UN General Assembly
2001

the 11 September terrorists, we realize first that they were not Afghans, and second, that they were not the wretched of the earth. They were from the middle class. Most were students, some with advanced degrees. They never even had to work hard for a living, like most members of the middle class. These men were privileged murderers. Or let me put it another way: they were fully modern. The struggle between modernity and the anti- modern is not anachronistic. To be a terrorist demands that you enter, systematically and rationally, into the modern world and to turn its apparatus, such as transportation and communication, against it. The struggle against modernity is one of the most romantic myths generated by modernity itself. So, too, is the misrepresentation of the poor by certain writers and intellectuals — I need not name names — who claim to speak for them. The suffering sown in Afghanistan by decades of invasion and civil war, they argue, has brought terrorism as its terrible harvest. In fact, these