New theatre of cruelty demands civilisation's response

After the September 11 attacks, the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard got himself into hot water by describing the strikes as the ultimate spectacle: “the absolute event, the ‘mother’ of events, the pure event”. He added that “the radicality of the spectacle, the brutality of the spectacle” had succeeded in revealing “a triumphant globalisation fighting with itself”.

Many people reacted with unease. The comments seemed at once to applaud the terrorists while undermining the tragedy of the carnage.

The series of beheadings by the so-called Islamic State are a new act of theatre, and once again, use of a metaphor associated with entertainment might sound like praise, or trivialisation in the face of grief. The use intends neither, but rather is a modest appeal for all people who oppose extremism to confront a stark reality: The jihadis have harnessed the power of spectacle to hijack the world’s imagination, while global civilisation has failed utterly to formulate an adequate response.

If the attacks on the Twin Towers borrowed the iconography of the Hollywood action blockbuster, the beheadings in the desert evoke drama far more ancient – Old Testament strife. The scenes are self-consciously theatrical, yet this does not sap them of their power – a point that global democratic leaders must digest in order to confront the challenge of the Islamic State executioners.

It may sound unlikely, but ISIS is exploring the farthest extremes of the “theatre of cruelty” created by French dramatist Antonin Artaud in the early 20th century. Artaud said he wanted to forge a theatre for the masses “where violent physical images crush and hypnotise the sensibility of the spectator seized by the theatre as by a whirlwind of higher forces”. And he appeals to ancient religions: “These gods or heroes, these monsters, these natural and cosmic forces will be interpreted according to images from the most ancient sacred texts and old cosmogonies.

“This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid.”

As theatre, the work tends to be rubbish, although Artaud has influenced many greats, including director Peter Brook. None of this matters. The key issue is how appealing its message may be to a certain cast of mind. The cocktail of violence-and-purity may find particular resonance in the restless, conflicted adolescent mind. Add the pressure of another set of circumstances, often socio-economic, and such minds can be fertile ground for jihadi recruitment. There are many more serious reasons for the appeal of jihad, from a scarcity of employment opportunities to arguments about colonial legacies, but jihad may also simply come across as a grand, romantic adventure. Adolescents are mesmerised by purity, impossible goals that most people shed as they mature. Obsession with purity can also be psychosis: Robespierre wanted a pure revolution, and the Nazis dreamed of a pure race. The jihadis, in many ways, follow a venerable Western tradition of idealism – puritanical and racist – that has always ended in tragedy.

Global leadership cannot fight this theatre of cruelty with similar tools – an orgy of rah-rah triumphalism or vaudeville sentimental propaganda. Former US president George W Bush was a master of both, pledging “shock-and-awe” in Iraq and gazing into Vladimir Putin eyes and claiming to see his soul.

Our global community must (and history tells us we can) find a way to deliver rational discourse with inspiring iconography. Leaders like Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr and Mahatma Gandhi shared a sharp sense of theatre: In the fight against communism, onetime actor Reagan visited Berlin to urge Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” – the performance was better than any he gave in Hollywood. King marched with 250,000 in Washington and created a transcendent moment in the history of civil rights with an act of consummate stagecraft. On a quest for reconciliation, Mahatma Gandhi showed not only moral steel but a shrewd sense of theatrics in recognising the power of a mass hunger strike.

Of course, in our sceptical post-modern world, any deliberate attempts at inspiration are suspicious – and that is perhaps healthy. Yet it is paramount that we awaken from our post-dogmatic slumber, not to seek a new dogma, but to reclaim the imaginative terrain for our civilised world. 

We must be warriors of tolerance, calling to arms our reason, our compassion and our sanity. Our leaders should show the way. US President Barack Obama, to begin with, needs to rediscover the charismatic force of his early presidency, the ability to draw millions of supporters, as he approaches its twilight. Germany’s Angela Merkel, who has political clout to burn, can complement her nation’s growing diplomatic muscle with bold symbolism, as did her predecessor, Helmut Kohl, when he stood alongside French president François Mitterrand in stirring scenes of post-war reconciliation. In India, Narendra Modi, who was chief minister in Gujarat at the time of horrific revenge killings against Muslims in 2002, can resonate beyond the borders of his country by deploying his charisma in a major gesture of Hindu-Muslim reconciliation.

Calling for such acts of reconciliation and inspiration is not to rule out military force, but to suggest that the ultimate battlefield must also include the theatre of persuasion. Otherwise another group of extremists will simply pop up elsewhere.

While Baudrillard’s analysis is stimulating and makes a valuable contribution to the global stage, we must reject his assertion that the 9/11 attacks were a manifestation of globalisation at war with itself. Baudrillard is correct to assert that “this is not a clash of civilisations”, but only in the sense that it is global civilisation – the civilisation of China’s Tang dynasty, of the Ancient Greeks, of India’s Muslim Mughal emperors – in conflict with anti-civilisation, a movement that in its purest distillation is simply a disrespect for life.

We must be warriors of trust. Our adventure of globalisation has the ability to yield such riches – material, cultural, spiritual and intellectual – or founder under the weight of intolerance and hate.

The message of globalisation requires global leadership – and someone to sit in the director’s chair.