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Thursday, Oct 16, 2008
Movies and video games get blamed for acts of senseless violence all the time. But some famous murderers got their ideas from literature.
Dec 15, 2003 | We've all heard about how computer games and films have supposedly influenced people to commit violence. In October a $246 million lawsuit was lodged against the makers of the game Grand Theft Auto III by the families of two people shot by teenagers allegedly inspired by the game. Such movies as "Natural Born Killers," "A Clockwork Orange" and "Money Train" have routinely been accused of inspiring copycat crimes. But what about novels? Is literature incapable of inspiring moronic acts of mayhem?
Many of the controversial novels of the last century were publicly condemned because it was believed they would lead to a decay in public morals. These criticisms were often patronizing ("Won't somebody please think of the children?"), expressing the belief that less educated members of society were likely to imitate anything and everything they read. The prosecutor in the 1960 British obscenity trial of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" asked jurors if it was the kind of book they wanted their wife or servants to read.
As ludicrous as that may sound today, obviously people are influenced by what they see and read, and authors have little control over how people will react to the ideas in their books. Although Isaac Asimov was a fierce critic of religion and New Age thinking, the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo was heavily influenced by his "Foundation" series of novels. The novels depict a universe where a galactic empire has become decadent and ripe for collapse. The empire's ruling planet is a vast hive of people and the only natural environment is the garden surrounding the emperor's palace. Only the foresight of Hari Seldon and his secret society of scientists can preserve civilization's knowledge before it is lost in the dark ages. Seldon's followers convert their society into a religion, believing "it is the most potent device known with which to control men and worlds."
Although Asimov based his empire on ancient Rome, members of Aum Shinrikyo saw similarities between Asimov's empire and modern Japanese society. The cult's founder, Shoko Asahara, preached that civilization was coming to an end and only the faithful would survive. He gathered around him a team of scientists from diverse disciplines. David Kaplan and Andrew Marshall's "The Cult at the End of the World" outlines how the cult's chief scientist, Hideo Murai, saw Aum's mission to save humanity from the coming apocalypse as mirroring the Foundation's struggle:
"In an interview, Murai would state matter-of-factly that Aum was using the Foundation series as the blueprint for the cult's long term plans. He gave the impression of 'a graduate student who had read too many science fiction novels,' remembered one reporter. But it was real enough to the cult. Shoko Asahara, the blind and bearded guru from Japan, had become Hari Seldon; and Aum Shinrikyo was the Foundation."
Asahara directed his scientists to create a variety of chemical and biological weapons to fight their enemies. When the predicted apocalypse wasn't forthcoming, Asahara decided to take matters into his own hands. On March 20, 1995, some of his followers released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000.
An article in the Guardian, the British newspaper, speculated that "Foundation" may have also influenced Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. It related claims that "Foundation" had been translated into Arabic under the title "al-Qaeda" -- which means the base or foundation -- and that bin Laden might have identified with the idea of a small group of rebels fighting against a decadent evil empire. This speculation has not, however, been widely accepted. It isn't even clear that an Arabic version of the novel was ever published.
"Foundation" is not the only novel to have influenced terrorists. A copy of "The Turner Diaries" was found in Timothy McVeigh's car when he was arrested. The novel was written by a leader of the National Alliance and tells the story of a white supremacist group that overthrows the government and subsequently eradicates nonwhites as well as "race traitors." The narrator destroys FBI headquarters by detonating a truck loaded with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. McVeigh used a similar mechanism to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
Several of McVeigh's friends testified he had given them copies of the book, encouraging them to read it. McVeigh had highlighted phrases in his copy of the book including: "the real value of all of our attacks today lies in the psychological impact, not in the immediate casualties," as well as one promising that politicians will not escape: "We can still find them and kill them." The novel ends with the narrator flying a bomb-laden plane into the Pentagon.
Another bomber with a fondness for reading was Ted Kaczynski. The Unabomber was a big fan of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Agent," an ironic novel in which a university professor turned anarchist is recruited to blow up a scientific icon, London's Greenwich Observatory. A Washington Post article revealed that prior to Kaczynski's arrest, the FBI had suspected the novel's influence and contacted Conrad scholars to help them in constructing their profile.
Author Joe Haldeman has spoken about the unintended influence of a short story he published in the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy in 1974. In "To Howard Hughes: A Modest Proposal," a blackmailer forces world disarmament by developing his own nuclear bomb. Haldeman says the story contained "pretty detailed instructions for acquiring plutonium and constructing a subcritical nuclear device (information not that easy to find, pre-Internet, but nothing classified) ... [Someone] used the story as a template and wrote a blackmail letter to the mayor of Los Angeles, saying he had a van parked somewhere downtown with a nuclear bomb in it, and he'd blow it up in 24 hours if he didn't get a million dollars, delivered to such-and-such a park at noon. Evidently the details were accurate enough for them to respond with a suitcase full of money, and of course a park full of agents disguised as normal people. The miscreant turned out to be a 15-year-old science fiction fan."
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