SPEAKING FREELY Tsarnaev and the politics of Rolling Stone(s)
By Dallas Darling
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
It took 120 years to build the beautiful and exquisite temple to the goddess Artemis in Ephesus, one of the greatest wonders of the world. But in a single night in the year 356 BCE, it was reduced to rubble and ashes. No one knows who built the temple. The name of its destroyer though, its assassin, still resounds. Herostratus, the arsonist, wanted to go down in history, and he did. [1]
Rolling Stone just caused another firestorm by putting Dzhokar Tsarnaev's face, the accused Boston Marathon Bomber, on its
cover. The magazine claims he was a popular, promising student who was failed by his family, fell into radical Islam and became a monster. Some argue a free press should report on stories of unlikely terrorists. Others say it glamorizes terrorism and sends the wrong message of "the innocence of youth".
Not much is known of Herostratus except that he proudly claimed responsibility for his act of arson, hoping to immortalize his name. In attempting to prevent more destructive acts from spreading, Ephesian leaders executed him and then attempted to extinguish his legacy. They forbade any mention of his name under penalty of death. Yet these measures did not prevent his name and act of terror from being recorded and remembered.
Tsarnaev does not have to worry about executioners nor his legacy disappearing. Not only has Rolling Stone immortalized him, but tens of thousands of youth are blogging how he was a patsy for a government cover-up. And when Tsarnaev appeared in court to plead not guilty for killing 3 people and wounding more than 20 (14 with amputations), he was greeted with dozens of adoring and cheering fans holding "Free Jahar" signs.
Still, thousands of young women have sent Tsarnaev marriage proposals. Some, including teenagers, have even tattooed his name on various parts of their bodies. Many of these young women either find him "cute" and "sexy," or they find it extremely exciting and sensual to be in love with someone who is accused of being a terrorist. They also say that modern love has become boring, that Tsarnaev evokes a kind of new "terrifying" love.
Like Herostratus, perhaps an overly fluid, contemporary social order has confused destruction with art, has substituted terror for truth, and has tragically replaced dying with living. There appears to be a fascination, even a fixation and trans-identity, with violent perpetrators instead of with their innocent victims. Like many, perpetrators think highly of themselves, competing to prove their superiority or in wanting to dominate or belong.
Perpetrators also believe themselves to be totally justified in committing their crimes. They feel vindicated after killing others, blaming it on mutual provocations and a list of escalating grievances. Herostratus and Tsarnaev thought their victims were a means to an end, in order to gain fame or purify the world. Both blamed others for their inabilities to achieve their grandiose ambitions, too be remembered.
Like tragic dramatists, they played to audiences, and the audiences listened, which tends to lend a kind of legitimacy and social reality, including recognition of a perpetrator's crime. For others, it is merely a comedic form of distant entertainment that shatters the trivial and monotonous days. Then again, maybe they were just vengeful narcissists, not realizing that social retaliations by far always exceed the original transgression.
According to Plato, original transgressions are often ideas formed in one's mind, in the most inner chambers of one's imaginations. For Tsarnaev, Herostratus and a host of political persuaders - like those who executed Herostratus and attempted to erase his name, or those who like Tsarnaev try to purify the world through acts of violent terrorism and profit from military invasions - seldom does inner reality coincide with outer reality.
Thus is the politics of Rolling Stone and Artemis's rolling stones. If only Diogenes' lamp was also for the victim(s)?
Note: 1.Children of the Days by Eduardo Galeano. New York, Nation Books, 2013, p218.
Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
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