The End of Life in a Global Lee

Until a few days ago, we lived with the idea that the Czech Republic was a safe place to live. We felt as if we were in a global lee, avoiding the worst violent manifestations of today’s world. After 21 December, when the mass shooting at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, took place, this is no longer the case. There has been massive violence, which appears in many places of the global world. For a moment, Prague has even become its main scene. The world’s media reported it on the front pages and the world’s leading politicians expressed their sympathy for the victims. This event showed that there is no longer any place in the middle of civilisation that is protected from acts of massive violence. The symbolic ‘island of safety’, as the Czech Republic was perceived by many, was transformed into a place of horror in which it became fully visible that all countries, without exception, have entered an apocalyptic age in which anything can happen, including brutal violence in the midst of peaceful central European cities.

This act was immediately interpreted in the Czech media as an Evil committed by a mentally disturbed young man. It is an interpretation that downplays the broader social horizon, as is the case in many other cases where everything is transferred to the psychological characteristics of the individuals. However, this act was not carried out by an alien invader, but by a person who belonged to our society, and even to the institution in question.

A New Kind of Terror

The perpetrator of the attack left no message to give us a clue as to motive. This is different from the mass murder of Anders Breivik, who shot dead 69 young social democrats on the Norwegian island of Utöya on 22 July 2011 out of hatred for ‘Marxists’. He left behind a compendium, ‘2083 - A European Declaration of Independence’, in which he writes that such acts are ‘horrific but necessary’. It is necessary to fight those who undermine ‘European traditions, culture and identity’. It was an ultra-conservative act of violence against the left.

Another type of terrorism are the attacks by Islamist militants in Western European cities, some of which have claimed over 100 victims (the 2004 Madrid rail attack had 193 victims). These attacks were mostly carried out at the instigation of the Islamic State or other militant Islamic organisations. They were certainly triggered by religious fundamentalism, but this cannot be explained by the nature of Islam, which was mostly more tolerant in its history than medieval and modern Christianity was. The French sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar, who studies the psychosocial breeding ground of Islamic fundamentalism, has concluded that the radicalisation of young members of Arab communities in the banlieues is not instigated by their studying Islamic doctrine but is triggered by a sense of humiliation and despair. Radical Islam is perceived as the only option for self-assertion. Being socially excluded, young people cherish a narcissistic desire for self-assertion, which is fulfilled by becoming a ‘negative hero’. They experience that they have exhausted all possibilities to overcome their social insignificance and assert themselves in a way of committing violent attacks. Their response to social exclusion and hopelessness is the sacred war with society. They do not desire a social recognition, but, as negative heroes, they want to strike a terror as a ‘scourge of God’ and thus draw attention to themselves.

Prague mass murder differs from Breivik’s far-right terrorism and from Islamist attacks considering that it does not refer to any doctrine. With this act, he was not fighting against the violators of European traditional values or against the godless West. Everything took place in a nihilistic void.

Nihilist Massacre

The Czech literary critic Roman Polách summed up the state of mind of many young people in the Czech Republic and not only here as follows: “…above all, futility, disillusionment, and an almost nihilistic surrender. We were born too soon, we have no ideals left, we are all going to break up anyway, we are sad and tired, the sharks and piranhas of the privileged will always be here, we are running away to artificial paradises, housing, bills, parents, children, plans, dreams, latent aggressions and depression…”

Reading these and similar statements about the young generation’s sense of life, it occurs to us that we are in a situation that Émile Durkheim and other sociologists called anomie. In times of social crisis, given norms, values and ideals crumble away. The life ideals of the neoliberal 1990s and 2000s were career, self-assertion, money. These ideals have become unattainable for many young people. They go through precarious jobs instead of successful career, collect likes on Facebook instead of real social self-assertion, and run into debt instead of earning money. This situation leads to a sense of disorientation, helplessness, and a loss of meaningfulness.

There are certainly miscellaneous values and ideals floating around us, but the crucial thing is whether are buttressed by social forces and processes that can improve the real conditions of human life in their name. If this does not happen, all values and ideals, democratic as much as populist, are empty and no one really believes in them. It is a state of anomie. Durkheim points that this state can reach an extreme point, which is anomic suicide.

The Prague mass killer probably experienced such anomie. He left no message, although with his historical training he was certainly aware that such messages are usually written. Police found only a letter in which he confessed that he had shot dead a man and his baby daughter in woods near the city six days before the Charles University attack.

The absence of a message suggests that his act was without a declared meaning. He made no reference to anything, he wanted to declare nothing. It was an anomic act. A few statements he left on social media give the impression of a totally alienated relationship with society. He wanted to cause as much harm to it as possible because society became the object of his hatred. He was driven by a need for anomic violence against society and himself.

Édouard Louis, in his novel “The End of Eddy”, highlights Pierre Bourdieu’s term “law of conservation of violence”. Structural social violence does not disappear in the moment we cease to discuss it but manifests itself as physical violence in many forms. In the case of poor French people living in the declining regions Louis writes about, it takes the form of racism, xenophobia, violent skirmishes, petty crime or the tendency to terrorize the weak. In their actions, one can see a violent reaction to anomie that distinguishes its addressees - they are migrants, weaker people or those who are different in some way. In the case of Prague killing, it is an anomic reaction of a different kind. It does not distinguish who the victim is - it was a random passer-by and his infant daughter in the forest, it was people who were just found in the building of the Faculty of Arts. It could have been anyone, and there could have been countless more victims. The monstrous consequences of anomie materialized before us almost live broadcast.

Prevention of Nihilism

If we understand the Prague massacre as an act of nihilist terrorism, is it possible to foster its prevention? I believe that the main problem is the nihilistic surrender that has spread in broad sections of society. It has become common wisdom that everything is getting worse and that an apocalyptic end awaits us. But at last, is not this nihilistic surrender a manifestation of pessimism of the will? Gramsci wrote: “I am a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” He was aware of the simple fact that if we think everything is futile and we cannot accomplish anything from what we declare, it is a foregone conclusion that we will also accomplish nothing. If there is capitulation in us, who will overcome the social and mane other crises of our time that can trigger other nihilist terrorist attacks? If there is any prevention of such attacks, it is the cultivation of the difficult discipline that is optimism of the will as the minimum prerequisite for meaningful social changes.

Translation of the Czech article “Teror bez motivu? Ještě k masové vraždě na pražské filozofické fakultě“ appeared on the web Forum 24, January, 21, 2024.