Transcript The Psychology of Terror The reconstruction of terrorism since 2000 Prof. Craig Jackson Head of Psychology Division BCU [email protected].

The Psychology of
Terror
The reconstruction of terrorism
since 2000
Prof. Craig Jackson
Head of Psychology Division
BCU
[email protected]
Brief and Partial History
“One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”
The attacks on September 11 confirmed that terrorism had acquired a new face
Terrorists were now engaged in a campaign of suicide and mass murder on a
huge scale
Previously it had been possible to believe that there were limits beyond which
even terrorists would not go
After the thousands of deaths on September 11, it was evident that at least one
group would stop at nothing.
Cyber Terrorism
Cheap
Most vulnerable point
£500 Million budget
History of UK Political Terror Attacks
February 1974
12 killed and 14 hurt when a bomb planted by the IRA blows up on a coach carrying
soldiers and families from Manchester to their base in Catterick
October-November 1974
IRA steps up its campaign, killing 28 people and injuring more than 200 in attacks on
British pubs in Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich, south-east London
March 1979
Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Airey Neave, a close friend of Conservative leader
Margaret Thatcher, is murdered when a car bomb planted by the Irish National
Liberation Army explodes as he drives up the exit ramp of the car park at the House of
Commons
July 1982
Two IRA bomb attacks on soldiers in London's Hyde Park and Regents Park kill 11
people and wound 50
History of UK Political Terror Attacks
December 1983
6 people - including 3 police officers - are killed and 90 are injured
when an IRA bomb explodes at London's Harrods department store
October 1984
IRA bomb attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where Tory party members are staying
during their annual conference. 5 people die and 34 are wounded
December 1988
Pan Am Boeing 747 crashes on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board
after a bomb explodes. 11 people in Lockerbie are also killed
September 1989
A bomb at the Royal Marines School of Music in Deal, Kent, kills 11 bandsmen and
wounds 22 others.
July 1990
Tory MP Ian Gow, opposed an Anglo-Irish agreement on Northern Ireland, killed by an
IRA bomb which exploded at his Sussex home.
History of UK Political Terror Attacks
April 1992
A huge car bomb outside the Baltic Exchange in London's
financial district kills three people and wounds 91
March 1993
Two children die when bombs explode in two litter bins in
Warrington, Cheshire. Jonathan Ball 3, and Tim Parry 12, are
killed as they walk through the shopping centre.
April 1993
London's financial district is again targeted as an IRA lorry bomb devastates the
Bishops gate area, killing 1 and wounding 44.
February 1996
An IRA ceasefire comes to a bloody end when a large bomb explodes in London's
Docklands area, killing 2 people and causing massive damage.
Non-Political UK Terror
April 1992:
Brief and Partial History
“One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter”
The attacks on September 11 confirmed that terrorism had acquired a new face
Terrorists were now engaged in a campaign of suicide and mass murder on a
huge scale
Previously it had been possible to believe that there were limits beyond which
even terrorists would not go
After the thousands of deaths on September 11, it was evident that at least one
group would stop at nothing.
Terrorist Mechanics
Brief and Partial History
The word 'terrorism' entered into European languages in the wake of the French
revolution of 1789
In the early revolutionary years, it was largely by violence that governments in
Paris tried to impose their radical new order on a reluctant citizenry
As a result, the first meaning of the word 'terrorism', as recorded by the
Académie Française in 1798, was 'system or rule of terror'.
This serves as a healthy reminder that terror is often at its bloodiest when used
by dictatorial governments against their own citizens
Brief and Partial History
Terrorism was not always like it is now
Its history is as much European as Middle Eastern,
and as much secular as religious
Far from being wilfully indiscriminate, it was often
pointedly discriminate
Yet there are some common threads that can be traced
through the history of terrorism
What happened on September 11 was a new twist in an old story of fascination
with political violence
Assassination
During the 19th Century terrorism underwent a fateful transformation
Associated today with non-governmental groups
1878-81 the small band of Russian revolutionaries of 'Narodnaya Volya' (the
people's will) used the word 'terrorist' proudly
They developed certain ideas that were to become the hallmark of
subsequent terrorism in many countries.
They believed in the targeted killing of the 'leaders of oppression'; they were
convinced that the developing technologies of the age - symbolized by
bombs and bullets - enabled them to strike directly and discriminately.
Narodnaya Volya
Assassination
Above all, they believed that the Tsarist system against which they were
fighting was fundamentally rotten
They propagated what has remained the common terrorist delusion that
violent acts would spark off revolution
Their efforts led to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 13 March 1881
That event failed completely to have the revolutionary effects of which the
terrorists had dreamed
Assassinations Continued
Terrorism continued for many decades to be associated primarily
with the assassination of political leaders and heads of state
This was symbolized by the killing of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by a
19-year-old Bosnian Serb student, Gavril Princip, in Sarajevo on 28 June
1914
The huge consequences of this event were not the ones that Princip and his
fellow members of 'Young Bosnia' had envisaged
Princip could not believe that the assassination had triggered the outbreak of
world war in 1914.
In general, the extensive practice of assassination in the 20th Century
seldom had the particular effects for which terrorists hoped.
Terrorism Evolves
In the half-century after the World War Two, terrorism broadened well beyond
assassination of political leaders and heads of state
In some European colonies, terrorist movements developed, often with two
distinct purposes.
1: to put pressure on the colonial powers (such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands) to
hasten their withdrawal.
2: to intimidate the indigenous population into supporting a particular group's claims to
leadership of the emerging post-colonial state.
India's achievement of independence in 1947 was mainly the result, not of
terrorism, but of the movement of non-violent civil disobedience led by Gandhi
In Malaya, communist terrorists launched a major campaign in 1948, but they
failed due to a mixture of determined British military opposition and a
programme of political reform leading to independence
Civilians as Targets
Terrorism did not end after the winding-up of the main European overseas
empires in the 1950s and 1960s. It continued in many regions.
In South-East Asia, Middle East and Latin America there were killings of
policemen and local officials, hostage-takings, hijackings of aircraft, and
bombings of buildings
In many actions, civilians became targets.
In some cases governments became involved in supporting terrorism, almost
invariably at arm's length so as to be deniable.
The causes espoused by terrorists encompassed not just revolutionary
socialism and nationalism, but also in a few cases religious doctrines. Law,
even the modest body of rules setting some limits in armed conflict between
states, could be ignored in a higher cause.
Civilians as Targets
How did certain terrorist movements come
to be associated with indiscriminate killings?
September 1970 - Palestinian terrorists hijacked
several large aircraft and blew them up on the
ground in Jordan but let the passengers free
Viewed by many with as much fascination as horror
September 1972, 11 Israelis were murdered in a Palestinian attack on Israeli
athletes at the Olympic Games at Munich
This event showed a determination to kill: the revulsion felt in many
countries was stronger than two years earlier
Justification
A justification offered by the perpetrators of these and many subsequent
terrorist actions in the Middle East was that the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza (which had begun in 1967) was an exercise of violence
against which counter-violence was legitimate.
The same was said in connection with the suicide bombings by which
Palestinians attacked Israel in 2001-2002.
In some of the suicide bombings there was a new element which had not
been evident in the Palestinian terrorism of 2 or 3 decades earlier: Islamic
religious extremism.
Beyond the State
In the 1990s, a new face of terrorism emerged.
Osama Bin Laden, son of a successful construction engineer
became leader of a small fanatical Islamic movement Al-Qaida
Its public statements were an odd mixture of religious extremism, contempt
for existing Arab regimes, hostility to US dominance, and insensitivity to the
effects of terrorist actions
Many of its leaders, having helped to free Afghanistan of Soviet occupation
in the 1980s, now developed the broader ambition of resisting western
dominance, especially in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt
In pursuit of these ambitions they killed hundreds in bombings of US
embassies in Africa in August 1998
New Kind of Terrorism
Here was a new kind of movement that had
a cause
a network, that was
not confined to any one state
whose adherents were willing to commit suicide if they could thereby
inflict carnage and destruction on their adversaries
Since their aims were vague and apocalyptic, there was little scope for any
kind of compromise or negotiation
United Nations
Main emphasis at the UN was on limited
practical measures
Series of 12 international conventions between 1963 and 1999, particular
terrorist actions, such as aircraft hijacking and diplomatic hostage-taking,
were prohibited
As the 1990s progressed, and concern about terrorism increased, the UN
General Assembly embarked on discussions about defining and outlawing
terrorism generally. Its Legal Committee issued a rough draft of a
convention, which:
Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror
in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political
purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of
a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that
may be used to justify them.
Terrorist Groups
In the past there have been strong disagreements
about whether certain movements were or were not
terrorist: e.g.
Jewish extremist group Irgun in Palestine in the 1940s
Viet Cong in South Vietnam from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s
Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s onwards
Famously, in 1987-88 the UK and US governments labelled the African
National Congress of South Africa 'terrorist': a questionable attribution even
at the time not because there had been no violence, but because the ANC's
use of violence had been discriminate and had constituted only a small part
of the ANC's overall strategy.
International Revulsion
The new face of terrorism as mass murder is significantly changing such
debates
The extremism of the September 11 attacks has led to a strong international
reaction. As a result, none of the 189 member states of the UN opposed the
USA's right to take military action in Afghanistan after the events of
September 11, and none has offered explicit support for Al-Qaida
By engaging in crimes against humanity, the new face of terrorism may have
contributed to its own eventual demise.
Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski
16 bombs
1978 - 1995
3 killed
23 injured
Freedom Club
Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski
Richard Reid
Attempted bombing on AA 63
22 Dec 2001
Shoe bomber
Beltway Sniper Attacks
Oct 2002
John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo
Washington DC snipers in blue Chevrolet Caprice
Demanded 1 Million USD to fund Islamic Training Camps
10 killed
3 critically injured
Terrorism as Routine News
ID Cards
CCTV Anti-terrorism
False Flag Terrorism
Nero burned Rome to blame the Christians A.D. 64
US provoked Mexican-American war 1846
USS Maine sinking 1898
Lusitania sinking 1915
Reichstag fire 1933
Hitler’s staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station 1939
The “surprise attack” at Pearl Harbor 1941
Bay of Pigs conspiracy 1961
Security Industries
Terrorism 2000
Al-Qaeda terrorist network carried out two separate attacks against the
United States in 2000 and 2001.
a suicide bombing of the U.S. naval destroyer USS Cole in the Yemenese port of
Aden on October 12, 2000, claimed the lives of 17 U.S. sailors.
a coordinated suicide attack using four hijacked U.S. commercial aircraft as
missiles on September 11, 2001, resulted in the deaths of 2,783 innocent people.
The September 11 attacks represent the most deadly and destructive terrorist
attack in history and claimed more lives than all previous acts of terrorism in
the United States combined.
The attack of September 11 represented the first successful act of international
terrorism carried out in the United States since the bombing of the World Trade
Centre in February 1993.
Eco Terrorism
Bilateral term
Anarcho Primitivism
Green Anarchism
Radical Environmentalism
Consumer Terrorism
Lone wolf operations
Monetary motives
Disgruntled employees / ex-employees
Incidents Vs. Preventions
Political Motivation
Anthrax Postal Campaign
Black Panthers
10 point programme
•We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities' education that teaches us our true
history and our role in the present day society.
•We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people.
•We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of colour, and all oppressed
people inside the United States.
•We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.
•We want full employment for our people.
•We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black Community.
•We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
•We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.
•We want freedom for all black and oppressed people now held in U. S. Federal, state, county, city and military prisons
and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.
•We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern
technology
FBI J Edgar Hoover
“the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,”
Oklahoma City Bomber – Hard Line Justice
White Supremacists
Pro-Life Extremists
Terrorist Activity by Target
Restriction of Freedom and Civil Liberties
Shoot to Kill Policy
Extreme powers to police
Ultimate deadly force
No prosecution
Further Reading
Terrorism and International Order by Lawrence Freedman et al. (Routledge and
Kegan Paul for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1986)
The Terrorists: From Tsarist Russia to the O.A.S by Roland Gaucher (Secker and
Warburg, 1968)
The Age of Terrorism by Walter Laqueur (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987)
Terrorism and the Liberal State (2nd edition) by Paul Wilkinson (Macmillan, 1986)
The Assassins by Bernard Lewis, Oxford University Press, April 1987
The Day that Shook the World by the BBC News Team (BBC Books, 2001)