HEIRS:

Patty Hearst & 9/11 (Peter Keough, January 14, 2005, Boston Phoenix)

Comparing the events of Robert Stone's taut and provocative documentary with their disquieting parallels in the recent past and present day, you get the sense that Karl Marx was wrong, that history repeats itself first as farce and second as tragedy.

In 1974, a band of amateur revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army decided to strike at a symbol of America's power, wealth, and corporate hegemony. They kidnapped 19-year-old Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of the late, legendary media mogul William Randolph Hearst. The deed evoked revulsion, fascination and terror. An army of FBI agents and police fumbled for months on the case. In the end, the SLA's abject failure and the spectacle of its naive idealism and infantile megalomania probably marked the end of any viable anti-establishment movement in America.

Three decades later, a band of jihadists calling themselves al Qaeda decided to strike at a symbol of America's power, wealth, and corporate hegemony. Their deed evoked terror, chauvinism and repression. Feckless government agencies, an invasion, and a war failed to bring the culprits to justice. In the end, the administration's success at exploiting these disasters and manipulating a cowed public and the craven media will probably mark the beginning of the unraveling of the Constitution as we know it.

Considering the source one should know better, but for a second there it seemed like Mr. Keogh might actually grasp that al Qaeda's infantile megalomania, as displayed most tragically on 9-11, likewise marked the end of Islamicism as a viable movement.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 17, 2005 9:18 AM