From Robespierre to al-Qa’eda: categorical extermination

An intellectual is someone who thinks ideas matter more than people. If people get in the way of ideas they must be swept aside and, if necessary, put in concentration camps or killed. To intellectuals, individuals as such are not interesting and do not matter. Indeed individualism is a hindrance to the pursuit of ideals in an absolute sense. The individual, with his quirks and quiddities, his mixture of good and bad, intelligence and stupidity, longing for justice but anxiety to promote his own selfish interests, does not fit into a utopian community. Hence utopians, if they are in earnest, tend to become terrorists. A significant case was Robespierre, who invented both utopianism and terrorism in their modern forms. On 17 February 1794 he outlined what the new and perfect republic was going to do:

In our country we want to substitute ethics for egotism, integrity for honour, principles for habits, duties for protocol, the empire of reason for the tyranny of changing taste, scorn of vice for the scorn of misfortune, pride for insolence, elevation of soul for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good men for amusing companions, merit for intrigue, genius for cleverness, truth for wit, the charm of happiness for the boredom of sensuality, the greatness of man for the pettiness of ‘the great’, a magnanimous, strong, happy people for an amiable, frivolous, miserable people, that is to say all the virtues and all the miracles of the republic for the vices and all the absurdities of the monarchy.