There is an old saying that the criminal of today shall one day become the hero of the legends of the future. This certainly applies to the Thief of Baghdad, Robin Hood, Gianni Schicchi, and Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (of the Bonnie & Clyde pair), not to mention the Greek Titan Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus, the Nordic god Wotan, who committed an act of brazen assault and robbery, against the Dwarf Alberich, to gain possession of the Nibelungen Ring, plus a great number of venerable Biblical characters resorting to all sorts of high crimes and petty misdemeanors at various stages of their great lives.
Public fascination with the criminal is a universal phenomenon particularly well manifested in the American legends of the Wild West, stories of the great gangsters of the Prohibition, and the by now perennial classic The Godfather Saga of Mario Puzo and of the Coppola Trilogy.
Conan Doyle’s criminal genius mastermind Professor Moriarti is a formidable nemesis to the genius sleuth Sherlock Holmes; James Bond may well lose his “authenticity” without the sinister Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the creator of Spectre; and even the incomparable Maxwell Smart is unthinkable without his lovable antagonist Siegfried.
The whole genre of Law and Order would have been a hopeless flop without the clever criminal. The next question to ask is how clever is the criminal in real life? The answer is, of course, that it depends. There is such a thing as a dumb criminal, and many of them, for whom crime is just a means to an end, are indeed as unexceptional as the average non-criminal Joe. But there are many others, for whom crime is the end, rather than the means, for whom crime is a lifestyle, a vocation, an inspiration. In this section, I am addressing the exception, rather than the rule, and such is the criminal who is presently our object of interest. He does not just break the social law and order, he exists beyond law and order, “on the other side of good and evil.” Thomas Crown (of The Thomas Crown Affair) is superrich, and for him theft is not a way to make a living, but an exciting way of life. Further such examples are in abundance…
In the world of our friend Mikhail Bakunin, that is, in his psyche, the criminal is the vital force of progress throughout history, the most active, energetic, enterprising, smart, and creative element of human society. Whereas among the law-abiding citizens genius is the rarest of exceptions, in the criminal world genius is the rule. “A certain disregard for the rules,” which Professor Dumbledore approvingly finds in the character of J. K. Rowling’s hero Harry Potter, becomes reckless disregard for all established philistine social norms in Bakunin’s legiclastic hero, akin to the profound amorality of Nietzsche’s blond beast.
Ironically, Bakunin’s hero-criminal may be an accurate representation of the criminal spirit, but the reality is too often falling short of the ideal. The case in point is Bakunin’s criminal-genius friend Sergei Nechayev (1847-1882), who was also the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky in Dostoyevsky’s Demons. A manipulative conman and scoundrel, Nechayev was playing on Bakunin’s weakness for the criminal spirit long enough to ruin him financially, and to cause him considerable political trouble, as if he had not had enough of his own. But Bakunin’s association with Nechayev gave birth to one of the most remarkable documents in the history of criminal psychology, the super-notorious Catechism of the Revolutionary. Penned by Bakunin himself, allegedly under Nechayev’s guidance, the Catechism is a practical manual for the brightest aspirants to the life of organized crime, laying down the basic principles of criminal activity, and providing useful advice on how to build an effective criminal organization from the ground up.
Bakunin’s voice was perhaps the clearest and most straightforward glorification of the criminal spirit. The Demons of Dostoyevsky were all consciously unsympathetic, but the somber atmosphere of their perverted existence, like the poisonous mist surrounding Fafner’s den, added to their clout, no less than Nietzsche’s grudging admiration for the Russian nihilist, virtually equating the latter with the man of the future.
Among the most explicit examples of a deliberate glorification of the criminal, in the Bakuninian sense, as a tremendously resourceful individual, a patriot, and a superhero, worth a platoon, or more, of better trained soldiers, is the American movie The Dirty Dozen. It may be argued, feebly, that the cutthroats, selected for that suicide World War II mission, were not exactly criminals, in the ordinary sense of the word. But if we look closer at the criminal records of the movie’s "Dirty Dozen," all of them are actual criminals, both in the eyes of the law, and in the most liberal view of conventional wisdom.
But I do fully agree with this, that they are by no means a bunch of common criminals. What makes them all uncommon, however, is not the uncommonness, or any extenuating circumstances of their previous crimes, but the aura of their present-day heroism, the sense of a legend being created around them, by the writers’ plot and their art of its development. The criminals of yesterday are thus being turned into the heroes of the new day, to be unconditionally admired by the viewers and the readers of the future.
Public fascination with the criminal is a universal phenomenon particularly well manifested in the American legends of the Wild West, stories of the great gangsters of the Prohibition, and the by now perennial classic The Godfather Saga of Mario Puzo and of the Coppola Trilogy.
Conan Doyle’s criminal genius mastermind Professor Moriarti is a formidable nemesis to the genius sleuth Sherlock Holmes; James Bond may well lose his “authenticity” without the sinister Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the creator of Spectre; and even the incomparable Maxwell Smart is unthinkable without his lovable antagonist Siegfried.
The whole genre of Law and Order would have been a hopeless flop without the clever criminal. The next question to ask is how clever is the criminal in real life? The answer is, of course, that it depends. There is such a thing as a dumb criminal, and many of them, for whom crime is just a means to an end, are indeed as unexceptional as the average non-criminal Joe. But there are many others, for whom crime is the end, rather than the means, for whom crime is a lifestyle, a vocation, an inspiration. In this section, I am addressing the exception, rather than the rule, and such is the criminal who is presently our object of interest. He does not just break the social law and order, he exists beyond law and order, “on the other side of good and evil.” Thomas Crown (of The Thomas Crown Affair) is superrich, and for him theft is not a way to make a living, but an exciting way of life. Further such examples are in abundance…
In the world of our friend Mikhail Bakunin, that is, in his psyche, the criminal is the vital force of progress throughout history, the most active, energetic, enterprising, smart, and creative element of human society. Whereas among the law-abiding citizens genius is the rarest of exceptions, in the criminal world genius is the rule. “A certain disregard for the rules,” which Professor Dumbledore approvingly finds in the character of J. K. Rowling’s hero Harry Potter, becomes reckless disregard for all established philistine social norms in Bakunin’s legiclastic hero, akin to the profound amorality of Nietzsche’s blond beast.
Ironically, Bakunin’s hero-criminal may be an accurate representation of the criminal spirit, but the reality is too often falling short of the ideal. The case in point is Bakunin’s criminal-genius friend Sergei Nechayev (1847-1882), who was also the prototype of Peter Verkhovensky in Dostoyevsky’s Demons. A manipulative conman and scoundrel, Nechayev was playing on Bakunin’s weakness for the criminal spirit long enough to ruin him financially, and to cause him considerable political trouble, as if he had not had enough of his own. But Bakunin’s association with Nechayev gave birth to one of the most remarkable documents in the history of criminal psychology, the super-notorious Catechism of the Revolutionary. Penned by Bakunin himself, allegedly under Nechayev’s guidance, the Catechism is a practical manual for the brightest aspirants to the life of organized crime, laying down the basic principles of criminal activity, and providing useful advice on how to build an effective criminal organization from the ground up.
Bakunin’s voice was perhaps the clearest and most straightforward glorification of the criminal spirit. The Demons of Dostoyevsky were all consciously unsympathetic, but the somber atmosphere of their perverted existence, like the poisonous mist surrounding Fafner’s den, added to their clout, no less than Nietzsche’s grudging admiration for the Russian nihilist, virtually equating the latter with the man of the future.
Among the most explicit examples of a deliberate glorification of the criminal, in the Bakuninian sense, as a tremendously resourceful individual, a patriot, and a superhero, worth a platoon, or more, of better trained soldiers, is the American movie The Dirty Dozen. It may be argued, feebly, that the cutthroats, selected for that suicide World War II mission, were not exactly criminals, in the ordinary sense of the word. But if we look closer at the criminal records of the movie’s "Dirty Dozen," all of them are actual criminals, both in the eyes of the law, and in the most liberal view of conventional wisdom.
But I do fully agree with this, that they are by no means a bunch of common criminals. What makes them all uncommon, however, is not the uncommonness, or any extenuating circumstances of their previous crimes, but the aura of their present-day heroism, the sense of a legend being created around them, by the writers’ plot and their art of its development. The criminals of yesterday are thus being turned into the heroes of the new day, to be unconditionally admired by the viewers and the readers of the future.
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