Terrorist Violence Research Articles

The War After the War: A New History of Reconstruction

Historians have long focused on violence’s permeation of the postwar South. However, in The War After the War: A New History of Reconstruction, John Patrick Daly argues that the violence was so elemental to, so pervasive and organized in the postbellum South that it constituted a new war—a Southern Civil War. Reviewer Xiaoxiao Li writes that Daly’s “lively military history” reveals that White southerners waged a war of violent terror to control the former-Confederate states’ governments. Further, Daly finds resonances between the war after the war in the U.S. and the aftermath of other civil wars in world history.

Modeling Public Policy: Influences on Terrorism and Public Opinion

This article examines the effects of counterterrorism policy in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2016. We use time series analysis and series hazard models to examine the influence of policy on (a) incidents of terrorist violence and (b) citizen perceptions of the threat of terrorism. Results indicate that counterterrorism policy is, for the most part, not related to significant changes in Canada but does report significant results for public opinion and terrorist incidents in the United States and the United Kingdom, although these effects are temporally defined.

Where Terror Lies: Misrepresentation of Extremist Attitudes and Terrorist Attacks in the Sahel

ABSTRACT Researchers have commonly treated misrepresentations in survey responses as an impediment to the accurate measurement of a variable or construct of substantive importance. This study builds on that approach and considers whether misreporting bias regarding support for violent extremism—both under- and over-reporting—may then have consequences for how terrorist violence itself unfolds. Using data from nearly 4,000 respondents in 35 communes in Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger collected just prior to a recent wave of terrorist attacks, we find that communes where individuals under-report their true support for violent extremism—as measured with unobtrusive experimental methods—have a greater probability of experiencing subsequent Islamist attacks, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics of the commune, country-level proximity effects, and other time-varying factors. The findings raise important considerations regarding the measurement of extremist support, and they suggest a new tool for identifying communities potentially susceptible to terrorist violence.

Asylum Migration, Borders, and Terrorism in a Structural Gravity Model

In this article, we examine the impact of terrorist attacks on asylum-related migration flows. So far, the literature that examines the “push factors” such as terrorism that explain forced migration has omitted the fact that the vast majority of people forced to flee typically do so toward other locations within the country. The novel feature of our research is the estimation of a structural gravity equation that includes both international migration and internally displaced persons (IDP), a theoretically consistent framework that allows us to identify country-specific variables such as terror attacks. For that purpose, we use information on the number of asylum applications, the number of IDP, and the number of terrorist attacks in each country for a sample of 119 origin developing countries and 141 destination countries over 2009–2018. The empirical results reveal several interesting and policy-relevant traits. Firstly, forced migration abroad is still minimal compared to IDP, but globalization forces are pushing up the ratio. Secondly, terror violence has a positive and significant effect on asylum migration flows relative to the number of IDP. Thirdly, omitting internally displaced people biases downward the impact of terrorism on asylum applications. Fourthly, we observe regional heterogeneity in the effect of terrorism on asylum migration flows; in Latin America, terrorist attacks have a much larger impact on the number of asylum applications relative to IDP than in Asia or Africa.

Indonesian National Security Policy in Fighting Terrorism Among the Youth Generation

At the beginning of the 21st century, Indonesia was marked by terrorist attacks that caused victims, such as the Bali Bombings in 2002. The threat and violence of terrorism cannot be separated from the influence of international terrorist organizations that attack Indonesia through targeted attacks on vulnerable individuals or groups, more specifically the youth generation. The perpetrators of terrorism have taken advantage of the technological network of the online radicalization era. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 has inspired many patterns of human interaction from domestic interactions to global interactions. This study explains various ideas about implementing national security policies in countering terrorism among the youth generation with qualitative methods using literature analysis so that several tactical steps are found to counter terrorism through critical and open education, exemplary, eradicating injustice, transcendence, and international cooperation. An important finding in this study is the importance of the joint commitment of elements of society to implement Indonesia's national security policy through actions that have small dimensions in the school and household environment and large dimensions at the national level.

Crouching shahid, hidden jihad: mapping the online propaganda campaign of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham-affiliated Ebaa News Agency

ABSTRACT The primary objective of this paper is to map the online presence of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) media branch – Ebaa News Agency (ENA) – on the surface web. It also measures three years of propaganda output of the group and its viewership, as well as outlines the thematic landscape of its productions based on the content analysis of a sample. It argues that Ebaa’s messaging pattern constitutes a peculiar mixture of opposing priorities. It paid a great deal of attention to portraying itself as an independent news agency that has nothing to do with violent terrorist organizations (VEOs). In effect, its productions are easily available on the surface web. A closer look, however, proves that since 2017 ENA has been dedicated to supporting HTS’s radical Islamist agenda. This paper provides evidence of this. Moreover, Ebaa adopted a two-vector distribution strategy of its productions, composed of standalone websites and Telegram channels. In this context, the output of this media cell appears to be quite impressive. Between 2017 and 2020, it was capable of releasing more than 13,000 pieces of propaganda on its websites. At the same time, however, their viewership was lower than initially expected.

Hard choices, soft targets: Terror proscription and strategic targeting decisions of FTO

ABSTRACT Proscription lists are common counter-terror tools, yet their impact on terrorist violence is unclear. We find that proscription can be effective at constraining the violence of some types of groups, especially those that are young, secular, and without institutional support. However, proscription also can backfire from a counter-terrorist prospective, especially when applied to groups that are well-established, religious, and/or sponsored by states. Our analysis evaluates 534 terrorist groups, including sixty-six that were ultimately proscribed under the United States’ Foreign Terror Organization list. Unsurprisingly, we find that terrorist groups that attract proscription are more violent and better equipped to tap into international terror networks. While younger groups and nationalist groups are more vulnerable to proscription, older religious groups and those with state sponsors seem to be more violent after proscription. Proscription can be an effective tool for reducing terrorist attacks and lethality, but it is most effective against younger terror groups and states should exercise caution in its use as it may not have the desired effects on all types of groups. Las listas de proscripción son herramientas antiterroristas comunes; no obstante, su impacto sobre la violencia terrorista es poco claro. Observamos que la proscripción puede ser efectiva en la limitación de la violencia de algunos tipos de grupos, en especial de los grupos nuevos, seculares y que no reciben apoyo institucional. Sin embargo, la proscripción también puede resultar contraproducente desde una perspectiva antiterrorista, especialmente cuando se aplica a grupos sólidamente establecidos, religiosos o que cuentan con el patrocinio del Estado. Nuestro análisis evalúa 534 grupos terroristas, incluidos 66 que se proscribieron finalmente conforme a la lista de Organizaciones Terroristas Extranjeras de los Estados Unidos. Como era de esperarse, observamos que los grupos terroristas que suscitan la proscripción son más violentos y están mejor equipados para acceder a redes internacionales de terrorismo. Mientras que los grupos más nuevos y los nacionalistas son más vulnerables a la proscripción, los grupos religiosos más antiguos y aquellos que reciben el patrocinio del Estado parecen ser más violentos después de la proscripción. La proscripción puede ser una herramienta efectiva para reducir la letalidad y los ataques terroristas, pero es más efectiva contra los grupos terroristas más nuevos, y los Estados deberían aplicarla con precaución, ya que es posible que no tenga los efectos deseados en todos los tipos de grupos. Les listes de proscriptions sont des outils courants de lutte contre le terrorisme, mais leur impact sur la violence terroriste n’est pas clair. Nous constatons que la proscription peut être efficace pour limiter la violence de certains types de groupes, en particulier ceux qui sont jeunes, laïques et sans soutien institutionnel. Cependant, la proscription peut également se retourner contre elle dans une perspective antiterroriste, en particulier lorsqu’elle est appliquée à des groupes bien établis, religieux et/ou soutenus par des États. Notre analyze évalue 534 groupes terroristes, dont soixante-six qui ont en définitive été proscrits en vertu de la liste des organizations terroristes étrangères des États-Unis. Sans surprise, nous constatons que les groupes terroristes qui attirent la proscription sont plus violents et mieux équipés pour puiser dans les réseaux terroristes internationaux. Tandis que les groupes plus jeunes et les groupes nationalistes sont plus vulnérables à la proscription, les groupes religieux plus anciens et les groupes soutenus par un État semblent devenir plus violents suite à la proscription. La proscription peut être un outil efficace pour réduire les attaques terroristes et leur létalité, mais c’est contre les groupes terroristes plus jeunes qu’elle est la plus efficace et les États devraient faire preuve de prudence dans son utilization car elle peut ne pas avoir les effets souhaités sur tous les types de groupes.

A Is for African: The "Black Man" and Demonic Ground of The Scarlet Letter

A Is for African:The "Black Man" and Demonic Ground of The Scarlet Letter Seth Cosimini (bio) Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was published in a time of U.S. crisis in 1850; this essay, a study of the novel, arrives in another moment of crisis in the country, one that has demanded that literary scholars attempt to define a disciplinary identity and purpose within ongoing global and academic crises.1 Following a summer of national and international uprisings, English departments across the country spent the 2020–21 academic year issuing statements of commitments to antiracism, vows to combat structural anti-Blackness, and promises to create diversity taskforces and subcommittees. A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, English departments also issued statements expressing solidarity with Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders against Sinophobic hate crimes across the nation. Widespread demands by Indigenous activists for "Land Back" have also compelled English departments to think hard about what it means to "decolonize" syllabuses, departments, and universities, an especially confounding problem for those committed to Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang's statement that "decolonization is not a metaphor" at universities in the U.S. settler states that were created by dispossessing Indigenous peoples of their land.2 Such racial terror calls on literary scholars to consider what the place is of the study of literature and the English department within the history of material struggle. The new wave of statements voicing a commitment to antiracism suggest that the answer is not only not generally agreed on but also that the discipline is at a moment of crisis (of identity and futurity) for having not yet adequately answered the question. Although Maurice Lee's 2016 forum "The End of the Canon?" might suggest material limitations to the strategy of multicultural canon expansion in addition to what [End Page 129] scholars like Ronald Judy help us identify as its ideological limitations, the question of how U.S. literary critics, especially those who study the literary history of the U.S. settler colony, might approach their scholarship within these intersecting crises remains dynamically open.3 In such a moment, it seems appropriate to return to Toni Morrison's 1988 speech "Unspeakable Things Unspoken" in which she proposes an "examination and re-interpretation of the American canon" to search "for the ways in which the presence of Afro-Americans has shaped the choices, the language, the structure—the meaning of so much American literature. A search, in other words, for the ghost in the machine."4 Evaluating the progress made since Morrison first issued her call for this examination, Sharon P. Holland contends that despite the twinning of African American studies and American literature, a shift wherein the "study of African American literature and culture becomes the rubric for the study of American literature—never took place."5 This essay forwards a methodological shift that foregrounds the concerns of Black American writers and that enables the development of analyses of literary history that contextualize our current moment of material, institutional, and epistemological crises. A defining work of the U.S. literary canon and a study of the nation's colonial origins, The Scarlet Letter is a uniquely generative text for such a project. The meaning of Hester's A has long been a source of critical question—"Atlantic," "alchemy," "abolition," "Abenaki," "Anglo-Saxon," among others, have been proposed and used to advance a variety of interpretations of Hawthorne's romance.6 Following Morrison's study of the "Africanist presence" in American literature, this article takes this critical tradition in a new direction by positing that the scarlet A on Hester's chest stands for "African."7 In doing so, it seeks to both acknowledge and move beyond the ways African peoples and the category of Blackness have been materially and ideologically positioned in the Americas as a dangerous, violent, mysterious force: a position used to justify an anti-Black political, legal, economic, and social culture of extreme disciplinary terrorist violence and surveillance in service of supporting white supremacy.8 Reading the A as African focuses critical attention on how Hawthorne's text represents the cultural and material genesis of the United States in Puritan theocratic society as...

“No Pope Here”: Britain, the Vatican, the IRA, and the Papal Visit to Ireland, September 1979

AbstractIt is often assumed, particularly by outsiders, that the conflict in Northern Ireland—known euphemistically as “the Troubles”—in which some 3,600 people lost their lives, was an atavistic throwback to Europe's religious wars of earlier centuries. In 1979, by which time some 2,000 people had already been killed in the Troubles, Pope John Paul II proposed to pay a visit to Ireland and perhaps to cross the border into Ulster's sectarian cockpit. The idea provoked outrage from some Ulster Protestants and high anxiety for the British, concerned that the Pope might inadvertently inflame the situation or embarrass the British by raising difficult issues. But there were hopes, too, that an unequivocal condemnation of violence by the head of the Catholic Church might help to bring the conflict to an end. This article, based on extensive research in diplomatic archives, reveals deep divisions within the Catholic Church on the Irish question and points to the power and limitations of the British diplomatic reach into the Vatican. It reveals also, however, the powerlessness of prayer and pleadings in the face of terrorist violence.

Natural disasters, population displacement and health emergencies: multiple public health threats in Mozambique

In early 2019, following the 2015–2016 severe drought, the provinces of Sofala and Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, were hit by Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, respectively. These were the deadliest and most...

Terrorist Violence Religion and Power Since Late 20th Century

Terrorist Violence Religion and Power Since Late 20th Century

Countering Terrorist Narratives: Assessing the Efficacy and Mechanisms of Change in Counter-narrative Strategies

ABSTRACT This study presents the findings of a laboratory-based experiment testing hypothesised processes implicated in the prevention of violent radicalisation through counter-narratives. The central aims of the study were to contribute to counter-narrative theory, whilst highlighting the value of experimental methodologies that can be deployed in this area of scientific enquiry. Two counter-narrative strategies were evaluated against a dominant terrorist narrative. Considering the role of cognition in the processing of narrative-related information, participants’ (n = 150) Cognitive Reflection and Need for Cognition were measured before they were randomly assigned to a narrative that legitimized terrorist violence, one of two counter-narratives, or a control. Returning autonomy to the target by having them actively counter terrorist rhetoric themselves was found to be more effective than offering generic counter-narratives. Notwithstanding the challenges and limitations associated with measuring violent radicalization-related constructs, the findings of the experiment demonstrate the extent to which individuals vary in their susceptibility to violent, terrorist narratives, as well as attempts to counter them.

Time will tell: Defining violence in terrorism court cases

Calculating the potential risk of future terrorist violence is at the core of counter-terrorism practices. Particularly in court cases, this potential risk serves as legitimization for the preemptive criminalization of suspicious (financial) behaviour. This article argues that the preemptive temporality seen in such court cases is a practice of ‘sorting time’ and producing distinct legal definitions around future violence. Building on postcolonial and feminist scholarship on temporality, the article examines preemptive temporality as the material, embodied and multiple engagements with time that are enacted in terrorism court cases. Through the use of empirical data obtained from court observations, court judgements and interviews with legal practitioners, accounts of empirical temporalities are traced to illuminate other forms of violence that until now have been overshadowed by the dominant (and relatively unchallenged) perception of future terrorist threats that is enacted in the courtroom. In this way, the article makes two important contributions. First, it advances the theoretical debate on preemptive security through an examination of how legal and security practices co-produce temporality by defining future terrorist violence. Second, it contributes empirically by showing how temporality is constructed in multiple ways, paying specific attention to temporalities resisting dominating perceptions of future terrorist violence.

Class Warfare: Political Exclusion of the Poor and the Roots of Social-Revolutionary Terrorism, 1860-1950

ABSTRACT We examine the effect of class cleavages on terrorist activity by anarchist and leftist terrorist groups in 99 countries over the 1860–1950 period. We find that higher levels of political exclusion of the poor, our main measure of class conflict, were associated with higher levels of social-revolutionary terrorist activity during this time period. This finding is robust to an instrumental-variable approach and further robustness checks. We argue that class cleavages – in the form of the monopolization of political power by the rich – perpetuated and exacerbated the socio-economic ordeal of the poor, while simultaneously curtailing their means to effect relief in the ordinary political process. Consistent with our expectations, this provoked terrorist violence by groups whose ideological orientation highlighted concerns over class conflict, economic equality and the political participation of the poor. Indeed, our empirical analysis also shows that terrorist groups motivated by other ideologies (e.g. extreme nationalism) did not respond to political exclusion of the poor in the same manner, which further emphasizes the role of ideological inclinations in the terrorist response to class antagonisms.

Terrorism and Hybridity: Analysis of Terrorist by John Updike

This paper examines the concept of hybridity as portrayed in Terrorist. As seen from a postcolonial paradigm, the paper seeks to determine the nature of relationship that characterizes the contact between the perceived superior and inferior cultures, that is, the colonizer and the colonized. The paper argues that the colonizer, or the Occident, typically resist and challenge hybridity. The perception among the colonizers is that cultural fusion both dilutes and degrades their assertions of cultural superiority. A quest for cultural preservation and purity defines the main objective of the colonizers. The study contends that, terrorism violence as interpreted within this study represents an extreme measure adopted by the colonizers as a means of cultural preservation. As for the colonized, hybridity constitutes an effective anti-colonial strategy which entails undermining the notions of imperial cultural superiority. The paper concurs with HomiBhabha’s postulation that cultural intermixing as a centerpiece of hybridity, is an antithesis to the designs of the colonizer.

THE NORTH AFRICAN FACTOR IN EUROPEAN SECURITY

"Since 2000, there have been frequent outbreaks of violent terrorist incidents in many European countries, the reasons for which are both external reasons of the deteriorating global security situation and internal reasons of the development dilemma that European countries themselves are caught in. Many European countries suffered from financial crisis, economic development stagnated and social conflicts intensified. Of particular concern is that these terrorist incidents in European countries are closely linked to North African countries. the refugee flows since 2015 have exacerbated tensions between Europe and North Africa, putting European security at great risk. Europe and North Africa have been inextricably linked through time in terms of geographic location, historical processes and physical developments. At present, security concerns of European countries still exist, and if appropriate measures are not taken to address them, these concerns will not disappear on their own and may even continue to worsen if the global counterterrorism situation takes a turn for the worse or the situation in Libya remains intractable, and I will propose some solutions to this problem in this paper."

Leader Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Terrorist Violence

Whether or not nationalism fuels terrorist violence by ethnic groups is an important yet underexplored research question. This study offers a theoretical argument, empirical analysis and a case study. When political leaders such as presidents and prime ministers use nationalism to shore up legitimacy, they threaten the existence of disfavored ethnic groups. In turn, those groups are more likely to respond with terrorist attacks. The author tests this argument using a sample of 766 ethnic groups across 163 countries from 1970 to 2009. The multilevel mixed-effects negative binomial regression results provide evidence that leader nationalism is a significant driver of ethnic terrorism. The detrimental effect of nationalism remains the same after using a generalized method of moments method to account for possible reverse causality. A case study of Sinhalese nationalist leaders versus Tamil Tigers also supports the nationalism and terrorism nexus.

Impact of Route Choice on Pedestrian Casualties in Car Bomb Terrorist Attacks

Current situation of international violent terrorism is severe. Public places with high density crowd are more likely to be attacked by violent terrorists. Terrorist attacks such as car bombs are one of the very common and harmful types. “10•28” Beijing Golden Water Bridge Attack is a very typical example. Based on the case analysis of the Beijing Golden Water Bridge Attack, this paper established a simulation model of a car bomb terrorist attack on the basis of the social force model of the Anylogic software platform and conducted simulation experiments on the impact of route choice on pedestrian casualties in the car bomb violent terrorist attack. The simulation results show that: there is minimal damage to pedestrians under a specific route. These conclusions are of great practical significance for the placement and arrangement of safety protection facilities for large-scale event venues.

Anger, Anxiety, and Selective Exposure to Terrorist Violence

We examine the political consequence of exposure to widely available video content of terror violence. In a two-wave survey of Americans, we assess who is exposed to, and seeks out, terror-related video content in the first wave and then observe who decides to watch raw video footage of the Boston marathon terror attack in the second. We focus centrally on anxiety and anger as differing emotional reactions to the threat of terrorism and document their influence on exposure to terror violence. Anxiety generates avoidance of violent terror content whereas anger increases its consumption. Moreover, we find that anger increases exposure to violent terror content and in addition enhances support for punitive and retaliatory anti-terrorism policy. We discuss the implications of our findings for the broader dynamics of terrorist violence and the emotional basis of selective news exposure.

Epistemic modes in news production: How journalists manage ways of knowing in hybrid media events involving terrorist violence

In this article, we investigate the challenge of hybrid media events of terrorist violence for journalism and analyse how news organizations manage epistemic modes in such events. Epistemic modes refer to different ways of knowing, which are managed by newsrooms through journalistic and editorial practices. We draw from an empirical study of terrorism-related news production in the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). Our data consist of thematic interviews ( N = 33) with Yle journalists, producers, and content managers and newsroom observations (14 days) conducted at Yle. The study investigates the data through a grounded theory approach with the aim of creating a theoretical understanding of knowledge production in hybrid media events. The results are drawn from a qualitative content analysis and close reading of the interview data, with the other data sets informing the core analysis. The article identifies seven epistemic modes of relevance to news production in hybrid media events: not-knowing, description, rumoring, witnessing, emotion, analysing and perpetrating. The modes are analysed in relation to three dimensions of crisis reporting: immediate sense-making, ritualizing and transformation back to normalcy. The article finds that although particular epistemic modes are typical to certain dimensions of reporting hybrid, disruptive media events, both the modes and the dimensions also are also merged and intermixed. This condition together with growing amounts of problematic epistemic modes of rumoring, emotion and perpetrating challenge journalists’ epistemic authority in reporting hybrid media events involving terrorist violence.