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Robust debate, not unanimity, is the only
riposte to this evil in a democracy
Rafael Behr
There is a scale of atrocity that tests the limits of human imagination. Just as
we cannot construct a mental picture of very large numbers, some orders of grief
are unavailable to proper comprehension. So it is with the Manchester bombing –
its precise vindictiveness, indiscriminate and targeted at innocence and joy. To
look at photographs of the young victims alongside the knowledge of what
happened on Monday night is physically intolerable, like staring into the sun.
Terrorism challenges the imagination in another, darker way. Salman Abedi, the
22-year-old killer, was not a senseless robot of destruction. He had a mind. He
had an interior realm of ambition and fantasy. It is not somewhere any
reasonable person would want to go, but can it be ignored? That interior realm
is a precursor chemical in the crime. Security services will need to investigate
how the bomber acquired explosives – but also how he ended up wanting them.
To consider a terrorist’s motives can feel like a misuse of empathy. When grief
is raw, any effort spent understanding the killer looks disrespectful to the
victims: Abedi deserves only contempt and oblivion. There is also the hazard of
moral relativism. A well-trodden analytical approach follows the twisted trail
of jihadi logic back to political grievance, Middle Eastern wars and blaming the
west. Too often that method prioritises ineffectual academic fiddling at the
roots of terrorism, when the pressing task is cutting the monstrosity down.
An alternative is to write off Abedi’s mind as a roiling pot of insanity,
inaccessible to rational inquiry. He was a deranged, cowardly loser, mentally
uninteresting. That view appeals because it is antithetical to the terrorists’
own self-image as heroic soldiers in a holy war. We don’t want to indulge their
grotesque delusion, but are in danger of doing so if we treat senseless butchery
as if it were a decipherable political statement.
But there is a problem with the psycho hypothesis: the condition of being
socially and morally deficient is not communicable in the way that radical
jihadi doctrine appears to be. Abedi’s ideology came from persuasion, not some
mysterious affliction. His route to the Manchester Arena will have unique
elements, but it will probably also fit a pattern.
We know little. He was born a Mancunian of Libyan descent. His upbringing was
devout, but that is a weak marker of potential radicalisation. There is evidence
to suggest that Muslims with shallow knowledge of their faith make better
targets for extremist recruitment. Some are new converts. The idea that Islam
itself builds theological conveyors that send young people towards terrorism is
wrong and dangerous. Casting the whole religion as an apologia for mass murder
is one of the most pernicious ideas currently breeding in the fetid pools of
European and US nationalism.
These debates are familiar from previous attacks. The whole structure of the
argument is familiar to moral philosophers who have grappled with it since long
before the modern eruption of Islamic militancy. Do we treat evil as an
autonomous force in the world – an irreducible phenomenon that needs no further
explanation? Or do we deconstruct evil into its mundane components, into a
composite of ordinary human choices – what the political theorist Hannah Arendt
called its shocking “banality”?
a response. The first stages are straightforward. Society mourns while the state
acts briskly to contain the threat of another attack. The public is urged to be
vigilant. A shocked country craves cultural solidarity and political unity. The
general election campaign has to be suspended.
But the election exists whether we admit it or not. Theresa May cannot
deactivate her status as a party leader seeking re-appointment when addressing
the nation as prime minister. In every headquarters, the consequences of this
week’s events for June’s ballot will be the subject of whispered conversations
that would look callous in transcription. That is how it was during the EU
referendum campaign in the days after Jo Cox’s assassination. Political
performance was suspended; political calculation was only subdued.
It is not pretty, but this is how politics works. And for all its ugly habits,
our politics should continue to work – and be seen to work. Not only is it
unavoidable in response to a terrorist attack, it is essential.
The challenge of responding to evil is not just an exercise for philosophers. It
creates policy dilemmas. Terrorism provokes big questions about the balance
between collective security and individual liberty. The state needs powers of
surveillance and detention, while citizens’ rights and privacies need
protection. Incitements to hatred clash with entitlements to free expression.
There are no perfect reconciliations between rival views on these issues. Just
as there is no one model that explains the terrorist’s motive, there is no
single template that enables a society to condemn, punish, prevent and
understand terrorism all at the same time. There is no elegant solution to the
paradoxes of tolerant societies harbouring enemies of tolerance, and the defence
of freedom sometimes demanding illiberal measures. It is because no one person
can get it right that we have rival parties in politics lobbying for different
positions, placing the emphasis different ways.
We put our faith not in a specific leader to give us the answers but in the
democratic process to muddle its way to a compromise. Our politicians might not
always behave in ways that dignify and enrich that system, but at times of
national trauma and emergency they tend to step up. They have done so this week
with displays of composure and compassion across party lines.
The challenge is to retain that civility in a resumed election campaign. It is
right that there was a pause for reflection and unity. But it is also vital that
the competition between different ideas is pursued with unbowed vigour. Unity
does not mean unanimity. We can unite around the idea of managing our divisions
civilly, peacefully. Politics must not be treated as a distraction from the
defence against terrorism. It is our defence against terrorism.