Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
I came to this book many years ago when I was trying to understand the violence that we were experiencing in Northern Ireland. The central theme is that, because we are very imitative beings, there will be violence and destruction unless we find ways of putting down boundaries to our behaviour such as the law and culture and religion, which is why the book is called Violence and the Sacred.
Before we start talking about the five books can you define what you mean by terrorism because for some people this is such a loaded term?
Yes, I guess the definition of terrorism has been a big problem for some, but for me it is clear. For me it isn’t a moral term. In other words, I am not using terrorism to say that this is very bad violence. I see it as a technique of asymmetric warfare where, in order to press your attack against a powerful force that you are too weak to engage directly, you attack a victim who is dependent on your enemy.
The victim that you attack is not really a target of your terrorism; the target is the responsible government or organisation, so what you are doing is not just intentionally committing a crime but you are trying to create enormous fear by showing that the major power with which you have the disagreement is unable to protect the victim that you are choosing to attack, and you are also not restrained by ordinary societal compunctions. In this way you are trying to undermine the standing of your powerful enemy.
You are also hoping that they are going to respond with profound anger and aggression against you so that they lose their moral authority. The tactic of terrorism is a very specific technique of asymmetric warfare which can be used by all sorts of people, they don’t have to be religiously inclined.
One of the things that I found in my work is that when you examine groups of people who use these tactics you find that they have themselves gone through a period as a group, of humiliation and profound disrespect and they have not found any other way of attacking back or righting what they regard as the terrible wrong done against them.
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As Leader of Northern Ireland’s Alliance Party, Alderdice was a key negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement and went on to be the first Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly. He was until recently President of Liberal International, the world-wide federation of Liberal political parties, and he is currently the Convenor (Chairman) of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords.
