When Terrorism Becomes Fashion
The glamorization of violence is hollowing out Western civilization from within.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay by Benjamin Kerstein, author of the new book, “Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto,” available on Amazon.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The remarkable spectacle of actor Javier Bardem unleashing an expletive-like “Free Palestine” at the Oscars two weeks ago, matched with a previous photo of him wearing an impossibly large keffiyeh — ironically matched with a no-doubt expensive designer suit — while raising his fist with murder in his eyes, can only put one in mind of one of the most disturbing and dangerous phenomena of our time: the rise of terrorist chic.
Put simply, the adulation and adoration of terrorism, whether the state terrorism of Iran and Hamas, or the “lone wolf” terrorism that plagues the Jewish community and the West in general, is now all but ubiquitous. It is fashionable and, as such, has become a fashion statement, embodied, above all, in the keffiyeh itself, the checkered swastika, the scarf of death, that is a universal symbol of Palestinian “resistance” to the existence of another people. Atrocity has become glamor and, as a result, Western civilization is in danger.
This, it must be said, is not new. Some decades ago, the great Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said:
“There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions — intellectuals, professors, liberals — spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.”
At another point he noted:
“Not a single family driving to an airport can be sure that it won’t be gunned down by some fighter for someone or other’s freedom. No one can be sure that he’ll get to the end of the street safe and sound. But terrorists can be sure: public opinion guarantees that their lives will be safe, that their cause will be given publicity, and that they will be held in decent confinement — that is, until other terrorists come and rescue them. A society for the protection of terrorists indeed! There was such a society in Russia before her collapse: we too have trodden this fatal path.”
The moral glamor of terrorism among certain classes — especially the privileged classes — may not be new, but it has gained immense momentum over the past 25 years. It began, perhaps, on 9/11, when millions of anti-American and antisemitic radicals the world over thrilled to the mass slaughter of thousands and the decimation of a symbol of the demonic capitalism and “imperialism” they so despised. Silently, Osama bin Laden became a hero to many and, if not that, at the very least a figure of sympathy and admiration: a bold warrior against the American/Israeli empire.
However, terrorist chic exploded in full after the October 7th massacre, when thousands, if not millions, took to the streets across the U.S. and the West in general to celebrate the slaughter, accuse Israel of all manner of crimes before any military response had been undertaken, intimidate and attack Jews, and generally conduct themselves like demons.
At that moment, the checkered swastika and innumerable other symbols and performances of terrorist chic, including openly genocidal symbols and chants, became not simply normalized but fashionable. Performative activism became performative terrorism; terrorism pursued at another level, the level of the spectacle.
This terrorist chic has now been extended to Iran, with Javier Bardem himself proclaiming “no to war” — meaning the war against Iranian terrorism, the Iranian terrorist state — and a studied hatred of the current conflict with Iran, which is viewed as a monstrous assault on noble resistants to the United States, Israel and, of course, the Jews.
As Solzhenitsyn warned, all of this may be prelude to something far more dangerous, monstrous, and evil: the rise of terrorist states in the West, the subversion and destruction of Western democracy as a whole. No free society, after all, can survive the emergence of a pro-terrorist consensus. If this is the endgame of terrorist chic, then it is imperative, above all, to understand it.
There are likely several reasons behind the rise of terrorist chic.
First, there is the fact that the terrorist lives in a state of nature, without constraints of law, morality, or indeed anything resembling the civilized world. This behavioral chaos may be terrifying, but it also has immense appeal, especially to sated and bored denizens of wealthy societies. It promises a kind of Nietzschean freedom, in which the terrorist becomes the “superman” for whom God is dead and therefore everything is permitted.
The terrorist, to his admirers, exists beyond good and evil. He can do anything he wants to anyone he wants, and the vicarious and vertiginous thrill of this has an intoxicating appeal to largely weak, deracinated, and flabby progressives and liberals highly constrained by civilized moralism and repression.
Thus, the terrorist becomes a romantic figure, able to purge all passionate emotions in the most violent way, promising catharsis to those who, perhaps unconsciously, desperately need it and cannot find it in the usual narcotics, such as drugs, pornography, and squishy middle-class liberalism and progressivism. The scrupulously moral and law-abiding bourgeois always longs, deep inside, to be a criminal.
This thrill of cathartic nihilism is embedded deep in the human psyche. Human beings have a strong streak of sadomasochism in them and take deep, if often unconscious, pleasure in the spectacle of violence, humiliation, and atrocity — the more violent, humiliating, and atrocious, the better. There is immense pleasure taken in both inflicting and submitting to the most horrific acts.
Hence, one imagines, the euphoric celebrations of the October 7th massacre. In recent years, there have been few acts more horrific, and Hamas consciously made a spectacle of it by assiduously filming the entire thing. Such images could not but induce the profoundest pleasure in repressed sadomasochists, and to perform this pleasure must be, on some level, one of the most basic motivations behind terrorist chic.
Along with pleasure, however, comes fear. While flabby liberals and progressives may take some pleasure in the breakage of their middle-class morality by the terrorist, they also feel the terror itself. They know they are weak and vulnerable for all manner of reasons and would stand no chance against someone given to nihilistic and genocidal atrocity. In its targeting of the innocent and the unarmed, after all, terrorism is simply genocide in slow motion, and the lovers of terrorist chic know quite well that (unlike Israel) they have no means whatsoever of defending themselves should they become its target.
As a result, support for terrorism and its performance in terrorist chic becomes an illusory means of self-defense. By satisfying the terrorist through support, terrorist chic proffers the delusion that the despairing middle-class activist can protect themselves. They can exempt themselves from the threat of becoming a victim.
This may be a delusion, but it is a powerful one, and the neurotic belief in it is profound. In the face of this, the reality, proven again and again, that the vicarious supporter of terror is always the first against the wall if the terrorists find themselves victorious, means nothing and wields no power. Everyone, after all, wants to feel safe and secure, especially when they are not safe and secure. In this case, cowardice leads to a deal with the devil.
Equally powerful is the sense of shared ideals. By and large, the lovers of terrorist chic agree with the terrorists. They loathe the U.S. and Israel, and believe that horrendous violence against both is eminently justified. I recall reading, shortly after October 7th, a post by a Jewish woman whose friend said to her, “What do you think decolonization looks like?” I thought the proper response would be, “If this is decolonization, I want no part of it.” The embrace of terrorist chic is the performance of very much wanting a part of it, but this can only be achieved vicariously.
On the part of performers of terrorist chic, then, the terrorist deserves a certain admiration. He is seen as an idealist, just like them, who is willing to “go all the way,” to pursue his ideals “by any means necessary.” Thus, the terrorist becomes purer and nobler than flabby middle-class activists. They feel shame in the face of the terrorist’s supreme dedication and will, even unto death and murder, and feel, ironically, that it is morally incumbent on them to support the morally bankrupt, to embrace the Nietzschean void.
Finally, there is a strong element of perverted empathy. That is, the performer of terrorist chic believes that terrorism is, in and of itself, a cry of pain. It is a plea for recognition, sympathy, and aid prompted by unbearable suffering.
To the performer of terrorist chic, terrorism is religion as described by Karl Marx. It is “the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions; it is the opium of the people.”
Terrorism, the performers believe, is the salve of the anguished, and they must help administer the analgesic. This, coupled with a culture of Western guilt over racism, imperialism, and other historical sins, fuels an impenetrable sympathy for the devil.
By a kind of terrible logic, this leads the performer of terrorist chic to absolute sadism. He believes that the more horrendous and brutal terrorism becomes, the louder the cry of pain. Thus, October 7th was not a series of horrific war crimes, but an indication of the unthinkable extent of Palestinian anguish.
Once extended to the rest of the world, once the intifada is globalized and extended to all terrorist atrocities, this perverted empathy is maximized. The worse terrorism gets, the more sympathy it demands, and the more the performer of terrorist chic sinks into the moral depths.
Terrorist chic is monstrous in and of itself, but perhaps its most monstrous quality is how supremely dangerous it is, especially to any democratic society.
As Solzhenitsyn noted, popular support, and especially elite support, for terrorism paved the way for the rise of the Soviets, who imposed a regime of institutionalized terror. The terrorist is always a psychopath, and thus the systematic nihilism of terrorist chic allows the psychopaths to rise. With them comes all the murder and tyranny that wracked the 20th century and now wrack the 21st one.
What this means is that, in its essence, terrorist chic is murderous hypocrisy. In the name of empathy, morality, freedom, and indeed democracy, it annihilates all four. The “liberation” it seeks and supports is a toxic liberation, the liberation of man to do anything, no matter how monstrous, with the assurance that large swaths of democratic society will support it. As has been proven again and again over the past century, no civilization, and especially no free civilization, can survive this. It must, by terrible necessity, destroy itself.
The West has already gone a long way toward destroying itself, but terrorist chic represents a threat that cannot, under any circumstances, be survived. Ennui, deracination, atomization, and other corrosive phenomena can be overcome by supreme effort. Renaissance is always possible. What cannot be overcome, however, is absolute nihilism, the embrace of the void, and the rise of performative murder and suicide to power.
Political trends in the West, including in the United States, indicate that this rise is already underway. Not only the minions in the streets, but powerful institutional forces — especially higher education — have embraced terrorist chic, and in several countries, performers of it like U.S. politicians Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and others have either attained power or are cravenly appeased by the powerful. It is entirely possible, in fact, that terrorist chic will soon complete its takeover of Western Left-wing movements like the Democratic Party and be only one election away from the immense powers of the presidency.
If the West and its virtues are to survive, then terrorist chic must be turned back. This will require enormous efforts, because the cancer has been spreading for some time.
Fortunately, terrorist chic is now deafening. Its performers are finally screaming at full volume. This represents a terrible danger but also an extraordinary opportunity. We know now who the absolute enemy, the adversary, truly is, because the adversary tells us who they are on an hourly basis. To simply point out that they are the adversary is, perhaps, the first step toward defeating them.
Change the laws!
Islam utilizes and takes advantage of Democracies to spread and proliferate on account of hard working tax paying Westerners.
Stop ✋️ this conquest from within. Think of your children and grandchildren for generations to come.
The term "radical chic" was coined by Tom Wolfe to describe the spectacle of someone like Leonard Bernstein hosting black panther radicals in cocktail parties in his Manhattan Apartment. The terror that is celebrated today is a magnitude worse and is driven not by a small number of radicals but by an enormous population of murderous Islamists whom the West has invited in without condition. Leonard Bernstein was never under any real threat from the Black Panthers. Today's useful idiots very much are but just don't realize jt.