Terrorism has arguably been one of the defining factors of our age. It frequently makes headlines, threatening or attacking governments, private business and ordinary citizens. And in many parts of the world, it has been one of the most important threats to peace, security and stability. But what does this exactly mean? What is the nature of this threat? Who or what is threatened, how, by whom and why? What can be done about it or how can we at least limit the impact of terrorism and make sure that terrorists do not make headlines and manage to scare us? These are just a handful of questions that will be addressed in this course that consists of three parts. First it focuses on the essence of terrorism as an instrument to achieve certain goals, in addition to an exploration of this phenomenon and the difficulties in defining it. The second part provides an overview of the state of the art in (counter) terrorism studies. Since ‘9/11’ terrorism studies have grown exponentially, reflecting the rise in perceived threats. But what has academia come up with? What theories, assumptions and conventional wisdom has it produced that could be of help in understanding terrorism and dealing with it? The most interesting results are examined and compared with empirical evidence with the aim to either stress their importance or to debunk them as myths. The final part looks into the implications and possibilities for policy making. The course ends with a module specifically designed to address one of today's most topical issue: the foreign fighter phenomenon.
5.3 Fear and Resilience
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From the course by Universiteit Leiden
Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Comparing Theory and Practice
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From the lesson
Dealing with Terrorism and the Future
After having tested these assumptions, we will make up the balance sheet. What are some of the remaining “un- and underresearched” topics in (counter)terrorism studies? We will also explore the concepts of fear management and resilience. Finally, we will look into the future of terrorism: what can we expect in the years to come?
Meet the Instructors
Edwin BakkerProf. dr.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijndrs.
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
[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.
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