Propaganda of the deed

A few posts ago, the subject was the American essay. That author indicated several essayists he still considered worth reading. One was Gary Saul Morson, at that point unfamiliar to me. Today I came across his "The Terrorist Mind," from which:

The Russian terrorist movement, which began in the 1870s, had reached prodigious dimensions by the beginning of the 20th century. Between October 1905 and the end of 1907, some 4,500 government officials, and about the same number of private individuals, were killed or injured in terrorist attacks. ....

Who were these terrorists? Except in rare circumstances, they came not from the oppressed working class or peasantry, but from the ranks of the highly educated or prominent. Resorting to terror, in this time and place, had become almost mundane and unexceptional. ....

Commentators spoke of “revolutionism,” that is, revolution, apart from what might follow it, as a goal in itself. Along with art for art’s sake, there was terror for terror’s sake.

Parallels suggesting we may be at an early stage of the Russian experience come readily to mind. As in Russia, alleged recent murderers and attempted murderers have been anything but uneducated. Luigi Mangione, accused of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the back, was the valedictorian of a Baltimore private school, founded his own game development company, and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science in engineering from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. Cole Allen, the alleged shooter at the Washington Correspondents’ Association Dinner, graduated from Caltech. He explained that he was not himself oppressed, but acting on behalf of those who were: “Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on?” he asked. The most famous Russian terrorists made similar avowals.

Highly prestigious institutions seem especially receptive to violent ideologies. Within hours of Hamas’s October 7 attacks, 34 Harvard student organizations rushed to express their approval. Such thinking results not from mental imbalance, ignorance, or irrationality. On the contrary, it issues from ideologies claiming to advance “social justice” and viewing murder not just as morally permitted, but as morally necessary. Somebody had to do it! As Allen explained, “I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack.” ....

The world’s greatest political novel, Dostoevsky’s Demons, examined the beginnings of the terrorist movement in the 1870s. The novel portrays the revolutionaries harshly, but not so harshly as the smug, cowardly liberals who apologize for them, both because liberal support allows the radicals to succeed and because terrorism reveals what is already implicit in some liberal doctrines. ....

“In my novel Demons,” Dostoevsky wrote in an essay, “I attempted to depict those...motives by which even the purest of hearts and most innocent of people can be drawn into committing such a monstrous offense” as political murder. When violence becomes fashionable, anything, literally anything, can be justified, and more than likely, will eventually be done. “And therein lies the real horror,” Dostoevsky concluded, “that...one can commit the foulest and most villainous act without being in the least a villain!” .... (more)

Gary Saul Morson, "The Terrorist Mind," The Free Press, May 4, 2026.