The Savagery of Beheading Cuts Much Closer to Home Than You Might Realize

I am reminded of Golding’s allegory in “Lord of the Flies” when confronted with the horrible imagery of innocent Americans being beheaded in the Middle East by warriors within what’s become called the Islamic State.  Fiction has become reality.

When Lord of the Flies was released in 1954, few paid the graphic novel much attention.  It sold only a few thousand copies before being recognized about a decade later for what it truly was — a masterful literary indictment of modern man reduced to his most primitive instincts.

To those who read it, the book written by prize-winning author William Golding was shocking for its time.  It told a fictionalized survival tale of English choirboys who, following a plane crash in the ocean, end up stuck and living together on a deserted island.  The dozen or so young teens must cooperate in order to survive.  For internal harmony and communal prosperity, a new order is required.  Unfortunately, as they attempt to organize and govern themselves, human nature takes over and the juveniles gradually descend towards tribal savagery.  The older and stronger boys end up murdering the younger and weaker members of the group.

Just as all acts of terror require similitude, a pig’s head becomes the symbol of this madness, which has been cut off and hoisted on the end of a sharpened stick.  The decapitated skull becomes an ornament that deliberately instills both horror and discipline among the survivors.

Now half-a-century later, I am reminded of Golding’s allegory when confronted with the horrible imagery of innocent Americans being beheaded in the Middle East by warriors within what’s become called the Islamic State.  Indeed, fiction has become reality.

But the first chapter of decapitation wasn’t scripted by Islamic extremists, as despicable and reprehensible as their motives and actions are to the civilized world.  Point of fact, the grotesque act of beheading actually has its earliest origins in Western civilization.  It has even been utilized in many advanced nations, including some societies thought to be the most progressive in the world.  Yes, even the United States.

Beheading was first recorded among the Celts.  Later, the Romans adopted the practice.  Next came the Ottomans.  Perhaps the most feared architect of beheading was Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as “Vlad the Impaler,” who is celebrated by some today as one of Romania’s greatest national heroes.  Proving that terrorism worked then just as it works now, he managed to successfully fend off the Turks after the invading legions stepped onto Dacian soil and were shocked to discover their lifeless former colleagues staring back at them, with giant wooden spears poking out of their skulls through their mouths across would-be battlefields.

England is often thought to be the most civilized country in the world, historically speaking.  But its kings and queens certainly loved to cut people’s heads off, turning it into the royal’s national sport.  During the Renaissance, enemies were often decapitated during victory parades.  Even some kings, including their inculpable wives, were beheaded.  At least one king, Henry VIII, decapitated one of his wives for the crime of not bearing him a son.

France went a step further.  Not only were deposed rulers Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette beheaded by the so-called “good guys” who orchestrated the French Revolution, a Frenchman named Joseph Ignace Guillotine (who remarkably was a physician) turned the act of severing a head from the human body into a successful business.  He invented what became known as “the guillotine.”

Amazingly, the guillotine was adopted because it was actually a more human way to execute criminals.  Guillotine’s device was considered far less painful for the victim than the previous device used during the Middle Ages, which was the breaking wheel.  That instrument of horror slowly broke bones and bludgeoned the victim to death.  The only proper description for this previous killer was “torture.”  And so, it’s important to understand that beheading, as reprehensible as it seems to contemporary attitudes, was actually an advancement in capital punishment at certain periods in history.

While there’s nothing advanced about ISIS or the religious fanatics who seek to impose the Dark Ages upon the world, America too has practiced beheading.  As New York University history professor Jonathan Zimmerman points out, the leader of the pilgrims, a man named Myles Standish, ordered the decapitation of an Indian chief just three days after the first Thanksgiving.  The colonialist even went as far as to display the impaled skull of the Indian leader on a pike at Plymouth.

Prof. Zimmerman writes:  “That’s the part we typically omit from our Thanksgiving myth, which emphasizes interracial harmony instead of violence….we certainly don’t like to remember that our forefathers practiced beheading, especially when we’re faced with an enemy that still engages in it.”

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Beheading doesn’t seem to have any moral paternity.  Enlightened nations have used it, just as fascists have.  Nazi Germany is believed to have executed 16,000 persons this way (remarkably, they kept pretty good records on this sort of thing).  Meanwhile, France used the guillotine all the way up to the year 1977, when it was finally outlawed.

As for we Americans and our ancestors, it’s certainly not nearly as widespread as in previous times, nor has it ever been an official policy of the state.  Instead, we seem to favor firing squads, gas chambers, and electric chairs.  And, fighter jets and drones.  But as Prof. Zimmerman points out, Americans cut off the heads of Japanese soldiers during World War II (to be clear, the victims might have been dead already).  In 1991, an enemy Iraqi soldier was shown with his head decapitated, which was then affixed to a tank while the U.S. Army whirled through the streets of Baghdad.  One can only wonder what became of the young Islamic boys who saw that horrific image twenty years ago of one of their countrymen serving as a trophy for an American battalion.  Odd how events of the past lead to the headlines we see today.

Yes, beheadings are awful.  The evil deeds of fanatics who kill innocents require action.  But before we point fingers at those who perform such terrible acts, we should realize there’s not just blood in the sand.  There is blood on our hands, too.

Footnote:  Read Prof. Jonathan Zimmerman’s article here:  Beheading not limited to Islamic State