BATTLEFIELDS HAVE BEEN RELOCATED IN CYBERSPACE. FOOT SOLDIERS ARE INVISIBLE NASTY TROLLS. AI IS THE HIGH COMMAND (He Who Rules The Data, Rules The World.)Vladimir Putin and the Silicon Valley billionaires have understood it though the latter have totally forgotten that a number is attached to a word, a culture, a meaning and is never reality. THEY JUST SPRAY BULLETS.
The first ones to have understood the power of words in asymmetric wars were the members of Al Qaeda who recruited solely online. Published for the first time in a book , these Al-Qaeda documents are the most consulted and downloaded writings on the internet. They are the most discussed texts on Islamist discussion forums and the most frequently recommended by the organization's recruiters and sympathizers. The printed book is a careful selection of what constitutes cyberwarfare.It was published in 2007 by Mathieu Guidére and Nicole Morgan. (Paris. le Seuil : Le Manuel de recrutement d'Al-Qaïda,). It was translated in many languages, circulated in (Asian) military schools. But in spite of our continuous efforts which included a ready to print meticulous translation in English we could not find an North American publisher. America was riveted to the bombs using a in increasingly poor language exchanging insults and emoticons. But although I could never presented the books in anglophone America I was a partitipant in many conferences on terrorism. , In all conferences I was told by experts that the United States was the country with the highest incidence of terrorism acts, most from the ultra right. And this is why twenty years ago I turned my attention to the manufactured hatred in North America whose future was to be seen , using the new communication technologies so clumsily it amounted to suicide, For although they magnify our capacities and powers enormously, they also add complexity to survival and make us extremely vulnerable. Technologically, because a simple failure can collapse the whole organism (such as an electricity outage lasting more than two weeks). Psychologically, because change and complexity promote anxiety. We should keep in mind that the first world war started in Sarajevo when a young anarchist whose name has been forgotten exploded the coach of an Austrian archduke who had so far been unnoticed by the world. That strike tolled the bell on the end of an epoch, and empires – Ottoman then Austro-Hungarian—tumbled one after the other, not because the anarchist blow was fatal but because they were ready to fall, the victims of social and technological turmoil for which they had not been prepared and did not know how to accommodate. I cannot help thinking of Joseph Campbell, who wrote in The Power of Myths : A society who is losing its 'telos" dies.
Back to Al Qaeda and the texts where I learned so much.... It is a long sophisticated story , the kind abhorred by "trumpism" where reading is a liability. But give some time to time: this is our only chance to survive "the explosion of stupidities"
The following text should have been the (translated) introduction of the book:
Fascination
Hidden faces fascinate by letting us envisage forces and powers we dread all the more because we dress them up in the colorful rags of our imagination, hounded as it is by its own shadows. They have haunted human societies from antiquity, starting at latest with the Zealots whose modus operandi was repeated in the Middle Ages by the sect of the Assassins and given its modern name – the Terror-- after 1789. Robespierre did not wear a mask, of course, but he understood the essence of terrorism: he knew how, with modest means and without big battles, to twist the bowels of citizens terrified by severed heads dripping blood that could on a whim become their own. There is a terrorist act, wrote Raymond Aron, "when its psychological effects are out of proportion to its purely physical results". Terrorism mirrors our most formidable enemy: ourselves.
Were we willing to set aside the phantasm for a few minutes and look at terrors in a wider and less passionate historical context, we would be forced to acknowledge that little blood was actually shed on the scaffolds of "the terror" or in the name of anarchist hatred. And as far as contemporary terrorism is concerned, it is to this date virtually invisible on a scale that includes the massacres of twentieth century world wars or those of recent genocides. There is nevertheless an important evolution: battlefields have been relocated and weapons are no longer the daggers of the Assassins or the makeshift bombs of Ravachol1. Words are the weapon, for which the pen rather than the dagger is the apt metaphor.
The mythical character of the masked anarchist came to life at the end of the XIXth century thanks to "the press and the infamous ‘wicked laws’ of 1893-1894 that stubbornly imagined him to be hidden behind the sadly ordinary faces of the real authors of the strikes. A deformation of the historical reality of anarchism, encouraged by the fascination exerted by this new form of violence on many writers, from Mallarmé to Zola by way of Fénéon, Tailhade, Schwob, Goncourt, Barrès and plenty of others!" They appear to have made effective use of their pens, for if Europeans had then been surveyed and asked what was the most urgent issue of their time, they would have undoubtedly answered "terrorism"—with one notable exception. For Octave Mirbeau, possibly more aware or less anxious than the majority, exclaimed in a moment of exasperation "the great danger of bombs is the explosion of stupidities they provoke".
Today, at the dawn of a new millennium, we could very well argue that there is nothing new under the sun. Al Qaeda has seized, along with the "mask" of antique terrorism, the aging recipes of "real politick". In a few years and with modest means, it has successfully mobilized the world’s most powerful military establishment and terrified countries of the West, which, weakened by the accelerated changes of globalization are more than ever captive of their imaginary fears and guilt-inspired doubts. Terrorists can then move onto a favourable field: like adolescents who instil guilt only in parents who ask for it, Al Qaeda strikes only those democracies subject to forces of change that put them in doubt of their values.
Why then, should we play along with the game and publish these explosive documents? Why add to the plethora of books that do little more than stir up phantasmagoric imaginations more taken than ever in all kinds of fears? Why risk providing propaganda tool, free and welcome advertising to those for whom propaganda is the main recruiting instrument?
To be even more pragmatic: why not refrain from writing about it at all and wait for the movement to fade away by itself? Terrorist movements did so in the past, rather quickly in fact. Cultures are being flattened out rapidly by new technologies, and Muslims themselves find it increasingly difficult to read the religious language used by Al Qaeda propagandists. They, like us, have had to go through mental mutations imposed by the post-industrial era and the global and virtual economy. For them as for us, daily and secular worries are far more important than spiritual and religious preoccupations.
We take the risk for reasons that can be condensed to three:
The first acknowledges the movement of radical Islam and Al Qaeda as one of its most dangerous proponents. The second concerns the real and potential weakness of its declared enemy—ourselves. The third reason engages the most important issue for the future of humanity: the way our children will be socialized. They will have to live under the terms of a global social contract the bases of which have hardly been drafted. This movement of cultural flattening is unprecedented, and the study of history is no longer of any help when it comes to finding good old reassuring patterns or ideals as hoped for by Plato. There is something new under the sun: the shape of humanity.
To expand on the first reason: We are not dealing here with a small sect of Assassins or a handful of isolated anarchists. Nor is it a small group of guerilleros who titillate the imagination and libido of that fraction of students whose quest is for romantic and strong sensations. Far from it! In the first place, the radical Islamic movement draws its force from local and immigrant populations, which potentially unite millions of individuals, three-quarters of them under the age of 18. Next, and without wishing to augment the sensationalism of contemporary political ideologies, we note that this movement (as with any terrorist group or individual loose cannons) has the potential capacity to use destructive technology which has no common measure with the weapons of the past. Lastly, we think that the means employed to deal with the problem carries within itself its own seeds of destruction. Since the London blasts in July 2005, the tracking of international cells organised by Al Qaeda has intensified and could be deemed successful if gauged by the large number of arrests in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Great Britain, Italy France and in Asia. Intelligence agencies have undeniably scored in their fight against the nebulous network of terrorists and have gathered much information. But we must understand that the heads of Islamic networks are immediately replaced and that there is no lack of candidates to the Jihad. For the Jihadist movement will not be quenched by police arrests. The stakes are found in the human psyche. Shooting in Iraq or elsewhere will never solve the real issue.
The second reason mirrors the first by reflecting the inherent weaknesses of our new technologies. For although they magnify our capacities and powers enormously, they also add complexity to survival and make us extremely vulnerable. Technologically, because a simple failure can collapse the whole organism (such as an electricity outage lasting more than two weeks). Psychologically, because change and complexity promote anxiety. We should keep in mind that the first world war started in Sarajevo when a young anarchist whose name has been forgotten exploded the coach of an Austrian archduke who had so far been unnoticed by the world. That strike tolled the bell on the end of an epoch, and empires – Ottoman then Austro-Hungarian—tumbled one after the other, not because the anarchist blow was fatal but because they were ready to fall, the victims of social and technological turmoil for which they had not been prepared and did not know how to accommodate.
The third reason engages the future of humanity: We must not underestimate the seductive power of Al Qaeda to cast a spell on a generation that is especially receptive to the appeal of all kind of cults and sects. It is as if a humanity fatigued by the "era of suspicion" was looking in the simplicity of archaic discourse for a response to the formidable challenge of global transformation. The question then becomes disquietingly simple: why are "the children of men" so prone to be seduced? How does Al Qaeda seduce young Muslims and convert others? Why is the West no longer seductive? Other questions mirror these issues: Why is youth so anxious? Why are we unable to re-assure it? Why has the "American dream" been replaced by hatred of "the other", a hatred we feel blowing over the fringes of our own cities.
This book is about seduction, a seduction which is found everywhere in the discourse of Al Qaeda, a seduction which constitutes its centre of gravity. Understanding of the motivations and resources of the seduction has so far been inhibited by lack of serious and objective analyses of its main weapon: the language. The analysis is not easy, for the language of seduction is versatile and complex. Also powerful in that it draws directly from sacred sources, vampirizing the Koranic text that few Muslims dare read otherwise than as a chant.
That is why, it seems to us that these questions cannot be answered without going through an attentive and careful listening to the discourse of seduction, far from battlefields, the coldness of data, so-called intelligent weaponry and strategies that reek of Clauseswitz. We are going to drag the reader onto a verbal and ideological battlefield of discovery—or more accurately of re-discovery, for we ourselves, our cultural ancestors, spoke a similar language not many centuries ago. We will be asking our readers to read for themselves the unpublished texts of Al Qaeda supporters. Such an effort is imperative if we wish to lift a corner of the veil and escape momentarily from the narcissistic imagery imposed by our own culture. This is asking a lot given the prevalence of the "discours unique" which demands that language be common, objective, flat and otherwise devoid of individual expressiveness—extending to the practice of "reading" authors great and small through commentaries or biographies. Increasingly we use English and the manipulation of numbers as the universal language of modernity, paying but scant attention to the human psyche, its depth and the symbols which govern and agitate it. Original texts are virtually forgotten except for isolated quotations selected for their familiar connotation. We thereby avoid the direct shock of the "other", the "non ego", the "stranger", whether it be an individual or a culture. We must nonetheless acknowledge that the difficulties inherent to translation do not simplify the life of the reader and may add to the opacity of the works.
The problem of this circular communication is not only semantic, for all the solutions and strategies that are drawn from it are enclosed within the asserted premises. But let us be more explicit concerning the actual struggle against terrorism: The Pentagon, locked into its own techno-ideological tower, is incapable of understanding an enemy that it has not created in its own image. It therefore finds itself reduced to an ever more punishing auto-flagellation. Our survival is going to depend on understanding of an otherness and of beliefs the power of which exceeds that necessary for the fission of an atom. As Einstein was fond of saying, "It is easier to break an atom than a belief."
Lifting a Corner of the Veil
The exercise requires an intense effort for it violates our habitual ways of thinking and writing. It also calls upon the reader to get beyond the boredom that some pages are bound to provoke along with the uncountable redundancies of a text that is nevertheless supposed to be galvanizing. It is a text that makes one feel crazy, or rather alienates us in the sense of making us feel "other". But the encounter with the "alien" is after all the goal of the exercise.
To add to the difficulty, we have little preparation for this kind of reading. Neither the francophone nor the anglophone public is familiar with these texts, and there is no exhaustive translation of texts coming from the terrorist organisation. As a result we have a scant idea of what is said and we tend to rely on deeply entrenched prejudices. When the press publishes some excerpts, it selects the most violent of invectives, creating a caricature bearing some resemblance to the insults used by the well known characters of Tintin in Land of Black Gold. Western intellectuals follow through and limit their analysis to more or less vehement denunciations of the violent, inhumane, barbaric and anachronistic aspects of the radical Islamic ideology, unless they fall themselves into a romantic delirium, projecting their own millenarian fantasies onto Al Qaeda as the agency of their fears.
Non-Muslim readers have neither the cultural background nor the emotional memory that is required to apprehend the meaning of these writings. Accustomed as we are to a demonstrative form of logic based on figures and rules, allusive descriptions and allegoric narration do not penetrate easily. These documents are especially unnerving (destabilizing) because of their distinctive rhetoric, their uncustomary usage of an intense emotional discourse, the abundance of legendary historical allusions, numberless religious and juridical references, numbing repetition, notable contradictions and vivid subjectivity. They make use of an ensemble of symbols and usages that no longer have an equivalent in our intellectual processes, neither in our social, economic and political environments, and especially not in our moral and religious discourse.
How then should we read these texts? Simply make the most literal of translations, hoping that its strangeness will keep the reader at a sane critical distance? Take refuge behind erudite notes to provide the reader with meanings that have disappeared from our daily universe of reference? Resort to a conceptual analysis to extract the main ideas of the terrorists? Is it reasonable to regard these documents as the sole business of specialists?
We try to avoid these shifting sands by offering as clearly as possible the elements that seem necessary to comprehend the meaning, without falling into either hermetic erudition easy vulgarization. We attempt to take apart the machinery and illuminate the way these writers articulate form and content to shape the body of a radical ideology which is taking root more and more firmly in the reality of the Muslims all over the world.
Background
Where do these texts come from? They are a selection from documents posted on the Internet by the active members of Al Qaeda. They circulate on the international web and are exchanged among the young and the less young just like music tracks or video films. They are easy to find on discussion forums and they came thus into our possession last year. Although they have emerged serially over the last three years (2002-2005), the context of their appearance is not reflected strongly in the content. That is actually their main strength and attraction; everyone who reads them can feel concerned and be seduced by the arguments, which speak to a general audience very different from the hard core Islamists of foregoing decades.
We see in these writings a second generation of Al Qaeda activists. They have developed both the style and functioning of the founding fathers (Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Azzam), but they have often gone beyond their masters who remain fundamentally men of the XXth century in their way of apprehending reality and thinking about change.
Following the disappearance of the Afghan sanctuary that protected Al Qaeda activities and the planet-wide hunt for militants and sympathizers of the organization, this second generation has to adapt to the new geostrategic context and adopt ways of functioning and communicating that are suited to a totally clandestine type of action.
The second generation has structured itself around the world-wide Internet medium and its capacity to transport all kinds of content (text, image, sound, video). The 21st century fact is that chiefs, ideologues, activists, militants and sympathizers no longer need face to face contact for coordinating their activities or putting together their terrorist plots. The Internet furnishes at the same time an effective means of direct communication and a medium for publication—which the different "branches" of Al Qaeda have not failed to exploit at will.
These «branches» are composed of autonomous and interdependent cells in the manner of cells in a living organism. This is the principal organisational characteristic of the second generation of Al Qaeda. Each branch (Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Al Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, etc…) has its own broadcasting network and its own assigned propagandists and ideologists. The writings of all the propagandists and ideologues are exchanged among the different branches and circulated on discussion forums and the most frequented sites. In the continuous flow of exchanged publications, some documents constitute a kind of "Basic Manual of the Perfect Little Qaedist" in that they are required reading for any who wish to join the ranks of Al Qaeda.
From continual attention to the jihadic forum over the course of a year (2005) and following closely the candidates to martyrdom who express willingness to join the ranks of "Al Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers" (Iraq) to fight the "unbelievers", we were able to select seven "epistles" which are the most frequently recommended to the internauts motivated by the Jihad. We are publishing them in the present book, signed by their presumed author.
We should note that the organisation of Al Qaeda daily refuses to accept "illuminated" candidates who are ready to sacrifice themselves for Allah. Willingness to die for the Islamic cause is not sufficient. On the contrary, the recruiters and the moderators of the jihadic forums regularly expel the most zealous candidates and seem to have a very precise idea of the ideal profile of their future members.
Whatever else it be, the procedure for recruiting to the Jihad is assuredly selective and undeniably initiatory in nature. An internaut who wishes to join of Al Qaeda finds it in his interest to prepare himself with a firm foundation before he will be able to integrate himself in its ranks. First, he must attain sufficient mastery in the classic Arabic language to access the texts he is highly encouraged to read. He must also possess a wide culture in order to grasp the common understanding of them and the patience necessary to read dozens of pages in a style that is at times difficult and specialized. On some sites, comprehension of the "good islamists" is regularly tested through a game of questions and answers where the moderator praises the candidate who is quickest in giving the right answer. Needless to say, the questions come exclusively from the basic writings of the organisation. The novice therefore internaut finds himself rapidly lost in the abyss of his ignorance and starts right away to read the documents in order to shine in the presence of the virtual assembly of his co-religionists.
It is interesting to note that this initiatory discourse is above all a virtual course, like those role playing games which are the rage in the Western world. The content and the goals are radically different, however. In Al Qaeda, the "player" will be interrogated incessantly on the "pillars of Islam". Although these are widely known, the continual harping on them is a way to get across to initiates that one essential pillar is missing nowadays, the Jihad. The more advanced the initiation, the more oriented is the learning towards the "Mystery" and the "After life". For behind all this ideology is the guiding light of the "Akhira" (The Other Life in Arabic), eternal and marvellous, that the believer can reach only after a certain "progression" (Sirât), death being only one step for the true believer. This progression is presented through an attractive language and the radical doctrinaires use all the seducing power of the language to enhance this choice of death in the name of Allah......
If any interest I can send you the whole translated book . I am not afraid that it could be used by Trump dream team. They do not read.