PARIS, THE FOCUS OF EVIL IN THE MODERN WORLD:

[B]etween 1892 and 1894, Paris was rocked by the activity of anarchists who, dissatisfied with words, plumped for "Propaganda by Deed." During these two years, 11 bombs burst in Paris, most of them heaved at institutions and individuals that anarchists believed stood between oppression and liberation. Explosions erupted in chic restaurants and law offices, military barracks and the Chamber of Deputies: every element of civil and political society became targets for anarchists. Though fewer than a dozen people died in these terrorist attacks, fear gripped bourgeois Paris -- a sense of insecurity that was, predictably, heightened by the popular press. No less predictably, when an Italian immigrant assassinated French President Sadi Carnot during a visit to Lyon, shouting "Vive l'anarchie!" as he flashed his knife, the government instituted a series of laws, the infamous "lois scélérates," or scoundrel laws, that undermined many legal and civil liberties.

Yet the most dramatic act of terrorism, if only because it now appears as a rehearsal for the blood-dimmed wave of terrorism in the Middle East, was aimed not at political or judicial figures, but instead at innocent bystanders. On February 12, 1894, a young and impoverished intellectual, Émile Henry, entered the Café Terminus. A popular café at the Gare Saint-Lazare, the Terminus was bustling with white-collar workers, whose modest careers as shopkeepers and clerks hardly qualified them as the traditional targets of anarchist terrorists. Lighting with his cigar the fuse of a homemade bomb filled with bullets and explosives, Henry tossed it into the main room; the explosion, which shattered mirrors and chandeliers, killed one bystander and wounded 20 more.

This, for Merriman, explains the bombing's true significance: "What makes Henry's attack qualify as the origins of modern terrorism," he told me in an email exchange, "was the fact that he did not go after someone identified with the state, but ordinary bourgeois having a beer." Tellingly, neither the death nor injuries drew expressions of remorse from Henry -- to the contrary. Caught, convicted, and condemned to die, Henry declared there were no innocents. These "petty bourgeois with a steady salary in their pockets," he railed, were no less guilty than generals and presidents. [...]Like ISIS, anarchist terrorism had global pretentions: President William McKinley, shot dead by an anarchist in 1901, was just one of several Western political leaders at the turn of the century whose lives were taken, or nearly so, by anarchists. Just like anarchist artists who excelled at presenting their cause, ISIS has cultivated its own brand of propaganda by word and image, moving quickly from videos of beheadings to videos of anti-Western lectures given by some of its other captives. Both then and now, jobless and aimless young men, banished to the margins of society, turn against the values of that same society with a murderous passion. Both then and now, politicians and popular media have done a better job at scaring their audiences than at informing them, just as both then and now, governments roll back legal and human rights while attempting to roll back the terrorists.

The wave of anarchist terrorism in Paris subsided after 1894. Not only had France begun to emerge from a deep recession, but civil society also proved more resilient and more rewarding than the bleak vision offered by the anarchists. This may again prove the case. Over the past several weeks, a growing number of open letters and manifestos, written and signed by Muslim clerics and intellectuals in France, have loudly denounced the acts of ISIS. Whatever the future does hold, however, the past reminds us that terrorism has been the refuge not just of religious fanatics, but also secular fanatics, and that profane ideology no less than holy scripture can lead to utter disregard for human life.

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