Far as I can seem to recall, no western totalitarian movement has made murder-suicide a central tenet of their philosophy. Conversely, every mad ideology that has enshrined the concept of the suicide murderer has been non-western.
This is kind of interesting, particularly when you look at the thesis of things like Victor Davis Hanson's book Culture and Carnage.
It might just have something to do with the western psyche that, even at its most twisted, is more interested in killing others, than demonstrating our macho virtue or whatever by dying in some spectacularly virtuous, public, and messy fashion.
George C. Scott as Patton:
I want you to remember that no dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.
Our enemies seem to be making it easy on us from that perspective.
Posted by: Matt at July 8, 2004 08:21 PMI guess it depends on whether you consider 19th Century Anarchists to be a Totalitarian movement or not. A number of their assassins did blow themselves up on purpose as I recall and certainly a few of their assassins executed their tasks in a manner that had no concern for whether they lived or died. ^_^;
Posted by: The Snark Who Was Really a Boojum at July 13, 2004 09:11 AM