Innocence

Abstract

This chapter tells the story of the MOVE Bombing. In the thirty-three years since the MOVE Bombing, writers, artists, and filmmakers have struggled to make sense of what happened on May 13, 1985. Overall, they have failed to do so. This author does not expect to succeed. His main contribution to an understanding of the MOVE Bombing is this: it is not exceptional and it is not inexplicable. Such acts of state violence have happened many times before, and there is no reason to suspect that that they will not happen again. Rather than looking at the MOVE Bombing as an inexplicable event, one should look at it as a perfectly normal behavior of the secular state. The MOVE Bombing, the author argues, makes sense only when one sees it as a logical extension of secularism; as the secular state preempting “illegitimate” religious violence with “legitimate” state violence.