Fools,Martyrs,Traitors
O'Brien, Tom
ride up through the pass, with the obligatory bodyguard, is almost an anticlimax. Though the writing, as throughout the book, carries the moment: "I stood there looking out over the...
...Smith acknowledges that he is not rigidly theoretical about what constitutes martyrdom...
...The effect of Brown's dignified approach to his own execution was profound, especially on moderates in the North...
...The national media often spoke in perplexed tones about McVeigh's stony-faced attitude to his jurors...
...It reflects a rich lifetime of learning, rooted in Smith's scholarship in the Renaissance, now grown backward to Socrates and forward to Gandhi...
...Given this rich and contradictory history, perhaps we need to ask ourselves what we are to make of Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh...
...Maybe the subtitle should read "Stories of Martyrdom...
...Brown never did anything well except dying...
...The reason for McVeigh's behavior was straight out of the history of martyrdom: he was looking to force a death sentence, to arrange his own perverse canonization...
...With their mastery of media, Orwellian expertise in public relations, and new tools to annihilate a resistant Self such as concentration camps and mental hospitals, totalitarian regimes can more easily manipulate "history," thus eliminating any memory of their opponents...
...others are in large part victims (the Maccabees...
...Socrates lucked out not only with Plato but also the French classical painter David...
...Silence can be eloquent, but stony silence, like that of McVeigh, has little power to move mountains or history...
...It is not irreverent, Smith asserts, to argue that a gift for political theater does not necessarily imply hypocrisy, but rather a passion to dramatize a cause worthy of one's life...
...Though the writing, as throughout the book, carries the moment: "I stood there looking out over the last stretch, the way out of the Khyber and the subcontinent, where so many men had walked or ridden to their doom, and asked myself what all these miles of the ]Grand Trunk] added up to....All along I'd tried to see how these people were living with their profound pasts, pasts they were largely unaware of except for an inherited residue of blind emotion and mutual distrust and habitual gestures--so little wisdom passed on, after all those centuries of civilization....There was no natural drift toward better things: that was the age-old lesson of the subcontinent...
...Smith is never more convincing than when detailing the way the Rosenbergs manipulated public opinion through the media...
...Talk of martyrs is, as Monty Python might say, "something completely different...
...The Marian martyrs (Smith sure knows their lore and gore) had Foxe...
...McVeigh, please remember, thinks there could be "general uprising" any day now...
...As Smith observes, those whom the gods wish to destroy, they afflict with martyrs...
...Manipulating public opinion in a democracy is a different story...
...Smith's is not a totally unified book but it is a highly readable one ranging over vast stretches of time and space...
...Tom O'Brien W oes everything come down to public relations...
...Some are not seeking to change the world (Thomas More was just trying to duck) while others are bent on revising history (Joan of Arc and John Brown...
...Many actively choose their fate...
...Indeed, sometimes you feel the course boring in too hard when the author engages in repetitive comparison and contrast...
...In interviews published in the New York Herald before his death, Brown transformed his image from that of a raving, murderous insurrectionist into quiet, courteous crusader for human rights...
...Tom O'Brien, Commonweal's former movie critic, is a Washington, D.C., writer...
...The South would have none of it, of course, and was propelled into paranoia and firing the first shot...
...Though not taken captive or bound by them, he is fully aware of the various theories about martyrdom--especially those that second-guess the egoism and even sensuality in self-sacrifice...
...Didn't he want to save his life...
...Smith's greatest spin doctor is the abolitionist John Brown...
...One can easily imagine this material delighting college students today, for whom the martyr is an endangered species...
...A successful martyr, Smith argues, may be idealistically inspired, but is no less skilled in the art of speaking to the future...
...Lacking a strict definition of martyrdom, Smith seems to have to stop frequently to review the variety of its forms--as if he feels the need to pull all his disparate material together in the middle of an ongoing discussion...
...Think of Carthage's Saint Perpetua...
...What finally links all these fools, martyrs, and traitors...
...That is almost the suggestion of historian Lacey Baldwin Smith in his new book on martyrs...
...A few want to do so without violence, the ultimate revision (Gandhi...
...After all, even in martyrdom the self is a large part of the equation and, as Smith notes, a kind of rich, rapt ecstasy is not uncommon in martyrs' memoirs...
...The multifariousness of the book's title is apt: Smith says he can't easily typify such fierce individuals...
...Thomas Swick is travel editor of the Fort Lauderdale Sentinel...
...In one sense, Smith argues, John Brown is a prophet of things to come: the martyr turned terrorist...
...Commonweal 2 8 January 30, 1998...
...Martyrs, Smith shows, may not always be noble (Becket was infrequently and maybe only at the last...
...The times of wisdom, the fruitful centuries, were onIy bumps in the road...
...On the other hand, conditions for martyrdom become still more tenuous in the twentieth century...
...No, Smith might have responded, if his publishing schedule had allowed...
...The Rosenbergs, he shows, artfully promoted themselves while awaiting their cruel and needless execution, and then enticed a national intelligentsia to become their champions...
...Moreover, they are rarely sweet and they are often without honor in their own families...
...It seems that a successful martyr is someone who chooses to value a cause above life itself, and then is "lucky" enough to have dunderheaded persecutors and talented commemorators...
...Fools, Martyrs, Traitors is the product of a course Smith taught at Northwestern University, and the course outlines are visible in the table of contents...
...It is easier, Smith argues, to fight authoritarian than totalitarian dictatorships...
Vol. 125 • January 1998 • No. 2
