Fantasy Ideology

Kelley jimmyjames at softhome.net
Mon Aug 19 08:52:29 PDT 2002


hey maxhunkhoney, do I get to wait four whole years for the scotch, too? :)

discuss amongst yourselves. <snicker>

By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view — for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

From: "Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris"

http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html



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