9 ms·

People killed by terrorism per year in western Europe 1970-2015

95 points by MrsPeaches 9y ago

nickserv 9y ago
So homegrown terrorism peaked in the 70/80s and dropped off in the 2000s, to be replaced by Islamic terrorists. It's looking like we haven't yet reached "peak Islam"...
- noobermin 9y ago
  Islamic terrorism in many cases is homegrown though.
- siidooloo 9y ago
  ...and a lot pf those homegrown terrorists form the 70/80s were funded by the Soviets. Notice how in the charts the rates drop off after the cold war ends. The same thing happened in Latin America. Presumably this could be a clue on how to solve current problems.
  - spangry 9y ago
    For the benefit of dummies like me, what's the lesson / clue?
    - qb45 9y ago
      Rumor has it that certain Arab states are directly funding Islamic terrorism today. Also, Western states and NGOs supported and continue to support various rebels against old, mostly totalitarian and often USSR/Russia-friendly regimes in the region which used to maintain order and keep extremists under their boot. They do it in the name of democracy but how it is turning out we all see.
      - spangry 9y ago
        Ah, thanks, I think I get it now. So, if my understanding of the situation is right, there are a number of conflicts that involve militant Islamic groups, but some of these conflicts are being spurred on by foreign powers with ulterior motives. These foreign powers provide support to some of these groups (in the form of arms, training, and/or direct combat support?) And the solution would be for these foreign powers to, in one way or another, directly address and resolve their disagreements? At that point there's no reason to be waging proxy wars and the foreign powers can withdraw their support / intervention, or intervene with more benign motives (e.g. humanitarian) where appropriate. Just to preface this, my understanding of what's happening in the middle-east is tenuous at best. But I think one possible wrinkle is that we now have a situation where there are 'proxy wars within proxy wars'. Starting from the outermost layer, you've got the US on one side and Russia on the other (I think?). I'm actually not 100% clear on their motivations. And on the inside layer you have two opposing regional powers and major oil producers (i.e. economic competitors, despite the recent tepid OPEC agreement) who also have religious differences: Saudi Arabia (Sunni / Wahhabi - US aligned) and Iran & Syria (Shia - Russia aligned). These two might engage in some direct military action (not with each other though), but also fund groups like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah (who are variously thought of as legitimate political entities, terrorists, resistance movements and so on depending on where you stand). And then there are 'third-party' groups who I'm not sure are strongly aligned with one side or another, but are nonetheless involved: IS / Daesh (who are religiously opposed to Iran, but to whom Saudi Arabia responded by building a 600 mile wall to try and keep them [Daesh] out of their territory), Turkey(?), Kurdistan and Israel (who, weirdly, I guess are nominally aligned with Saudi Arabia and the US, given their concerns about Iranian nukes and conflicts with Hezbollah). Does that sound right to you, or have I gone horribly wrong somewhere?
danielvf 9y ago
Not sure why this was dead. FYI, graph at the start is missing the most recent years. End graph is more up to date: http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-isl-20170523.png http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-i...
dmoy 9y ago
Yea, and murder / violent crime rates have historically been going way down in the last ~4 decades over here in the US (like half of what it was a couple decades ago). You'd never guess it from watching the news.
- bluedino 9y ago
  Except not in cities like Chicago that dominate the media coverage
  - 3131s 9y ago
    Nope, the murder rate in Chicago now is still lower than it was for most of the late 70s and the early 90s.
  - dmoy 9y ago
    2016 was a bad year and comparable to the 90s, but prior years murder was down 50% from decades earlier in Chicago.
jgrahamc 9y ago
This explains why I was far more worried in the 1970s/80s then I am today about being caught up in a terrorist incident.
- Bakary 9y ago
  Do you remember how the coverage of terrorist attacks was handled in those days? Looking at the graph, I can't help but think that even the peak of yearly casualties is a rounding error compared to the other types of threats facing Europeans.
  - observation 9y ago
    Then I believe you would be mistaken. Terrorism isn't warfare, it is a strategy. The object is to get two groups to conflict aka sectarianism. I'd say Islamic terror coupled with MENA mass migration is well on its way to producing low intensity civil conflict in countries such as France. Examining the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria will likely reveal a series of escalating attacks before they broke out proper. You're saying the spark from each struck match is not meaningful. I agree, but we're at Gas Station across the street from the Dynamite Store!
micv 9y ago
I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in the UK the only thing keeping us from numerous terror attacks per year is the panopticon we've allowed our security services to build. They are stopping numerous attacks every year. This doesn't feel like a win to me.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Yet that didn't stop the Boston attacks. There are other plausible reasons to consider why terrorism has lowered in Western Europe: 1) IRA is dismantled. IRA and UK are at peace. 2) ETA is dismantled as well. That's more recently though. 3) The Iron Curtain is down. Its a well known fact Eastern Europe states were supporting terrorists such as Carlos and the RAF. In the 80s this became less feasible already. 4) Right after the Iron Curtain went down there were wars and new countries (eventually) born. After that, the region more or less stabilized. NB: This is merely my perception.
  - micv 9y ago
    All of these can be true without changing my point. The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and advancement in tech which results in modern terror groups failing vastly more often than not. The IRA were vastly more capable than the Islamic terrorists we face in the UK today, but they never had to face a security service as well equipped to deal with them.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      > The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and advancement in tech Can you objectively prove this? Specifically that its due to 1) experience 2) advancement in tech? Terrorists also gain experience. Terrorists also advance in tech. You do realize terrorist plots were foiled in the 70s and 80s as well? Minimizing (casualties from) terrorism is of all times. Yet the so-called 'vastly more capable' security services did not stop 9/11, Madrid, London attacks, Boston, or the attack on the USS Cole. All of that happened after mid 90s, arguably when mass surveillance was possible. What your posts continue to lack is any kind of substance on the positive effect of mass surveillance. The fact targeted surveillance is much older is a fallacy. However targeted surveillance has a proven track record. I've yet to see the efficiency of mass surveillance. I'll put my money on a lot of false positives, and a cat and mouse game where the mouse is going to adapt pretty quickly to the mass surveillance. In Belgium, for example, the government wants to have all SIM cards registered. All anonymous SIM cards will be disabled in a month. Hows that going to help catch terrorists? If not only for the fact anonymous SIM cards are still sold in the neighboring The Neherlands? Finally, as I posted in the other post, we must remember the main goal of terrorism is not (merely) 'killing people' [1]. So the statistic isn't accurately describing the 'effectiveness of terrorism'. [1] Specifically: "7. The direct victims are not the ultimate target (as in a classical assassination where victim and target coincide) but serve as message generators, more or less unwittingly helped by the news values of the mass media, to reach various audiences and conflict parties that identify either with the victims’ plight or the terrorists’ professed cause;"
Kenji 9y ago
How ready we are to sacrifice many of our freedoms and conveniences to * prevent 200 deaths - especially considering how mindlessly we accept risks that are multiple orders of magnitude higher, like driving cars. It is fascinating. *try to
- jliptzin 9y ago
  Agreed. Not sure why you're getting downvoted.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  That's a meaningless statistical comparison. I'm more likely to choke on a chicken wing than getting hit by a streetcar in San Francisco. Risk assessment is about probabilty and impact. People overweight risk in cases of extreme impact or high probability. We're also bad at identifying root cause.
- edgartaor 9y ago
  You have a good point. But we don't know if the government agencies are actually preventing an even higher amount of deaths. Or we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing.
  - thescriptkiddie 9y ago
    In all likelihood, we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/does_the_tsa_ever_catch_terrorists.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-stor... http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-failure/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-f...
  - Bakary 9y ago
    Even if say the amount of casualties triple, that's still a rounding error compared to heart disease, suicide, car crashes, and a number of other sources of massive suffering and shortened lives.
Fnoord 9y ago
I'm from NL, and we had MH17 in 2014 (just for completion sake: the plane took off from Amsterdam, and crashed in Eastern Europe). More people died in that plane crash (298), than the amount of deaths from terrorism in that year or in 2015. The goal of terrorism is not merely killing people though. See also Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism (2011) [1] [1] http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/schmid-terrorism-definition/html http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/vi...
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's a very fascinating subject. At UT Dallas we have a couple of world class scholars on the topic. Some more reading material: * http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Waves-of-Modern-Terrorism.pdf http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Wave... Could we consider the terrorism in Europe part of a new wave? Note: it's thought that "modern" terrorism started with anarchist movements in the 1880s; Lenin's brother was executed for his involvement in one of the earliest groups. * http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitution-20091003.pdf http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitutio... Terrorists have shifted their targets over the years from hardened military targets to "softer" ones. It's easier (unfortunately) to run over 100 civilians with a lorry than it is to attack a military outpost. * http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%202003.pdf http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%20... The "logic" behind suicide terrorism is unfortunately pretty sound. If you are in Palestine where human life is "cheap" due to environment and material resources are expensive, suicide bombing strikes groups like the West particularly hard where life is expensive and tech is "cheap", and the smartest most expensive missiles aren't nearly as smart as someone packed with explosives who is willing to die. The worst thing about all of this is that modern terrorism became possible because media enabled terror to reach farther than before: today's social media environment is like a best-case scenario for terrorists because their actions reach so damn far so quickly. Most attacks today are livestreamed. ISIS virtually has a media empire. Zuckerberg and Ev Williams probably weren't thinking about the issue much when they were building their their networks. What's even more striking is the fact that the refugee crisis is gonna keep this going for another generation or more. The US destabilized the Middle East by invading Iraq, which created a new wave of terrorism and refugees in Europe, and new reprisals by the West, which continues the cycle. This was one of bin Laden and al Qaeda's explicit goals.
dgut 9y ago
This ignores the detail that most terrorist plots today (in Europe that is) are prevented by a more sophisticated police (and no, I'm not referring to mass surveillance) and increasing security expenses. Remove that, and we would probably have the 70s and 80s levels if not more.
- mistermann 9y ago
  Is there evidence of this? I can think of numerous failsafe ways of going out and killing hundreds of people with zero chance of being detected prior to the fact. Terrorists may be uneducated, but are they dumb?

95 points by MrsPeaches 9y ago

So homegrown terrorism peaked in the 70/80s and dropped off in the 2000s, to be replaced by Islamic terrorists. It's looking like we haven't yet reached "peak Islam"...

noobermin 9y ago
Islamic terrorism in many cases is homegrown though.
siidooloo 9y ago
...and a lot pf those homegrown terrorists form the 70/80s were funded by the Soviets. Notice how in the charts the rates drop off after the cold war ends. The same thing happened in Latin America. Presumably this could be a clue on how to solve current problems.
- spangry 9y ago
  For the benefit of dummies like me, what's the lesson / clue?
  - qb45 9y ago
    Rumor has it that certain Arab states are directly funding Islamic terrorism today. Also, Western states and NGOs supported and continue to support various rebels against old, mostly totalitarian and often USSR/Russia-friendly regimes in the region which used to maintain order and keep extremists under their boot. They do it in the name of democracy but how it is turning out we all see.
    - spangry 9y ago
      Ah, thanks, I think I get it now. So, if my understanding of the situation is right, there are a number of conflicts that involve militant Islamic groups, but some of these conflicts are being spurred on by foreign powers with ulterior motives. These foreign powers provide support to some of these groups (in the form of arms, training, and/or direct combat support?) And the solution would be for these foreign powers to, in one way or another, directly address and resolve their disagreements? At that point there's no reason to be waging proxy wars and the foreign powers can withdraw their support / intervention, or intervene with more benign motives (e.g. humanitarian) where appropriate. Just to preface this, my understanding of what's happening in the middle-east is tenuous at best. But I think one possible wrinkle is that we now have a situation where there are 'proxy wars within proxy wars'. Starting from the outermost layer, you've got the US on one side and Russia on the other (I think?). I'm actually not 100% clear on their motivations. And on the inside layer you have two opposing regional powers and major oil producers (i.e. economic competitors, despite the recent tepid OPEC agreement) who also have religious differences: Saudi Arabia (Sunni / Wahhabi - US aligned) and Iran & Syria (Shia - Russia aligned). These two might engage in some direct military action (not with each other though), but also fund groups like Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah (who are variously thought of as legitimate political entities, terrorists, resistance movements and so on depending on where you stand). And then there are 'third-party' groups who I'm not sure are strongly aligned with one side or another, but are nonetheless involved: IS / Daesh (who are religiously opposed to Iran, but to whom Saudi Arabia responded by building a 600 mile wall to try and keep them [Daesh] out of their territory), Turkey(?), Kurdistan and Israel (who, weirdly, I guess are nominally aligned with Saudi Arabia and the US, given their concerns about Iranian nukes and conflicts with Hezbollah). Does that sound right to you, or have I gone horribly wrong somewhere?

danielvf 9y ago

Not sure why this was dead. FYI, graph at the start is missing the most recent years. End graph is more up to date: http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-isl-20170523.png http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-i...

dmoy 9y ago

Yea, and murder / violent crime rates have historically been going way down in the last ~4 decades over here in the US (like half of what it was a couple decades ago). You'd never guess it from watching the news.

bluedino 9y ago
Except not in cities like Chicago that dominate the media coverage
- 3131s 9y ago
  Nope, the murder rate in Chicago now is still lower than it was for most of the late 70s and the early 90s.
- dmoy 9y ago
  2016 was a bad year and comparable to the 90s, but prior years murder was down 50% from decades earlier in Chicago.

jgrahamc 9y ago

This explains why I was far more worried in the 1970s/80s then I am today about being caught up in a terrorist incident.

Bakary 9y ago
Do you remember how the coverage of terrorist attacks was handled in those days? Looking at the graph, I can't help but think that even the peak of yearly casualties is a rounding error compared to the other types of threats facing Europeans.
- observation 9y ago
  Then I believe you would be mistaken. Terrorism isn't warfare, it is a strategy. The object is to get two groups to conflict aka sectarianism. I'd say Islamic terror coupled with MENA mass migration is well on its way to producing low intensity civil conflict in countries such as France. Examining the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria will likely reveal a series of escalating attacks before they broke out proper. You're saying the spark from each struck match is not meaningful. I agree, but we're at Gas Station across the street from the Dynamite Store!

micv 9y ago

I can't speak for the rest of Europe, but in the UK the only thing keeping us from numerous terror attacks per year is the panopticon we've allowed our security services to build. They are stopping numerous attacks every year. This doesn't feel like a win to me.

Fnoord 9y ago
Yet that didn't stop the Boston attacks. There are other plausible reasons to consider why terrorism has lowered in Western Europe: 1) IRA is dismantled. IRA and UK are at peace. 2) ETA is dismantled as well. That's more recently though. 3) The Iron Curtain is down. Its a well known fact Eastern Europe states were supporting terrorists such as Carlos and the RAF. In the 80s this became less feasible already. 4) Right after the Iron Curtain went down there were wars and new countries (eventually) born. After that, the region more or less stabilized. NB: This is merely my perception.
- micv 9y ago
  All of these can be true without changing my point. The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and advancement in tech which results in modern terror groups failing vastly more often than not. The IRA were vastly more capable than the Islamic terrorists we face in the UK today, but they never had to face a security service as well equipped to deal with them.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    > The security services have grown vastly more capable through experience and advancement in tech Can you objectively prove this? Specifically that its due to 1) experience 2) advancement in tech? Terrorists also gain experience. Terrorists also advance in tech. You do realize terrorist plots were foiled in the 70s and 80s as well? Minimizing (casualties from) terrorism is of all times. Yet the so-called 'vastly more capable' security services did not stop 9/11, Madrid, London attacks, Boston, or the attack on the USS Cole. All of that happened after mid 90s, arguably when mass surveillance was possible. What your posts continue to lack is any kind of substance on the positive effect of mass surveillance. The fact targeted surveillance is much older is a fallacy. However targeted surveillance has a proven track record. I've yet to see the efficiency of mass surveillance. I'll put my money on a lot of false positives, and a cat and mouse game where the mouse is going to adapt pretty quickly to the mass surveillance. In Belgium, for example, the government wants to have all SIM cards registered. All anonymous SIM cards will be disabled in a month. Hows that going to help catch terrorists? If not only for the fact anonymous SIM cards are still sold in the neighboring The Neherlands? Finally, as I posted in the other post, we must remember the main goal of terrorism is not (merely) 'killing people' [1]. So the statistic isn't accurately describing the 'effectiveness of terrorism'. [1] Specifically: "7. The direct victims are not the ultimate target (as in a classical assassination where victim and target coincide) but serve as message generators, more or less unwittingly helped by the news values of the mass media, to reach various audiences and conflict parties that identify either with the victims’ plight or the terrorists’ professed cause;"

Kenji 9y ago

How ready we are to sacrifice many of our freedoms and conveniences to * prevent 200 deaths - especially considering how mindlessly we accept risks that are multiple orders of magnitude higher, like driving cars. It is fascinating. *try to

jliptzin 9y ago
Agreed. Not sure why you're getting downvoted.
Spooky23 9y ago
That's a meaningless statistical comparison. I'm more likely to choke on a chicken wing than getting hit by a streetcar in San Francisco. Risk assessment is about probabilty and impact. People overweight risk in cases of extreme impact or high probability. We're also bad at identifying root cause.
edgartaor 9y ago
You have a good point. But we don't know if the government agencies are actually preventing an even higher amount of deaths. Or we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing.
- thescriptkiddie 9y ago
  In all likelihood, we are sacrificing freedoms for nothing. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-ha... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/11/does_the_tsa_ever_catch_terrorists.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-stor... http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-failure/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/03/opinions/abend-tsa-screening-f...
- Bakary 9y ago
  Even if say the amount of casualties triple, that's still a rounding error compared to heart disease, suicide, car crashes, and a number of other sources of massive suffering and shortened lives.

Fnoord 9y ago

I'm from NL, and we had MH17 in 2014 (just for completion sake: the plane took off from Amsterdam, and crashed in Eastern Europe). More people died in that plane crash (298), than the amount of deaths from terrorism in that year or in 2015. The goal of terrorism is not merely killing people though. See also Revised Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism (2011) [1] [1] http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/schmid-terrorism-definition/html http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/vi...

aaron-lebo 9y ago
It's a very fascinating subject. At UT Dallas we have a couple of world class scholars on the topic. Some more reading material: * http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Waves-of-Modern-Terrorism.pdf http://international.ucla.edu/media/files/Rapoport-Four-Wave... Could we consider the terrorism in Europe part of a new wave? Note: it's thought that "modern" terrorism started with anarchist movements in the 1880s; Lenin's brother was executed for his involvement in one of the earliest groups. * http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitution-20091003.pdf http://www.utdallas.edu/~tms063000/website/TargetSubstitutio... Terrorists have shifted their targets over the years from hardened military targets to "softer" ones. It's easier (unfortunately) to run over 100 civilians with a lorry than it is to attack a military outpost. * http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%202003.pdf http://www.ir.rochelleterman.com/sites/default/files/pape%20... The "logic" behind suicide terrorism is unfortunately pretty sound. If you are in Palestine where human life is "cheap" due to environment and material resources are expensive, suicide bombing strikes groups like the West particularly hard where life is expensive and tech is "cheap", and the smartest most expensive missiles aren't nearly as smart as someone packed with explosives who is willing to die. The worst thing about all of this is that modern terrorism became possible because media enabled terror to reach farther than before: today's social media environment is like a best-case scenario for terrorists because their actions reach so damn far so quickly. Most attacks today are livestreamed. ISIS virtually has a media empire. Zuckerberg and Ev Williams probably weren't thinking about the issue much when they were building their their networks. What's even more striking is the fact that the refugee crisis is gonna keep this going for another generation or more. The US destabilized the Middle East by invading Iraq, which created a new wave of terrorism and refugees in Europe, and new reprisals by the West, which continues the cycle. This was one of bin Laden and al Qaeda's explicit goals.

dgut 9y ago

This ignores the detail that most terrorist plots today (in Europe that is) are prevented by a more sophisticated police (and no, I'm not referring to mass surveillance) and increasing security expenses. Remove that, and we would probably have the 70s and 80s levels if not more.

mistermann 9y ago
Is there evidence of this? I can think of numerous failsafe ways of going out and killing hundreds of people with zero chance of being detected prior to the fact. Terrorists may be uneducated, but are they dumb?