[MUSIC] Hi there. In the previous video I mentioned a number of issues that need our attention and I singled out fear of terrorism resilience and. The management of fear, prior, during or after a terrorism related incident. And in this video, we will explore these issues. Well, let me go back to the first week. And where we discuss the definition and essence of terrorism. And although there is no generally accepted definition of the term, there is agreement that it is an instrument. An instrument used by certain actors to achieve certain goals. But the important part is that they try to achieve these goals by spreading fear and anxiety through violent acts. And these violent acts are part of the tool, not the goal itself. And I also quoted Brian Jenkins, who in the 1970s said, terrorists like to see a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead. Or in other words, it's the images and reactions that count. How you and I react to a bomb attack or a shooting spree, of course, also influenced by the media, statements by politicians, et cetera. After the attacks on the United States on the 11th September 2001 there has been a drastic increase in investments in counter terrorism. Many intelligence organizations were given additional means and sometimes additional powers and legal tools to do their work. And there have been investments in other organizations as well actually any actor that somehow could contribute to prevent violent radicalization, extremism, terrorism, et cetera. And we also saw a number of new actors, new agencies, counter-terrorism coordinators, fusion centers. Well in the first five, six years after 9/11 many of these investments and measures were of a ad hoc nature including immediate reactions to incidents threats et cetera. And the emphasis was for good reasons on preventing terrorist attacks and especially one of the scale of 9/11. Well, fortunately, Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations did not manage to repeat an attack on that scale. And in fact, as we noted in the third week of this course, the number of attacks in the West was relatively low. And although each attack is one too many, and each victim is one too many, it remained very low. Again, at least in the West. Unfortunately, in other parts of the world, we did see an increase but not in the West. However, the impact of terrorism on societies remained very high. Terrorism was high on the political agenda and according to public opinion polls a lot of people feared terrorism. Thus, in that sense, terrorists got what they wanted, a lot of people watching even if they didn't manage to kill a lot of people. again, at least in the West. Well, this raises a fundamental question about the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measure and the effectiveness of all these investments. Although difficult to prove, one might argue that the enormous investments seem to have contributed to prevent terrorist incidents, and that's good news. But terrorism is not only about killing, it's also about fear. So, the second part is the fear part, and there we did see that despite all this investment, there was still a very high level of fear and attention for terrorism. Well, in week three, I gave the example from the Netherlands where one single terrorist killed somebody else, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. And he caused very high levels of fear in the Netherlands. Although there has been a lot of investments in the Netherlands at the same time one person was able to make us very scared about terrorism. Well these high levels of fear are bad for at least two reasons. First it can lead to distress and stereotyping of certain groups in society. And it can cause preference for tough action oriented reactions to terrorism, and two simple explanations for this phenomenon. Which is the second reason why fear should be considered to have a bad impact on society. Well, these immediate reactions and simple explanations for terrorism are often quite automatic responses by policy makers, politicians and the general public. It's almost like a reflect a reflex. Though understandable it can lead to sub-optimal policies and policy making. and even worse it can lead to overreactions a by the public by politicians and policy makers. And that, in turn, can lead to polarization of society, radicalization. Well, you might end up in a negative spiral in which fear for terrorism leads to more terrorism and some terrorists are very aware of that and play into that. One of the most prominent academic critics of a counter terrorism approach that leads to more fear and anxiety is the British sociologist Frank Furedi and he studied how western society finds it very difficult to deal with change and risk. And he has studied the reactions in the west in the United States in the United Kingdom to the events of 9/11. And he warns against what he calls a culture of fear. In his book Invitation to Terror he describes how it leads to fatalistic attitudes. Pessimism, vulnerability and fear of terrorism. And according to Furedi, such a attitude and such thinking produces a self-fulfilling prophecy an invitation to be terrorized and some terrorists know this. think for instance of the often used phrase, we love death more than you love life, which is aimed to scare a lot of us. Well, unfortunately, also politicians and policy makers produce slogans that sometimes make terrorists and terrorism bigger and scarier than it is. Slogans like the Global War on Terrorism or the Long War are not always very helpful. They sometimes betray confusion about the threat we face or the size of the threat we face, and according to Faraday it undermines our capacity to engage with it. And he says that it should be stress that the cultural fear entails a much more then just a fear of terrorism. It's part of a what others calls also have pointed at the emergence of a so called risk society which can actually better be translated as a risk avoidance society. it shows how the West in particular has become more vulnerable to accidents, disasters and violent incidents. Against this background I would like to make a plea for a change of attitude towards terrorism. to limit its impact especially in countries that are not often hit by terrorism, in which terrorism is not a daily threat. Well one of the terms, one of the ideas that has been put forward in the debate on the impact of terrorism on politics and societies is the concept of resilience. Well, this particular concept find its roots in civil engineering psychology and ecology. And, in short, it indicates the capacity of materials, persons or biotopes to resist sudden change or stress. as well as the capacity to recover and to return to its previous state the situation as before. But from the perspective of counter terrorism resistance and resilience may be regard, may be regarded important capacities to deal with the negative impact of terrorism, the fear of terrorism by individuals and societies as a whole. And a resilient society in my eyes is more able to cope and to recover from a terrorist attack, and terrorists who attack a resilient society will find it more difficult to have an impact. And to achieve their goals. Our knowledge of the importance and role of resilience in relation to terrorism and counter-terrorism is limited, but fortunately, in recent years, there has been more research into this field. And we've also seen a growing number of government reports that look into crisis communication after specific terrorist attacks. Well, this shows that at least in a number of countries, the governments are aware of the negative implications of overreactions. But unfortunately there are still too many cases of terrorism terrorist attacks where the authorities and other actors did not seem to pay much attention to fear management. In the past years, we have been confronted by a, a number of these examples of overreactions to terrorist attacks. think of the handling of the terrorist attack in Boston. The Boston Marathon bombing Many things went pretty well but in my eyes there was also an over reaction after the killing of three people and wounding of a lot of people by two perpetrators. And the same holds for the attack on the British soldier in Woolwich, London. I think in both cases the perpetrators got the attention they wanted and that in itself in my eyes is a good reason to do more to limit the impact of their deeds. Well with that in mind, and given the indirect and long-term costs of fear of terrorism it seems high time to focus. on communication and resilience as an integral part of our counter-terrorism policies. we not only limit need to limit the chance that terrorists will strike us but we also have to make sure that when they do, the impact of their deeds will be limited. In sum, in this video we discussed the impact of fear of terrorism on societies, and we argued why it is important to limit fear and to increase resilience to terrorism. In the next video, we'll look at fear impact management and ways to increase resilience of communities and societies.
