Were the attacks on the United States Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the American Ambassador and three other diplomats, motivated by the film that the assailants, and many news networks, claim was their motive? Was it really religious outrage that made a few young men lose their heads and commit murder? Have any of the men who attacked the consulate actually seen the film? I do not know one Libyan who has, despite being in close contact with friends and relatives in Benghazi. And the attack was not preceded by vocal outrage toward the film. Libyan Internet sites and Facebook pages were not suddenly busy with chatter about it.

The film is offensive. It appears that it was made, rather clumsily, with the deliberate intention to offend. And if what happened yesterday was not, as I suspect, motivated by popular outrage, that outrage has now, as it were, caught up with the event. So, some might say, the fact that the attack might have been motivated by different intentions than those stated no longer matters. I don’t think so. It is important to see the incident for what it most likely was.

No specific group claimed responsibility for the attack, which was well orchestrated and involved heavy weapons. It is thought to be the work of an extremist faction who, like the Salafis, are willing to use force to exact their will. These groups have perpetrated other similar assaults in Benghazi and elsewhere in Libya. They are utlra-religious, authoritarian groups who justify their actions through selective, corrupt, and ultimately self-serving interpretations of Islam. Under Qaddafi, they kept quiet. In the early days of the revolution some of them claimed that fighting Qaddafi was un-Islamic and conveniently issued a fatwa demanding full obedience to the ruler. This is Libya’s extreme right. And, while much is still uncertain, Tuesday’s attack appears to have been their attempt to escalate a strategy they have employed ever since the Libyan revolution overthrew Colonel Qaddafi’s dictatorship. They see in these days, in which the new Libya and its young institutions are still fragile, an opportunity to grab power. They want to exploit the impatient resentments of young people in particular in order to disrupt progress and the development of democratic institutions.

Even though they appear to be well funded from abroad and capable of ruthless acts of violence against Libyans and foreigners, these groups have so far failed to gain widespread support. In fact, the opposite: their actions have alienated most Libyans.

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was a popular figure in Libya, and nowhere more than in Benghazi. Friends and relatives there tell me that the city is mournful. There have been spontaneous demonstrations denouncing the attack. Popular Libyan Web sites are full of condemnations of those who carried out the assault. And there was a general air of despondency in the city Wednesday night. The streets were not as crowded and bustling as usual. There is a deep and palpable sense that Benghazi, the proud birthplace of the revolution, has failed to protect a highly regarded guest. There is outrage that Tripoli is yet to send government officials to Benghazi to condemn the attacks, instigate the necessary investigations and visit the Libyan members of the consulate staff who were wounded in the attack. There is anger, too, toward the government’s failure to protect hospitals, courtrooms, and other embassies that have recently suffered similar attacks in Benghazi. The city seems to have been left at the mercy of fanatics. And many fear that it will now become isolated. In fact, several American and European delegates and N.G.O. personnel have cancelled trips they had planned to make to Benghazi.

And these far-right groups that feign religious and moral outrage are being very deliberate in their progress. They have turned a blind eye to what can be argued are conservative Libyans’ more traditional concerns. They have said nothing, for example, about the widespread consumption of drugs and alcohol among Libya’s youth, about the young men who fill Tripoli’s costal cafés late into the night, descending into hopeless states of intoxication before every weekend. This is not an oversight but intentional. Infringing on the freedoms and fun of young people would provoke too much anger and, more crucially, lose the extreme right the support of their main target audience: young men. Like Benito Mussolini’s Milan fascio in nineteen-twenties Italy, Libya’s far right knows that it cannot rule through violence and fear if it does not have the young and strong on its side.

So instead they have focussed on easy targets: architecture, women, and, now, America, or, more abstractly, the West. They demolished landmarks, claiming them to be unreligious; demanded that women be banned from cafés; and now, because of a film almost no one has seen, they have attacked symbols of the American state. But perhaps this latest assault is their most cunning. Not only because it involved the loss of four innocent lives but also because it is trying cynically to capitalize on legitimate grievances.

It is not unusual to see in city squares or outside shops in Benghazi the American flag along with that of France and Turkey and Qatar, countries that, albeit almost never without ulterior motives, helped Libya’s revolution. Yet notwithstanding that sincere gratitude, many Libyans continue to associate America, because of its actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and its defense of Israeli policy, with violent imperial pursuits and double standards.

So far, at least, it appears that the attack on the American consulate has backfired. But that might change. Following a demanding revolution and the exuberances of victory, Libya has entered a phase of fatigue and cynicism. The happiest people seem to be the old and the middle-aged, those whose lives had been most affected by Qaddafi’s repression and who are now basking in vindication. The young, however, who form the majority of the population and who are the intended audience for the far right and its violent acts, are impatient, angry, and resentful. Whether secular or religious, they are pissed off. Theirs is an almost existential grievance toward history. If they are not engaged, if their energies and grievances are not attended to, then the road ahead might prove very difficult indeed. And a Libyan version of Milan fascio might yet take hold.

Photograph by Ibrahim Alaguri/AP Photo.