The Four Corners program last night, Dangerous Ground, looked at how the alienation of Muslims in Australian society has the potential to create terrorists.
During the course of the program David Wright-Neville explained how this may happen:
DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE, GLOBAL TERRORISM RESEARCH CENTRE (at seminar): Nobody is born a terrorist. In any society, and if this triangle represents an area of society, only a few people will make the transition from membership in mainstream society to the point where they’ll involve themselves in violence here at the end of this transition.
Terrorism is a process, people pass through a series of processes. Along the way they cross what one might call the alienation threshold, at which point they begin to disengage from society and mix in groups of people who are similarly alienated, who have similar experiences, who feel collectively as if society is against them and excludes them from involvement in all mainstream activities…
SALLY NEIGHBOUR: After alienation it’s a short step to the next threshold – the decision to use violence.
DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE, GLOBAL TERRORISM RESEARCH CENTRE (at seminar): …Once they’ve crossed the violence threshold they begin to ethically disengage from society and they’ll begin to contemplate killing others outside of that particular in-group into which they’ve gravitated.
SALLY NEIGHBOUR (to David Wright-Neville, at seminar): So how important is alienation in this process?
DAVID WRIGHT-NEVILLE, GLOBAL TERRORISM RESEARCH CENTRE: Alienation is critically important. Most terrorist research shows that unless the person is alienated, coupled with feelings of humiliation, disempowerment and so on, it’s very unlikely that a person will become a terrorist.
The disturbing aspect of this idea is that those who may fall into terrorism are very likely to be born and raised in Australia. Australian born Muslims interviewed for the program expressed confusion and dismay over the struggle to be both Muslim and Australian. How does one react to being told: F**k off wogs, go back to your own country Mohamed when they were born in Australia? The alienation threshold helps explain how people could participate in a terrorist act like the London bombings and poses a lesson for Australian approaches to counter-terrorism.
While Australia’s counter-terrorism policy has played on the politics of fear and racist dog whistles, Dangerous Ground did illustrate some of the positive approaches to policing and security that are being develop.
The Victorian police have adopted a community policing approach (pleasantly surprising a group of Sudanese women) to build links into the Muslim and immigrant communities. The NSW police have adopted similar measures and even the Federal Police have employed a Muslim mediator to work with the community and allay concerns.
Racism is bred of ignorance and fear and eventually feeds the distrust of both Muslim and non-Muslim Australians. If terrorism is to be negated, we need to build bridges in the communities rather than engage in the bigotry of sterotyping; viewing all Muslim Australians as potential terrorists or all anglo-Australians as probable racists.
While promoting social cohesion and trust between Australians of all creeds is not the only method of counter-terrorism, it is a vital part of a comprehensive strategy that deserves more recognition.
For more, the supplementary collection of reports and articles collated by Four Corners are worth reading.
subjectivity is a process? identity is less an essence and more a threshold of belonging and practice?
BLOODY POSTMODERNIST wishy washy JIBBER JABBER!!!!!!!!!11one
pffft…
we can’t start being realistic about the formation of subjects! what will all the conservatives do who think the access to privilege they enjoy is a function of natural right?
I thought the Wright-Neville stuff was pretty lame to be honest. I don’t know what this research is based on – it seemed like psychobabble to me. Aren’t most “terrorism experts” trained in international relations? There’s been a whole sub-discipline of political scientists busily reinventing themselves to chase research dosh and student bums on seats without necessarily much genuine grounding in any discipline that would shed much light on domestic sociological and economic issues.
I should add that I’m not convinced that there is much, if any, potential for “home grown terrorism” in this country at all. What I see is incompetent security agencies and people like Wright-Neville living off fat grants, and a whole industry springing up of people in plush boardrooms reciting mantras to each other about “alienation”.
If we stopped invading other countries, we might find life more peaceful!
And if we addressed economic exclusion and everyday discrimination with more effective tools than “community policing” and exhortations to high school assemblies by liaison officers, we might be on to something. Sure, community policing is much better than cops kicking “wogs” but it’s not the be-all and end-all.
I thought the two kids at the high school who weren’t buying the cop schtick got it about right.
I also suspect the AFP’s “mediator” has a very big job indeed ahead of her.
Yes, the Howard years are characterised by an unfortunate synergy between the earnest authoritarian personality traits dominant in any police force and the political opportunism of Howardistas.
The results can be found in our anti-terrorism, etc., legislation.
Finally, almost too late, politicians and police are having a change of heart.
No doubt this fact irritates our RWDB friends no end.
C’mon RWDBs. Knock yourselves out … where is your moral outrage at further evidence of the end of civilisation as you’d like to know it?
Mark,
I’ve put my academical inclined terrorism studies on hold for now but I found what Wright-Neville had to say in line with a lot of what has been said in counter-terrorism studies over the years. This post of mine from last year reflects some of that thinking especially the work of Paul Wilkinson.
The idea of alienation as one of the steps in progression to terrorism is well accepted (though alienation does not always lead to terrorism) as a google search on “terrorism alienation threshold” will turn up plenty of papers (I still wish i had academic library access).
The community policing and involvement is very important from an intelligence perspective. An issue is that heavy handed enforcement and seeing the police as instruments of the enforcement closes communities down to security agencies (or makes it harder to penetrate). An open friendly approach is designed to encourage people with the community to be open with information and make intelligence gathering easier.
I do agree though re the size of the task for the AFP mediator.
Well, Shaun, we’ll have to agree to disagree here, I suspect. To the degree that some “alienation” threshold has any meaning, it begs a number of questions. First, what causes the alienation has to be more complex than a lack of social integration, because that’s far too broad a category. Secondly, there’s no logical necessity – if there is such a thing as a “violence” threshold – for that to take the form of terrorist violence.
I also beg leave to doubt whether there’s much of a potential problem in Australia at all except in a manner constructed by all these official practices and modes of thinking. Was anyone worrying about “home grown terrorism” in 2000? In 1995? People were worrying about “Lebanese gangs” then, to be sure. There’s a lot of conflation going on here, and a few crazy Imams and people reading websites don’t prove a hell of a lot in my humble opinion.
I once had to sit through an APSA panel on terrorism, chaired by Wright -Neville (actually, he was alright) but the paper presenters were absolute dingbats. They were running the Neo-Con line that conventional social science cant help us understand terrorism. Cause and effect doesnt work with these nasty types, and its their values (which evidently spawn in evil social vacuums) hence it cant be anything to do with anything thats ever been doen to them – all internal.
I pointed out is was a short jump to then saying trying to explain the causes was disloyal to our values, and this was how authoritarianism generally kicks off.
Anyway, these clowns reminded me of that ex-Israeli PM and all round ‘lebensraum fur die volk’ Neo-Nazi creep Netinyahu – babbling on about the “authoritarian personality” being the root cause of the Palenstian Intifada.
Not, say, occupation by Israeli soliders and pregoressive dispossession by state-sponsored settlers. No – thats a discredited ’social science’ explanation.
These guys were the only real po-mos in town. Thankfully, their days are just about up.
Speaking of which – Zapatero is back! Cuatro años más!
RWDBs were still worrying about Asians back in 2000 (remember: drugs, cabramatta, taking our jobs). But ‘we’ like them now.
These guys are like goldfish in a bowl. Not to be taken seriously.
Mark [at 9:54pm]:
There certainly has been an epidemic of “counter-terrorism [wtf]” specialists since “9/11″; some interesting, many amusing and a few downright hilarious. Don’t know if David Wright-Neville is a fair dinkum expert or not but he seems to know what he is talking about.
Unlike you, I do see a [preventable] potential for home-grown terrorism …. and not just from alienated young Moslems …. but perhaps also from thoroughly frustrated and alienated young “Skips”. Forget your drunken raving Romper-Stomper stereotypes from the last century – they’ll still turn up to add colour to any riot or brawl, of course – far more troubling would be the quiet stone-cold sober ones who avoid being in anything at all like the Cronulla riots.
b.t.w., Tolerance won’t work if it is all in the one direction. Australian and migrant Moslems alike would do well to reflect on their own intolerances too. The hysterical news media is responsible for most of the anti-Moslem attitudes in Australia …. but not for all of it.
Carthago delenda est
Fuckin’ Vandals, that’s what they are
Ravaging Norsemen
Murderous Moghuls
Brutal Scots Barbarians
Reconquista!
Murdering Fenian Bastards
Perfidious Albion
Swarming Slavic Hordes
The Yellow Peril
Boney’s Coming!
The Global Jewish Conspiracy
The Brutal Hun
Kill More Japs
Yankees Go Home!
Mud Race miscegenation
Reds Under The Bed
New World Order
Islamofascists
Ferengi fuckers
Indians don’t play cricket when it comes to cricket,
And on and on and on it goes. Y’know some people just can’t handle the fact the world is much bigger and more unpredictable than their current place in it. Globalisation started a long long time ago and it ain’t gonna stop anytime soon.
To elaborate on what I said earlier, I thought what this kid said illustrated perfectly the limitations of the approaches advocated in the program:
glen: “the access to privilege they enjoy…”
Katz: “civilisation as you’d like to know it”
*sigh*
Every morning, you get up and weed the crabgrass, but somehow it always just keeps on growing back…
Still – how lucky we are to have such an mighty gardener, Japes!
We are humbled. Humbled, I tells ya.
Mind you, let’s look at the situation. It’s now 2008. The number of actual terrorist attacks on Australian soil?
As for arrested terrorists, who have we had? Benbrika’s mob, currently on trial. While it’s kind of irrelevant for the purpose of deciding whether they’re guilty or not, their defence team has accurately characterised them as incompetent to organize a shag in a brothel.
The combination of the desire to commit terrorism against Australia, the opportunity to do so, and the brains to pull it off without getting caught, seems to be exceedingly rare.
Mark,
Bear in mind that David WN is usually giving that pitch to a group of undergrads only a year or two out of high school.
The approach that DWN the Aust branch of the GTRC take has been heavily influenced by criminology studies IIRC.
Seems to me to be a no-brainer that treating some ethnic groups like crap increases the liklihood that some members might eventually go on to commit terrorist acts. I couldn’t see much to object to in the program other than the attempt to convey the impression that the bleeding obvious has some academic rigor behind it.
David Wright Neville’s quite knowledgeable, he used to be a top terrorism analyst at the ONA and he knows shitloads about South East Asia. But that said, I disagree with him a lot, and find him too post-modern and a bit psycho-babbly, as others have said.
“Alienation” for example, is a very vague and imprecise category, and not particularly helpful in itself. I mean, a lot of people feel “alienated”, just about every teen movie is about alienation!
But he’s a smart guy and has contributed to some great pieces of research: http://www.arts.monash.edu/criminology/news-and-events/index.php
Scroll down to the fourth box and click on “view counter terrorism conference report.” Also, Vicpol’s “community policing” approach is certainly to be commended.
And check out the works of Marc Sageman and John Horgan for good stuff on radicalisation, and Scott Atran http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/relevant_articles_on_terrorism
Nothing like a few academics to intellectualize a debate, is there?
All your AFP liaison officers and media talkfests and tertiary studies and community programs mean nothing if we do not address one screamingly simple problem: our governments say one thing, but do another.
The radicalisation of potential terrorists is not a domestic issue, it is an international one spawned by the forces of globalisation, but particularly by Western governments’ hypocritical, illogical and immoral misrepresentation and hype. The core issue of Israel/Palestine has ballooned into a multi-billion-dollar “War” on terrorism, including the invasion of Iraq. That’s your “disconnect” right there. There’s your major source of radicalizing “alienation”.
Can I refer readers to this excellent article by Chris Hedges, a divinity graduate and former NYT foreign correspondent with nearly 20 years in the field:
Hedges concludes:
He might also ask how many more will die needlessly in Sydney, L.A. or Manchester. We cannot expect to remain immune from this fire when we are helping to stoke the flames.
During the election campaign, Kevin Rudd took great pains to present himself as a great friend of both Israel and the USA. He did this not for the sake of the general population, but in order to gain the trust and support of two small but very powerful groups. The same dynamics are at work in Washington, Canberra, and London, not to mention other Western capitals.
We can spend billions trying to pretend that “we” are right and “they” are wrong, trying to stop potential radicals getting hold of explosives or weaponry, holding summits around the world, funding academic studies, etc etc etc.
Or we can acknowledge the sad truth: that we as a nation have become complicit in a major crime against humanity.
Wot Japerz?
No more moral outrage?
You must’ve been drinking the Round-up!
http://www.scottsaustralia.com.au/Roundup
[The above link is a thoughtful explanation for a local reference.]
We leftie-liberal weeds are infesting the Lawn of Civilisation at the very same time that you are suffering your neuraesthenic swoon.
Outrage! Outrage is the only salvation.
Just imagine how Muslims and/or Australians from a Middle-Easter background feel when they read shit like this in our national broadsheets.
But the fact is that so far there has been no terrorist acts in Australia and people like Benbrika group have been characerised as a group of blokes just talking shit to impress each other.
I wonder if every new ethnic group who have come to Oz hasn’t been treated badly, but no-ones’s suggested they’ll turn into terrorists.
Some of the rhetoric was interesting. The kid quoted above who talked about wearing a beard and wearing traditional clothes as an example of being a good Muslim. Why did he consider that good? And it was interesting that he didn’t see that looking like that is what is unfairly perceived as being a dangerous Muslim in Oz.
The concentration on learning boxing as a way of steering the kids away from violence. Wouldn’t they be better off learning a skill from which they can earn money?
The program felt like a bit of a beat up. Four Corners has been a bit weak this year.
Or this crap from Janet “The Australian” Albrechtsen:
I hope all LP readers realize that the head of CENTCOM has just resigned and Dick Cheney is on his way to the Middle East to prepare his business friends for the coming attack on Iran (NOT, as the media is pretending, to ask them to help “lower the price of oil” – as if he would ever do that!).
The coming attack will be presented in the Australian, US and UK media as “the legitimate defense of Israel”. Kevin Rudd will strongly support it, even as he calls for a “rapid end to hostilities”.
Sorry, my blockquote above should have closed off before the bit “I hope all LP readers realize …” (obviously NOT written by Planet J).
Alienated? Sh*t, I’m alienated, been alienated since I was 15 and I first hjeard of the stuff. I’ve written lots of narky letters to newspapers and politicians over the years, been a rabble-rouser and helped other people be rabble rousers.Butr I’ve NEVER had the inclination to pick up a gun or make a bomb and kill RWDBs. (Presumably that stands for Right Wing Ding Bats?)Even when the Hermit was our ignoble leader. And he utterly enraged me. There’s a deeper explanation for this Muslim desire for self-immolation and it goes back to the tradition of the Assassins in the Middle Ages. Its one of the ways Muslims make war. Now, in Australia, the Muslims here don’t want to make war. They just want to be accepted and left to get on with that ordinary, dull, mostly happy, sometimes sad life that we all have in Oz. So why don’t we let them?It would be a marvellous but impossible thing if the RWDBs had the same idea.I suspect the people we should be interrogating are ourselves.
Paul Burns,
Do you want to explain that? Is it meant to be satire? It sounds like racist drivel.
i was being ironic above, lol
the concept of alienation is of course nonsense as it presupposes a social totality that does not exist.
but i think the speaker was using it less in the sociologial sense and more in the everyday sense.
gandhi,
Regret you read my comment as racist drivel.The Assassins were a Sh’ite splinter group established at Alamut near the Caspian Sea in 1092. They were later known in the West as The Assassins.They were a sect of killers. All I’m suggesting is that the practice of suicide bombers derives from this tradition.Its worthwhile remembering that the western military tradition is not the only one by which war and conflict are governed. The statement has absolutely no racist intent. Though it is quite common for acts of warfare outside the Western tradition to be misunmderstood or described insultingly. A classic case was the white misinterpretation of Aboriginal tactics in colonial Australia.
Fine #20,
Muslims and Middle-Easterners are not a “new ethnic group who have come to Oz” – they have been here for generations already.
It’s not (just) the program that’s a “beat up”.
ghandi,
No, not racist drivel, though it may have been badly phrased and too inclusive. Was referring to the killers’ sect of the Assassins founded in 1092 as a precursor of suicide bombers.
Re 26/28. Sort of repetitively posted. Am on dial-up. Got a hone call cutting me off and had to repost. Thought first comment was lost and was not prepared to let Ghandi’s accusation pass unanswered. I have many negative traits but racism is not one of them.
Paul, I’d say the idea of suicide bombers come out of the idea of martydom and a far more recent development that ties into the Iraq/Iran war and Israel/Palestinian conflict. I wrote about this a few years back here at LP.
Gandhi, it’s really not particularly helpful to accuse someone else of racism. If you disagree, say so and say why, but please don’t use epithets like that lightly.
Paul Burns,
So if it’s not racist drivel, what’s your point?
You comment at #23 suggested that you have “NEVER had the inclination to pick up a gun or make a bomb” but if you were a Muslim, what – it would be a different story? Because even fourth-generation Aussies from M.E. backgrounds inherit some sort of “military tradition” from the 11th Century???
To compare your dislike of Howard with what Palestinians have suffered for the past half century is, quite frankly, ignorant. Are you a professional academic too?
You’d make me happy if you cut out the slurs against academics too. I don’t know what you do, but whatever it is, I wouldn’t make a sweeping statement that all people in that occupation are ignorant.
Mark, my comments on “professional academics” are intended within the context of this thread, particularly the charge that some might be prone to over-intellectualize this issue. I do appreciate that some (like yourself) make a very worthwhile contribution.
Paul Burns’ comments seem designed to show off his knowledge of C11th history, hence the question (in context).
I am always happy to stay on topic and avoid personal confrontation, but my understanding is that LP does not tolerate racism – correct?
Yes, correct, gandhi, but Paul’s explained that his intention wasn’t racist and he’s obviously offended by your comment. I’m merely asking you to think more carefully before you start using such epithets. An apology to him might be nice, too, but of course that’s up to you.
I should apologise to HIM??? That’s rich!
Frankly, it doesn’t matter if his “intention” was racist – I accept him at his word that it was not. But it seems to me that the thinking behind it was racist. I would be happy to hear it explained otherwise!
No, the thinking behind it was idealist in the sense that Paul is suggesting certain ideas are continuous in certain cultures and determine the form taken by acts of aggression. An alternative account of those practices could stress their more recent genealogy, as Shaun’ suggests. Neither approach looks for the causes of aggression, only seeks to explain the ways in which it is manifested.
FWIW, Irish Catholics were stigmatised in Australia for generations for:
1. their alleged addiction to terrorist violence.
2. their alleged genetic inability to find a legitimate place in the modern world.
Billy Hughes formed the Commonwealth Police in the context of apprehended Fenian violence associated with the Easter Uprising and the conscription referenda.
The Old Guard, a major secret army that received official approbation of a nod and a wink, monitored Catholic monesteries and convents on the suspicion that they were the arsenals of an apprehended fenian uprising in this country.
The bottom line is that persons of authoritarian temper don’t need much provocation to construct explanations for the behaviour of marginalised groups that are both blatantly over-generalised and ignorant.
Yes, well said Katz. The only reason that Italians and Greeks in the 50s weren’t labelled as terrorists or potential terrorists is that we weren’t living in teh age of terror in the 50s.
Muslims also have the additional problem of a religion that we don’t understand.
To be fair, Katz, O’Farrell, an Irish immigrant, did shoot Prince Alfred.
But O’Farrell was anti-Catholic.
In a bizarre twist O’Farrell’s brother shot and wounded James Goold, the Catholic Bishop of Melbourne.
And to add to the strangeness of Right-wing responses to terrorism, Liberal governments to 1972 were determined not to find any evidence of the activities of the Croatian Ustasha, who were inserting terrorists into Yugoslavia during the entire Cold War era.
I frequently ran into the Ustasha training in the Otways in Southern Victoria, during my bush-walking days.
I didn’t know that about the brother, Katz. Cool.
On the Ustashi, the covert insertions weren’t just into Yugoslavia.
So it goes, so it goes…
Kevin Rudd stood up in parliament today to lavish even more praise on Israel, his sugary words exceeded only by Brendan Nelson’s ridiculous fawning:
Someone please tell 0.07 that our continued support for Israel is actually having a detrimental effect on our security. Oh, wait – don’t bother. He already knows that. He just doesn’t care. Neither does Rudd, it seems.
To his credit, Rudd at least (briefly) acknowledged the Palestinians’ plight in his speech. But under present circumstances, that is nowhere near enough. We should be condemning Israel as loudly as we once condemned apartheid South Africa.
Labor MP Julia Irwin questioned the government’s decision to celebrate Israel’s 60th year of existence. A group including the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the Maritime Union of Australia and South Australian Democrat MP Sandra Kanck, placed an ad in the OO today condemning the motion. A lone woman protester was removed as Rudd spoke.
More here from Alan Ramsay (a few days ago) if anyone is interested.
Klaus K @ 31,
An excellent exposition of my line of thought.
To you ghandi: on this occasion I have no response, except to say I’ve had this idea about the origins of suicide bombing for years, and yes, it does derive from my knowledge of medieval history. That’s one of history’s uses. As for showing off, I would have thought the existence of the 11th centrury assassins was pretty general knowledge.So I don’t see how it can be showing off.
Paul Burns,
I’ve had this idea about the origins of suicide bombing for years…
I hope one day you find a thread where you can bring it up in in a useful context.
Shorter Stud Nelson, V.C.: “No I really wasn’t Australian Defence Minister at the time that Australian troops were used to train the troops of one of those nasty theocracies. It’s lies! All lies!”
Ghandi I think Paul Burns was referring to the Assassin sect of Hassan I sabbah, William Burroughs’ favorite middle ages Muslim leader. His sect cultivated a willingness to sacrifice themselves in the sure knowledge that Allah would reward their martyrdom in heaven. Apparantly his name is also where we get the term hashish.
Paul could be referring to a genuine cultural attitude, not in a racist way either, but he missed the fact that throughout the 20th century other groups as diverse as WW2 japanese pilots and Tamil Tigers also used suicide bombing. There are probably cases from every nationality and most religious groups throughout the 20th century, especially during the major conflicts. I wouldn’t call him racist but he needs to get his facts right.
Also one of the Assassins legendary talents was their ability to infiltrate surrounding powers and work their way into positions of trust and influence. As Sabbah employed no standing army, or a tiny one, he apparantly relied on using his agents to assasinate threats to him. He didn’t rely on armies and the bloodshed associated with war. Just killed the leaders.
That actually sounds alot better than fighting wars, at least from where I sit.
BTW the first acts of “terrorism” in Australia were migrant based if I remember rightly. I think there was a bombing campaign between various groups from different sides of the recent balkans conflict in the 60s.
39. adrian Mar 12th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Yes, that and the fact that Italians and Greeks were not, as a rule, blowing up public places. Nor declaring jihad against Crusaders and Zionists. Nor turning certain neighbourhoods into no-go zones.
What they were doing was fitting into the host society as “New Australians” under the much derided policy of assimilation. A policy that had the support of both elites, populace and the migrants themselves, going by their behaviour.
It worked so well that Cultural Leftists decided to abandon it in favour of something called “multiculturalism”. A term that no-one can give an operational testable definition, which allows it to cover a multitude of sins.
The Cultural Leftist policy motto: If its fixed, break it.
There are serious flaws with the theory that alienation contributed to terrorism, as I demonstrate: http://leonbertrand.blogspot.com/2008/03/four-corners-blames-non-muslims-for.html
The Middle East has another democracy emerging:
But of course we don’t want to start talking about Kurdistan as seperate country (even tho’ it is as far as they’re concerned). That might piss someone off. Wouldn’t want that ‘ey.
What a good idea. That will achieve so much. How about instead of playing the Mid-East As Football Fanclub Game (C’arn the Palestinians, C’arn the Israelis) we do something different.
>
We don’t take sides!
>
Instead we condemn practises loudly no matter where they happen or who does them. Some Palestinian launches a rocket and kills a bunch of Israelis – BAD. The IDF rolls a tank over a Palestinian village equally BAD.
>
And we seek to condemn dumb policy like this. Just a thought.
So Strocchers, which ethno-religious groups in Australia do make a rule of blowing places up?
And those no-go zones — do you mean like what the Melbourne Club did to Catholics and Jews?
And where do you stand on the dreaded fenian threat? Truth or fiction?
It is right I should get my facts straight.But I was discussing the Islamic context.
Would have thought first act of terrorist violence in Oz was Vinegar Hill.Or is that stretching it a bit?
The ‘no-go zones’ thing is bullshit, at least in Australia. I want to see some stats.
If we are going to be social scientists we should be refuting stupid or false theories “explaining-blaming” terrorism. And then develop theories that predict the incidence of terrorism.
Whilst it is true that most terrorism emanates from Muslim regions it is also true that the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists, do not sympathise with terrorists and are the primary target of terrorists. The “muslim=terrorist” equation is refuted by the existence of civilized nations, such as Turkey and Malaysia, which do not host sectarian terrorist movements or spawn such in other countries.
Sectarian terrorism is an aspect of the “Clash within Civilizations”, the age old clash between barbaric, tribal provincials and civic, national capitals. (Marx’s Town V Country”) It seems to be a function of “culture shock” caused when young men from tribalised, pre-modernised “retro-poli” come into abrupt contact with nationalised, modernised metropolis.
Sectarian terrorism is conditioned by ethnological factors that are mainly regional, rather purely than religious or racial. It has anthropological, rather than theological or biological, causes. Anthropological factors are necessarily historico-geographically dependent, classified according to evolutionary stages of development for a specific entity.
But sectarian terrorism also seems to require a contingent political catalyst.
The “culture shock” is accentuated by the ideological de-mentation and institutional degeneration associated with host-country “post-modernization”: multicultural happy clap-trappery, ethnic lobby racketeering, “borderless world” free-for-alls, reflexive appeasement and apologetics.
My theory also explains the association b/w terrorism and the allied phenomenon of ethnic gangsterism. Caught between two cultures.
To that already potent mix one can add “sub-culturalization” with the various perversities associated with glorification of common-or-garden vices, esp sex and drugs. These perils can be safely negotiated by natives by simply getting coupled with some-one who expects you to grow up.
The chronic unrest stirred up by multi- & sub- “culture shock” will be sparked into violence by the addition of an acute political irritant eg Israel’s attacks against Palestine or the USA’s military bases in Saudi Arabia.
This theory of sectarian terrorism predicts that it will be most acute amongst somewhat rootless [!] “retro-politans” who have moved into pre-modern, multi-culturalized enclaves situated within post-modern, sub-culturalized “bright lights, big city”.
Solution: do not try to turn us into them right here. And do not attempt to turn them into us over there.
Oh really?
No, and young men from the countryside never go to Ankara, Istanbul or Kuala Lumpur. Been there, Jack? It’s a modernised metropolis all right. In fact post-modernised. I don’t know about “nationalised” because I don’t know what you mean by that, but I imagine that all this blather is some sort of anti-Muslim immigration screed dressed up with egregious and absurd pseudo-science.
Ps – Kuala Lumpur isn’t ethnically homogenous.
I’m also wondering how the s11 perps fit in with the “tribal” encounter with postmodern urbanism or whatever. Or maybe Jack’s grand narrative explains only “domestic terrorism” – whichs begs the question of why he purports to make international comparisons. But really it’s not a theory at all – just piffle dressed up as such to make his prejudices seem rooly important.
Mark [11.37am]:
Agree with you on the unfairness of sweeping statements about people on the basis of their occupation [this time - academics] …. However, I don’t have much respect for those opportunists who have suddenly leaped onto the gravy train and passed themselves off as “counter-terrorism experts” when clearly they are no such thing; no doubt those in academia who actually do have an understanding of terrorism are similarly annoyed. It’s one thing to relate one’s own expertise in a field to problems of terrorism – but quite another to hang out a shingle on the basis of presenting a few cut-and-paste papers and without ever having had contact with a single terrorist.
Lefty E [10.32am yesterday] raised an interesting point
Cause and effect does work with groups that have a distinct attainable aim. They can be readily understood – e.g.: the IRA wanting the English out of Northern Ireland; Communists seeking to destroy Capitalism and to make every country into a workers’ paradise; Islamist extremists who seek to establish the new Caliphate. Each does things aimed at ultimately achieving their objective and tends to refrain from doing things that hinder reaching that objective [that is, apart from specific acts of stupidity that are clearly of the type "it seemed like a good idea at the time"].
In contrast, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to understand groups which may have clearly stated goals but whose behavior, then, is incredibly irrational and harmful to their cause. For such groups, random acts of violence and destruction are rarely a means to an end – such acts are the end in themselves. Such acts may be rationalized away by the perpetrators or their pals but they are unable to give a logical explanation of their purpose or how they fit into the overall scheme of things.
Lumping various groups together under the one label of “terrorist” and putting all their activities into the one box called “terrorism” does nothing to help us understand these groups and their activities. The word “terrorism” is a bit like the word “cancer” – it’s a convenient term but using it blinds us to the great variety of manifestations covered by it.
Well said, Graham.
Though I’m not sure that the distinction you make between irrational and rational acts is as clear cut as you think.
Mark [1:36 am]:
You’re right. I was trying to oversimplify a complex set of concepts.
b.t.w. Hope nothing I’ve said would discourage any newcomers from entering the field of counter-terrorism and making worthwhile contributions to saving the lives of innocent bystanders. Developing expertise in the field does not necessarily involve having military or police service nor extensive overseas experience but it does require an open mind and a willingness to view the world through the terrorists’ eyes. Therefore it is a field open to the young, to the disabled, to those with expertise in a completely different field or to anyone else with talent and diligence.
My scorn is directed solely at the shonky operators trying to sell their dodgy “expertise” to the public.
Gandhi, Thanks for the belly-laugh from Janet Albrechtsen’s column. That naughty, ungrateful Australian electorate, with its lack of interest in History! (Never more clear than on the day of the Sorry statement…) We Herald readers get the Divine Miranda, but she just doesn’t have Janet’s, um, gravitas.
Actually Paul, I think the self-immolation mentality has its roots further back that the hashishin era. It’s one thing to for a cause to be subverted after the prophet has died resulting in conversion by the sword/gun/nuke, it’s quite another for the prophet himself to spend the last 10 years of his life cutting off heads in a holy war. For those that want to ‘follow in the prophet’s footsteps’, I don’t think it is such a great mental leap for an adherent to go from killing non-believers to killing non-believers at all costs.
I’ve read a few things from the psychological literature about terrorists which are very interesting. One concerned the training of fighters during the Greek Civil War. These weren’t (initially) willing participants but young men, kidnapped and separated from community. I can’y remember whether these were members of X or a partisan group but essentially it was relatively simple to get them to behave in the required way by separating them from family and offering them the benefits of community- but only if they did what they were told. Perhaps when he talks of ‘alienation’ he is trying for a term that is even more general that a sense of injustice, because even that is not necessary for someone to willingly participate in a violent act.
In some ways the training of terrorists is not unlike the training of legitimate military personnel- in order to overcome the innate boundary that most people are not prepared to cross (the willingness to kill), you have to put them into a community where that willingness is normal, accepted and positively reinforced.
About three weeks after the Iraq War started I found myself hitching a ride from the middle of NSW to Sydney for reasons I won’t explain. The dude who picked me up was from Iraq. Nice chap. A little loud and a totally batshit driver. He hadn’t had any sleep for a while and I thought we’re going to wrap ourselves ’round something in a hurry.
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Anyway we get into town okay. He drops me off at the train station near his place. The zone is Arabic which I like because I grew up in Egypt. So I get myself some Turkish coffee and phone my brother who asks me where I am.
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“Ummm”, I look around, “Lakemba”.
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“Lakemba! Shit! WTF Are you doing in Lakemba. That’s always been dangerous. Except now that the war is on. It’s even more dangerous!”>
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Well he hurried over. Apparently it’s not recommended to be in Lakemba if you’re not local. But I can’t say I had any trouble. Not even a nasty look. So ???? Dunno.
He wasn’t kidding, Adrien.
I’ve had garlic sauce in Lakemba that should have been classed as a Weapon of Mass Olfaction.
Of course it’s total bullshit.
Anyone who thinks Australia has “no-go zones” for anyone but Aborigines has never been in one.
Wearing a Freo guernsey down Smith Street after beating the Pies was the closest I ever want to come.
Liam – if you’re ever in an upmarkety mideastern eatery, ask for zhoug (spelling may vary). It’s basically garlic sauce with the sauce taken out. You just make an emulsion of garlic and oil with a bit of salt and lemon. Then watch as your lady friend changes the locks.
#65 – HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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There are no-go zones in Australia. But it has nothing to do with terrorism. Do not find yourself in Paramatta early on a week-end morning. That’s not a joke.
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FDB – You survived that. Wow! I guess Chop-Chop musta been outta town that week. Saw him once at the Smith St
Drug Addicts ShelterSafeway. I was standing behind him thinking “What happened to this guy’s ears?”.@67
Watch as my lady friend steals it all.
Well Skribe if you both eat it, it ain’t no thang, right?
All this garlic talk is making me hungry. As luck would have it, a
former dealermate of mine’s just opened a Lebanese restaurant a short walk from my house.“There are no-go zones in Australia. But it has nothing to do with terrorism. Do not find yourself in Paramatta early on a week-end morning. That’s not a joke.”
Exactly. Or anywhere near the Coogee Bay Hotel if you plan to make eye contact with anybody.
I’ve been in all the so-called hot-spots: Lakemba, Punchbowl, Bankstown, Arncliffe, Fairfield, and Cabramatta many times throughout the years, on foot, sometimes alone and at night, and never a hint of trouble. Not even a whiff, and what’s more I know of nobody that has.
I did get punched in the face near Miranda Fair shopping centre once though, notorious ‘no-go zone’ that that is for whiteys like me.
Hey I got punched in the face on Sunday morning. I think the real problem isn’t Arabs. It’s around 25% of the guys that graduated high school at the end of ‘06. Was there something in the water in the late 80s?
Yes! The problem is the young! Now you’re on to something.
Interesting issue, this.
I guess on one level an action is irrational only if it fails to achieve its objective.
Thus was it irrational for the Romans to commit genocide on the Jews in Judaea when they rose up in the 1st century. Eventually, the Roman Empire fell and Jews were not extirpated as a geopolitical force.
Conversely, was it irrational for the Zealots to rise up against Rome, provoking Rome into a policy of genocide and the self immolation of the Zealots? Today, all Israeli soldiers take their oath at Masada, the site of the Zealots’ self-immolation.
It appears that there should be some sort of a statute of limitations on when an act ceases to be considered “irrational” owing to its unsuccessful outcome.
Furthermore, just because we as witnesses cannot perceive the rationale of some act of terror, doesn’t necessarily mean that the act is “irrational”. These acts may have culture-building and culture-strengthening qualities that outsiders cannot perceive. The Zealots at Masada are surely a prime example of this quality.
Kid’s these days… I blame the decline of moral values…
For example, the younger generation are so… Straight Edge.
“Yes, that and the fact that Italians and Greeks were not, as a rule, blowing up public places.”
Mmm, I can’t seem to recall any Australian-Muslims blowing anything up. Where is that terrorist threat again?
“…at which point they begin to disengage from society and mix in groups of people who are similarly alienated, who have similar experiences, who feel collectively as if society is against them and excludes them from involvement in all mainstream activities…”
“After alienation it’s a short step to the next threshold – the decision to use violence.”
Erm, maybe he is actually talking about the police…
“THREE former detectives who were caught on tape bashing an armed robbery suspect have avoided an immediate jail term and will serve their sentence in the community.”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/assault-tape-detectives-escape-time-behind-bars/2008/03/13/1205126116944.html
Katz [74] – yes, a very interesting question.
But I don’t think your criterion of what’s ‘rational’ will do. It’s too mechanical and lacks an essential component: morality.
Your examples are facinating and illustrate the importance of ‘taking the long-term view’. D’you remember Mao Zedong, when asked late in life what he thought of the effects of the French Revolution, said “It’s too early to tell.” Not sure if he had considered Masada.
Now, you wrote “I guess on one level an action is irrational only if it fails to achieve its objective.”
That’s a possible criterion. It would rule an act which cannot physically be achieved, an irrational attempt, e.g. trying to drive an FJ Holden to the Moon, or far more tragically: to demand that Cambodian peasants double the rice yield per hectare [take a bow, Pol Pot] regardless of centuries of agronomic experience, regardless of soil nutrient limitations, water supplies, and while providing no extra machinery or water buffaloes…. So I’d agree that the Cambodian diktat was irrational. It simply couldn’t be achieved. Even thousands of litres of human blood made not a jot of difference to the rice harvest.
But what of the aims of acts? To feed the people with a good rice harvest seems a reasonable aim. What what if someone’s AIM* is to kill thousands of bourgeois and thereby terrify the citizens of a nation? It seems to me that by your criterion, ramming passenger jets into skyscrapers is not irrational, if the group has that AIM*
And yet many of us decry those acts. We do so on grounds based in morality, human rights, what we see as the fair limits of actions in the political sphere, or whatever.
But in one sense this debate doesn’t matter. “Irrational” may be a smear-word used to blacken the reputation of a group one opposes on other grounds. It may be the VALUES of a group that we basically oppose, rather than the fitness of the tactics they employ to achieve their goals.
Well, I’d argue that there are plenty of other terms useful in opposing or judging a cause or person: megalomaniac [Mao, Hitler], vengeful [some French Resistance members after VE Day, Nazis after Heydrich's assassination], bombastic [Castro], secretive [Pol Pot], paranoic [Kim Il Sung], slippery [JWH], egotistical [Hawke, Keating, Beazley Jr, Costello], pompous [Whitlam], well-meaning [Brian Howe], thuggish [Black Jack McEwen], consumed by hatred [Clyde Cameron, Eddie Ward], brilliant but unhinged [Bert Evatt],… do you get the picture?
“Irrational” is too crude.
I’d like a broad lexicon that can cope with the broad variousness of the strange and sad folk who “lead”. Mostly because if we can understand them (a little, only a little) we may have a chance of ducking just before one of them lashes out.
Ambigulous [9:46 pm yesterday]:
That is why you have to separate difficult but still achievable aims [such as driving a foreign power out of one's country or changing an oppressive set of laws] from wild airy-fairy aims [such as "destroying Capitalism" or, as you mentioned, suspending the physical laws of the universe so as to double the rice harvest]. As I said earlier [in a slightly different context]
Yes, the word “irrational” can be used just to smear an enemy but it is also quite useful for describing what is behind – or what is lacking from – some terrorist acts. There is, as you said, a need for a wider range of terms though.
I do like your roll-call. Excellent. Makes me glad I visit Larvatus Prodeo.
As Katz suggests it’s easy to forget that what was ‘irrational’ yesterday can easily be revealed as supremely rational today. It’s also dangerous in some contexts. In fact this notion – setting out to make the old irrational the new rational – lies at the core of much human endeavor, especially in Darwinian spheres such as empirical science, military strategy and the ebb and flow of civilisations. A failure to understand this is one expression of that fatal collective hubris which is a key precondition for the withering of the status quo in any given system before a coming new paradigm.
It is incredibly foolish for the ‘Judeo-Christian West’ (sic) to dismiss Islamist (sic) terrorism as irrational. To take only the most obvious manifestation of it thus far, the ‘irrational’ tactical attacks of 9/11 themselves can in retrospect be seen to boast a geo-strategic cost-benefit ratio that is likely unmatched in all military history. With our lunatic mishandling of our response to them in the form of the invasion, liberation and occupation of Iraq, far from exposing bin Laden’s loose and grubby little gaggle of chancers as ‘irrational’ we are now perilously close to cementing them in the eyes of long history as hard-headed visionaries.
By all means comfort them with platitudes about our enemy’s insanity if it helps our children sleep at night. But if this precludes we grown-ups from conducting a steely-eyed appreciation of what exactly he wants and how he intends to achieve it…then he will do so, at our cost. And our forlorn children will come to regard us, not him, as the ranting vanquished, chained to the receding madman’s rock of the past.
So, Ambi. I take it that you belong to the “Crime Never Pays” school of thought.
This school subscribes religiously to the following syllogism:
People never prosper from immoral acts.
I have declare a specific act to be immoral.
Therefore the “perpetrator” of that particular act will not prosper.
Might I modestly suggest that such thinking is the epitome of inflexible ideation.
Jack Robertson [5.54am}:
Oh no! By “irrational” I mean really off-the-planet and downright sociopathic or psychopathic behavior. Stuff that does not contribute anything at all to achieving specific goals – even though it causes many deaths, much suffering and a lot of irrepairable damage.
Please correct me if I am wrong, it seems what you are talking about is a variation on the old saying “One man’s Terrorist is another man’s Freedom Fighter”. You are spot-on about ill-considered and poorly planned responses giving the evil-doers an unnecessarily exalted place in history.
I take your point GB but I am not entirely sure that any behaviour can be classed as entirely ‘off-the-planet’ or ‘downright sociopathic or psychopathic behavior’ in the context of the essence of military (including para- and quasi-military) force, which is the premeditated impersonal passionless killing of fellow human beings against whom the killers have no personal (as in specific) antipathy, nor in the killing of whom any particular personal gratification to be got.
In one school of thought – mine – there is actually no more psychopathic behavior than the killing of another person in that profoundly morally nihilist context. Even the worst psychopathic mass murderer operates according to his own internal (im)morality and logic. But the soldier – whether of State, ism, god or fortune – kills for the least rational of all reasons, one that is quite literally ‘a-rational’: because someone else tells him to; someone else assures him it is ‘rational’: a someone else – politician, revolutionary theorist, cleric, dollar doler – who is invariably far removed from the practical and moral hazards of the killings. Worst of all, long history, but especially recent history, and especially coupled with the vastly enhanced info-literacy of the modern would-be order-taker, should by rights render it manifestly irrational for anyone to enter into that kind of ‘killing pact’ and expect not to be betrayed in one form or another.
Are you kidding, soldier? I speak as an ex military man in a longish family line of military men across the last century’s wars when I ask, genuinely gobsmacked: how can any sane and rational person elect to become a soldier in anyone’s army – State, Faith, Ism or Corporate – anymore?
So I would be extremely dubious about claims that there is any automatic distinction to be found between ‘crazy’ irrational and plain old ‘irrational’ irrational in the context of this discussion. For example, this subset of the former…:
“Stuff that does not contribute anything at all to achieving specific goals – even though it causes many deaths, much suffering and a lot of irreparable damage.”
…would to me appear to be an arguable description of much – not all, but much – of the West’s military activity since 2001.
And I don’t think that’s what you had in mind, is it?
Jack Robertson [83]:
Take your point about war itself being absolutely immoral – can definitely recommend trying all other courses of action first instead.
No, what I call irrational in the terrorist context is killing and maiming for the fun of it and to enhance personal vanity or prestige, by using religion or politics or ethnicity as the excuse for doing so. Even the most ruthless forms of banditry have the rational aims of gathering as much power and plunder as possible – you can negotiate with bandit chiefs and know that a substantial offer of Danegeld and/or seats in the new government will be very seriously considered and, if everything suits them, will be accepted – with disarmament ceremonies, new suits, new wealth, new respectability all round and yesterday’s gangsters becoming tomorrow’s statesmen.
You cannot do that with the worst types of terrorists – for them, there is no objective that they would be delighted to achieve suddenly and unexpectedly [as with the bandits I mentioned] – for them, achieving whatever were their stated goals would be a tragedy because their excuse for their murderous play would cease to exist.
Everyone:
Much attention has been focused on alienated young Australian Moslems …. yet none on the more obvious risks from alienated, frustrated and angry educated young “Anglo-Celtic” Australians
“…can definitely recommend trying all other courses of action first instead.”
Yes, quite so, GB. Acknowledged always, soberly and with respect.
No doubt JR has provided an accurate description of the mindset of a large part of the soldiery in any western, professional army.
Napoleon understood this feature of soldiering when he opined “the worse the man, the better the soldier”. This is a devil’s bargain wherein a soldier willingly puts his personal morality (if he has any) into escrow and becomes the pliant tool of another.
This moral situation reminds me of the case of the Garuda Airlines pilot who crashed his plane at Jogjakarta.
He landed at too high a speed because he had a cash incentive from his employer to save fuel. When he crashed the plane, he took the blame because it was always his choice (so it was said) to decide to land this particular plane in this particular way on this particular day.
Yet it was Garuda that incited the pilot to act immorally by offering him an immoral bargain. Garuda was not compelled to do this. This was not a last resort to keep the airline solvent. And doubtless, many Garuda pilots have landed their planes with an eye to sharing some of the spoils of fuel conservation without crashing their planes and drawing moral condemnation upon themselves. Yet they are as immoral as the pilot who crashed, only a lot luckier.
Thus, when the inevitable disaster occurs, it isn’t the order-giver who is punished. It is the person who carries out the order. Except where victors’ justice is meted out, the same applies to war. Thus the leaders accept the rewards of success but pass on the penalties of failure. And professional soldiers, like professional pilots, accept this evil arrangement.
Katz [86]:
Well put.
Napoleon was wrong though about “The worse the man, the better the soldier”. Those with outstanding personal qualities always make better soldiers.