel, suspended reality, in which their previous nagging duties and concerns could be ignored, and all norms and conventions were turned upside down: hence their disinclination to accept that they should feel guilty about what they had done. Social order and conventional morality were perverted to such an extent that the boundary between right and wrong completely dissolved, while adepts’ self-denial came very close to self-imposed mind-control.
Their atrophied morality, which was in stark contrast to their fervid imagination, was further exacerbated by a deterministic view of the effects of karmic influence on one’s personal life. They were persuaded that the negative consequences of past misdeeds could only be counteracted by escaping from the bonds of karma through meditation (karuma kara no dasshutsu) or overturning deleterious social institutions and conventions that had caused what they saw as widespread spiritual degeneration. By living in a sick and corrupted society, people accumulated a large amount of bad karma that, like a genetic burden, would affect them for the rest of their lives, and possibly beyond. Therefore, Aum preached positive spiritual cleansing through ascetic practices at the same time that it called for the annihilation and the subsequent regeneration of Japanese society.
But too few Japanese were eager to follow this path of spiritual cleansing through meditation. According to Asahara’s understanding of tantric Buddhism, these millions of skeptics were unworthy of life. They deserved a “compassionate” death, which would ultimately accelerate their cosmic journey of reincarnation. Additionally, to take the life of people who represented an obstacle for those engaged in the reduction of bad karma in the world was actually a meritorious act. Thus, Aum-Shinrikyo was not amoral or ethically indifferent: it rather embraced an inverted ethical system that was both “primitive” and “modern.” Asahara’s philosophy tapped into the deepest, ungovernable recesses of the human mind, but it also affirmed its determination to demonstrate that humankind, not God, is in charge of the future, and that happiness and spiritual fulfillment can be achieved in this life and in this world.

A Japanese distinctiveness?

The most important question we need to address, then, is where this predisposition to self-deception came from. In other words, are there any distinctive features of modernity in general or Japanese culture and society in particular that make some persons less prepared to face such a challenge? It seems undeniable that magic has not been banished from contemporary society, for it clearly satisfies a social and psychological need. While on the one hand science destroys traditional mythologies, it also paves the way for all sorts of post-modern mythologies inspired by a blend of science and religion. Hence the persistent and widespread belief in astrology even amidst the educated public and the proliferation of sub- and counter-cultures that merge science and magic in order to ease people’s existential angst. What is remarkable about Aum-Shinrikyo is how successful the sect was in making science a sacred enterprise. Sacred and profane mingled while fascination for state-of-the-art technology and science was employed to awe potential followers (Reader, 2000).
Shoko Asahara gave instruction to his aids to screen the top Japanese universities and lure brilliant researchers into joining the sect. This task did not prove exceedingly difficult. In Japan, traditional religions are giving ground to occultism and mysticism. In 1993, 231,019 sects were registered in Japan, with two hundred million members. This means that thousands of Japanese join more than one religious organization, indifferent to possible theoretical and ethical inconsistencies. Some of these sects profess a millenarian faith in an incipient new world order, reflecting in so many ways the rather bleak and apocalyptic view of society conveyed by Japanese science fiction and anime. That the new religions’ millenarianism has much to do with the apocalyptic visions of Japanese manga is proven by the fact that Asahara Shoko was himself the author of a manga tellingly entitled Metsubô no hi, “The Doom’s Day.” Furthermore, the enormous popularity of Nostradamus’ prophecies in Japan led many to believe that the saikimatsu, the end of the century, would coincide with the jidaimatsu, the end of time. Some, like the Aum cultists, went a step further, and became obsessed with the possibility of actively bringing about the Armageddon (Manzenreiter, 1995).
Asahara’s foolish plan was also inspired by Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation series,” whose key character, Hari Seldon, is a mathematical prodigy and the discoverer of a new discipline, psychohistory, enabling its practitioners to predict the future. When the Empire’s leadership fails to heed his warning of an impending catastrophe, he summons the best thinkers of the Empire and founds a sect that will preserve wisdom and knowledge. Following the disaster, the sect’s acolytes find themselves ruling the universe as no one else has a sufficient command of science and technology to challenge their authority: they are looked upon as wizards.
Asahara believed he was a post-modern hero, like Kaneda, the protagonist of Akira, a milestone of the Japanese techno-apocalyptic genre, which first appeared in Young Magazine in December 1982. Kaneda struggles in a post-nuclear Neo-Tokyo that has been completely destroyed by a nuclear experiment and then rebuilt. He is the member of a gang of bikers, bôsôzoku, literally “violent running tribe” (from bo violent, so to run, and zoku tribe). Bôsôzoku defy police authority, use Chinese characters for their gangsta name, wear uniforms of kamikaze pilots, all symbols usually associated with extreme right-wing political movements and yakuza members. Although Kaneda is poorly schooled and ignorant, he is also kôha, gallant, tough guy, and displays makoto, purity of motives, which makes him a qualified candidate for the leadership of the new, uncorrupted society that will rise from the ashes of the old one (Standish, 1998). It is possible that Asahara identified with Kaneda and thought himself a messianic leader on a mission to rid Japan of its “impurities.”
It is also plausible to assume that the declining role of Shintoism and Buddhism may have concurred to produce a moral void for thousands of young Japanese and that while the new religions enjoy the clear advantage of not having to prove any consistency of behavior or doctrine, they may not always be able to provide the desired spiritual anchor in troubled times. Under extreme circumstances, this loss of firm religious and ethical landmarks is apt to provoke a fluctuation between the idolatry of humankind and nihilism of the “humans pollute the Earth” kind.
Aum-Shinrikyo could be fairly described as a progressive, millennialist response to the prolonged stagnation of the Japanese economy and the suffocating traditionalism of Japanese society. Initially drawn to Asahara’s philosophy as a result of a feeling of emptiness, boredom, isolation, and possibly hopelessness, thousands of cultists increasingly saw themselves as the instruments of a superhuman agent whose decision could change the course of history and usher in a millennial kingdom.
Like Hong Houxiu, the leader of the disastrous Taiping Rebellion, which took place in mid-nineteenth-century China, who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, Asahara proclaimed himself “Today’s Christ” and “the Savior of This Century,” and promised collective salvation after the ultimate battle between good and evil. This doctrinal shift caused a momentous transition from a progressive and tolerant gradualist attitude to social reform and spiritual cleansing to an apocalyptic and violent revolutionary fervor. AUM adepts had been chosen to fulfill a providential purpose and felt enormously empowered. The eschatological dimension of the movement, which was bound to create an alternative society and an alternative modernity, the beginning of a new era of peace and prosperity, conferred a sacred status on those who were entirely committed to the cause and a transcendental significance to their murderous actions. Their calling, as “metaphysical agents of reform,” would in turn fill the spiritual void which haunted them.
The fact that this movement could flourish so vigorously in a peaceful and generally affluent society like Japan, raises a number of thought-provoking issues. Because of economic stagnation, these disgruntled and alienated young Japanese men and women were the first generation since the end of WWII who could expect to have a worse standard of living than their elder brothers and sisters. Tired of vicarious emotional experiences, they were probably going through a severe identity crisis and viewed middle class over-bureaucratized corporate life and materialistic, rampantly consumerist society as dehumanizing and intolerable. They despised a public structure that enforced a conservative, authoritarian, unchangeable, and corrupt system. At the same time, docile and virtuous, hopelessly mediocre, desperately bored, perfectly trained in the art of self-denial, these level-headed young citizens never experienced material deprivation. Too lethargic to feel compelled to become politically active, they were nonetheless eager to re-sanctify the world.
Like a demigod, Asahara offered them collective empowerment and a false sense of individuality. Then he molded them into an army of drone-like radical revolutionaries fighting against the same society that had shaped them. Estrangement, disenchantment, discontent, powerlessness, the urge to find a way to liberate their emotions, and a paradoxically nihilistic search for meaning, caused them to become enemies of their own peers. They ended up thinking that “life-affirming” violence was a solution to their resentment and emasculation. Creation would follow destruction, and the terrorist assault on Kasumigaseki and Nagatacho, home to the Japanese government, was part of a plan meant to wipe out the ruling elite to make room for the drop-out elite, hungry for status and motivation.
Ultimately, Aum-Shinrikyo should serve as a cautionary tale: there is a limit to the amount of pressure and constraints that a democratic society can place on its citizens. When that limit is reached, society will pay the consequences.

REFERENCES

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Dostoevsky, Fyodor M., The Brothers Karamazov, London: Heinemann, 1912.
Lifton, Robert J., Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyo, apocalyptic violence, and the new global terrorism, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999
Manzenreiter, Wolfram, “Armageddon now! Dramaturgie und Inszenierung der Apokalypse. Manga, Mythen, Medien und Aum Shinrikyō,“ Minikomi – Informationen des Akademischen Arbeitskreis Japans 2 (1995), pp. 1-5.
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