War, Terrorism and Cultural Crisis:
The escalation of mimetic rivalry and re-sacralising violence in
modernity
This essay examines the nature of contemporary violence in the context of the
radically shifting dynamics of modernity. In particular, the essay assesses the
changing state of warfare and the growth of religious-based terrorism. In order to do
this, I critically engage with the insights into violence and war provided by the
cultural anthropologist and theorist, René Girard, with respect to contemporary
violence. In order to base this inquiry on contemporary data, I analyse the internal and
international dynamics of contemporary conflicts in Syria and Iraq, assessing and
applying Girard’s insights to these cases. These examples are chosen as they starkly
present the conduct and dynamics of modern violence, terrorism and warfare. The
essay argues that modernity is undergoing a cultural crisis reflected in the breakdown
of sacrificial institutions that restrained violence, such as warfare. This breakdown is
particularly reflected in the growth of ‘extremist violence’ and terrorism, with
violence escalating to unforeseen extremes. The essay further argues that terrorist
groups are essentially motivated to re-sacralise violence as a false antidote to
modernity’s deepening cultural crisis. 1
Warfare, Extremist Violence and Modernity
In his final major work (Battling to the End), René Girard argues that the
institutionalisation and codification of warfare has broken down in modernity,
1
Please note that in making this argument that I do not seek to exonerate or excuse
the violence of the United States or other nation-states. This essay is proposing an
analysis of the trajectory of modern violence.
1
revealing an underlying cultural crisis and an increasing inability to contain violence.2
Girard’s analysis in Battling to the End extends what is called his ‘mimetic theory’ to
the dynamics of war and modern European history, through analysing Carl von
Clausewitz’s famous treatise, On War. Girard argues that the rivalrous, mimetic
dynamics that recur in human relations have become increasingly unrestrained from
institutional and legal frameworks. 3 In particular, warfare largely lost its institutional
manner regulated by aristocratic rules and codes of behaviour. While nation-states
sought to address this loss of codification, warfare has tended to become more
extreme, culminating in the development and use of weapons of mass destruction in
which the distinction between combatant and civilian has been degraded.
Girard particularly explores how competition and rivalry in modernity,
especially amongst nation-states, are characterised by increasing polarisation. He
provides examples of this in his analysis of warfare in the last 200 years in Europe,
especially between France and Germany. He argues that nation-state rivalry,
especially French-German competition for supremacy in Europe, led to the
breakdown of warfare as a codified institution and the onset of ‘total war’ (from
Napoleon onwards) in which a whole populace is mobilised for violence against a
nation’s rival(s). For Girard, total war represents a new stage of violence in human
history. In it, the previous cultural system based around strict hierarchies (with the
2
René Girard, Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre, trans. Mary
Baker (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2010). Girard’s work has
traversed a number of academic disciplines, particularly anthropology, literary
studies, philosophy and theology. To summarise, Girard’s insights have three major
parts:
1) that human desire is mimetic or imitated, i.e., it is stimulated by others;
2) that human cultures use scapegoats or victims to resolve mimetic rivalry and
violence in order to create cultural unity; and,
3) that biblical revelation reveals the scapegoat mechanism and provides a positive
way for structuring human desire and culture around God’s gratuitous love.
3
Girard, Battling to the End.
2
monarchy and aristocracy at the apex) is superseded by the nation-state where the old
hierarchies are swept aside by a more egalitarian mobilisation of the whole populace.
According to Girard, this mobilisation is driven by the outbreak of what he calls
“internal mediation”, that is, the increasing polarisation of mimetic desires and
rivalries breaking free from cultural restraints, such as social hierarchies. 4
Because of the outbreak of total war, what Girard calls “the escalation to
extremes”5 – the polarising and escalating nature of violence – now occurs “on a
planetary scale”6, as the sacrificial restraints of pre-modern and medieval cultures
were no longer effective. He further argues that the escalation to extremes is
identifiable with what Christianity describes as the ‘apocalypse’. 7 For Girard, the
violence of the apocalypse is not driven by divine intervention or punishment, but
rather can be identified with the out-workings of unrestrained human violence through
mimetic rivalry: “When sacrifice disappears, all that remains is mimetic rivalry, and
it escalates to extremes.”8 In Girard’s view, then, violence is becoming more
unpredictable because it has been unleashed from its sacrificial restraints. 9
Girard’s analysis seems apropos as more extreme forms of violence have
developed in modernity, denoting a cultural crisis as the previous cultural institutions
(such as around hierarchy and warfare) are degraded. Terrorist or extremist violence
even moves beyond conventional state-based forms of violence, doing so in a way
that has accelerated the onset of total war in modernity. Like totalitarian states
4
René Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure,
trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 121.
5
Girard, Battling to the End, 1.
6
René Girard, “‘What is Occurring Today is Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale’:
René Girard on September 11” (with Henri Tincq). Le Monde, November 6, 2011.
Translated by the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Available at
www.morphizm.com/politix/girard911.html.
7
Girard, Battling to the End, xvi.
8
Girard, Battling to the End, 198.
9
Girard, Battling to the End, 68.
3
mobilised by total war, extremist religious groups derive their identity and unity from
violence. Further than this, however, these extremist groups do not try to hide their
victims (as totalitarian regimes do), but rather celebrate their violence in an explicit
fashion and are willing to use violence in an arbitrary fashion, ignoring distinctions
between combatants and civilians.
Alongside the breakdown of the institution of war and the growth of
extremism, Girard identifies the rise of ‘security’ apparatuses and discourses (rather
than ones based around warfare) as representing the new institutional paradigm for
containing violence.10 In respect to international ‘security’, the dynamics of
international rivalries especially in regards to the containment of mass or heinous acts
of violence (e.g., by Al-Qaeda or Islamic State) and the use of weapons of mass
destruction (such as in Iraq or Syria) have become primary motivators for the
construction of large state-based and private security apparatuses. They also provide
justification for the discourse of ‘strategic interventions’ to protect innocent people.
Thus, with the breakdown of the aristocratic cultural system and the rise of nationstates and extremist violence, security has become the over-riding concern and
motivator for targeted violence: “…we have gone from an era of codified war to an
era of security, where we think we can ‘resolve’ conflicts just as we cure sickness,
with increasingly sophisticated tools.” 11 On this point, the US use of drones comes
readily to mind as an exemplar of a sophisticated tool used to ‘cure’ extremist
violence. Though a security paradigm has arisen to combat contemporary violence,
Girard argues that political rationality has failed to comprehend the nature of violence
in its reciprocal, unpredictable and escalating character.12
10
Girard, Battling to the End, 117.
Girard, Battling to the End, 117.
12
Girard, Battling to the End, 68-9.
11
4
Alongside these security apparatus, another reaction to the modern situation is
found in the conduct of warfare itself. It now tends to operate in two opposing modes
– in increasingly overt or covert ways, such as with Islamic State’s public violence in
Iraq and Syria, or Russia’s covert tactics to foment and prosecute war in the Ukraine.
Thus, warfare is increasingly unregulated: it involves either unrestricted acts of
violence in which violence is explicitly and ruthlessly performed; or denial of one’s
involvement in what are usually unjustifiable acts and in which violence retains a
performative character (particularly for those targeted), though allowing one to
continue to play the game of international politics and limit reactions from the
international community.
Girard on Desire, Violence and the Modern Cultural Crisis
As mentioned, Girard’s theory of violence is based on his identification of mimetic
desire and rivalry. It is worth undertaking a brief overview of these concepts to
understand their significance for modernity. Girard’s mimetic theory as a whole
derives from his first and primary insight into mimetic desire (or ‘triangular desire’),
that is, that humans desire according to the desire of another. According to Girard, the
origins of human relationality and self-identity, as well as culture, violence and
religion, are to be found in the nature of human desire. Desire, structured by mimesis,
moves the human subject toward an object, pulling it away from the model and
enabling autonomous movement. However, imitation of the other’s form or what the
other has is not sufficient to produce the ‘self’. 13 The complex interaction of these two
types of imitation with the temporal dimension of mimesis (repetition) produces a
13
Jean-Michel Oughourlian, The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria,
Possession, and Hypnosis, trans. E. Webb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1991), 10; James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes
(New York: Crossroad, 1998), 29.
5
third sort of imitation: “wanting to be who the other is”.14 Thus, the mimetic draw of
the model in mediated autonomy enables and structures the human’s new-found
‘ontological need’ to be: “a need which draws us to others and to imitate them in
order to acquire a sense of being, something felt as a lack”.15 This imitation is not a
negative aspect of human being, but rather draws humans into ever more complex
forms of relationships and identities.
Girard has also shown how mimetic desire is connected to acquisitiveness,
rivalry and violence. Girard noticed that mimetic desire became pathogenic and
distorted when the subject of desire seeks to acquire what the model desires by
grasping at the object of desire.16 In this circumstance, the subject asserts the
ownership and priority of his/her desire over the other’s desire, which the Bible
represents in such stories as those of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel. 17 This
grasping desire usually leads to rivalry and scandal, which becomes more extreme:
“As rivalry becomes acute, the rivals are more apt to forget about whatever
objects are, in principle, the cause of the rivalry and instead to become more
fascinated with one another. In effect the rivalry is purified of any external
stake and becomes a matter of pure rivalry and prestige. Each rival becomes
for his counterpart the worshipped and despised model and obstacle, the one
who must be at once beaten and assimilated.”18
Thus, once the conflict and rivalry are established, it tends to escalate up to the point
where the object is forgotten and the rival becomes the focus of scandal for the
14
Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 29.
Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 33.
16
Oughourlian, Puppet of Desire, 18.
17
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1977); 145.
18
René Girard, with Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, Things Hidden Since
the Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Michael Metteer (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1987), 26.
15
6
subject. Girard calls this state of rivalry the skandalon, in which the rival becomes a
block to the subject’s desire so that the rival takes the subject’s focus, rather than the
original object.19
Girard identifies two forms to mimetic desire and rivalry: what he calls
‘internal mediation’ and ‘external mediation’. In internal mediation, there is little or
no distance between the subject and model, so that each becomes the other’s model
and potential rival. 20 According to Girard, distance and difference between subjects of
desire and their models, such as that cultivated by taboos and social hierarchies,
ensure that the potential for conflict over shared objects of desire is minimised.
According to Girard, violence displays a lack of difference between desiring subjects
and models―that there is nothing definitive that differentiates “me” from “you” and
makes “me” better. For example, when the distance and distinction between the
subject and model collapses in the pursuit of the same object, two rivals become
undifferentiated from each other as “doubles” imitating each other’s desire, which
usually results in conflict.21 This state of “undifferentiation” arises from “internal
mediation” between the rivals, when the distance and social barriers between the
subject and model are weak or collapsed.
Ordinarily, however, social barriers can prevent mimetic rivalry, such as the
social distinctions between an aristocrat and a tenant farmer. These barriers establish
differences and distance between the subject and model such that the subject cannot
ever see him- or her-self justifiably capable of rivalry with the model. Girard calls
these forms of relationships “external mediation”. External mediation is usually
characterized by a one-directional relationship where the subject is influenced wholly
19
René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. J. G. Williams (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2001), 16.
20
Girard, I See Satan Fall, 119.
21
Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 12.
7
or primarily by a model, and the model is unaware of or uninfluenced by the desire of
the subject. Thus, the relationship remains external as there is no actual or possible
mimetic reciprocity between the subject and the model.
Girard argues that modernity is particularly characterised by accelerating
forms of internal mediation. 22 According to Girard, the democratic revolutions caused
the final breakdown of the aristocratic hierarchies and unleashed desire through
internal mediation. 23 The new democratic situation does not just mean universal
suffrage in shared power and values, but, on its darker side, it means anyone can be in
competition with anyone else: “Who is there left to imitate after the ‘tyrant’?
Henceforth men shall copy each other; idolatry of one person is replaced by hatred of
a hundred thousand rivals. In Balzac’s opinion, too, there is no other god but envy for
the modern crowd whose greed is no longer stemmed and held within acceptable
limits by the monarch. Men will become gods for each other.”24
Democracy, then, is characterised by widespread competition in a manner
previously unknown. This situation is possible because the revolutions of early
modern Europe destroyed the central pillar of the pre-revolutionary class system: the
divine right of absolute monarchs. 25 Previously, with the rise of absolute monarchs,
the divine right of monarchs had created a definitive distance from and victory over
the aristocracy, building on the distance between the aristocrat and the serf/peasant. It
meant that the monarch was at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, always to be
imitated and never to be in rivalry with aristocrat or commoner. The divine right acted
as a taboo to prevent violence and social breakdown: by making the monarch’s
22
René Girard, with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Evolution
and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (New York: Continuum, 2007),
240.
23
Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 121.
24
Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 119.
25
Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 119.
8
position subject to a supernatural taboo and license, the monarch was, in large part,
removed from the rivalries of the aristocracy that could result in the monarch’s
removal, scapegoating, or assassination. Yet, Girard states that, following the French
Revolution, no one in France could “be privileged without knowing it.” 26 The
bourgeoisie and the “common people” could then desire and take what the king had,
namely power and status. Thus, power and sovereignty became internally contestable
and accessible.
According to Girard, the way that human cultures have conventionally dealt
with internal mediation and mimetic rivalries is scapegoating. 27 Girard argues cultural
breakdown is conventionally resolved by the accumulation of rivalries (“all against
all”) being cast onto a victim (“all against one”) through the unanimous imitation of
an accusation that results in expulsion or murder. 28 The unification of desire by
scapegoating a victim produces a newfound cultural unity and order built on the
justification and ritual repetition of unanimous violence.
Through anthropological and literary analysis, Girard has chartered how the
violence of the mob maintains culture by transferring the power of unanimous
violence onto the victim, who is portrayed as divine and ‘sacred’. 29 Instead of
identifying the power of reconciliation in the mob’s action, the victim is claimed to
have some supernatural power to mediate and unify all desire. Girard claims that the
26
Girard, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 128.
Girard calls this process of scapegoating by a number of other terms: ‘the scapegoat
mechanism’, ‘the victimage mechanism’, ‘the surrogate victimage mechanism’, or the
‘single victim mechanism’ (Girard, Things Hidden, 23–47; I See Satan Fall, 36). Cf.
René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Y. Freccero (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1986), 12–23; Violence and the Sacred, 68–88.
28
Girard, Things Hidden, 24; I See Satan Fall, 22 and 24.
29
Girard remarks that the Latin root word “sacer” has a double meaning indicating
the double nature of the sacred in archaic cultures. It is translated as “sacred” or
“accursed” which has both beneficent and maleficent aspects denoting the disorder of
distorted desire and the restored order of scapegoating (Girard, Violence and the
Sacred, 257).
27
9
twin power of the mob – to cause and resolve chaotic violence – results in a “double
transference” where both order and disorder, good and evil, are ascribed to the victim
through supernatural agency. 30 This double transference onto the victim is the basis
for the construction of the (violent) ‘sacred’ in archaic31 culture and consciousness,
which structures and is maintained by rituals, laws and myths.
In Girard’s view, then, ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ are fundamentally inseparable
as ‘religious’ rituals, myths and laws develop that are based on the “violent sacred”
and become the foundation for culture. On the basis of these pillars, the violent sacred
instructs humans “…as to what they must and must not do to prevent a recurrence of
destructive violence”32, which includes a ritualised version of the original violence
against the victim, namely in sacrifice. Sacrificial rituals are, then, inaugurated to
imitate the original violence against the victim and appease the deity, who is believed
to have the power to cause disorder and order. It is important to note that Girard does
not regard religion or culture as violent in themselves, but as controlling mechanisms
to minimise violence and regulate human relations. Furthermore, Girard in no way
condones the use of “sacred violence”, and the attempt to project cultural or religious
structures as sacred, because it is inherently contradictory and mendacious: it gains
mimetic fulfilment and unity through the expulsion of the other, which is hidden,
rationalised and imitated.
Furthermore, Girard argues that warfare has acted as an important sacrificial
institution in human history to restrain and channel violence. It acts in the manner of a
scapegoating, but does so by targeting a whole people as enemy. In medieval times,
30
René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1977), 257-64; I See Satan Fall, 71-2.
31
Girard uses the word ‘archaic’ to denote a pre-modern, traditional culture
characterised by a singular tradition of sacrificial rituals, myths and prohibitions. I
follow his use of the word in this essay.
32
Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 259.
10
warfare was regulated through aristocratic codes and rules, like that of duels and
tournaments, and allowed for relatively controlled expressions of violence. However,
with the onset of revolution and total war in modernity, warfare was released from its
regulatory restraints, under the pressure of mass mimetic dynamics. Girard regards the
advent of ‘total war’ following the French Revolution and under the direction of
Napoleon as the turning point for mimetic rivalry and violence in modernity. In total
war, the conventions and structures of war are purposefully disregarded. They are no
longer the preserve of the aristocracy and its codes and strategies; rather, war becomes
absolute, unrestrained from the rules and conventions that had structured it as a
sacrificial activity, that is, an activity that cathartically released mimetic tensions in a
controlled fashion.
Based on Schmidt’s genealogy of terrorism, Girard argues that at the same
time as Napoleon unleashed total war, irregular war (and the roots of terrorism)
developed, as partisans sought to combat invading armies. 33 In irregular warfare, the
codification of war is clearly broken, with the distinction between soldier and civilian
purposefully confused. According to Girard, this “ensures the passage from war to
terrorism” in which total war has escalated to the point where there are no longer
legitimate armies but only fighters “ready to do anything.”34
The advent of total war and irregular warfare, for Girard, is also a premonition
of the apocalypse. Girard regards the effectiveness of modern institutions (e.g., legal
systems, nation-states and politics) as increasingly under threat. While these
institutions have provided unprecedented levels of order, peace and justice in the
modern world, they are at the same time increasingly challenged to constrain violence
and justify themselves through limited uses of violence to control more widespread
33
34
Girard, Battling to the End, 66.
Girard, Battling to the End, 66.
11
violence.
Furthermore, according to Girard, the breakdown in the effectiveness of
cultural institutions to restrain violence in modernity and postmodernity can be
attributed to one major cause: to the biblical tradition, and to some degree, to the
world’s major religions. Girard argues that in the biblical revelation human violence
is definitively exposed and the possibilities for a cultural shift away from violence
occurs. In his later work, Girard identifies how the Judeo-Christian tradition
undermines scapegoating violence by revealing the innocence of the victim of human
violence. This revelation, culminating in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus,
leads to a gradual deconstruction of the distinction between “the mob and the victim”,
“us and them”, by showing the mimetic/relational basis of human nature and its
fulfilment in divine love that transforms distorted desire and mob violence. In this
way, Girard establishes a distinction between the archaic-mythical (“pagan”) and
biblical traditions centred on the victim, while also showing how the biblical tradition
seeks to un-distort and re-direct traditional culture in its misguided search for unity
and peace. Thus, the cultural crisis that seems to afflict the modern world is really the
emergence of a definitive choice for humanity: for or against violence.
The Escalation to Extremes in (Post)Modernity
Applying Girard’s analysis to modernity, it seems that in a similar way to archaic
cultures, the international order, under the hegemony of the USA, acts to contain
mimetic violence and the potential for mass destruction within a legal-political order
structured around the limited use of violence. However, while violence is used in a
sacrificial manner, the international order also seeks to uphold the values of justice,
human rights and peace, based around a growing consciousness of the evil of human
12
violence and the innocence of the victims. This order was for most of the second half
of the 20th century structured around mimetic rivalry, that is, the superpower rivalry
between the US and USSR. The escalation to extremes was an ever-present threat in
this rivalry as it relied on the avoidance of mutually assured destruction (MAD) by
not engaging in total war through nuclear weapons. Though some elites were willing
to risk total destruction at points in this period, ultimately MAD was avoided by
fortuitous diplomatic and political efforts. The fear of nuclear mass destruction,
however, has re-emerged following the Cold War in relation to nations such as North
Korea and Iran, and in reference to terrorist groups.
Furthermore, while the US-USSR rivalry was seemingly resolved by
economic warfare, Russia’s recent ascendency and manipulation of existing
conventions around war and international relations indicates that this rivalry is reemerging in a (re)new(ed) way. Russia’s efforts, interestingly, show how international
rules around war can be covertly manipulated in an age of international law and
nuclear weapons. It also shows the potential of a nation seeking to stave off a cultural
crisis (following the breakdown of communism in the early 1990s and democratic
capitalism in the late 1990s) through an identity that is heavily structured around an
external threat and enemy (the West). It demonstrates another aspect of Girard’s
analysis of war – that national wars rely on the movement of mass “hostile feeling”
(in Russia’s case, a history of anti-Western sentiment), which can be catalysed,
cultivated or manipulated through the “hostile intent” and tactics of leaders.35 In this
regard, President Putin has shown the effectiveness of media propaganda and war in
stoking mass feeling and resentment.
Nevertheless, the ceasefire in the Ukraine shows how the international
35
Girard, Battling to the End, 187.
13
political order can produce outcomes of peace through negotiation, though only after
the warring parties are willing to come to the table. According to Girard’s analysis of
war, conflict often ceases because of strategic reasons on the part of one or more of
the warring parties (that is, because they cannot win or they will lose more than what
is gained, even if they are victorious).36 Through sanctions against Russia and limited
support for Ukraine, the West has been able to force Russia and its rebel allies to
recognise its strategic reality. These strategic outcomes are fragile, relying on a
strategic balance between the parties to the conflict being maintained and other
mutual interests being fostered, such as the reward of alleviating sanctions against
Russia. 37 Unless a lasting and just peace can be reached, peace or ceasefire
agreements can be strategic moves on the part of the weaker rival to re-gather its
strength in preparation for future conflict.38 Girard remains pessimistic about the
potential of politics to restrain mimetic violence, particularly in the long-term, without
a meaningful peace. Long-term peace requires some manner of internal change away
from violence (conversion) that can be the basis for just relations amongst the parties,
such as through complete exhaustion with or revulsion to violence (like in Europe
after World War II or in East Timor following the Indonesian occupation).39
Thus, the potential of violent escalation is an ever-present one in the
contemporary world order, especially as it is constantly being contested by rivalries
between nation-states (e.g., the US and Russia) and, more recently, with non-state
parties. World order has been conventionally focused on the machinations of nationstate rivalries, particularly in using the dynamics of these rivalries to contain violence.
In the 21st century, however, there has been a new entity introduced to global politics
36
Girard, Battling to the End, 12-14.
Girard, Battling to the End, 12-19.
38
Girard, Battling to the End, 13.
39
Girard, Battling to the End, 99.
37
14
and warfare that has changed the game dramatically – the extra-state actor, such as
Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, ISIS or Da’ish). These extra-state actors seem willing
to go where the MAD rivals feared to trod: total victory, and so, total destruction.
There are grave fears that these extra-state actors could obtain weapons of mass
destruction, most likely from collaborators in state agencies or by theft from a weak
state institution. The emergence of these non-state actors seems to represent the
movement of international rivalries to a new extreme, beyond traditional state-based
systems, in which international laws and structures do not matter in the face of total
victory and guerrilla-type tactics. At the same time, however, even amongst nationstates, the rules of the game are being stretched, especially by Russia, as rivalries
escalate and the cultural crisis of postmodernity becomes more deeply entrenched.
On the other hand, while terrorist groups have scandalised many nations and
peoples around the world by their extreme use of violence, these extremist groups also
seem willing to fight conventional wars such as in Iraq and Syria (though in extreme
ways) in order to bring about their own socio-political system and culture. In this way,
they are an exemplar of the breakdown of the institution of war, though in a confused
or contradictory manner: on one hand, rules do not matter for Islamic extremists,
rather only victory over the infidel is important; yet, on the other hand, their violence
and victories seek to institute systems and rules purportedly handed down by God in
order to bring salvation and order.
This contradiction at the heart of modern extremism presents two aspects of
Girard’s insights: that violence is escalating beyond its conventional cultural restraints
in postmodernity; and that while extremist groups are a product of the breakdown of
the institutional restraints around modern violence and warfare, they seek to produce
new cultural systems based on ‘sacred violence’ to re-institute order amidst the
15
seemingly chaos of a disintegrating and disorientating pluralistic world. Islamic
terrorism and extremism, then, is (in large part) a reaction to the cultural crisis
experienced by modernity (and accelerated in postmodernity): the breakdown of
sacrificial institutions that kept violence in check, most particularly the institution of
warfare; and the inability to cope with this new situation because of a lack of cultural
and political resources, such as an effective nation-state and civil society, to cope
without using violence as a means of forming unity. This cultural crisis has been
exported from the West as the biblical spirit of the victim has infected almost every
culture worldwide. This has occurred through the spread of the Judeo-Christian
tradition and the globalisation of Western cultural forms that have grown in concert
with this tradition, such as human rights and Western political systems. The spread of
the biblical spirit has, of course, involved levels of violence, oppression and
domination, which has confused its reception with issues of power and rivalry and
with colonial and capitalist systems.
Thus, this essay contends that extremist groups seek the unity around violence
found in archaic cultures, but they contrast to these archaic cultures in that violence is
intentionally instituted and explicitly celebrated at the heart of their activity. For
archaic cultures, violence was not the explicit object of motivation or worship, though
it was at the heart of their mythical projections. Therefore, there is a deep disorder in
perpetrators of extremist violence, especially in their attribution of violence to God,
but the level of disorder is becoming more explicit and clear to the modern world.
Violence is more honestly embraced as the way to salvation and order by extremists
in a way that archaic cultures really had no choice.
16
Terrorism and Contemporary Conflicts: Syria and Iraq
Iraq and Syria have recently been the major focus of the non-state actors such as AlQaeda and ISIS. Extremist Islamic groups have entered the conflicts in Syria and Iraq
to oppose governments who are resented or are on the opposite side to their religious
ideology. Yet, more than this, these groups are attracted to an opportunity to fight
wherever there is an acute political and cultural crisis, particularly in the Middle East.
As mentioned, these groups are willing to act in extreme and violent ways, e.g.
Islamic State’s public beheadings. Yet, these groups also act in conventional mimetic
ways: they have rivals (the Alawhite/Baathist Syrian government or the Shiadominated Iraqi government) for power and land, and as they defeat these rivals, these
groups seek to establish supremacy over territory in order to institute their brand of
totalitarian or puritanical government. The difference: ISIS and Al-Qaeda seem
willing to brutally destroy and subjugate their enemies through extreme uses of
violence. This is, in part, a strategic move to cause the most damage and gain the most
attention and fear, as is typical of small insurgency movements who feel threatened by
a more powerful foe.
Yet, the way in which these terrorist groups put their violence on public
display even goes beyond some guerrilla movements who become desperate in the
face of defeat. They don’t try to hide the violence from the media or stay silent about
their responsibility for it (like some insurgency movements), nor do they undertake
their violence in secret (like many totalitarian regimes); rather, they purposefully put
it on public display and happily claim responsibility. They do so to cause terror, but
more than this, they are celebrating and sacralising violence in an intentional way.
Archaic cultures stumbled upon the power of violence and held it in sacred fear and
reverence, but modern terrorism has taken violence to a new level by explicitly and
17
intentionally instituting it at the centre of its activity and even celebrating and
worshipping it. As discussed, this sacralisation is being done, in large part, in reaction
to the undermining of the efficacy and sacredness of violence, which has had marked
and widespread effect in modernity. Thus, the terrorist attempts to overcome the
subversion of violence by explicitly sacralising violence. This occurs in a contrived
kind of way that seeks to re-institute unanimous violence against ‘enemies’, who are
seen to be less than human and who often represent the Western tradition that no
longer accepts the efficacy of absolute violence.
Thus, these terrorist groups seem to take modern violence and war to its
extreme: no rules except victory. Even the worst kinds of violence and abuse against
‘infidel’ women and children are justified in their ‘moral code’ of violence. On the
other hand, the sign of some kind of moral code amongst these terrorist groups shows
how violence is operating to re-construct cultural forms, such as rules for the conduct
of violence or rape by these newly formed groups. As Girard shows, groups need
rules and rituals if they are going to contain and channel violence effectively. As these
extremist groups have formed and require structure to maintain themselves, they have
formulated rules that aim to channel ‘good’ violence in the most effective ways (e.g.,
against Western infidels or minorities) and avoid ‘bad’ kinds of violence, such as
violence done against a fellow combatant and/or his/her family, which could cause
internal rivalries and violence. However, these cultural forms are inherently
disordered as they try to explicitly build unity and order around arbitrary and petty
forms of violence, giving rise to irrational prejudices and rules.
It is also important to note that in the cases of Syria and Iraq, conflict has
occurred within the context of the breakdown of the wider culture and political
system. This conflict could potentially have been avoided if the governments of each
18
state had been more inclusive of their rivals. In a sense, these governments gave their
rivals motivation and space to fester in injustice and resentment. The more extreme
wing of their rivals has now emerged as most powerful and are willing to oppose
these regimes. In both places, it seems that extremist groups have received some
forms of assistance from local people because these people in some sense regard the
extremists as identifying with their grievances. Based on his interpretation of On War,
Girard argues that war depends on the feeling of the masses, that is, their feeling in
regards to the political object of war.40 In the Iraqi case, the nature of mass feeling –
at least in the case of Sunnis – turned against the government, allowing extremist
groups to take advantage.
Furthermore, Girard argues that in war the defensive party has the advantage
because it is supposed to be responding to aggression.41 Yet, this defensive status can
hide a more aggressive intent and give moral weight to that side’s claims, especially
its claims to victim-status, providing a justification for its underlying resentments
against its rivals. Even aggressors generally argue for a ‘defensive’ position when
they undertake acts of aggression. For example, an aggressor party often claims it is
defending the rights or interests of its people by responding to the aggressive or unjust
actions of others, such as Hitler did before World War II when he claimed victim
status for Germany and a legitimate right to re-take the Rhineland42; or as George W.
Bush did for America after 9/11 in order to wage war. In Iraq, the ISIS fighters are
claiming to defend their right to Islamic rule and the safety of their people against an
unjust and sectarian government. In a similar way, the Iraqi government is claiming a
defensive position against ISIS in mounting large counter-attacks against what it
40
Girard, Battling to the End, 185-6.
Girard, Battling to the End, 15-19.
42
Girard, Battling to the End, 184.
41
19
brands as illegitimate extremist and terrorist groups (minimising the fact that its own
sectarianism has caused violence). Similarly, in Syria, the government claims to be
defending itself against terrorists and extremists who sought to unjustly usurp the
government.43 Moreover, Russia justifies its acts of aggression in Crimea and the
Ukraine by claiming to be defending itself against a Western takeover of its
traditional lands. In these cases, the defensive claims distort real claims to victimstatus and just cause in order to justify a rivalry for power that is escalating to
extremes. In this way it can be seen that modern violence is constituted by strategic
moves justified by defensiveness, fuelled by (and in turn fuelling) frustrated desires,
resentments and the feeling of being threatened.
Hyper-Sacralising Violence in the Name of God
In summary, a global cultural crisis in modernity around the de-institutionalisation of
violence has opened up a cleavage that Islamic extremists are particularly feeling and
exploiting. These extremist groups have gradually developed to strategically inflict
damage, particularly on the West, as the cleavage described above has widened. As
Girard shows, conflicts do not necessarily occur quickly, but in fact, build-up over
time, such as the rivalry between France and Germany in modern European history. 44
Moreover, these extremist groups have been strategic in their planning and operations.
This is consistent with Girard’s observation that rivalries are typically subject to
strategic concerns in which resentments are left to fester and foment until one can
achieve the means for victory.
As many comment, the modern world is characterised by a fundamental
43
In the Syrian case, however, a non-violent civil protest movement preceded the
war: the government sought to repress the movement, leading to armed conflict with
moderate groups and later to the involvement of extremist groups.
44
Girard, Battling to the End, 157-93.
20
breakdown of difference, though this breakdown has deeper roots (as Girard shows)
than most realise. The dilemma of defining difference is at the heart of modern
extremism and terrorism. With the breakdown of traditional cultural institutions,
which channeled violence and maintained key structural, class, gender and political
differences, the construction of new identities is required. If this construction cannot
be done peacefully (e.g., through solidarity amongst peoples), arbitrary points of
difference are grasped at ever more violently. Because this violent grasping is
characteristic of modern terrorists, they show themselves to be experiencing a
particular crisis around the construction of difference and identity. The terrorists,
especially those who mount attacks in Western countries like those against Charlie
Hedbo in Paris, have been deeply affected by the cultural values and non-violent spirit
of the West and feel threatened and displaced from their own tradition. According to
Žižek, they resent the West for this ‘threat’ and displacement, especially as they
cannot find a point of differentiation to overcome their own inferiority:
“…the terrorist pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued,
fascinated, by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting
the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation.
It is here that Yeats’ diagnosis falls short of the present predicament: the
passionate intensity of the terrorists bears witness to a lack of true conviction.
How fragile the belief of a Muslim must be if he feels threatened by a stupid
caricature in a weekly satirical newspaper? The fundamentalist Islamic terror
is not grounded in the terrorists’ conviction of their superiority and in their
desire to safeguard their cultural-religious identity from the onslaught of
global consumerist civilization. The problem with fundamentalists is not that
we consider them inferior to us, but, rather, that they themselves secretly
21
consider themselves inferior. This is why our condescending politically correct
assurances that we feel no superiority towards them only makes them more
furious and feeds their resentment. The problem is not cultural difference
(their effort to preserve their identity), but the opposite fact that the
fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already
internalized our standards and measure themselves by them. Paradoxically,
what the fundamentalists really lack is precisely a dose of that true ‘racist’
conviction of their own superiority.”45
In reaction to this crisis, Islamic extremists seek to create a cultural system
that is clearly differentiated from the West. They do this through violence in a way
that seems not to have precedent: victims are clearly targeted and put on display,
rather than covered up and hidden; and violence is celebrated by perpetrators in the
name of ‘God’, not rationalised or explained away as the act of a supernatural force.
Girard remarks: “Suicide attacks are from this point of view a monstrous inversion of
primitive sacrifices: instead of killing victims to save others, terrorists kill themselves
to kill others. It is more than ever a world turned upside down.”46 Violence becomes
more explicitly the heart of worship in order to re-create a sacred world (though this
world is more confused, unstable and disordered than archaic cultures). Adherents
willingly sacrifice themselves and others - entering into the sacred by explicitly
embracing violence. These terrorist ‘rituals’ sacrifice a member of the group to kill
others, in contrast to archaic sacrificial rituals that sacrifice a member to save others
from chaos. Nevertheless, the logic remains sacrificial: violence is done to institute a
45
Slavoj Žižek, “Slavoj Žižek on the Charlie Hebdo massacre: Are the worst really
full of passionate intensity?”, New Statesman, 10 Jan 2015,
http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/01/slavoj-i-ek-charlie-hebdomassacre-are-worst-really-full-passionate-intensity; Cf. Slavoj Žižek, Violence (New
York, NY: Picador, 2008), 72-3.
46
Girard, Battling to the End, 67.
22
larger project of sacred order. Moreover, the action of the suicide bomber entrenches
the belief and imagination of the extremist group; it is, in fact, the foundation of its
sacred mythology: that violence brings glory and everlasting reward to the bomber
(“the martyr”) and promotes the divine will and order on earth by fulfilling the
group’s aims against its enemies.
In this way, violence itself has become the defining point of the extremist’s
identity (and some of the Western reaction to it). It is the willingness to execute
violence in ruthless and absolute ways that defines the Islamic extremist. ISIS, alQaeda and other extremist groups publically rejoice and glory in their violence in a
way that shows it to be directly constitutive of their identity.
In Battling to the End, Girard discusses the phenomenon of terrorism as a sign
that violence is being uncovered and seen as futile, resulting in the resort to violence
becoming more deliberate and extreme. The unconscious mendacity of the archaic
systems of violence, which has been undermined by the revelation of the innocent
victim, is being replaced by conscious celebration of violence, meaning the
perpetrators are more honest about what they do. Thus, Girard indicates that to reconstruct a sacred order, violence must be embraced ever more explicitly and
willingly:
“…once unbridled, the principle of reciprocity no longer plays the
unconscious role it used to play. Do we not now destroy simply to destroy?
Violence now seems deliberate, and the escalation to extremes is served by
science and politics.
Is this a principle of death that will finally wear itself out and open onto
something else? Or is it destiny? I do not know. However, what I can say is
that we can see the growing futility of violence, which is now unable to
23
fabricate the slightest myth to justify and hide itself.”47
Thus, while violence is being increasingly undermined and rejected in the
modern consciousness (especially in the West), violence is seen by the perpetrators as
their only point of differentiation and transcendence, even as it becomes more
unstable by losing its justifications and supernatural character. There is a strange
embrace and glorification of violence by extremists – it is not regarded as a dangerous
cure to disorder (as it was in archaic cultures), but something good to be celebrated in
itself as well as for the way to further the righteous and ordered reign of God. The two
are in fact blended together in an inextricable mix for the Islamic extremist: violence
constitutes the ordered reign of God – providing an answer to the underlying cultural
crisis by becoming the object of transcendent fascination and worship.
The centrality of violence is evident in the testimony of Islamic terrorists and
extremist fighters. For example, an ex-ISIS fighter, Hamza, recounted the intense
military training and initiation techniques explicitly involving executions and rapes.
This fighter joined ISIS for religious reasons and rejoiced in destroying the boundary
between Iraq and Syria for the Caliphate, but became disillusioned with the extreme
violence and dissolute lifestyle of the ISIS fighters: “the executions, or more horribly
the beheadings, as well as the raping of the non-Muslim girls. These scenes terrified
me. I imagined myself being caught up in these shootings, executions, beheadings and
raping, if I stayed where I was.”48 Thus, as the transcendent allure of violence – both
against innocent civilians and woman – is stripped away, the reality that is left is an
ugly world of brute power, disordered desires, petty identities and evil:
47
Girard, Battling to the End, 20.
Patrick Cockburn, “Life under Isis: Why I deserted the 'Islamic State' rather than
take part in executions, beheadings and rape - the story of a former jihadi”, The
Independent, 16 March 2015, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middleeast/life-under-isis-why-i-deserted-the-islamic-state-rather-than-take-part-inexecutions-beheadings-and-rape--the-story-of-a-former-jihadi-10111877.html
48
24
“At the beginning I thought they were fighting for Allah, but later I discovered
they are far from the principles of Islam. I know that some fighters were
taking hallucinatory drugs; others were obsessed with sex. As for the raping,
and the way different men marry by turn the same woman over a period of
time, this is not humane.
I left them because I was afraid and deeply troubled by this horrible situation.
The justice they were calling for when they first arrived in Fallujah turned out
to be only words.”49
Thus, as mimetic rivalry moves to its extreme, so the structures of sacred
violence are taken to their extreme to cope with the instability. Yet, in doing so,
violence reveals itself more clearly as the heart of worship. However, even as
violence becomes more central, the movement from attributing violence to the
divinity (in the archaic sense) to celebrating violence for itself (in the modern sense)
is seemingly not yet complete, as the extremists still seeks to justify their violence
through reference to the divinity. Yet, it is important to not misapprehend the nexus of
violence and the sacred here: it is violence that sacralises the action of terrorists (not
the other way around) and this violent sacralisation is becoming ever more brazen and
explicit (a ‘hyper’ sacralisation). While there seems to be a return to archaic forms of
religiousity, there is an important difference: the victims of the extremists are not fully
divinised. They are condemned as “dogs” and monsters, but they are not revered as
supernatural gods, like victims in archaic cultures were. Rather, more ‘infidels’ are
sought out for sacrifice to an arbitrarily constructed system of sacralised violence.
The establishment of victor and victim, according to Girard, is the
foundational cultural difference. In archaic cultures, this cultural difference is
49
Cockburn, “Life under Isis”.
25
sacralised by divinising the victim: instead of identifying the power of reconciliation
in the mob’s action, the victim is attributed with supernatural power to mediate and
unify all desire. This is a crucial attribution for archaic culture, as Girard shows,
because it allows them to distance themselves from the dangerous power of violence
and to justify their own precarious relationship with it. For example, in numerous
archaic myths, the victim is represented as a god who is responsible for the whole
process of crisis, reconciliation, and peace involved in scapegoating.50 Sacrificial
rituals are, then, inaugurated to imitate the original violence against the victim and
appease the deity, who is believed to have the power to cause disorder and order.
In the case of modern violence, however, the victim is generally not divinised
by the mob. Rather according to the terrorists, the victim remains in their view an
enemy who needed to be eliminated, while the transcendent effects of violence are
ascribed to God (and their group and brand of religion). The cause for this lack of full
sacralisation is, as discussed, the growing awareness of the innocence of the victim
and the desacralisation of violence (starting in the West). The attempts to resacralise
human culture (particularly aimed at the desacralised West) by religious extremists
following the effects of desacralisation represents a new stage of sacralisation than
that present in archaic cultures. Rather than seeing the victim-god in control, the
Islamic extremist sees their construction of God as in control, and so by extension,
they regard themselves as having power over violence because of their divine
commission. The Islamic extremist is the agent of God, because God (ironically) does
not act on his own behalf; rather the extremist acts on God’s behalf, supposedly with
God’s blessing and help. In this way, the sacred power of violence is transferred onto
a third party (in this case, the revealed Islamic “God”) who explicitly delegates the
50
Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 275; I See Satan Fall, 65–72.
26
power over violence to the mob, rather than the victim. Thus, the extremist mob
wishes to be seen to be in direct relationship with violence (rather than to distance
themselves from it).
There is a similar transference of violence in totalitarian regimes. For
example, in East Timor during Indonesian rule (1975-1999), the perpetrators of
violence (the agents of the state) were willing to be explicitly identified with the
power of violence through the mediation of and projection onto a third party, namely
the ‘sacred’ nation-state. This was particularly exemplified in torture where, if
successful, the victim ascribed blame onto himself (through confession) and justified
the actions of the state agents, which in turn justified the omnipotent status of the state
in ‘protecting’ order through violence. Violence was explicitly embraced for its own
cathartic value and for the order of the state:
“For the purposes of the Indonesian state, the victim was not divinised as in
archaic religions, though he or she was attributed with blame and the power to
disrupt the social order. Instead of worshipping the victim, then, the state
transferred the power of victimage onto itself by having the victim legitimate
the state’s monopolisation of violence and the rivalry the state had created,
and by spreading propaganda about the victim as a deviant or subversive
enemy. Rather than the victim being sacralised, the state became the
depository of the violent sacred as it determined blame and order (which even
the victim recognised).”51
In a similar way to a totalitarian state, Islamic terrorist groups sacralise
violence by attributing it to God, and by way of God, to themselves. In this way, the
terrorists become the guardian of the divine will and order, meaning that they can
51
Joel Hodge, Resisting Violence and Victimisation: Christian Faith and Solidarity in
East Timor (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 126.
27
target anyone for punishment or praise in the name of the Almighty. Like the
totalitarian state seeking enemies and dissidents, terrorist groups create rivalries and
seek to justify them by reference to divinely-commissioned violence that is structured
around a discourse and imagination of enemies. These groups become like the archaic
sacred that Girard describes (ironically, in the name of the one, revealed God) by
distributing disorder and order. Any violence these groups perpetrate, then, is
‘righteous’ as it restores order by dealing with cultural crisis, the cause of which is
ascribed to offences against the divine being and law in the terrorists’ view. In
rectifying this crisis through violence, the terrorist restores cultural and cosmological
harmony and religion’s rightful place in the cultural pecking order. Thus, just like the
violent nation-state, religious extremists resort to archaic forms of sacred violence,
though in an accelerated, modern form of explicitness and absoluteness, which seeks
to make them like gods wielding ultimate power. Like archaic cultures, they seek to
produce order through defined sacred structures, with laws, myths and rituals. For
terrorist groups, their sacrificial rituals include the actions of the suicide bomber or
lone-wolf, which are imitated actions that sustain individual and group identity.
However, these modern forms of the violent sacred are highly unstable as they
focus more explicitly on violence. As Girard argues, no scapegoating process is
completely effective in the modern period, because violent unanimity cannot be built
when the awareness of the innocence of the scapegoat is so widespread. 52 For this
reason, modern Islamic terrorists must bury this awareness under even more extreme
forms of violence. They recruit people (often young, marginalised, ignorant or in
crisis) by appealing to a discourse of enemies and threats to true religion and
civilisation, while arguing that the West’s decadence and corruption is ruining the
52
Girard, I See Satan Fall, 161-69.
28
world. However, the paradox of the situation is that religious extremists are fighting
against an enemy they cannot defeat: the deconstruction of sacred violence cannot be
un-done, and no amount of renewed violence will provide the unanimity and order
they seek. This is evidenced by the way in which the discourse of violence is
deconstructed and rejected by members of extremist groups themselves. For example,
as I showed above, some of those who travel from Western countries to fight for
Islamic State or Al-Qaeda in the Middle East have come to realise the brutality and
emptiness of the extremists’ efforts and discourse, and seek to return to their home
countries. In contrast, of course, others are more convinced and radicalized by the
sacred violence, showing that it still has an effect, though not a unanimous one.
Because of the inability to enforce or attract unanimity, modern violence becomes
more extreme, believing that more victims are required to achieve the goal of order. 53
This acceleration of sacrifice, however, becomes increasingly pathogenic as violence
itself becomes the focus.
Conclusion
Girard’s analysis of warfare and violence provides an important window into
understanding the dynamics of modern violence. This essay has particularly argued
for understanding modern violence, especially extremism, as being motivated by a
cultural crisis that is characterised by a breakdown of scapegoating structures and
institutions that were meant to restrain violence (such as warfare). This insight helps
to clarify the underlying conditions for modern violence, both from totalitarian nationstates and extremist groups. Further, the essay has argued that Girard’s category of the
53
This phenomenon of increasingly bloody and numerous sacrifices to a failing
system of sacred violence was, for example, exemplified in the dying days of the
Aztec regime.
29
‘violent sacred’ (or ‘sacred violence’) can be deployed to interpret the phenomenon of
extremist violence, as extremist violence aims to re-construct the archaic world based
on the ‘violent sacred’. It does so, however, in an absolute way that fetishes and
celebrates violence, moving beyond how archaic cultures imitated and contained
violence. The extremists’ efforts in this regard are made under the cover of the
divinity, on whose behalf the extremists act, aggregating the power of violence to the
extremist group. To resist this violence requires a clear understanding of what is at
stake: namely, the slow and ambiguous emergence of a more just political order
underlaid by a worldwide cultural shift, based on solidarity with the innocent victim.
While this cultural shift may require occasional defence with arms, this defence must
be proportional and directed to protect the innocent. Moreover, it should be
understood that armies and security services are not enough to address the extremist
threat and the underlying cultural crisis motivating them. It must be recognised that
the liberation effected for humanity through the biblical revelation of the victim has
given it a definitive but unstable freedom at the level of mimetic relationality and
identity.
While this essay has largely been diagnostic – meaning there has not been
space to explore a full response to the cultural crisis – I hope it is clear that freedom
from sacred violence must be fostered – not resulting in a naïve freedom to do what
one wants, but in a freedom to be for others, rather than in rivalry with them. This
freedom requires conversion from violence, in relationship with the innocent and
forgiving victim. It is the particular task of civil society, and even more particularly
the church, to foster this freedom: to build solidarity with victims in various ways, but
ultimately to enable this solidarity to be grounded in and seen as an encounter with
God himself, who is not violent or on the side of violence, but rather is the truly
30
loving victim of violence, “the lamb slain since the foundation of the world”, coming
to us gratuitously with forgiveness to set us free (Rev 13:8; cf. 1 Pet 1:19-20).
31