Still from Armed with Faith.Terrorism, that singular and repulsive act of human devastation, is so often characterised by its ability to rupture the fabric of daily life, to suspend reality over a cliff edge while trauma takes over. But even the most extreme forms of societal violence cannot operate in a vacuum. Bound tightly to specific political contexts, terror actors use maximal destruction to enforce their will or attack target communities. Against such aberration and abomination, popular resistance to terrorism and its aftershocks produces inspiring displays of empathy and solidarity, a blanket of human compassion that incubates, however briefly, a genuine sense of collectivism.
As ordinary people come together, so do the organs of the establishment. They probe and pathologise the circumstances of terror, decry its horrors and make fevered pledges for its eradication. The young, male perpetrators are investigated exhaustively. Fingers are pointed and accusations are exchanged. Ugly discourses take shape, demanding ‘tough talk’ and ‘hard truths’, sometimes oblivious to the suffering of the victims and of their families and communities in mourning.
Then, normality returns. The event and its immediate repercussions are necessarily sealed off, so that life can continue unmitigated by fear. Reality climbs back up on its feet.
