Editorial of october 2001

Curzio Malaparte, Technique of coup d'état.

The attempt against New York has provoked the same astonishment and the same incredulity than the sacking and the seizure of Rome in 451 : Power City, the unassailable town, the capital of the world, pulled down by rough Barbarians, not even well-armed but, as in the V° century, strong by the weakness of Rome. However, it is only terrorism and not a military conquest. But the word is pronounced by all the lips, has been red in the pages of all newspapers, has been repeated by all the media : War. Even if leaders have replaced it later by indirect terms, this first impression conditions badly all the reactions and statements against these attempts. Then, the riposte will be martial and totally inadequate.

In 1931, Curzio Malaparte analyzed in his "Technique of Coup d'Etat" the modern method for taking the power. Now let's look into this old book that caused so much troubles to its author, and let's it apply to the recent events. We are going to recapitulate, step by step, this good old recipe, as it had been used by Trotsky in 1917, used again in 1922 by Mussolini, and more or less achieved by many other putschists. And we are going to imagine that it has been applied once again during the day of 11th September 2001. Pure fantasy ? No, it is just a exercise of uchronia(1).

Let's begin by the facts. The facts of the 11th September 2001 are simple and horrific. So such simple than we notice only their horrific aspect. These facts appear to us as some acts of very powerful destruction, some acts of terror that have been not even assumed, and it makes them more barbarous, more savage : They seem to be just gratuitous acts. And everybody speak a lot about fanatism, furious violence, an inextinguishable hate that aims to make the largest damages as possible and above all, to attack the more symbolic and political places of the United States.

However, modern technique of coup d'état does not recommend to seize the organs of state, ministeries or parliament, but aims to paralyze public life by attacking its economical and technical centers. Even if the Pentagon should be now no more than a trigon, and even if the White House was another target, the attempts of the 11th September have not had for effects to pull down the American government and to control the political and military organs of the United States. What could have make the "terrorists" with that ? It had just to paralyze efficaciously the running of the attacked town, and even the running of America, and even of the world. Malaparte could have resumed it as "neutralizing the communications, transports, the energy, by series of attempts, more or less achieved, against the organization of the technical services of the town." And it is a fact that, during many hours and many days, there was no electricity, no transports, no stock exchange, no communication.

Now, let's talk about the authors of these attempts. Immediately, in all the minds, it could be nothing but the facts of crazy killers, of fanatics ready to die and to go to Heaven (or Hell) with the escort of their thousands of victims. But the authors of these attempts have nothing to do with the young Palestinian or Kurdish kamikaze who ties up dynamite on his body and makes himself explode, by despair and pride to be more desperate than the happy well provided people he attacks. No. The guys were only technicians, some good, able technicians. For "the seizure of modern state needs a troupe of armed men, directed by engineers... " And if they could act so efficaciously, so surely, the reason is that they have acquired a perfect knowledge of their course. They took hundred times the aerial shuttles between Boston and Manhattan, they had entered hundred times in the World Trade Center Towers. They have memorized the neuralgic points of New-York state and Pennsylvania, the maps of Manhattan, Washington, the plan of the airports... "The red guardians act surely for they have worked, invisibles, on the ground of their struggle."

As for their suicidal act and their total absence of compassion for the victims, it is perfectly compatible with the coldness required to technicians. Any secret group can be united by hate. The usual drill of insensitiveness front of a dehumanized enemy is a common attitude. As noticed Bruce Chatwin, in "The songlines", all bellicose propaganda has ever tried to despise the enemy, to present him like a beast, traitor, a cancer, or at the contrary, warriors should transform themselves as wild beasts and human become automatically their legal captures." Getting rid of any compassion for its future victims is not difficult, it happens during all the wars. And persuading these good performer that their exploit could be only achieved by their own death is not so hard than we could imagine. It comes under the desire of a well done work, of a technical prowess, and the passionate vanity of the master work. In his novel "From earth to the moon", Jules Verne showed then three men, including two American engineers, trying to reach the moon at any price, though they know that they could not come back on earth. Who could think that these positive heroes, these avant-gardists of human progress are nothing but kamikazes ?

What are the consequences of all this on the American public opinion and the Western world ? Fear, disarray, incomprehension, "why a such hate ?" And the feeling, increased by the anonymity of the authors, a diffused menace, an idea that everything is a menace. And the shock provoked by an action so spectacular and murderous allows to keep going its effects, without repeating them at a such high level. Some attempts with a lower degree of material destruction, and even many false alarms could have bad effects. If we consider the population's state of tension, the explosion of a one pétard in a tower higher than twenty floors could provoke spontaneous suicides, and the click of a nail-clipper could panic easily many passengers in a flight.

Facing to such attacks, the foreseeable reaction of a government is a military or police riposte, "war or justice", and to unite all the political tendencies, to form a sacred or democratic or legalist union against aggressors. And here is the common mistake of threatened governments, when they defend themselves by using army or police, I mean when they try to protect military and political targets, though the aggressor's tactics bases on disorder and infiltration inside civilians targets. Up keeping trouble of minds, using of information as misinformation, for "freedom of media had never prevented newspaper to publish wrong news", provoking anxiety by any way, infiltrating the organs of connection and functioning (nowadays phones, televisions, satellites, aerial transports, stock exchanges, e-mails and so on) which, at the right moment, will be cut, control or hijacked. "Everywhere in fabrics, les regiments, banks, administrations, ( fascist) cells form the secret network of the organization."

But, at the end, how an analysis of events that happened in 1917 or 1922 could be valuable for the day of the 11th September 2001 ? From that time, the world has not changed ? The stakes and the impact of policy on economy, communication, the fighting ground of the powers, all these facts do not require a refreshment of analysis ?

I agree, and for that reason, if you read Malaparte’s essay or its citations in this paper, I suggest you to replace "State" by "world" and "coup d'état" or "insurrection " by "control of the world ".

Sandrine Alexie

Appeal for no more violence :

http://www.flora.org/coat/appeal and  http://www.geocities.com/act_against_war 

(1) «Uchronia, n.f. : utopia applied to history ; history remade logically as it could have happened.» Larousse 1913

Summary