Viswanathan K's Thoughts

One of the first uses of the word “terrorism” was by Thomas Jefferson in 1795, says Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind . He used it in for what was happening in Paris several years after the French Revolution, the so called Reign of Terror. “Robespierre’s terror took the state’s legal monopoly on violence to devastating extremes.”   Today, the meaning of the term has flipped on one significant aspect: “(Modern terrorism) grants a disproportionate power to small bands of insurgents and shadow networks.” And who were the first practitioners in its modern form? Pirates! “Extreme violence carried out by non-state actors, creating disproportionate effects through media dissemination.”   Media dissemination? Yes, even back then, the tabloid culture had begun to flourish – across “pamphlets, newspapers, magazines and books”.   “Dead men tell no tales” – it’s the pirate mantra we’ve all heard. We associate it with ruthlessness. But pirates also took that sta...

Why did Rome, unlike every other kingdom and empire, back then come up with a distributed power structure like the Republic? Here’s how Tom Holland summarizes it in his book, Rubicon : “What else had the Republic been founded upon if not this single great perception – that the taste of kingly authority was addictive and corrupting?... It was the intoxicating quality of power that made it so dangerous.”   But, as mentioned in earlier blogs, the model still created the problem that wars had to be fought, rebellions put down. The victorious general always returned with fame, adulation, riches and influence. A first among equals in the Republic. To avoid this, the Senate would often not authorize wars! “If Rome’s interests were not immediately threatened, then senators might prefer to tolerate any amount of low-level anarchy rather than grant one of their peers a license to clear things up.”   This explains why piracy lasted for so long during Roman rule. To begin wit...