This page was created to provide further information about glamour bombs in support of the Glamourbombing community on Livejournal. The views expressed here are entirely those of the creators of this page.

Is glamour bombing a kind of terrorism?

Absolutely not. It is important that we make this disclaimer right off the bat. At its genesis back in '97, this named concept of "glamour bombing" was inspired by a Hakim Bey essay called Poetic Terrorism. Hakim Bey (better known as the American radical historian Peter Lamborn Wilson) proposed a kind of anti-terrorism that instead of fear inspired wonderment. However, what Hakim Bey suggested usually amounted to street theatrics, public nuisance, tresspassing, fraud and vandalism. A lot of things that cold get you arrested.

Glamour Bombing differs greatly from "poetic terrorism" in that it proposes a much-more subtle, low-impact approach to evoking wonder (and particularly belief in faery or the supernatural). Even though glamour bombing is often covert, since we discourage carrying out acts that break the laws of society, there is no reason to consider what we do "terrorism."

In this day of heavy-handed enforcement in the name of National Security, we have to be very wary of doing anything or being connected to any group that advocates acts of terror or political subversion. I believe we can accomplish so much more by doing small charming things than by undertaking great public acts such as the "unauthorized pyrotechnic displays" and suchlike provocations that Hakim Bey recommends.

The word "bomb" in glamour bombing is simply a metaphor. In this sense it is more about blowing minds, or demolishing paradigms, and has nothing to do with destructive acts. We mean the term constructively. As for subversion, we consider selfless acts of kindness to be more subversive than any kind of thunderous publicity stunt. There is nothing that we do that can be directly connected to the sowing of discord or unrest, nor the striving for a state of anarchy. Our largest ambition is just to reconnect people to the belief in spirits, which does not violate any laws or treaties that I know of.