Baudrillard on Terrorism

Baudrillard sees the power of the terrorists as lying in the symbolism of slaughter—not merely the reality of death, but in a sacrifice that challenges the whole system.

Where previously the old revolutionary sought to conduct a struggle between real forces in the context of ideology and politics, the new terrorist mounts a powerful symbolic challenge which, when combined with high-tech resources, constitutes an unprecedented assault on an over-sophisticated and vulnerable West.

This new edition is up-dated with the essays Hypotheses on Terrorism and Violence of the Global.