Everything about Sabotage totally explained
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy, oppressor or employer through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction.
Origin
Sabotage is a term of French origin coined during the railway strike of 1910, when workers destroyed the wooden shoes, or sabots, that held rails in place, thus impeding the morning commute.
An alternate definition pretends the word to be older by almost a century, the times of
Industrial Revolution. It is said that powered
looms could be damaged by angry or disgruntled workers throwing their wooden shoes or
clogs (known in French as
sabots, hence the term
Sabotage) into the machinery, effectively
clogging the machinery. This is often referenced as one of the first inklings of the
Luddite Movement. However, this etymology is highly suspect and no wooden shoe sabotage is known to have been reported from the time of the word's origin.
(External Link
) Others contend that the word comes from the slang name for people living in rural areas who wore wooden shoes after city dwellers had begun wearing leather shoes; when employers wanted strikebreakers they'd import 'sabots'/rural workers to replace the strikers. Not used to machine-driven labor the 'sabots' worked poorly and slowly. The strikers would be called back to work (with demands won) and, could win demands on the job by working like their country cousins - the sabots. Thus 'sabotage'.
Sabotage in war
In
war, the word is used to describe the activity of an individual or group not associated with the
military of the parties at war (such as a foreign
agent or an indigenous supporter), in particular when actions result in the destruction or damaging of a productive or vital facility, such as equipment,
factories,
dams,
public services, storage plants or
logistic routes. Prime examples of such sabotage are the events of
Black Tom and the
Kingsland Explosion. Unlike acts of
terrorism, acts of sabotage don't always have a primary objective of inflicting casualties. Saboteurs are usually classified as enemies, and like
spies may be liable to
prosecution and criminal penalties instead of
detention as a
prisoner of war.
It is common for a government in power during war or supporters of the war policy to use the term loosely against opponents of the war. Similarly,
German Nationalists spoke of a
stab in the back having cost them the loss of
World War I. Also see
(External Link).
The
cold war included a subtle form of sabotage. One well documented case is the Soviets
Trans-Siberian Pipeline Incident, triggered by the
Farewell Dossier.
Subtle sabotage has also been employeed for other reasons, including attempting to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities.
Sabotage as part of a crime
Some
criminals have engaged in acts of sabotage for reasons of
extortion. For example,
Klaus-Peter Sabotta sabotaged
German railway lines in the late 1990s in an attempt to extort
DM10 million from the German railway operator
Deutsche Bahn. He is now serving a sentence of
life imprisonment.
Workplace sabotage
When disgruntled workers damage or destroy equipment or interfere with the smooth running of a workplace, it's called workplace sabotage. This can be as part of an organized group activity, or the action of one or a few workers in response to personal grievances.
Luddites and Radical
labor unions such as the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have
advocated sabotage as a means of self-defense and
direct action against unfair working conditions.
The IWW was shaped in part by the
industrial unionism philosophy of
Big Bill Haywood, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:
The experience that had the most lasting impact on Haywood was witnessing a general strike on the French railroads. Tired of waiting for parliament to act on their demands, railroad workers walked off their jobs all across the country. The French government responded by drafting the strikers into the army and then ordering them back to work. Undaunted, the workers carried their strike to the job. Suddenly, they couldn't seem to do anything right. Perishables sat for weeks, sidetracked and forgotten. Freight bound for Paris was misdirected to Lyon or Marseille instead. This tactic — the French called it "sabotage" — won the strikers their demands and impressed Bill Haywood.
For the IWW, sabotage came to mean any withdrawal of efficiency — including the slowdown, the strike, or creative bungling of job assignments.
Sabotage in defense of the environment
Certain groups turn to destruction of property in order to immediately stop environmental destruction or to make visible arguments against forms of modern technology considered as detrimental to the earth and its inhabitants. The
FBI and other law enforcement agencies use the term
eco-terrorist when applied to damage of property. Proponents argue that since property can not feel terror, damage to property is more accurately described as sabotage. Opponents, by contrast, point out that property owners and operators can indeed feel terror. The image of the monkeywrench thrown into the moving parts of a machine to stop it from working was popularized by
Edward Abbey in the novel
The Monkeywrench Gang and has been adopted by eco-activists to describe destruction of earth damaging machinery.
Political sabotage
The term political sabotage is sometimes used to define the acts of one political camp to disrupt, harass or damage the reputation of a political opponent, usually during an electoral campaign.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Sabotage'.
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