Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99 per year.
Subscribe for Full Access
[Commentary]

American Lucifer: The tormenting face of Osama bin Laden

Adjust

By Bill Wasik, from the December 2001 issue

Hatred hopes to perceive hatred in its object, but what satisfaction can we find in this face? Guileless, affable, serene, the face confronts us—as did the footage of his apparent deeds, those eerily cinematic collisions of airplanes and buildings—with a peculiar disjunction: an image of evil that attracts our eyes despite our minds’ protestations.

Download the free PDF from our archives. Please subscribe here to get free access to more than 160 years of Harper’s Magazine.

More
Close
“An unexpectedly excellent magazine that stands out amid a homogenized media landscape.” —the New York Times
Subscribe now

Debug