The Aurora Massacre and the 'Propaganda of the Deed'

William Norman Grigg has done a brilliant job of putting the Aurora Massacre, and the likely growth of the authoritarian state because of it, in perspective:

In the Batman movie] Bane’s assault on Gotham was an cinematic example of what the French Revolutionaries and their ideological offspring call "The Propaganda of the Deed" – a conspicuous act of violence used as a "sudden, violent shock" to shatter the status quo and catalyze revolutionary change. Immediately after demolishing much of Gotham City, Bane – backed by a mercenary army – imposes martial law and revolutionary "justice" in terms very familiar to collectivist "people’s revolutions" from Jacobin France to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.

It’s tempting to think that in addition to Dickens and Lean, the Nolan Brothers [in writing the Batman screenplay] might have drawn inspiration from Carlos Marighella’s Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla, which provided tactical guidance for generations of terrorists. (Interestingly, the Nolans compared Bane to Argentine Marxist mass-murderer Che Guevara.)

The purpose of terrorism, explained Marighella, is to "to intensify repression," resulting in draconian measures that "make life unbearable" for the subject population. When faced with "revolutionary violence," government will eagerly resort to "police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people [that] make life in the city unbearable…. " Rejecting the "so-called political solution," the urban guerrilla must become more aggressive and violent, resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation in which the government must act…."

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, a millionaire Marxist publishing magnate, published Marighella’s tract and gave it wide international The full column is here.