Civil Resistance and Cosmetic Treatment of Terrorism

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

EDITORIAL

This contribution is an editorial reflection by the founder of the World Mediation Organization, written in the days following the attack on the Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin on 19 December 2016. The minister named in the text held the defence portfolio rather than the foreign one, and her name was misspelled in the manuscript; both have been corrected.

ABSTRACT

This reflection opens with a personal account of a children’s birthday outing in Berlin on the evening of 19 December 2016, and of the news that reached the family ten minutes after they had decided against visiting the Christmas market. From there the author turns to the response of the state, arguing that funding for counter-terrorist equipment and the visible work of special units address the surface of the problem while leaving its causes untouched, and that such measures are presented to the public chiefly because they can be shown. He then advances his central proposition, that terrorism is at bottom an act of communication by groups whose interests have been ignored, and notes that states communicate through comparable means, including weapons transfers, economic pressure and the destabilisation of other countries, with the difference that these are conducted lawfully and largely out of sight. The article closes by locating prevention in teachers, social workers, culture, arts and sport, and in critical thinking as a form of civil resistance against deliberately misleading information.

KEYWORDS

Terrorism, Berlin, prevention, radicalisation, critical thinking, civil resistance, communication, state violence, media, disinformation, education, exclusion

INTRODUCTION

Scenario

It is a wonderful pre-Christmas evening, with a clear sky, lots of stars, and a bit chilly. A family meets with a bunch of children in front of a movie theatre in order to celebrate the 12th birthday of their beloved son. The friends welcome each other with a bright smile, laughter, and full of enthusiasm. As happy as they were to see the film, as happy as they spent their time and left again. Their parents were waiting, and the gifts were exchanged. The music of the Christmas market filled the air, and one of the fathers thought it would be great to spend some time there with the boys. But it was late, almost eight o’clock, and everybody left. Ten minutes later, being back home, it was shared on the news that the Christmas market turned out to be the target of a terrorist attack. Berlin, December 19th, 2016.

Impressions

Still a block to walk to the Christmas market, a strange atmosphere, lots of people in the area, silence, silence all over, Christmas market closed, police, press, cameras, people crying, rushing photographers, silence, silence all over. Berlin, December 25th, 2016. People gather at the Christmas Market at night in order to protest in collectivity against strategic destabilization of society by global terrorist attacks.

MAIN CORPUS

Civil resistance and cosmetic treatment of terrorism

Ladies and Gentlemen, in order to start this reflection, I would like to state that my thoughts and best wishes are with the victims of terrorist attacks, social and individual abuse, and strategic violence, not on a local level only, but on a global one.

Our current epoch of globalization and worldwide media information range makes us face challenges that we possibly were not prepared to deal with. Communication, obviously a central pillar of our life in this century, creates immense benefits but also causes difficulties, namely by offering a multitude of ways that may be used for organized abuse, such as spreading fake news on purpose and using virtual communication services for raising fear and mobilizing copycats that follow calls of radicalized groups.

The monopoly of mass media channels suffered a takeover by individual bloggers and committed individuals who work for good or bad, while such definition is up to each of us. According to the mass of headlines and content that we have to deal with, I would like to name a few that recently crossed our news lines, such as the German Defence Minister, Frau von der Leyen, who supports Nigeria with items for counter-terrorist actions valuing 4,200,000 Euro; Police Brigades, Undercover Units, and Special Forces work day and night to prevent extremist activities, and to enable mankind to cherish a balanced life.

Obviously, all three of these actions are important to us, forming part of civil society. The question that comes to my mind is if such projects really prevent us from future attacks by radicalized individuals or groups. Personally, I think such reactions by our governmental authorities do not catch up with the level of attention that terrorism demands. It may be a public visual and well to share content that intends to make us feel safer. To me, it is a cosmetic treatment of terrorism at the most superficial level possible. And it is a shame that state authorities sell us the idea that this is the best way to counter extremist attacks.

Terrorism as an act of communication

If we break down terrorism to what it may be in its inner core, we may note that it is basically an act of communication. Yes, communication realized by one or more specific groups that follow up on unnoticed or well-ignored interests by the national or international community. I guess it is surprising to one or the other of you to hear that such ways of communication are not totally alien to the international diplomatic forces.

Diplomatic services often communicate in a very similar way, for example, by atomic tests, by financing the weapon industry, or even by certain ways that cause the destabilization of nations. Lots of actions that take place on our globe are critical but still within a legal environment, because often they are not communicated in public, such as putting financial pressure on countries by cutting off trade agreements. From then on, when we look behind the curtain of mass media, we can discover which parties support each other, and who works on different levels attempting to achieve similar goals.

SUMMARY

The reflection moves from a single evening to a structural claim, and the distance between them is what gives it force. A family decided against walking to a Christmas market because the hour was late, and learned ten minutes afterwards what that decision had spared them; nothing in the piece dramatises this, and nothing needs to. From there the author asks what the response to such an act consists of, and answers that it consists largely of measures that can be photographed. The central proposition follows: if an attack is a message sent by people whose interests have gone unaddressed, then equipment and units address the delivery and not the sending, and prevention must begin where the message originates. The comparison with the conduct of states is the sharpest passage and is offered as an observation about method rather than a judgment of equivalence, namely that pressure exerted through weapons, money and destabilisation is also a way of communicating, distinguished by being lawful and largely unseen.

CONCLUSION

What I ask you to reflect on is the complex ability to mislead us by biased information. Terrorism, as we know it today, is definitely not fought on a superficial level. And this is a fact that every politician, sociologist, and psychologist may confirm. It all starts with a confession, namely the confession that confirms that the needs and interests of social groups were ignored. As time went by, such movements manifested and became strategically radicalized by supporters who have a financial interest in initiating an escalated or armed conflict and in sustaining such.

The only suitable and sustainable way of countering terrorism may be to prevent it in the future. How may this take place? Well, not with weapons at all, but by investing in teachers’ skills, in educating social workers, in culture, arts, and sports. It is about avoiding people becoming outsiders of the community, it is about investing time, and more than anything else: it is about Critical Thinking. As José Martí is said to have put it, the first task of every human is to think properly. May Critical Thinking be our contribution towards Civil Resistance. Resistance against mass abuse by strategic misleading information channels. Be aware that we have the power to avoid consuming such media. If we stand up for this, all misleading data will stay parked in orbit.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The central proposition is well founded and its consequence is more specific than the essay draws out.

That terrorism is a communicative act is a standard finding in the research literature rather than a provocation: the immediate victims are not the audience, and the act is designed to reach a far larger one through the coverage it generates. The consequence, which follows directly and is rarely acted upon, concerns how such events are reported. Coverage that names and profiles the perpetrator, that reproduces the material they left behind, and that returns to the event repeatedly delivers precisely what the act was designed to obtain, and the association between saturation coverage and subsequent incidents is documented. The protocols that respond to this are established and used in some countries: report the act, name the victims, decline to name or portray the perpetrator, avoid reproducing manifestos, and resist the anniversary cycle. This is a practical response available immediately and it costs nothing.

The claim about prevention through education and social work is supported and requires one qualification that makes it usable. Radicalisation is not predicted by poverty or by exclusion alone, since the great majority of excluded people never become violent and a number of perpetrators have been educated and employed. What the case studies find repeatedly is a combination: a grievance held to be legitimate, a personal crisis of belonging or purpose, and a person or group offering both an explanation and a role. That combination identifies where the author’s proposals actually bite. Teachers, youth workers, coaches and community leaders matter not because they alleviate deprivation but because they are the people who notice when someone withdraws, and because they can offer the belonging that recruiters offer. The programmes with the better records are built on exactly this: trained adults in ordinary institutions who are equipped to respond, rather than a security apparatus asked to identify future offenders.

The comparison with the conduct of states deserves the precision the author’s argument can carry. In law the two are not equivalent, since the deliberate targeting of civilians to spread fear is prohibited absolutely and to whoever does it, while an arms transfer or a sanctions regime is lawful unless it breaches a specific rule. What the comparison does establish, and this is the useful part, is that the label of terrorism is applied selectively, and that a state which arms one party while condemning another for arming its own has weakened the norm it invokes. Consistency is not a moral luxury here; it is the condition on which the prohibition retains force.

Finally, the closing appeal to critical thinking is the most demanding proposal in the piece and worth stating in operational terms. The research on resistance to manipulation finds that correction after exposure works poorly and that preparation before it works considerably better, through brief exercises in which people are shown the techniques of manipulation rather than the falsity of particular claims. That is a curriculum item, it can be taught in an hour, and its effects have been measured. The author’s proposal is therefore not an aspiration but a programme, and the field he addresses is well placed to deliver it.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

FURTHER READING

Schmid, A. P., & de Graaf, J. (1982). Violence as Communication: Insurgent Terrorism and the Western News Media. Sage, London.

Crenshaw, M. (1981). The Causes of Terrorism. Comparative Politics, 13(4), 379 to 399.

Neumann, P. R. (2013). The Trouble with Radicalization. International Affairs, 89(4), 873 to 893.

Kruglanski, A. W., Bélanger, J. J., & Gunaratna, R. (2019). The Three Pillars of Radicalization: Needs, Narratives and Networks. Oxford University Press, New York.

Jetter, M. (2017). The Effect of Media Attention on Terrorism. Journal of Public Economics, 153, 32 to 48.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). Fake News Game Confers Psychological Resistance against Online Misinformation. Palgrave Communications, 5(65).

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/288 (2006), United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and the Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, A/70/674 (2015).

Radicalisation Awareness Network, collection of practices in prevention, European Commission, Brussels.