Especies de doble propósito, tanto ornamental como de consumo

A sudden, decisive, and illegal seizure of a ruling power by a political or mili-tary group working within the machinery of the state. The French coup means

“blow” or “stroke” (it’s also used in both French and English in such senses as a

Coup D’État

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clap of thunder or an effective move in a chess game). The French état means

“state.” Thus, a coup d’état is a “blow against the state.”

The coup d’état comes in different forms. One type, found especially in Latin America and Africa in the postcolonial period, involves one set of soldiers, such as junior officers, mounting a strike against other officers, typically top generals. In general, however, a coup can be distinguished from other forms of insurgency by such criteria as duration of the conflict, number of people involved, threat posed to the regime, and violence (Merari 2002). Usually the duration of a coup con-trasts strikingly with that of guerrilla warfare and most terrorism. The number of people involved, often just a faction of the army, is usually much less than those engaged in revolutions (characteristically based on popular uprisings) or guerrilla warfare (terrorism also typically engages small groups, though they may be linked in global networks). The threat to a regime is higher with a coup than with terror-ism, but again, the violence will be less than that in most instances of revolution or guerrilla war. There may be only the explicit threat of violence; in some cases, no blood is spilled.

A coup is often a way of preventing change or political threat from below by offering reform from above. Possibly associated with social and political unrest, a coup can lead to remedies for grievances, even changes in government policies, but not typically the far-reaching changes seen in a revolution. See also GUERRILLA;

INSURRECTION;^REVOLUTION;^TERRORISM;^VIOLENCE.

Coward

Insulting term for a person who is too easily frightened. The word comes from Latin cauda, “tail,” suggesting one who turns tail (or draws the tail between the legs, like a fearful dog) to flee. The tail of an advancing army is where the cowards are found.

The term is typically used in a context in which aggressive roles are idealized and weakness or “feminine” passivity despised as “cowardice.” Herb Goldberg wrote of the “hero-image bind” among men in which they choose between accepting challenges to their masculinity that can be self-injurious and facing such devastat-ing labels (common playground taunts) as coward (1976, 889). In wartime, one side boosts its courage and self-righteousness by impugning the enemy’s “manhood,”

citing their ignoble “cowardice,” regardless of how they fight. Jews, for example, in antisemitic literature, have been stereotyped as a cowardly “race,” yet Israeli Jews have fought successfully against Arab armies. At the same time, Jews may imagine the Arab as someone who, while fierce and violent, “fights like a sneak and will rarely stand and face you like a man” (Shipler 1986, 183). The patriarchal assump-tion is that unmanliness is a core sin that represents the enemy’s evil. Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor was described in the American press as “sneaky” and “cow-ardly,” language that served not only to rhetorically construct Japan as the enemy but also to rally Americans to the war, and to appease U.S. humiliation. This is part of the manly game of war and conquest.

Coward

43 On September 11, 2001, public figures quickly accused the terrorists of making a

cowardly attack on the United States. In an address to the nation, President Bush referred to hunting down and punishing “those responsible for these cowardly acts.”

Once he was suspected of being behind the 9-11 attacks, Osama bin Laden was de-picted as a coward, a one-dimensional term that, by missing his complexity and abil-ity to exercise extensive influence, only blinded the nation to his influence. At the same time, however, some Muslims claimed that the United States was fighting a

“cowardly” war in Afghanistan, for example, by fighting during the Muslim holy time of Ramadan. In general, while the Islamist suicide method of terrorism may be known as “cowardly” by Israelis and the U.S. government, those Muslims involved see the bravery of the martyred terrorist starkly against the cowardly pleasure-seeking of the Westerner who is fearful of death (see also MARTYR;SUICIDE TERRORISM).

Name-calling using the slur coward is also meant to control and punish or de-nounce the wartime behavior of Americans that may be construed as a threat to U.S. security or policy. For example, when California Representative Barbara Lee voted against the House bill (September 2001) that granted President Bush broad war-making powers in countering terrorism at the expense of the usual checks and balances, she was accused of cowardice and even received threats to her life (Ms.

Lee was assigned a round-the-clock bodyguard). In a very different scenario, Bill Maher, host of TV’s Politically Incorrect, was criticized by the White House for de-nying that the terrorist attacks were “cowardly” and claiming instead that the real cowardly attacks were the launching of U.S. cruise missiles from two thousand miles away. (Neil Steinberg [Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2001, 14A] said that while Maher’s crack was “dumb,” the criticism was “a frightening example of overreac-tion by attempting to shush a simple quip by a comedian.”)

Still, coward is not necessarily strictly an insult or mechanism of control. It might have a use many would agree upon as appropriate. For example, probably every-one, except terrorists who practice it, would agree that the furtive planting of a bomb to explode a school bus filled with children is a cowardly act. See also ^PACIFISM;

TRAITOR.

Crackpot

An eccentric, especially one given to lunatic notions. From the nineteenth cen-tury, crackpot derives from cracked, in the sense of “broken” or “fractured,” and pot once signified the skull; thus the suggestion is of a “cracked” brain, or damaged thinking.

Crackpotoften comes up in political contexts, where ideas or doctrines are ques-tioned or discredited as crazy. Those to the extreme Left or the far Right, conspiracy theorists, and others who depart from our unquestioned political standards or ac-cepted assumptions—and thus are pitied, feared, and loathed—are typically dis-missed as crackpots.

Terrorists and other violent extremists are among those shoved to the “lunatic fringe” with this word. Terrorists may indeed be socially marginalized—by economic

Crackpot

44

conditions, political oppression, or according to police studies expert Dr. Andrew Silke, some gross injustice done to themselves or members of their family (Kent and Cameron 2001). Some are even emotionally disturbed (but probably not most, and most emotionally disturbed people do not become terrorists). Yet the crackpot characterization, however seemingly truthful and handy to express our emotions, is overly simplistic. As Carr (2002, 53) has explained, the international terrorist is in fact often a soldier and even a statesman, working not on the shadowy fringes, but in the halls of national power.

Speakers may be said to have succumbed to the crackpot stereotype when they assume something superior about themselves. In the case of America’s response to terrorism on September 11, the feeling was in part one of bewilderment over why theywould want to do it to us—to so democratic and superior a nation. Andrew Stephen explains: “To Americans, any terrorists attacking their country must be evil crackpots consumed by envy and jealousy of U.S. lifestyles. And these crack-pots can and must be eradicated” (New Statesman, September 24, 2001, 8).

When political foes clearly replace logical argument with propaganda that struts and screams—as do, for example, fanatical antisemites and as once did many ex-treme anticommunists—to dismiss and make fun of their absurd points of view may lead to ignoring what those points of view are meant to do. Over half a century ago, psychologist Theodor Adorno warned that extreme antisemitic propaganda seeks to appeal to the audience’s unconscious mechanisms and wish-fulfillment rather than to reason. When successful, that appeal can be almost totally resistant to reason and easily exploited (Simmel 1948). See also ASSASSINATION;^FANATIC;^LONE

CRAZED KILLER;LUNATIC FRINGE;MADMAN;MISFIT;NUT.

Crazy