13 ms·

Terrorism is not about terror

184 points by Artistry121 11y ago

Artistry121 11y ago
Terrorism is about finding an "in" group. How do you combat this? My favorite quote about how the internet impacts terrorism: "If we see terrorism as more of a tribal or gang activity than political activism or warfare, then online connections become especially important to our analysis, otherwise we will be fooled by so-called lone wolves. Earlier ‘lone wolves’ like bombers Timothy McVeigh or Eric Robert Rudolph turn out on closer inspection to have ties, social & otherwise, to like-minded people; McVeigh lived with several other extremists and was taught his bomb-making skills by the Nichols, who also built the final bomb with him, while Rudolph remained on the run for several years in a community that wrote songs and sold t-shirts to praise him and was ultimately caught clean-shaven & wearing new sneakers. Lone wolves who genuinely had no contact with their confreres, such as Ted Kaczynski, are vanishingly rare exceptions among the dozens of thousands of terrorist attacks in the 20th century, and as rare exceptions, otherwise implausible explanations like mental disease account for them without trouble."
- jacquesm 11y ago
  There's also Breivik. Terrorism is as much about media as it is about anything else and by giving these suckers as much airtime as they get the media are more than just a little bit complicit in providing them with a platform for their idiocy.
  - kwhitefoot 11y ago
    So stop doing it. That name turns up much more often in English language media that it does here in Norway. Here he was to a quite large extent treated as a common criminal, a murderer.
    - j_camarena 11y ago
      Terrorism is an American (English word) your barely hear the word in Spanish.
      - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        Ostensibly, it's actually a loan word from French, if Wikipedia's etymology is to be believed. That said, I can certainly attest to the word being commonly used in a host of other languages besides English, including Slavic ones. Perhaps it is the case that it is not frequent in Spanish-speaking societies.
        ctchocula 11y ago
        The Online Etymology Dictionary agrees. It dates back to the French Revolution, it seems. [0] [0] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=terrorism&searchmode=none http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      True. But the typical Norwegian words for he-who-shall-not-be-named may not carry the same connotations in an international context: "the terrorist", "the perpetrator", "the murderer", etc. So it may not be that simple to translate it. Plus, journalists in general aren't the most eloquent and precise of wordsmiths.
      - kwhitefoot 11y ago
        No, that's not how it works here. When the event is mentioned in the media it is usually in neutral terms that do not mention the perpetrator. The emphasis is almost always on how we support those who were injured and the families of those who were injured or killed and on how to move on. When the camp at Utøya was formally reopened in the summer the opening speech was about the future not the past.
  - larrys 11y ago
    What is interesting is that in the US you have freedom of speech but that doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a movie theater (as the example often goes). Otoh you have freedom of the press but there are little restrictions on the press to print anything (obvious exclusions include libel) under the premise that people have a right to know certain things even if that right to know ends up creating more danger. Which is what you mean by "giving these suckers as much airtime". The truth is, why do I need to know that a school in another state in the US had a shooting? Does the information value of that outweigh the obvious effect of having copycat crimes and more damage? To me, it doesn't. And I don't think the issue is really not allowing information like that to be put out. I think the issue is simply playing so long and so hard that it creates the impact that you are referring to. And creates "more suckers".
a3voices 11y ago
There is comparatively strong theoretical and empirical evidence that people become terrorists not to achieve their organization’s declare political agenda, but to develop strong affective ties with other terrorist members. In other words, the preponderance of evidence is that people participate in terrorist organizations for the social solidarity, not for their political return. Well this is probably true for any organization, and for culture in general.
- jredwards 11y ago
  That's true, but these groups offer a lot more than your average highschool club. It's a social structure and a livelihood.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    you could say the same thing about the US military though, couldn't you?
- grandalf 11y ago
  Precisely. This point seems to evade the author at every turn. Terrorist organizations are organizations first.
- murbard2 11y ago
  Most people work for companies for reasons which have nothing to do with "social solidarity", so no, it's not true of any organization.
sandworm101 11y ago
>>Statistical analysis of terrorist groups’ longevity, aims, methods and successes reveal that groups are self-contradictory and self-sabotaging, generally ineffective; "Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction." (A cookie to anyone who knows where that is from.)
- lucozade 11y ago
  I don't like cookies. How about a spice cake?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Afforess 11y ago
  Karl Marx. Karl Marx wrote that Capitalism carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, that capitalists would sell you the noose with which you could hang them.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    Maybe that's where it started, but the exact quote is from a totally different place. Think deserts and religious extremism.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      Come on, your username was enough... b^)
    - rzzzt 11y ago
      Karl Marx from House Atreides, then.
jessaustin 11y ago
Let's not spend any more time arguing about the style and cut of the emperor's new clothes. Terrorism constitutes a tiny fraction of the threat to life, health, and property that numerous widely-accepted institutions in Western societies constitute. For some reason, though, it's the only topic that folks in DC find fit for discussion. Could there be a reason for that?
- mason240 11y ago
  Because national defense is one of the few actual responsibilities of the US Federal government.
  - pnut 11y ago
    That is an opinion, not a fact.
    - tvanantwerp 11y ago
      No, it's the the first paragraph of the US Constitution that the federal government ought to "provide for the common defense".
      - webXL 11y ago
        Perhaps parent was taking issue with "few actual responsibilities", which our current government treats as an opinion.
      - emodendroket 11y ago
        I don't think anyone is disputing that the government should provide for the common defense; saying it is "one of the few responsibilities of the federal government" implies a certain conservative view and the unstated assumption that the huge security apparatus created to fight terrorism is an effective way of providing for the common defense is also a matter of opinion.
        11y ago
jredwards 11y ago
One of my college professors wrote a really interesting book on exactly this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Religious-Violent-Economics-Terrorism/dp/0262516675/ http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Religious-Violent-Economics-Te... Highly recommend it.
munificent 11y ago
I think we need to get better at looking at groups from a natural selection perspective. Any given individual has a finite amount of time to contribute to the social groups they belong to. That means groups are always competing for members. You can think of a group as a single organism competing with other group-organisms in an environment where members are "food". The group may have overt goals that are not about the group's own survival, but groups that do not devote significant effort to their continued existence—whether deliberately or inadvertently—simply can't compete and die out. The Shakers[1] are a good example of this. They religion requires celibacy which means the only way the group survives is through adoption and conversion of new members. That makes it very hard for them to compete with other faiths, and the religion is almost totally gone today. What I find fascinating is that in many groups, survival forces directly oppose the group's own overt goals. The classic example is the NAACP. It's goal is the elimination of racism, but if we ever pull that off, there's no need to have an NAACP anymore either. From this angle terrorist organizations make a lot more sense. Random terrorist attacks are highly visible and increase the public profile of the group. They make the group appear relatively strong compared to other competing extremist groups. Being inflexible and dogmatic makes them less effective, but satisfies members who join the group specifically because of its extreme views. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
- saint_fiasco 11y ago
  > What I find fascinating is that in many groups, survival forces directly oppose the group's own overt goals. The classic example is the NAACP. Anohter very relevant example are the organizations that are supposed to protect people from terrorists. What happens to them when terrorists stop terrorizing?
  - NumberCruncher 11y ago
    The same applies to psychologists. What happens to them if they heal their patients so they don't need the therapy anymore...
    - 11y ago
curiousjorge 11y ago
I've always questioned the logic of mass murdering innocent civilians to get them to vote their current leader out.
- murbard2 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_politician)#Presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_polit... "After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor ran for president in the 1997 general election. He famously campaigned on the slogan "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."[22] The elections were overseen by the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, along with a contingent from the Economic Community of West African States.[23] Taylor won the election in a landslide, garnering 75 percent of the vote. Although the election was widely reckoned as free and fair by international observers, Taylor had a huge advantage going into the election. He'd already taken over the former state radio station, which referred to him as "His Excellency." Additionally, there was widespread fear that Taylor would resume the war if he lost." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar#La_Catedral_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar#La_Catedral_pris... "Escobar was allegedly responsible for the 1989 murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. " ... "After declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. He was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral. Before Escobar gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. That was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar or other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly."
  - grandalf 11y ago
    What you describe about Escobar is pretty much exactly the period of history covered by Amazon's original series "Narcos".
rhodri 11y ago
So I suppose terrorists are like goths.
Synaesthesia 11y ago
What I want to know is what's the definition of terrorism? That's very important. Let's define terrorism as the use or threat of force for political gain.(a US military definition) Then the biggest terrorist of the last 15 years is the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
- meapix 11y ago
  I'll start, terrorism is a violence of any kind.
  - klez 11y ago
    That's an overly broad and dangerous definition of terrorism. Following that definition, these acts can be considered terrorism: - Pub brawl - Running someone over with a car - Punching someone who is attacking you - Police hitting protestors
- pluma 11y ago
  The 2003 Iraq operation was called "Shock and Awe". That struck me as pretty damn ironic at the time, considering how much the US emphasised that 9/11 was an act of terrorism.
nabla9 11y ago
Biggest problem with analyzing terrorism is in the definition. Classifying both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda as terrorist groups means that you have spread the definition for any group that may have bombed civilians at some time or another. I would claim that Hezbollah is much more than terrorist group. Their success or failure does not depend on terrorism. Second bias might be exclusion of successful terrorism that is later legitimized. For example, are IZL and Stern Gang included? I would say that they were highly successful. How about Stalin and early communists in Russia? If terrorists have enough support and are successful early, terrorism turns into ethnic cleansing and/or revolution and it is taken out from the list. Third problem is that terrorism seems by definition be the underdog because official or state terrorism is excluded. Many dictators use terrors successfully as tactics (kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians or relatives of their opponents) but this does not fit under terrorism. Taiwans White Terror or Augusto Pinochet used terror as tactics but it's not classified as that.
- emodendroket 11y ago
  Right. There are certainly definitions we could come up with that would be internally consistent but then they would also apply to someone we didn't want to apply the label to.
  - lisper 11y ago
    Like us.
- abalone 11y ago
  > terrorism seems by definition be the underdog because official or state terrorism is excluded While the definition may be nebulous, clearly the U.S. supported terrorism in Cuba and Nicaragua on massive scales that matches concretely what is called terrorism generally. E.g. death squads murdering and raping civilians, bombing airplanes hospitals and embassies, mining commercial harbors. Hard to believe if you're a patriot but you owe it to yourself to read up on the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponsored_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso... Also, the U.S. Phoenix Program in Vietnam explicitly was terrorism in the eyes of its own perpetrators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program Arguably the drone assassination program going on right now in the Middle East is also a form of terrorism. Just imagine how you'd feel if China was flying drones over the U.S., killing people at their pleasure, without trial, sometimes wiping out hospitals and weddings and bystanders in the process. Even if you believed that China was trying to eliminate violent elements of a neo-Nazi insurrection which for some reason a collapsed U.S. government was powerless to stop.. how would you feel when you hear those Chinese death planes buzzing overhead? Might you be a bystander? Might you be targeted? Living with that generates resentment and resentment drives people to extremism (in this scenario, you'd probably be more likely to join an anti-China militant group, such as the hypothetical dominant hard-right one). Which ultimately supports the conclusion of the paper: that terrorism is counter-productive. That is, unless the goal is actually not to stop terrorism, but to drive people to extremism.... something to think about. (If you think that's far-fetched, would it be so difficult to believe that in this scenario China's motive was not really to stop neo-Nazism, but rather to justify increased intervention in the U.S. to prevent a strong competitive government from emerging? Just look at Israel for an example of this playbook on a smaller scale: provoking and driving Palestinians to extremism to further justify their oppression and taking more land. Just one example among many, but it's one the U.S. directly supports.)
grandalf 11y ago
In the pre-internet world, the hardest thing for terrorist groups was to propagandize to their local supporters, for fundraising, etc. They used to have to have elaborate networks for distributing audio tapes, video tapes, etc. These days, with the internet, it's not only easy/affordable to reach the local constituents, but also to reach foreign audiences. ISIS is the first modern terrorist group, in this sense. Much of its propaganda is designed specifically to intimidate westerners watching from home. Modern terrorism capitalizes on the free PR that the recipient group provides. Mainstream TV networks have giving ISIS tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Terrorist groups are "big tent" groups, much like western political parties. Donors may think they are donating for food and infrastructure, but some of that money may go to fund bombings, etc. The goal of war is to break the will of the enemy. Terrorism is a useful tactic, which is why it is used by the West via drone strikes and fear campaigns. If you have a small budget, terrorism is a far cheaper way to attempt to break the will of the enemy than conventional warfare, and its successes and failures play out over a longer period of time. The US, while it doesn't have a small budget, has very little tolerance for aspects of war that appear to the public as messy or gruesome, which is why we choose drone strikes and other low-budget ways to attempt to break the will of our enemies. Terrorism is not guerrilla warfare, as the article claims, but propaganda warfare. The symbolic strike is everything. The more fear created by strikes, the more effective they are.
- Animats 11y ago
  "ISIS is the first modern terrorist group" ISIS is an insurgency movement which attempts to take and hold territory. It uses terror as a weapon, as preliminary intimidation against groups it wants to conquer outright, or exterminate. That sort of thing goes back to at least the Mongols.
  - grandalf 11y ago
    My point was intending to emphasize that ISIS has done a far better job of adapting its approach to modern PR realities than other groups that use terrorism as a tactic.
hitekker 11y ago
I may not fully agree with each and every point, but I always appreciate the research and meticulousness gwern brings to the table.
- Theodores 11y ago
  I don't. This article is clueless. The truth has not been triangulated here. Sometimes one needs to pull one's backside out of academic citations and speak to people, at the moment Syrian people are pretty handy for informing one's own perspective on things. I am fortunate in that I know regular Syrian people that do professional jobs, raise kids, play football and have plenty of family back home. Normal people that happen to have moved out before the rest from Syria don't have some crazy viewpoint, but you have to talk to them. They may not know the truth either but they can provide a point of reference not provided by the media or 'well meaning' articles written by people that either know nothing or have an axe to grind.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    This would be more persuasive if you told us what your prescient Syrian acquaintances think, and how that contradicts TFA.
peterwwillis 11y ago
Terrorism is an agenda sought through terror. Nobody ever claimed terrorism was rational or effective. It's just the physical implementation of hate speech. I think The Westboro Baptist Church is a great example of a terrorist organization. Sure, they haven't blown up anyone with a pipe bomb like other extremist christian terror groups, but you can see in their bumbling intimidation tactics how they're just acting violently in hopes that they get what they want (in this case mainly violent speech and intimidation through picketing). If anything they're more focused on inflicting pain than successfully achieving their objective. In this sense, terrorism is about terror.
meapix 11y ago
Terrorism as delivered by the media in the current time is Islamic related violence.
obrero 11y ago
> terrorist organizations never use terrorism as a last resort and seldom seize opportunities to become productive nonviolent political parties If you look at Colombia, the Colombian establishment, and US government, have never respected the will of the average Colombian, or Colombia's sovereignty for that matter. Obama's guards going off to sleep with prostitutes (and stiff them at that) is a great symbol for the US/Colombian relationship. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán looked like he was going to become president of Colombia in 1948, so he was murdered by someone supporting the Colombian establishment. This led over time to a series of events (and US intervention) which caused FARC to arise. In 1984, FARC desired to stop its armed campaign, which had wide support among southern Colombian peasants, and enter politics. This was not something desired by Colombia's establishment or Reagan, and thousands of left-wingers were murdered in Colombia, including all left wing presidential candidates. In 1987, FARC picked up the armed struggle. The Colombian elite and US response to leftists in Colombia entering politics is to murder them. Just like when leftists in Chile were murdered like Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The Chilean establishment and US answer even elected government's like Allende's with violence and murder. The mujahideen is another example. Sylvester Stallone dedicated Rambo III to the mujahideen in a movie glorifying them as freedom fighters, as did the US political establishment and almost all of the pundits, outside of maybe The Nation. Now Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Taliban are supposed to be awful people, whereas the Taliban used to make friendly visits to the White House. It's complete hypocrisy.
- joyeuse6701 11y ago
  If you strip any situation of context it can be called hypocrisy. 'The U.S. used to war with Japan and were the greatest of enemies... Now the U.S. guarantees their safety! What hypocrisy'. Time is a factor, interests are a factor. U.S. hypocrisy is best highlighted by the propaganda pushing for democratic republics while simultaneously undermining the democratic process. Of course the real aim of the U.S. or any nation that has the power to influence is to back those they find favorable to themselves by whatever means, natural democracy be damned.
acqq 11y ago
The term is simply used to name "the others" while inducing the emotional response among "our" population. The terrorists are always those who are against "us" and "we" can never do the "terrorism" even when "we" do "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear." The religions would call these "others" "the unbelievers," of course. Even though everybody in the world doesn't believe in most of the gods of the world. The "terrorists" is used as something like "the evil others." A case study: The start of the WWII (in Europe) with Germany attacking Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland "The invasion was referred to by Germany as the 1939 Defensive War since Hitler proclaimed that Poland had attacked Germany and that "Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror and are driven from their homes. The series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier."" It's always "them." Even as internationally "agreed": http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/terrorism-defined http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/terrorism-defined "Although the longest, the United Nations' definition is arguably the broadest and mostly serves to individualize the act, which, like the State Department, disregards nations as possible agents of terrorism. At the time the declaration was registered in April 2002, 132 of the 180 parties had signed the resolution. What is most interesting about the United Nations Declaration made by the General Assembly, is not necessarily the definition itself, but the 'declarations', 'reservations', 'understandings', and subsequent 'objections' made by the parties (See Appendix). Take notice how Yemen did not sign the declaration on the basis that, as a nation, it did not want to relay the impression that it was recognizing Israel's existence. Many of the countries signed the declaration, but not before declaring that it did not apply to them because they were unbound for one reason or another." "United States signed with the following reservation: "(a) pursuant to Article 24 (2) of the Convention, the United States of America declares that it does not consider itself bound by Article 24 (1) of the Convention; and (b) the United States of America reserves the right specifically to agree in a particular case to follow the arbitration procedure set forth in Article 24 (1) of the Convention or any other procedure for arbitration." Understandings: "(1) EXCLUSION OF LEGITIMATE ACTIVITIES AGAINST LAWFUL TARGETS. The United States of America understands that nothing in the Convention precludes any State Party to the Convention from conducting any legitimate activity against any lawful target in accordance with the law of armed conflict. (2) MEANING OF THE TERM 'ARMED CONFLICT'. The United States of America understands that the term 'armed conflict' in Article 2 (1) (b) of the Convention does not include internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence, and other acts of a similar nature." With regard to the declaration made by the Jordan upon ratification: "The Government of the United States of America, after careful review, considers the statement made by Jordan relating to paragraph 1 (b) of Article 2 of the Convention (the Declaration) to be a reservation that seeks to limit the scope of the offense set forth in the Convention on a unilateral basis. The Declaration is contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention, namely, the suppression of the financing of terrorist acts, irrespective of where they take place or who carries them out.""
rorykoehler 11y ago
Terrorism is a convenient term that has been so over- and mis-used that it means nothing anymore. As far as I understand it was supposed to mean the unofficial use of violence to achieve political aims. Now the establishment uses it for anyone it doesn't like. When I hear it all I can think is that the person using it has an agenda and is trying to mislead me (through the use of propaganda).
leroy_masochist 11y ago
Money quote: "the preponderance of evidence is that people participate in terrorist organizations for the social solidarity, not for their political return." Reminds me a bit of an article from earlier this year [0] which argues that young men who leave Europe to join ISIS do so largely out of a desire to belong to something important. [0]: http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-far-from-that-of-tolkien/ http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-f...
oso2k 11y ago
"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." [0] -- George Orwell, 1984 "History is written by the victors." [1] -- Napolean [0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6145-he-who-controls-the-past-controls-the-future-he-who http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6145-he-who-controls-the-pas... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/210910.Napol_on_Bonaparte https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/210910.Napol_on_Bona...
- dalke 11y ago
  Please distrust goodreads as an authoritative source for quotes. If you search you'll also find that "History is written by the victors" is also attributed to Churchill and to Hitler. My experience is that quotes to famous people, without any citation, are almost always misattributed. For what it's worth, the oldest Google Book search for 'history is written by the victors' is from the 1970 "Willard W. Waller on the Family, Education, and War", p148, in a section dated "previous unpublished." A search for 'history is written by the winners' finds this summary of the history of the quote, https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA90&dq=%22written+by+the+winners%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIr5Dqz7GsyAIVBXdyCh3eVgk6#v=onepage&q=%22written%20by%20the%20winners%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA90&dq=%2... and concludes there is no clear origin.
  - oso2k 11y ago
    And google books is authoritative? Napoleon was oldest the attribution I could find. I actually believe the quote is far older the 1970, maybe homer or some other writer from antiquity describing Alexander the Great. Maybe Plutarch. Grammatically, it's probably not identical to the modern English version, especially if it were translated from the original Greek or possibly Latin.
    - dang 11y ago
      Dalke didn't claim that Google Books is authoritative. He's right that nearly all attributions of famous quotes to famous people turn out bogus—the real sources are usually obscure and often interesting. They're also often more recent than you'd think. Who knows if that 1970 find is the origin of this one (probably not), but it's exactly the sort of thing that could be. A great resource for these is the Quote Investigator, an anonymous researcher who has slowly been building up an impressive portfolio of all the well-known catchy quotes. Here's a great recent example: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/. He or she takes requests, so I asked him or her to put "history is written by the victors" on his or her todo list.
tedks 11y ago
I get that you can get upvotes just for the (gwern.net), but come on, this is one of his worst. >There is a commonly-believed “strategic model” of terrorism which we could describe as follows: terrorists are people who are ideologically motivated to pursue specific unvarying political goals; to do so, they join together in long-lasting organizations and after the failure of ordinary political tactics, rationally decide to efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks on (usually) civilian targets to get as much attention as possible and publicity for their movement, and inspire fear & terror in the civilian population, which will pressure its leaders to solve the problem one way or another, providing support for the terrorists’ favored laws and/or their negotiations with involved governments, which then often succeed in gaining many of the original goals, and the organization dissolves. {{who}}? Come on. Not even a single source on this. It's easy to burn your enemies if they're straw men.
- readymade 11y ago
  I agree, it's rather appalling scholarship and it’s disappointing that this is being taken seriously here. A novice writes a paper with no citations, an amateur writes one with practically nothing but them. Any one of the academic articles he links to would shed more light on the topic, on its own, than this essay does in its entirety. The observation that terrorism is somewhat socially driven is interesting but should be backed by a deeper frame of reference, and one that the authors of those papers surely understood: the larger goals of an organization like Al Qaeda don’t align at all with traditional political demands. The long term strategy involves attacking the US to draw them into open war with a muslim country, spreading the conflict to neighboring regions, mobilizing local resistance to the invaders (as in Afghanistan) and drawing the west into a war of attrition. In this sense they’ve been startlingly successful, and a focus on social capital and “branding”, as opposed to concrete demands of existing governments, is actually quite strategic. Whatever commonality this has with the IRA, the FARC, or even Hezbollah and Hamas is superficial at best.
6t6t6 11y ago
The word terrorism now belongs to the "Newspeak". A guy who infiltrates into an enemy army base in order to kill soldiers from a foreign country cannot be terrorist. And a country that drops a bomb from a drone into a wedding party because someone suspects that there may be some enemies among the guests, is obviously practicing terrorism.
ilaksh 11y ago
http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-is-made-in-the-usa-the-global-war-on-terrorism-is-a-fabrication-a-big-lie/5435816 http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-is-made-in-the-usa-th...
crimsonalucard 11y ago
Terrorism is show business.
deleted 11y ago
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cm2187 11y ago
I think the few times where terrorism had a political agenda, it was not about getting the adhesion of the population through terror. It is more of a provocation, which is meant to provoke a reaction, hoping that the target population will be hostile to that reaction. Think about IRA. Most of their bombings and assassinations were designed to make the UK install a police state in Northern Ireland, with the intention that the population will become increasingly hostile to the UK in reaction. Terrorism targeted at american troops in Iraq was following pretty much the same pattern, like Indian terrorism before the independance or the french resistance during ww2. ISIS is the same thing. They are desperate to grab attention by destroying historic sites and staging horrific executions. I believe their true goal is to provoke a western coalition against them so they can recruit fighters in the muslim world arguing it is a crusade. That being said, I believe that individual terrorists have historically little real political agenda. Even in wealthy democracies there will always be a bunch of violent thugs who want to kill, blow things up. The ideology is more of a pretext and they might have gone for a criminal career anyway. I don't think there are many differences between the assassins of the Baader Meinhof gang, the home grown al quaeda terrorists, IRA terrorists, or the ZAD militants throwing acid on policemen to protest against the construction of an airport in France. Fundamentally terrorism is just another category in common crime. Neither new or particularly worse today, and not by any mean the most problematic form of crime by body count. The current hysteria about terrorism not only isn't achieving anything, but in some cases it is actually falling into the terrorists trap. We should react to terrorism like we do to rape, gang violence, drug related crime, etc. Not ignore the problem, be tough enough but not make the problem bigger than it is.

184 points by Artistry121 11y ago

Terrorism is about finding an "in" group. How do you combat this? My favorite quote about how the internet impacts terrorism: "If we see terrorism as more of a tribal or gang activity than political activism or warfare, then online connections become especially important to our analysis, otherwise we will be fooled by so-called lone wolves. Earlier ‘lone wolves’ like bombers Timothy McVeigh or Eric Robert Rudolph turn out on closer inspection to have ties, social & otherwise, to like-minded people; McVeigh lived with several other extremists and was taught his bomb-making skills by the Nichols, who also built the final bomb with him, while Rudolph remained on the run for several years in a community that wrote songs and sold t-shirts to praise him and was ultimately caught clean-shaven & wearing new sneakers. Lone wolves who genuinely had no contact with their confreres, such as Ted Kaczynski, are vanishingly rare exceptions among the dozens of thousands of terrorist attacks in the 20th century, and as rare exceptions, otherwise implausible explanations like mental disease account for them without trouble."

jacquesm 11y ago
There's also Breivik. Terrorism is as much about media as it is about anything else and by giving these suckers as much airtime as they get the media are more than just a little bit complicit in providing them with a platform for their idiocy.
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  So stop doing it. That name turns up much more often in English language media that it does here in Norway. Here he was to a quite large extent treated as a common criminal, a murderer.
  - j_camarena 11y ago
    Terrorism is an American (English word) your barely hear the word in Spanish.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Ostensibly, it's actually a loan word from French, if Wikipedia's etymology is to be believed. That said, I can certainly attest to the word being commonly used in a host of other languages besides English, including Slavic ones. Perhaps it is the case that it is not frequent in Spanish-speaking societies.
      - ctchocula 11y ago
        The Online Etymology Dictionary agrees. It dates back to the French Revolution, it seems. [0] [0] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=terrorism&searchmode=none http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    True. But the typical Norwegian words for he-who-shall-not-be-named may not carry the same connotations in an international context: "the terrorist", "the perpetrator", "the murderer", etc. So it may not be that simple to translate it. Plus, journalists in general aren't the most eloquent and precise of wordsmiths.
    - kwhitefoot 11y ago
      No, that's not how it works here. When the event is mentioned in the media it is usually in neutral terms that do not mention the perpetrator. The emphasis is almost always on how we support those who were injured and the families of those who were injured or killed and on how to move on. When the camp at Utøya was formally reopened in the summer the opening speech was about the future not the past.
- larrys 11y ago
  What is interesting is that in the US you have freedom of speech but that doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a movie theater (as the example often goes). Otoh you have freedom of the press but there are little restrictions on the press to print anything (obvious exclusions include libel) under the premise that people have a right to know certain things even if that right to know ends up creating more danger. Which is what you mean by "giving these suckers as much airtime". The truth is, why do I need to know that a school in another state in the US had a shooting? Does the information value of that outweigh the obvious effect of having copycat crimes and more damage? To me, it doesn't. And I don't think the issue is really not allowing information like that to be put out. I think the issue is simply playing so long and so hard that it creates the impact that you are referring to. And creates "more suckers".

a3voices 11y ago

There is comparatively strong theoretical and empirical evidence that people become terrorists not to achieve their organization’s declare political agenda, but to develop strong affective ties with other terrorist members. In other words, the preponderance of evidence is that people participate in terrorist organizations for the social solidarity, not for their political return. Well this is probably true for any organization, and for culture in general.

jredwards 11y ago
That's true, but these groups offer a lot more than your average highschool club. It's a social structure and a livelihood.
- grandalf 11y ago
  you could say the same thing about the US military though, couldn't you?
grandalf 11y ago
Precisely. This point seems to evade the author at every turn. Terrorist organizations are organizations first.
murbard2 11y ago
Most people work for companies for reasons which have nothing to do with "social solidarity", so no, it's not true of any organization.

sandworm101 11y ago

>>Statistical analysis of terrorist groups’ longevity, aims, methods and successes reveal that groups are self-contradictory and self-sabotaging, generally ineffective; "Every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction." (A cookie to anyone who knows where that is from.)

lucozade 11y ago
I don't like cookies. How about a spice cake?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Afforess 11y ago
Karl Marx. Karl Marx wrote that Capitalism carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, that capitalists would sell you the noose with which you could hang them.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  Maybe that's where it started, but the exact quote is from a totally different place. Think deserts and religious extremism.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Come on, your username was enough... b^)
  - rzzzt 11y ago
    Karl Marx from House Atreides, then.

jessaustin 11y ago

Let's not spend any more time arguing about the style and cut of the emperor's new clothes. Terrorism constitutes a tiny fraction of the threat to life, health, and property that numerous widely-accepted institutions in Western societies constitute. For some reason, though, it's the only topic that folks in DC find fit for discussion. Could there be a reason for that?

mason240 11y ago
Because national defense is one of the few actual responsibilities of the US Federal government.
- pnut 11y ago
  That is an opinion, not a fact.
  - tvanantwerp 11y ago
    No, it's the the first paragraph of the US Constitution that the federal government ought to "provide for the common defense".
    - webXL 11y ago
      Perhaps parent was taking issue with "few actual responsibilities", which our current government treats as an opinion.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      I don't think anyone is disputing that the government should provide for the common defense; saying it is "one of the few responsibilities of the federal government" implies a certain conservative view and the unstated assumption that the huge security apparatus created to fight terrorism is an effective way of providing for the common defense is also a matter of opinion.
      - 11y ago

jredwards 11y ago

One of my college professors wrote a really interesting book on exactly this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Religious-Violent-Economics-Terrorism/dp/0262516675/ http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Religious-Violent-Economics-Te... Highly recommend it.

munificent 11y ago

I think we need to get better at looking at groups from a natural selection perspective. Any given individual has a finite amount of time to contribute to the social groups they belong to. That means groups are always competing for members. You can think of a group as a single organism competing with other group-organisms in an environment where members are "food". The group may have overt goals that are not about the group's own survival, but groups that do not devote significant effort to their continued existence—whether deliberately or inadvertently—simply can't compete and die out. The Shakers[1] are a good example of this. They religion requires celibacy which means the only way the group survives is through adoption and conversion of new members. That makes it very hard for them to compete with other faiths, and the religion is almost totally gone today. What I find fascinating is that in many groups, survival forces directly oppose the group's own overt goals. The classic example is the NAACP. It's goal is the elimination of racism, but if we ever pull that off, there's no need to have an NAACP anymore either. From this angle terrorist organizations make a lot more sense. Random terrorist attacks are highly visible and increase the public profile of the group. They make the group appear relatively strong compared to other competing extremist groups. Being inflexible and dogmatic makes them less effective, but satisfies members who join the group specifically because of its extreme views. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

saint_fiasco 11y ago
> What I find fascinating is that in many groups, survival forces directly oppose the group's own overt goals. The classic example is the NAACP. Anohter very relevant example are the organizations that are supposed to protect people from terrorists. What happens to them when terrorists stop terrorizing?
- NumberCruncher 11y ago
  The same applies to psychologists. What happens to them if they heal their patients so they don't need the therapy anymore...
  - 11y ago

curiousjorge 11y ago

I've always questioned the logic of mass murdering innocent civilians to get them to vote their current leader out.

murbard2 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_politician)#Presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_polit... "After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor ran for president in the 1997 general election. He famously campaigned on the slogan "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him."[22] The elections were overseen by the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia, along with a contingent from the Economic Community of West African States.[23] Taylor won the election in a landslide, garnering 75 percent of the vote. Although the election was widely reckoned as free and fair by international observers, Taylor had a huge advantage going into the election. He'd already taken over the former state radio station, which referred to him as "His Excellency." Additionally, there was widespread fear that Taylor would resume the war if he lost." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar#La_Catedral_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Escobar#La_Catedral_pris... "Escobar was allegedly responsible for the 1989 murder of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán, one of three assassinated candidates who were all competing in the same election, as well as the bombing of Avianca Flight 203 and the DAS Building bombing in Bogotá in 1989. " ... "After declaring an end to a series of previous violent acts meant to pressure authorities and public opinion, Escobar surrendered to Colombian authorities in 1991. He was confined in what became his own luxurious private prison, La Catedral. Before Escobar gave himself up, the extradition of Colombian citizens had been prohibited by the newly approved Colombian Constitution of 1991. That was controversial, as it was suspected that Escobar or other drug lords had influenced members of the Constituent Assembly."
- grandalf 11y ago
  What you describe about Escobar is pretty much exactly the period of history covered by Amazon's original series "Narcos".

rhodri 11y ago

So I suppose terrorists are like goths.

Synaesthesia 11y ago

What I want to know is what's the definition of terrorism? That's very important. Let's define terrorism as the use or threat of force for political gain.(a US military definition) Then the biggest terrorist of the last 15 years is the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

meapix 11y ago
I'll start, terrorism is a violence of any kind.
- klez 11y ago
  That's an overly broad and dangerous definition of terrorism. Following that definition, these acts can be considered terrorism: - Pub brawl - Running someone over with a car - Punching someone who is attacking you - Police hitting protestors
pluma 11y ago
The 2003 Iraq operation was called "Shock and Awe". That struck me as pretty damn ironic at the time, considering how much the US emphasised that 9/11 was an act of terrorism.

nabla9 11y ago

Biggest problem with analyzing terrorism is in the definition. Classifying both Hezbollah and al-Qaeda as terrorist groups means that you have spread the definition for any group that may have bombed civilians at some time or another. I would claim that Hezbollah is much more than terrorist group. Their success or failure does not depend on terrorism. Second bias might be exclusion of successful terrorism that is later legitimized. For example, are IZL and Stern Gang included? I would say that they were highly successful. How about Stalin and early communists in Russia? If terrorists have enough support and are successful early, terrorism turns into ethnic cleansing and/or revolution and it is taken out from the list. Third problem is that terrorism seems by definition be the underdog because official or state terrorism is excluded. Many dictators use terrors successfully as tactics (kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians or relatives of their opponents) but this does not fit under terrorism. Taiwans White Terror or Augusto Pinochet used terror as tactics but it's not classified as that.

emodendroket 11y ago
Right. There are certainly definitions we could come up with that would be internally consistent but then they would also apply to someone we didn't want to apply the label to.
- lisper 11y ago
  Like us.
abalone 11y ago
> terrorism seems by definition be the underdog because official or state terrorism is excluded While the definition may be nebulous, clearly the U.S. supported terrorism in Cuba and Nicaragua on massive scales that matches concretely what is called terrorism generally. E.g. death squads murdering and raping civilians, bombing airplanes hospitals and embassies, mining commercial harbors. Hard to believe if you're a patriot but you owe it to yourself to read up on the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponsored_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-sponso... Also, the U.S. Phoenix Program in Vietnam explicitly was terrorism in the eyes of its own perpetrators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program Arguably the drone assassination program going on right now in the Middle East is also a form of terrorism. Just imagine how you'd feel if China was flying drones over the U.S., killing people at their pleasure, without trial, sometimes wiping out hospitals and weddings and bystanders in the process. Even if you believed that China was trying to eliminate violent elements of a neo-Nazi insurrection which for some reason a collapsed U.S. government was powerless to stop.. how would you feel when you hear those Chinese death planes buzzing overhead? Might you be a bystander? Might you be targeted? Living with that generates resentment and resentment drives people to extremism (in this scenario, you'd probably be more likely to join an anti-China militant group, such as the hypothetical dominant hard-right one). Which ultimately supports the conclusion of the paper: that terrorism is counter-productive. That is, unless the goal is actually not to stop terrorism, but to drive people to extremism.... something to think about. (If you think that's far-fetched, would it be so difficult to believe that in this scenario China's motive was not really to stop neo-Nazism, but rather to justify increased intervention in the U.S. to prevent a strong competitive government from emerging? Just look at Israel for an example of this playbook on a smaller scale: provoking and driving Palestinians to extremism to further justify their oppression and taking more land. Just one example among many, but it's one the U.S. directly supports.)

grandalf 11y ago

In the pre-internet world, the hardest thing for terrorist groups was to propagandize to their local supporters, for fundraising, etc. They used to have to have elaborate networks for distributing audio tapes, video tapes, etc. These days, with the internet, it's not only easy/affordable to reach the local constituents, but also to reach foreign audiences. ISIS is the first modern terrorist group, in this sense. Much of its propaganda is designed specifically to intimidate westerners watching from home. Modern terrorism capitalizes on the free PR that the recipient group provides. Mainstream TV networks have giving ISIS tens of millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Terrorist groups are "big tent" groups, much like western political parties. Donors may think they are donating for food and infrastructure, but some of that money may go to fund bombings, etc. The goal of war is to break the will of the enemy. Terrorism is a useful tactic, which is why it is used by the West via drone strikes and fear campaigns. If you have a small budget, terrorism is a far cheaper way to attempt to break the will of the enemy than conventional warfare, and its successes and failures play out over a longer period of time. The US, while it doesn't have a small budget, has very little tolerance for aspects of war that appear to the public as messy or gruesome, which is why we choose drone strikes and other low-budget ways to attempt to break the will of our enemies. Terrorism is not guerrilla warfare, as the article claims, but propaganda warfare. The symbolic strike is everything. The more fear created by strikes, the more effective they are.

Animats 11y ago
"ISIS is the first modern terrorist group" ISIS is an insurgency movement which attempts to take and hold territory. It uses terror as a weapon, as preliminary intimidation against groups it wants to conquer outright, or exterminate. That sort of thing goes back to at least the Mongols.
- grandalf 11y ago
  My point was intending to emphasize that ISIS has done a far better job of adapting its approach to modern PR realities than other groups that use terrorism as a tactic.

hitekker 11y ago

I may not fully agree with each and every point, but I always appreciate the research and meticulousness gwern brings to the table.

Theodores 11y ago
I don't. This article is clueless. The truth has not been triangulated here. Sometimes one needs to pull one's backside out of academic citations and speak to people, at the moment Syrian people are pretty handy for informing one's own perspective on things. I am fortunate in that I know regular Syrian people that do professional jobs, raise kids, play football and have plenty of family back home. Normal people that happen to have moved out before the rest from Syria don't have some crazy viewpoint, but you have to talk to them. They may not know the truth either but they can provide a point of reference not provided by the media or 'well meaning' articles written by people that either know nothing or have an axe to grind.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  This would be more persuasive if you told us what your prescient Syrian acquaintances think, and how that contradicts TFA.

peterwwillis 11y ago

Terrorism is an agenda sought through terror. Nobody ever claimed terrorism was rational or effective. It's just the physical implementation of hate speech. I think The Westboro Baptist Church is a great example of a terrorist organization. Sure, they haven't blown up anyone with a pipe bomb like other extremist christian terror groups, but you can see in their bumbling intimidation tactics how they're just acting violently in hopes that they get what they want (in this case mainly violent speech and intimidation through picketing). If anything they're more focused on inflicting pain than successfully achieving their objective. In this sense, terrorism is about terror.

meapix 11y ago

Terrorism as delivered by the media in the current time is Islamic related violence.

obrero 11y ago

> terrorist organizations never use terrorism as a last resort and seldom seize opportunities to become productive nonviolent political parties If you look at Colombia, the Colombian establishment, and US government, have never respected the will of the average Colombian, or Colombia's sovereignty for that matter. Obama's guards going off to sleep with prostitutes (and stiff them at that) is a great symbol for the US/Colombian relationship. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán looked like he was going to become president of Colombia in 1948, so he was murdered by someone supporting the Colombian establishment. This led over time to a series of events (and US intervention) which caused FARC to arise. In 1984, FARC desired to stop its armed campaign, which had wide support among southern Colombian peasants, and enter politics. This was not something desired by Colombia's establishment or Reagan, and thousands of left-wingers were murdered in Colombia, including all left wing presidential candidates. In 1987, FARC picked up the armed struggle. The Colombian elite and US response to leftists in Colombia entering politics is to murder them. Just like when leftists in Chile were murdered like Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The Chilean establishment and US answer even elected government's like Allende's with violence and murder. The mujahideen is another example. Sylvester Stallone dedicated Rambo III to the mujahideen in a movie glorifying them as freedom fighters, as did the US political establishment and almost all of the pundits, outside of maybe The Nation. Now Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the Taliban are supposed to be awful people, whereas the Taliban used to make friendly visits to the White House. It's complete hypocrisy.

joyeuse6701 11y ago
If you strip any situation of context it can be called hypocrisy. 'The U.S. used to war with Japan and were the greatest of enemies... Now the U.S. guarantees their safety! What hypocrisy'. Time is a factor, interests are a factor. U.S. hypocrisy is best highlighted by the propaganda pushing for democratic republics while simultaneously undermining the democratic process. Of course the real aim of the U.S. or any nation that has the power to influence is to back those they find favorable to themselves by whatever means, natural democracy be damned.

acqq 11y ago

The term is simply used to name "the others" while inducing the emotional response among "our" population. The terrorists are always those who are against "us" and "we" can never do the "terrorism" even when "we" do "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear." The religions would call these "others" "the unbelievers," of course. Even though everybody in the world doesn't believe in most of the gods of the world. The "terrorists" is used as something like "the evil others." A case study: The start of the WWII (in Europe) with Germany attacking Poland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland "The invasion was referred to by Germany as the 1939 Defensive War since Hitler proclaimed that Poland had attacked Germany and that "Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror and are driven from their homes. The series of border violations, which are unbearable to a great power, prove that the Poles no longer are willing to respect the German frontier."" It's always "them." Even as internationally "agreed": http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/terrorism-defined http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/terrorism-defined "Although the longest, the United Nations' definition is arguably the broadest and mostly serves to individualize the act, which, like the State Department, disregards nations as possible agents of terrorism. At the time the declaration was registered in April 2002, 132 of the 180 parties had signed the resolution. What is most interesting about the United Nations Declaration made by the General Assembly, is not necessarily the definition itself, but the 'declarations', 'reservations', 'understandings', and subsequent 'objections' made by the parties (See Appendix). Take notice how Yemen did not sign the declaration on the basis that, as a nation, it did not want to relay the impression that it was recognizing Israel's existence. Many of the countries signed the declaration, but not before declaring that it did not apply to them because they were unbound for one reason or another." "United States signed with the following reservation: "(a) pursuant to Article 24 (2) of the Convention, the United States of America declares that it does not consider itself bound by Article 24 (1) of the Convention; and (b) the United States of America reserves the right specifically to agree in a particular case to follow the arbitration procedure set forth in Article 24 (1) of the Convention or any other procedure for arbitration." Understandings: "(1) EXCLUSION OF LEGITIMATE ACTIVITIES AGAINST LAWFUL TARGETS. The United States of America understands that nothing in the Convention precludes any State Party to the Convention from conducting any legitimate activity against any lawful target in accordance with the law of armed conflict. (2) MEANING OF THE TERM 'ARMED CONFLICT'. The United States of America understands that the term 'armed conflict' in Article 2 (1) (b) of the Convention does not include internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence, and other acts of a similar nature." With regard to the declaration made by the Jordan upon ratification: "The Government of the United States of America, after careful review, considers the statement made by Jordan relating to paragraph 1 (b) of Article 2 of the Convention (the Declaration) to be a reservation that seeks to limit the scope of the offense set forth in the Convention on a unilateral basis. The Declaration is contrary to the object and purpose of the Convention, namely, the suppression of the financing of terrorist acts, irrespective of where they take place or who carries them out.""

rorykoehler 11y ago

Terrorism is a convenient term that has been so over- and mis-used that it means nothing anymore. As far as I understand it was supposed to mean the unofficial use of violence to achieve political aims. Now the establishment uses it for anyone it doesn't like. When I hear it all I can think is that the person using it has an agenda and is trying to mislead me (through the use of propaganda).

leroy_masochist 11y ago

Money quote: "the preponderance of evidence is that people participate in terrorist organizations for the social solidarity, not for their political return." Reminds me a bit of an article from earlier this year [0] which argues that young men who leave Europe to join ISIS do so largely out of a desire to belong to something important. [0]: http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-far-from-that-of-tolkien/ http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/the-appeal-of-isis-isnt-so-f...

oso2k 11y ago

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." [0] -- George Orwell, 1984 "History is written by the victors." [1] -- Napolean [0] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6145-he-who-controls-the-past-controls-the-future-he-who http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6145-he-who-controls-the-pas... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/210910.Napol_on_Bonaparte https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/210910.Napol_on_Bona...

dalke 11y ago
Please distrust goodreads as an authoritative source for quotes. If you search you'll also find that "History is written by the victors" is also attributed to Churchill and to Hitler. My experience is that quotes to famous people, without any citation, are almost always misattributed. For what it's worth, the oldest Google Book search for 'history is written by the victors' is from the 1970 "Willard W. Waller on the Family, Education, and War", p148, in a section dated "previous unpublished." A search for 'history is written by the winners' finds this summary of the history of the quote, https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA90&dq=%22written+by+the+winners%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIr5Dqz7GsyAIVBXdyCh3eVgk6#v=onepage&q=%22written%20by%20the%20winners%22&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&pg=PA90&dq=%2... and concludes there is no clear origin.
- oso2k 11y ago
  And google books is authoritative? Napoleon was oldest the attribution I could find. I actually believe the quote is far older the 1970, maybe homer or some other writer from antiquity describing Alexander the Great. Maybe Plutarch. Grammatically, it's probably not identical to the modern English version, especially if it were translated from the original Greek or possibly Latin.
  - dang 11y ago
    Dalke didn't claim that Google Books is authoritative. He's right that nearly all attributions of famous quotes to famous people turn out bogus—the real sources are usually obscure and often interesting. They're also often more recent than you'd think. Who knows if that 1970 find is the origin of this one (probably not), but it's exactly the sort of thing that could be. A great resource for these is the Quote Investigator, an anonymous researcher who has slowly been building up an impressive portfolio of all the well-known catchy quotes. Here's a great recent example: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/28/fish/. He or she takes requests, so I asked him or her to put "history is written by the victors" on his or her todo list.

tedks 11y ago

I get that you can get upvotes just for the (gwern.net), but come on, this is one of his worst. >There is a commonly-believed “strategic model” of terrorism which we could describe as follows: terrorists are people who are ideologically motivated to pursue specific unvarying political goals; to do so, they join together in long-lasting organizations and after the failure of ordinary political tactics, rationally decide to efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks on (usually) civilian targets to get as much attention as possible and publicity for their movement, and inspire fear & terror in the civilian population, which will pressure its leaders to solve the problem one way or another, providing support for the terrorists’ favored laws and/or their negotiations with involved governments, which then often succeed in gaining many of the original goals, and the organization dissolves. {{who}}? Come on. Not even a single source on this. It's easy to burn your enemies if they're straw men.

readymade 11y ago
I agree, it's rather appalling scholarship and it’s disappointing that this is being taken seriously here. A novice writes a paper with no citations, an amateur writes one with practically nothing but them. Any one of the academic articles he links to would shed more light on the topic, on its own, than this essay does in its entirety. The observation that terrorism is somewhat socially driven is interesting but should be backed by a deeper frame of reference, and one that the authors of those papers surely understood: the larger goals of an organization like Al Qaeda don’t align at all with traditional political demands. The long term strategy involves attacking the US to draw them into open war with a muslim country, spreading the conflict to neighboring regions, mobilizing local resistance to the invaders (as in Afghanistan) and drawing the west into a war of attrition. In this sense they’ve been startlingly successful, and a focus on social capital and “branding”, as opposed to concrete demands of existing governments, is actually quite strategic. Whatever commonality this has with the IRA, the FARC, or even Hezbollah and Hamas is superficial at best.

6t6t6 11y ago

The word terrorism now belongs to the "Newspeak". A guy who infiltrates into an enemy army base in order to kill soldiers from a foreign country cannot be terrorist. And a country that drops a bomb from a drone into a wedding party because someone suspects that there may be some enemies among the guests, is obviously practicing terrorism.

ilaksh 11y ago

http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-is-made-in-the-usa-the-global-war-on-terrorism-is-a-fabrication-a-big-lie/5435816 http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-is-made-in-the-usa-th...

crimsonalucard 11y ago

Terrorism is show business.

deleted 11y ago

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cm2187 11y ago

I think the few times where terrorism had a political agenda, it was not about getting the adhesion of the population through terror. It is more of a provocation, which is meant to provoke a reaction, hoping that the target population will be hostile to that reaction. Think about IRA. Most of their bombings and assassinations were designed to make the UK install a police state in Northern Ireland, with the intention that the population will become increasingly hostile to the UK in reaction. Terrorism targeted at american troops in Iraq was following pretty much the same pattern, like Indian terrorism before the independance or the french resistance during ww2. ISIS is the same thing. They are desperate to grab attention by destroying historic sites and staging horrific executions. I believe their true goal is to provoke a western coalition against them so they can recruit fighters in the muslim world arguing it is a crusade. That being said, I believe that individual terrorists have historically little real political agenda. Even in wealthy democracies there will always be a bunch of violent thugs who want to kill, blow things up. The ideology is more of a pretext and they might have gone for a criminal career anyway. I don't think there are many differences between the assassins of the Baader Meinhof gang, the home grown al quaeda terrorists, IRA terrorists, or the ZAD militants throwing acid on policemen to protest against the construction of an airport in France. Fundamentally terrorism is just another category in common crime. Neither new or particularly worse today, and not by any mean the most problematic form of crime by body count. The current hysteria about terrorism not only isn't achieving anything, but in some cases it is actually falling into the terrorists trap. We should react to terrorism like we do to rape, gang violence, drug related crime, etc. Not ignore the problem, be tough enough but not make the problem bigger than it is.