Terrorism as “the Essence of Government”
The arrest of a 19-year-old suspect who had allegedly planned a terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna carries some lessons in view of what Auberon Herbert, a disciple of Herbert Spencer, wrote in 1894. The suspect, an Austrian citizen “with North Macedonian roots,” who is reported to have sworn allegiance to Islamic State, apparently intended to attack the crowd with knives and explosives. (See “Teenager Confesses to ‘Isis’ Attack Plot Against Taylor Swift Concerts,” Financial Times, August 8, 2024; and “Taylor Swift Terror Suspects Planned to Use Bomb-Filled Car at Concert, Authorities Say,” Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2024).
Auberon Herbert was a British individualist-libertarian anarchist, although he called his philosophy “voluntaryism” and rejected the anarchist label. European anarchists of his time were mostly communists and often terrorists who blew up things to precipitate the revolution. In his Contemporary Review article, “The Ethics of Dynamite” (reproduced in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, Liberty Fund, 1978), Auberon Herbert argued that the “dynamiters” (the terrorists) were not really against government:
Perhaps I ought at once, for the benefit of some of my friends who are inclined a little incautiously to glorify this word “governing” without thinking of all that is contained in it, to translate the term, which is so often on our lips, into what I hold to be its true meaning: forcing your own will and pleasure, whatever they may be, if you happen to be the stronger, on other persons. … Dynamite is not opposed to government; it is, on the contrary, government in its most intensified and concentrated form. … [Dynamite] is a purer essence of government, more concentrated and intensified, than has ever yet been employed. It is government in a nutshell, government stripped, as some of us aver, of all its dearly beloved fictions, ballot boxes, political parties, House of Commons oratory, and all the rest of it. How, indeed, is it possible to govern more effectively, or in more abbreviated form, than to say: “Do this—or don’t do this—unless you desire that a pound of dynamite should be placed tomorrow evening in your ground-floor study.” It is the perfection, the ne plus ultra, of government.
Speaking of the terrorists, he harangued governments of his time:
Here is your own child. This is what your doctrine of deified force, this is what your contempt of human rights, this is what your property in men and women leads to.
This was at a time when Western governments were much less powerful than today’s. For sure, the latter are still far from beating at that game Islamic State and many other tyrants in the world. Still, we might reflect on a Senate hearing about another matter related to Taylor Swift but mainly about the government’s dirigiste crusade against so-called monopolies and market inefficiencies—a claim that, coming from the government, is hard to take seriously (“Senate Hearing on Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift Meltdown: Five Takeaways,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2023):
Live Nation Entertainment Inc. faced questions from lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday, in a Senate hearing stemming from Ticketmaster’s botched ticket sales last year for Taylor Swift’s coming tour. …
Senators from both political sides of a divided Congress came together to criticize Ticketmaster, with Democrats and Republicans calling for a re-examination of Live Nation’s market power.
Individual liberty and private property are required to prevent social strife or Leviathan. Let people who like Taylor Swift free to patronize her concerts, if she or others can finance them. Those who don’t like Taylor Swift or don’t like fun just have to abstain. And let people who want to go to Taylor Swift’s concerts buy their tickets from whoever organizes these concerts or acts as an agent of the organizers or has tickets to resell.
(1 COMMENTS)