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Celebrity sociopath plays to his audience
By JOHN MACLACHLAN GRAY
Wednesday, October 3, 2001 – Page RHere's an image of the Taliban I find peculiarly haunting: While eking out an existence in the Afghan wilderness as a despised class of young outcasts, these young fundamentalists are said to have whiled away the hours watching TV -- on sets suspended from trees. A resonant image with implications as to how this group may have become susceptible both to the politics of exclusion and to the politics of celebrity.
In such a scenario, Osama bin Laden comes into focus as an all-too-familiar 20th-century figure: the sociopath who goes into management; the psychopath whose abilities to manipulate and delegate enable him to persuade weak-minded people to behave like psychopaths themselves. Hitler was an obvious example of the type. Pol Pot, Stalin, the instigators of the genocide in Rwanda -- the list goes on.
Even a cursory glance at bin Laden's r�sum� indicates that what we are dealing with here is not a soldier, nor a scholar, nor a revolutionary, nor a militant peasant, but a rich man's son who parlayed an inheritance of $60-million into a portfolio not far off half a billion, with interests in forestry, minerals, precious metals, construction, real estate, small arms and probably the drug trade.
What was bin Laden's investment in the attack on Sept. 11? So-called experts indicate the whole ghastly business required less than a million. Small change, really.
The potential profit? Simply by buying gold through a shell company, the man stood to make more than one kind of killing -- not to mention selling short on airline stock. Exchanges in Europe are at this moment investigating a series of remarkably prescient transactions executed just in time to take advantage of a downturn.
This is not to suggest the attack had no political-religious significance (the two go together in most Islamic countries). On the contrary, during the Afghan revolution, al-Qaeda, in addition to its other activities, functioned as a lobby group analogous to the National Rifle Association and succeeded in persuading the Muslim clergy to accord the Taliban, in effect, charity status. Once it became legal for Muslims to give alms (compulsory alms, a form of religious taxation) through al-Qaeda, a tap opened to the tune of $3-million a month.
In the process, to the Taliban bin Laden became a celebrity. And we all know how addictive that is.
Take a close look at the carefully posed photographs of the fellow. Note the costume -- given his background and education, he is certainly in costume -- like something out of Lawrence of Arabia. Watch a promotional video on the Web, featuring our fearless leader firing an assault weapon at some invisible off-camera enemy, with the familiar "Look Mom, I'm on TV!" expression of an amateur host on Rogers Cable.
Had the New York atrocity occurred as part of a robbery, even in our grief and rage North Americans would have an easier time recognizing bin Laden as a familiar staple of American culture -- the celebrity sociopath. Think Bonnie and Clyde. Think Butch Cassidy. Think The Sopranos and The Godfather, in which we chuckle at the foibles of multiple murderers, feel their pain, cheer them on to even greater mayhem.
But not when the murders are politically motivated. I know of no movie in which John Wilkes Booth is portrayed as a lovable idealist, and expect it will be a long time before Americans become interested in the love life of Timothy McVeigh.
On the other hand, to an Iraqi audience, say, the life and psychology of a suicide bomber would be of far greater interest than that of a thief and a murderer.
Two different styles of celebrity sociopath, arising from the underclass of two different cultures -- each incomprehensible to the other, and yet similar in their glorification of terrible men.
Compare bin Laden with, say, Al Capone. Capone ascended to power during the Depression, in an era when Italian immigrants were regarded as second-class citizens. Bin Laden came into vogue during the struggle against the Communist government in Kabul. Compare their business interests (contraband, drugs, small arms), their utter ruthlessness, their role among excluded minorities as Robin Hood figures in hard times. Compare the celebrity of Al Capone among disaffected slum children in 1931 with the figure of Osama bin Laden among the Taliban today.
Like bin Laden, Capone was not himself a slum child but the son of a businessman, who went into business in his own way, delegating the dirty work to others. (When Capone finally went to prison it was for tax evasion.)
If this view proves correct, the attack on the World Trade Center emerges as an atrocious piece of agit-prop theatre, financed by bin Laden and executed by his fans at the cost of their lives. Its purpose was to galvanize and to polarize a potential audience of 1.1 billion Muslims, to increase their awareness of the al-Qaeda brand, to ensure an increased cash flow for its various activities, and to enhance the charisma and reputation of its celebrity president.
If this is what happened, then the man is no warrior but a celebrity sociopath, a mass murderer -- and the most infamous white-collar criminal in history.
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