Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Historical Literary Background
Mass travel and tourism
*
as a sociological and economic phenomenon is symbolic
of the modern world. The mass travel and tourism industry, as it is known today, is
no more than 50 or 60 years old. Prior to the 1950s travel was restricted to the very
wealthy or those, such as soldiers, who had to travel. Travel was dangerous and
uncomfortable. It is for this reason that the English word 
travel
is derived from the
French word for work (
travail
), which in turn is derived from the Latin word for
pitchfork (
tripalium
). Modern travel is a result of a confluence of multiple social
factors, among them economic surplus and relief from ennui. Future historians
reviewing the current fin de siècle period may well call our period “The Age of
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).” This first decade of the twenty-first century
also approaches what latter historians may call the age of 
a-history
. Being a time
of collective amnesia, historical revisionism, political correctness, and a sensa-
tionalist media, an impartial observer may wonder if most current events either
take place in a vacuum or have no historical basis. Certainly the media’s portrayal
of terrorism would fit this description. The modern media has portrayed terrorism
as an almost recent phenomenon. In reality, terrorism and suicidal acts aimed at the
murder of the innocent can be traced to prior to the French revolution.
One of the earliest forms of terrorism may have occurred during the fifteenth
century. The Peasants’ Revolt of Germany is such an example of early terrorism in
which the innocent were murdered as a form of social pressure. Led by radical the-
ologians and second ranked knights and nobles the so-called revolt occurred dur-
ing a period of rapid social change in which thousands of people lost their social
bearings. Its Osma Ben Laden was the radical cleric Thomas Muentzier. Peters has
written of Muentzier: “Muentzier left a trail of devastation across the middle of the
Germanies that only ceased when a coalition of the nobility and knights brought
him to a final apocalyptic that ended with an uncompromising pursuit and mas-
sacre of the insurgents, followed by the ingenious torture and execution of their
captured leaders” (Peters, 2002, p. 48). The Peasants’ Revolt may have influenced
the nineteenth century German philosopher Hegel in producing his countertheory
of humanity. The rationalists who preceded the French revolution rejected the idea
that some people are inherently evil and instead developed the position that
humanity was perfectible through science and knowledge. The Enlightenment
philosopher believed that history might be brought to its successful conclusion
through social science and understanding.
Philosophically opposed to this rational train of thought, Hegel proposed his
dialectic that for every thesis there is an antithesis. Thus, if humans are perfectible
they must also have a dark side or that, as humanity becomes ever more rational,
there will also surface the irrational side to humanity. From a Hegelian perspec-
tive, the realistic or irrational counterpoint to the French philosophes argued that
at least some humans seek to dominate others both politically and economically.
At approximately the same time the idea of combining murder with suicide, the
glorification of death appeared throughout European literary thought. Examples
abound from Victor Hugo’s play 
Hernani
to the Russian author Dostoevsky’s
famous character Ivan who states that in a world without God, all is permitted. In
A Social Theory of Terrorism and Tourism
35
*
The travel and tourism indutry goes by many names, such as “travel,” “hospitalipy,” “visitor,”
etc. For purposes of this book all terms have been reduced to simelr “tourism industry.”
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England, Joseph Conrad reflects many of these same principles in his short story,
“The Secret Agent.” Even the Robin Hood legends carry a hint of terrorism. In
these legends self-appointed heroes take from the rich to give to the poor and fight
with the evil sheriff. The Robin Hood tale assumes that the rich are evil and that
the poor are good. It also assumes the right of wealth redistribution that leisure and
service are by their very nature evil.
Under such assumptions, it is not hard to make the leap that tourists are enslav-
ing the poor workers and that not to be at work is to be evil. This same concept is
shown sociologically by Veblen in his work 
The Theory of the Leisure Class
. In the
most Robin Hood of styles Veblen writes, “the term ‘leisure’ as here used does not
connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is a non-productive consump-
tion of time. Time is consumptive non-productively (1) from a sense of the unwor-
thiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a
life of idleness” (Veblen, 1963, p. 46). From the perspective of the terrorist, the
non-pilgrim tourist is merely a user of idleness, one who loves money and hates
productivity, and an industry based on this type of consumption will necessarily
deprive its consumers’ future paradise for this world’s pleasures.
As Paul Berman notes in his book 
Terror and Liberalism
, the theoretical model
used by nineteenth century Russians (based on the ideas of the French) is the fol-
lowing. Humanity can go from freedom, to the freedom to murder, to the freedom
to commit the ultimate murder, that of oneself, while murdering others. In such a
world, the cult of death became the philosophical underpinning for the irrational
movements that ended in mass murder. Ironically, history notes some of the great-
est massacres in places where the West sought to bring its humanistic civilization
(such as India, the Congo, South Africa, or Algeria). The ultimate expression of this
rationalized irrationality of course is the Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. For all
intents and purposes the idea that humanity was perfectible is replaced after World
War I with a new political theory, that of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism replaced
the individual with the needs of the state, and then replaced the value of the human
life with the needs of the state’s life. Death now became elegant. Franco’s 
Falange