7. US Govt. 2001 definition
Premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetrated against
noncombatant* targets by subnational
groups or clandestine agents, usually
intended to influence an audience.
8. US Govt. 2001 definition
Or,
What looks, smells and kills like terrorism
is terrorism
9. United Nations definition
The United Nations ability to develop a
comprehensive strategy has been constrained by
the inability of Member States to agree on an
anti-terrorism convention including a definition of
terrorism.
11. Scholarly definitions
Schmid, provides a perfunctory definition:
“Terrorism is a politically motivated tactic
involving the threat or use of force or
violence in which the pursuit of publicity
plays a significant role.”
17. Daesh / ISIS
Daesh – middle eastern paramilitary
organisation
Defintive contemporary image of a terrorist
organisation
Al Qaeda Al Qaeda in Iraq ‘ISIS’
18. Warning: you may find this video disturbing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18lf1kpBgRk
19. Daesh – virality social media
Acts:
Killing civilians and military personnel
Destruction of artifacts (iconoclasm)
Destroying musical equipment
Professionalisation/purpose
20.
21. Daesh – musical instruments
Visually spectacular
Ties into existing rock music genre imagery
Semiotically and contextually unclear
Shared across all manner of online media
24. Daesh – actions and imagery
Daesh’s social media is highly redistributable
1) Lots of images
2) High production values
3) Evocative imagery
4) Newsworthy
5) Distributed across social media in the first
place
28. The ‘Witness’ - Agamben
The Witness is the person ‘next to’ the victim
The Witness must testify
– i.e. Aylan Kurdi, Rezi Berati
Daesh uses social media to produce material
that is testified to on social media
30. Manifesto
A document that calls people into radical
political, social, or artistic purposes
Pushes for fundamental change in society
31. Pre-Social Media
Dr. Ted Kaczynski “The Unabomber”
Industrial Society and Its Future
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – Columbine
High
AOL website hosting threats/agendas
Hitman for Hire
32. Elliot Rodger
22 year old ‘Men’s Rights’ activist
My Twisted World:
The Story of Elliot
Rodger
2014 Isla Vista
killings
33. Dylann Roof
21 year old white supremacist
lastrhodesian.com
-- also Facebook
2015 Charleston
Church Shootings
Rhodesia,
Apartheid,
Nazism
34. Anders Breivik
32 year old white supremacist, publicly fascist
2083: A European Declaration
of Independence
2011 Oslo & Utøya attacks
35. The ‘Hero’ – Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi
The Hero is the person who fights for a cause
So the Hero also needs to have a cause, but what
if one does not exist?
The Hero creates a cause in the form of the
manifesto, and distributes this online
In all cases the Hero must kill for their cause
37. The ‘hero’ destroys lives and creates
manifestos
The witness must observe and testify
Social media allows for wider attention &
distribution locally and globally.
Editor's Notes
Okay, so I’m going to talk about a number of things today, but just in the interests of not upsetting anyone, some of my talk is going to involve discussions of violence, specifically violence in the Middle east, and some discussion of violence against women and also racism.
I won’t show any deaths, but I understand if people wish to leave at any point.
Here we might understand the contemporary question that we’re looking at today.
We need a definition of terrorism
We need a timeline of social media
Then we can look at the issues.
For each of these sections, I’m going to bring up one theoretical figure – a sort of philosophical archetype which can be used to understand the situation. Maybe it helps you, maybe it doesn’t.
The parochial definition is subjective, relative, and postmodern
‘Terrorism’ is a relative position
A judgement of action determined by the speaker’s ideology.
For this definition, the term terrorist tells us more about the person that uses it than the person who it describes.
So under this first definition, we can see that terrorism is sometimes understood as just linguistic wordplay
Guy Fawkes, well-known for wanting to bomb parliament, is often a celebrated folk hero. Despite the saying remember remember the 5th of November, people tend to forget that he was an ardent monarchist who sought to eliminate democracy and return to a sovereign king.
The asterisk is in the original document, and defines the term noncombatant to mean anyone not actually engaged in combat at that time. So American military personnel, who are camped in the middle east, but not shooting someone, are considered non-combatants.
This definition is about how violence is used against individuals, and it ignores the existing material in the geneva convention.
Specifically it defines terrorism as people using violence to achieve political goals
However, in the reference to subnational groups, this excludes nation states
Nation states cannot, under this definition, commit terrorism.
This definition can largely be ignored. The US didn’t really seem to follow it, and started to use the term ‘terrorist regime’ to describe a number of states in the middle east, thus contradicting themselves
The US govt has held about four different definitions of terrorism at different times.
These definitions are generally ones that serve US interests, and are flexible enough that it allows the government to exercise violence against people. Generally implements a double standard
[Read out]
…
In other words, there is no agreed upon definition of terrorism within the United Nations.
This has been partly due to complications with regards to different states supporting national liberation and resistance movements, for instance Palestine in Israel, Ukraine in Russia, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and so on.
Also, there have been questions around whether financing terrorism should be considered an act of terrorism itself.
Schmid: hundreds of billions of dollars are spent fighting based on the word terrorism.
: 109 different definitions of terrorism circulating, 1930s-1980s
Terrorism gained an implicit anti-Muslim/anti-Arab component post-9/11
Massive change after World Trade Centre attacks, despite significant ‘home grown’ terrorism up to that point
Number of definitions were reduced, but no consensus
Schmid’s article is basically a 46 page definition
What I want to take away from this is the importance of the pursuit of publicity as a key element of terrorism.
A key component for many definitions of terrorism is about making people who haven’t been a target for an attack become aware of the acts, and change their behaviour.
Before 2001, social media was not that much of a thing. There were various services that made use of the internet to communicate socially, but these were generally not about profile building in the same way as current services are.
Also, I don’t want to imply that 9/11 caused this change, but rather that there is an interesting shift in politics and technology that occurred around the same time, in both cases driven as much by technological changes as political changes.
But also Social Media is about staking claims to things – espousing ideology and commitment to principles. It’s not just a space for argumentation, but a space of action, description, and testament.
So between 2000 and 2002 we see a big change in the nature of social media. At the same time we also see a big change in the idea of terrorism.
The idea, not the definition, but the idea of terrorism is now connotated with the idea of Muslim and Arab peoples
There’s a change here which is quite substantial.
But also Social Media is about staking claims to things – espousing ideology and commitment to principles. It’s not just a space for argumentation, but a space of action, description, and testament.
So between 2000 and 2002 we see a big change in the nature of social media. At the same time we also see a big change in the idea of terrorism.
The idea, not the definition, but the idea of terrorism is now connotated with the idea of Muslim and Arab peoples
There’s a change here which is quite substantial.
Daesh – middle eastern paramilitary organisation
ISIS = Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham
ISIL = Islamic State In the Levant
Islamic State in Syria and the Levant
The primary non-state actor in the Syrian war
The primary non-state actor in the Syrian war – essentially seeking statehood.
Assad – a horrible despot who tortures civilians, part of a dynasty of horrible dictators. Largely a self-interested despot who is out for himself
vs. ISIS, who are far more authoritarian and ideological, wanting to displace Assad, and replace him with an absolutist rule of law.
They execute/murder/kill people of all types. They kill Muslims and Christians, Arabic and non-Arabic people. They are probably going to wipe out the Yazidi people.
They are notionally muslim and arabic. Their main thing is recruitment.
Al Qaeda- “These guys are crazy – we want to distance ourselves from them.”
Aesthetics, how metal is this?
Visually spectacular
They’re not taking this with a shitty 2 megapixel camera. This is high-res imagery, which has probably been photoshopped afterwards
Ties into existing rock music genre imagery
Burning instruments is classic Jimmi Hendrix
Semiotically and contextually unclear
Is this stupid and moronic, or is it intelligent and effective
Shared across all manner of online media
Emotional
Attacks modern liberal sentiment about culture. People know that artworks have value. That there is something important in culture.
Iconoclastic
The destruction of icons is a behaviour common to many religious and political movements over the centuries. This act here is a type of territorial claim – they are emptying out their territory of competing cultural signifiers
Again, visually spectacular
I want to think about the fact that they have recorded the museum destruction. It is not simply about showing a pile of rubble at the end, it is about watching the act of destruction. You are watching the pot smash.
Why?
We can have a reason to explain this, but it all seems insufficient. On one hand, why bother? Why such a small statement? But again, these are irreplaceable, historical, magnificent. Extreme care has been given to these objects to keep them safe for millennia. It is tragic, and it shocks people, and that’s part of why people distribute the images, and it’s also part of why Daesh have succeed in in getting as much attention as they have.
Daesh’s social media is highly redistributable
Lots of images
No longer is it Osama bin Laden giving a speech declaiming Western usury
High production values
They’re using glossy CGI & high quality cameras in their releases
Evocative imagery
They’re destroying things that are valued by many people
These are connections to culture or the past
Worth mentioning that Western movements did this first.
The italian Futurists advocated this
The Fascists did this
The byzantine destruction of idols, etc
Newsworthy
Distributed across social media in the first place
This isn’t a news team from ABC doing this – this is Daesh itself reporting on its actions, because it knows people will watch and listen, because they’re scared or outraged
Source: https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/641677031760117760
These aren’t people stuck in a cave somewhere. These are people who are connected to the world.
They’re using quant metrics to set goals, and produce annual reports
They’re using powerpoint in training sessions.
Masiir Al Khawarij
The Witness is the person ‘next to’ the victim
The Witness must testify
i.e. Aylan Kurdi, Rezi Berati
People see these images, and then something compels many of us to recount or describe these events.
Daesh uses social media to produce material that is testified to on social media
We all become witnesses – both in observing the material, and in redistributing it.
Manifesto killers are individuals who have conducted mass killings, predominantly within the United States, that have a political ideology at the heart. Because their ideologies are either democratically unacceptable or essentially nonsensical, they write massive manifestos which they then distribute online.
It is notable that a large number of manifesto killers who are white and young, and personally document their actions as having racist or patriarchal motives.
Often calls its subjects into being
Addresses people as people to be convinced of the right-ness of the manifesto
Ted Kaczynski “The Unabomber”
Industrial Society and Its Future
35,000 word manifesto about modern society, declaiming the changes being brought about by computers
For 17 years – 1978-1995
he sent bombs from a remote cabin in the wilderness to various individuals across the US, killing three people, and injuring a further 23.
The bombs were used as blackmail against the Washington post and the New York Times. He claimed he would stop sending bombs if either of the papers published his manifesto.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – Columbine High
AOL website hosting threats/agendas
early online distribution of manifestos
Totally asocial.
Their claims were against people of all types, but specifically against people that didn’t recognise their elite personal qualities.
Hitman for Hire
video manifesto
A video for a school project that acted out a school shooting
22 year old ‘Men’s Rights’ activist
He posted online about a war on women, and how he wanted to subjugate them all. How they were innately inferior beings.
My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger
107,000 word manifesto. Distributed online over email and youtube
It included extreme racial prejudice, and hatred of women. He hated black people, referring to them as slaves, and talks about his aristocratic ancestors.
He repeatedly condemned all women for refusing to sleep with him.
He said that society should, quoting: “quarantine all [women] in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off... I would have an enormous tower built just for myself... and gleefully watch them all die."”
2014 Isla Vista killings
Killed six people, and injured a further fourteen. He used a knife, a number of guns, and a vehicle to harm and kill people. He committed suicide at the scene.
21 year old white supremacist
“Feared ‘the blacks’ are taking over”
Often frequented different white supremacist websites, and was pro-slavery, pro-hitler, pro-racism, specifically anti-black racism
lastrhodesian.com
-- website and Facebook
Dylann Roof was committed to the idea of Rhodesia, and created a site that idealised it as a perfect utopian period, that we had to return to. He wrote a manifesto, only about 2500 words, which committed to a wide range of racist ideologies
Naziism, antebellum american confederacy, apartheid, and so on. It seems that the ideologies that he committed to were less important than the racialised hatred he espoused.
2015 Charleston Church Shootings
Earlier this year, he conducted the 2015 Charleston church shootings, killing nine african american church-goers. He attended prayer with them, then gunned them down. He survived, and is in custody. During his questioning, he admitted to wanting to start a race war.
I want to also focus on the apartheid, rhodesia, hitler thing.
Rhodesia was a failed state. It only succeeded for as long as it did because it was a slave colony supported by outside wealth. It failed, and imploded, but because of this it no longer exists.
Apartheid failed. It was kicked in the guts by the African National Congress, as led by Nelson Mandela. Black South African people were given the right to vote, and in doing so, did away with some of the institutional structures of racism. Apartheid no longer exists.
The same goes for Nazi Germany. These are all political movements that died, but dreamed of a racist state. I just want to argue here that the fact that they’re no longer around means that it’s possible for people to dream about them as if they were utopias. If they were still around, then the reality of them wouldn’t accommodate for Roof’s racist dream
32 year old white supremacist, publicly fascist
Now 36 years old. Very active on white supremacist websites. Extensively discussed his hatred for the progressives, and was absolutely venomous against Muslim people.
2083: A European Declaration of Independence
His manifesto is extremely long. Over a thousand pages, or roughly 300 thousand words. Copies portions of the Unabomber’s manifesto, but instead of talking about ‘leftists and blacks’, Breivik talks about ‘Cultural Marxists and Muslims’. He self-described as Culturally Christian, but not religious. He sought a return to patriarchy, and was a fan of Jeremy Clarkson, until recently of Top Gear fame.
While he is a white supremacist, he is, like only a few others, pro-Israeli, pro-Zionist. As far as I can tell, this is due to his desire for Jewish people to leave Norway and head to Israel.
“You cannot defeat Islamization or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/ cultural Marxism.”
Breivik was also really in to World of Warcraft, which was apparently a way of making people think he had a dumb hobby. Instead he was writing his manifesto.
2011 Oslo & Utøya attacks
In 2011, he shot a large number of people, predominantly young white Norwegian teenagers, who were attending a summer camp on the Island of Utoya. He posed as a police officer to gain access to the island, and then proceed to shoot people, mainly aged between 17-19. Because the island was limited in size, the teenagers couldn’t flee. As a result, he killed nearly 80 people. The reason that he targeted the camp appears to be because it was organised by the Norwegian Labor Party, which he believed was partly responsible for cultural marxism.
So I want to stress that while Bifo uses the word ‘hero’, he means it in a critical, sarcastic way. At the end of the book on the hero figure, he writes “Why did I write such a horrible book?”
The Hero is the person who fights for a cause
If this is a common cause – such as the nation, or democracy, or a religion, then we have an easy way of understanding this.
So the Hero also needs to have a cause, but what if one does not exist?
The Hero needs to create a cause. Sometimes the cause is written down, some times it is ranted on a video, sometimes it is encoded in a game. In all cases, these documents are types of manifesto, which are published online. Sometimes on places like 4Chan, at other times on YouTube, and occasionally in webforums
The Hero creates a cause in the form of the manifesto, and distributes this online. These texts are pathological – they are maniacal, paranoid and fear-ridden. Often, they are explicitly racist, and in this, they are drawn from the implicit anti-Arab racism that exists in the social idea of the terrorist.
Bifo notes that many of the contemporary hero terrorists – the lone wolves – are often calling for a eugenicist approach to killing off large portions of the population often on the basis of race or sexual identity. He also notes that this approach is often espoused alongside a horrible interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as a commitment to an extremist atheism. And although I don’t like to say it, as an atheist, I believe that his diagnosis is correct. Despite what Richard Dawkins claims, there are extremist atheists.
The ‘hero’ destroys lives and creates manifestos
The witness must observe and testify
Social media hasn’t ‘constructed’ the manifesto killer, nor has it constructed the extremist political movement
But it has allowed for wider attention + distribution nationally, and globally.
