Complicity in Discourse and Practice

Jef Verschueren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000442878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

It is commonplace to say that we are living in troubled times. Liberal democracy is in crisis. Academic freedom is seriously constrained. The media offers less insight and analysis than could be expected given the proliferation of communication tools. Based on decades of research into the social and ideological functioning of discourse and with a focus on politics, universities, and the media, Jef Verschueren offers an analysis of current practices, asks whether we are all complicit, and makes suggestions for what we can do.

Central to this book is the notion of derailed reflexivity, referring to the observation that politics, institutions, and news reporting tend to be excessively aimed at public opinion, impression management, and clicks, to the detriment of policies addressing social justice issues, high-quality service, and media content. Highlighting that education is the cornerstone for democratic choices and ensures that we can critically assess media content, this book shows that shared responsibility can be a source of hope and that everyone has the power to intervene.

Complicity in Discourse and Practice is a call to action for readers and a plea for actively minding the ecology of the public sphere.

1 In society

DOI: 10.4324/9781003206354-1

We dive in at the deep end, the divisive side of society and its violent excesses, acts and events which I trust you would be unwilling to be associated with. This is a most confrontational testing ground for the notion of complicity. So, please bear with me along the first disturbing pages of this essay, as they are not without significance.

Terror and complicity

22 July 2011. A low-profile native of an affluent Northern European country detonates a home-made fertilizer bomb in the capital’s government district. Eight people killed. Not much later, he hunts down camping socialist youngsters on an idyllic island. In cold blood, he shoots 69 of them to death – followed by composed acquiescence to his arrest. You remember the names: Anders Behring Breivik, Oslo, Utøya. Judging from the 1,518-page “compendium” which he had just released through the internet, he found justification for his atrocities in the indirect responsibility of his victims for the Islamization of Europe, the decline of European culture and identity. It was his duty to arrest the decline. His deeds, therefore, were cruel but necessary.

Complicity is the underlying notion serving this cavalier defender of European culture to legitimate the carnage. In his words, by supporting immigration and multiculturalism, “European political elites implement the agendas of our enemies and ignore the interests of their own people” (p. 599). He continues, “They are thus collaborators and traitors and should be treated accordingly.” His targets, the individuals as well as the institutions they associated themselves with, did not have to be Islamic. They were to blame for their acquiescence to, or applause for, diversity. They failed to oppose and sometimes encouraged the unacceptable. They were complicit, hence guilty.

You may also remember that complicity with Breivik’s acts of terror – in the form of support for some of the ideas that prompted him into action – was at the heart of a debate that flared up briefly. It was triggered, first, by some far-right politicians expressing sympathy for the ideology that prompted Breivik into action, notwithstanding their agreement with the public condemnation of the massacre itself. Second, a quick screening of the “compendium” showed striking similarities with widely shared and accepted ideas circulating in the extreme right corners of society. Breivik even named some well-known politicians as sources of inspiration or in support of his points of view. The progressive left in Europe saw an opportunity to point out the dangers of a nationalist ideology, and so they did.

The controversy was short-lived. Politicians who openly sympathized with Breivik were reprimanded and sometimes expelled by their parties. And the argument was made, not without reason, that blaming all believers in a world view for the terror caused by extremists in its name, would be comparable to confusing the bombing of a family planning clinic with run-of-the-mill pro-life activism, or equating ecologically inspired sabotage, the so-called eco-terrorism, with strong ecological convictions.

Perhaps you are convinced that only the perpetrators of heinous acts, and those consciously involved in their planning, can be held responsible for them. Direct responsibility, or legal and moral accountability for specific acts, tends to be associated with deliberation and intentionality; what is done is done “on purpose.” Assigning responsibility would be easy if we could invoke a simple concept of law. But with laws as unambiguous rules, there would be no need for lawyers. As Hart reminded us a long time ago, “in the vast majority of cases that trouble the courts, neither statutes nor precedents in which the rules are allegedly contained allow of only one result.” He continues: “The judge has to choose between alternative meanings to be given to the words of a statute or between rival interpretations of what a precedent ‘amounts to’” (Hart 1994, p. 12).

To the misleading simplicity of legal accountability, we must add distant forms of responsibility and multiple shades of complicity. We cannot avoid doing so in a complex world, full of categories of events with blurry boundaries. It may help to continue where we started, with the category of “terrorism.” History provides us with a long list of destructive and often murderous acts for which we can probably agree that they somehow involve “guilt,” that someone “is to blame.”

But history does not make things easy. Perpetrators come in different guises. They operate in different realms. Their motivations as well as their modes of operation vary – also over time. The range of iniquitous effects of their actions often defies sensible comparison. The combined assessment of motivations and effects, depending on the stance we take, opens a kaleidoscope of incommensurable evaluations, from understanding and sympathy to outright condemnation.

The Global Terrorism Database¹ lists over 150,000 incidents categorized as “terrorist” from 1970 to 2015 – that is, an average of more than nine on every single day over a 45-year period. You can probably name only a few of those, imprinted in our collective memory by massive media coverage.

If you are the right age, you may remember the bombing campaign (with high-profile targets such as the US Capitol, the Pentagon, the US Department of State) by the Weather Underground, a militant left-wing organization opposing, amongst other things, the Vietnam War, in the early 1970s. Their advance warnings prevented casualties – except for three of their own. More deadly revolutionary movements operating throughout the second half of the 20th century included the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Euskadi Ta Askatusuna (ETA, “Basque Country and Freedom”). With roots in the 19th century, the IRA metamorphosed on several occasions, while preserving the legacy of resistance against British imperialism. ETA rose against Franco’s dictatorship in Spain but persisted in the struggle for Basque self-determination after the transition into democracy. Both may have ceased violent action, but not until ETA had been responsible, since 1968, for over 800 killings, thousands of injuries, and dozens of abductions, while the Northern Irish “Troubles” from 1969 to 1998 cost over 3,500 lives (roughly 60% at the hands of IRA-related republicans, 30% attributed to loyalist paramilitary groups, and 10% to British security forces). The majority of those killed were civilians. A less advertised movement, similar in spirit, that may have escaped your attention, was the separatist and leftist Front du libération du Québec which, between 1963 and 1970, in seemingly tranquil Canada, was involved in 160 violent incidents, leaving eight people dead and many more injured.

Flirting with the boundaries of legitimate warfare, “liberation” has served as the great motivator on many occasions. Liberation from dictatorship was the shared goal of the Tupamaros in Uruguay and the Vanguarda Armada Revolucionária Palmares in Brazil, both left-wing organizations. Operating in the 1960s and early 1970s, the former did not shy away from assassinations, while the latter’s major feats were robberies. The Uruguayan and Brazilian dictatorships both ended in 1985. Later, José Mujica, erstwhile combative member of the Tupamaros (for which he spent a total of 13 years in prison, to be released under the 1985 amnesty law), served as the 40th President of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. Former VAR Palmares member Dilma Roussef (probably without any major role in the organization) became the 36th President of Brazil from 2011 to 2016. Clearly, transgression, crime, guilt, and responsibility are not stable historical categories.

Liberation from occupation rather than dictatorship was the goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), serving as an umbrella for organizations such as Fatah (its most prominent “member”) and the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Under the PLO umbrella, aircraft hijacking developed into a fine art in the 1960s and 1970s (with as many as four in one day on 6 September 1970), and violence aimed at Israeli civilians as well as military personnel made numerous casualties. Under PLO leadership, Palestine has achieved its present status as a “Non-member Observer State” at the United Nations since 2012. Yet it does not look like the struggle has reached its conclusion. There is a continued tug-of-war over the definition of Palestinian political violence as a form of resistance or of terrorism. Again, history will decide. Having said that, the exertion of power will be involved, so that responsibility must inevitably be shared by the powerful agents who will help to decide the outcome – not just by people on the ground.

A comparable history, with a more desirable outcome than the currently unresolved two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can be sketched for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. The ANC was founded in 1912 as an anti-apartheid opposition party, banned in 1960, continuing as an underground guerilla and sabotage network, lifted to political legitimacy again in 1990 to become South Africa’s leading political family. But it was not taken off the US terror watch list until 2008.

Recent acts in the name of independence must be easy to recall. Think of the three-day school siege (starting 1 September 2004) in Beslan, a town in the Russian Caucasus, where the fight for an independent Chechnya left nearly 400 people dead. Earlier Chechen actions had led to the death of at least 140 people when they attacked the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk in 1995 and took hostages in the local hospital, and of 170 people in a Moscow theater in 2002. It is impossible to condone murder. But if legitimate grievances are at issue, are the killers the only ones responsible?

Racially motivated property destruction, violence, and random killings are still the order of the day. You know the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan, still in existence today, though with greatly diminished membership. Their trademark activities were bombings and burnings of black schools and churches (at least one as recent as 1995). The years of the civil rights movement also saw violence against and assassinations of black and white activists. Former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke, a member of the US House of Representatives from 1989 to 1992, is still politically active, openly antisemitic, and he applauded Donald Trump’s campaign attacks on immigrants and Muslims. Is it a whim of our imagination to see a link between the violence and the political rhetoric, even if we cannot lay blame for one on the other?

Less well-known is the far-right extremism of the Jewish Defense League, established in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane to counter antisemitism, and responsible for several assassinations of prominent Arab Americans in the ensuing decades. A notorious US member of the League was Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the Hebron massacre on 25 February 1994, a shooting in the Ibrahimi Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs compound, killing 29 Palestinians and wounding another 125. Was this an individual’s hatred, or the morbid outgrowth of legitimate resistance to racism turned racist?

Still in the realm of racially motivated violence, you may have entirely forgotten the so-called Zebra murders which paralyzed the San Francisco Bay Area from October 1973 to April 1974, with mostly white victims, and committed by a group of African Americans calling themselves “Death Angels.” Amongst other things, they practiced the art of drive-by shootings. They did not have a monopoly on this method of sowing terror. Nor, unfortunately, are such incidents confined to a relatively distant past. In fact, they are so frequent and random that it is impossible to categorize them in any sensible way. A recent survey identified 733 drive-by shooting incidents in the US in a six-month period from July through December 2008, killing 154 and injuring 631 – with the state of California leading in the ranking with 148 incidents, 40 lethal victims, and 129 injured.²

In Europe, throughout the final decades of the 20th century, extreme left and extreme right were outbidding each other in the quest for public attention. In Germany, a group of leftist youngsters engaged in violent action. They found justification, amongst other things, in the continued position of privilege and power enjoyed by former Nazis; they felt they had to make up for the resistance which their parents had failed to put up before and during World War II. You are right, I am thinking of the Rote Armee Fraktion or Baader-Meinhof group. Roughly 300 attacks, at least 34 dead. Their Italian counterpart, the Brigate Rosse (with a 21st-century pendant in the Partito Comunista Politico-Militare), was a left-wing paramilitary organization responsible for robberies, kidnappings, and assassinations (including the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 – an event that also cost the lives of five people in Moro’s entourage when he was abducted). They were not the only ones contributing to the “years of lead” (Anni di piombo). In four years, from 1977 to 1981, 33 murders were committed by the neofascist Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR), an organization to which also the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station (85 killed, 188 wounded) was attributed.

Africa and Asia have had their share of terrorist violence. A recent but superficial scan of Africa takes us from the Algiers bombings in the north (11 April 2007), hitting the headquarters of the prime minister and a police station, killing 23 and injuring 162, via sprees of violence in northeastern Nigeria (the arena of Boko Haram) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with 268 incidents and 877 terror victims in a five-year period – not counting the innumerable victims of civil war), to post-apartheid South Africa, where often unclaimed but clearly politically inspired violent attacks are still rampant.

Asia is offering a sad spectacle. Looking from Europe, it starts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, all with countless cases of deadly violence. It continues via India with, for instance, the series of coordinated shootings and bombings that held Mumbai in its grip for four days in November 2008, leaving 164 people dead and over 300 wounded. We get all the way into China, where on 18 September 2015, at least 50 were killed when people armed with knives attacked the Sogan Colliery coal mine in the Xinjiang region. The attack was attributed to Uighur separatism which is held responsible for an underpublicized but long string of lethal actions. Even Japan has its so-called Revolutionary Army, regularly targeting US Army bases on Japanese soil.

Obviously, this is only a brief anthology of events overshadowed in current public consciousness by 9/11 (11 September 2001, attacks on the New York World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon); 11-M (11 March 2004, the Madrid train bombings); 7/7 (7 July 2005, the London metro and bus bombings); the bomb that killed 224 people on a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai desert on 31 October 2015; the series of coordinated attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015; the suicide attacks on Brussels airport and a Brussels metro station on 22 March 2016; or the truck attacks in Nice on 14 July 2016, in Berlin on 19 December 2016, and in Stockholm on 7 April 2017. All of these are grouped under the label of “Islamic terror,” whether at the hands of Al Qaeda, Islamic State, or any of their home-grown operatives.

And then there are all the so-called “lone wolves” – a notion which loses its significance when looking at extended forms of responsibility and complicity, as they are always children of their time and social environment, nourished by powerful belief systems. The names of these notorious individuals you easily remember: Theodore Kaczynski or the Unabomber, the anti-technology anarchist who targeted airline officials and university professors with letter bombs between 1978 and 1995, killing three and injuring 23; or Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the right-wing sympathizers who killed 168 people and wounded 680 others with a car bomb at a federal government building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995. And then, yes, there is Anders Behring Breivik, as well as others he may have inspired, including Brenton Harrison Tarrant who killed 51 people during his mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019.

More easily forgotten are the names of mass murderers whose individual motives remain the object of speculation: Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 and wounded 413 in ten minutes, shooting from his hotel room in Las Vegas on 1 October 2017; Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings co-pilot who killed 150 people by deliberately crashing flight 9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf into the Massif des Trois-Évêchés on 24 March 2015. The list is endless.

This looks like apples and oranges. But I hope you get the message. In the decades before COVID-19 temporarily diverted our attention, public opinion in the Global North developed a spatio-temporally confined fixation with so-called “Islamic” terror. In practice, however, any type of extremism or despair can lead to acts of terror, and so can any type of deep anger based on a sense of injustice, whether justified or not, and the accompanying frustration about unequal access to the means needed to pursue one’s goals. Usually, it is a deadly mix of such ingredients. All these incidents belong to a vague category which only has in common that the acts are aimed at making a statement. Sometimes it is purely personal and hard to define. More often, there is a political, religious, or social goal, or a combination of these. Moreover, the statements are meant to have an impact on an audience beyond the direct victims themselves. For violent political action, a further criterion to qualify as terrorism is the transgression of internationally declared (though not necessarily observed) limitations on legitimate warfare, for instance by intentionally targeting non-combatant civilians. As some of the examples have shown, it is here that the boundaries of the category get most easily blurred. For my current purpose, it is not necessary to decide when we are looking at an apple or at an orange. The family resemblance is decisive.

As I already suggested, you may believe that only the perpetrators of heinous acts, and those consciously participating in their planning or...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• 1 In society
• 2 At the university
• 3 Through the media
• Recap: Sharing responsibility
• Prospect: An ecology of the public sphere?
• References
• Index