Critical Terrorism Studies Neg

1NC
The war on terrorism is a discursive creation. Only by destabilizing the dominant narrative can we
hope to challenge the current practices which make violence and terrorism inevitable
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 181-183]
In each instance of symbolic generalisation, including the war on terrorism, the same discursive
practices can be observed: the creation of a sense of exceptional grievance and victim-hood; the
demonisation and dehumanisation of an enemy other; the manufacture of a catastrophic threat and danger
which demands immediate and forceful action; and the justification and legitimisation of pre-emptive (or
preventive) counter-violence. When these messages are repeated endlessly through the media, in university
lecture halls and churches, through laws, by institutional practices and in daily conversations - when society
is saturated with the same words over and over - ordinary people are persuaded to go to war and to stand by
when human rights are abused. The war on terrorism, like other kinds of political violence, is not a
natural or normal response to objective conditions or events; nor is it simply an inevitable response to
the actions of others. It is rather, a totalising discourse which has been deliberately, and in some senses,
artificially, created to make people who would otherwise be circumscribed by normal social codes of nonviolence, tolerance and human rights, complicit or even willing participants in a massive project of counterterrorist violence. It is a political and social construction, an edifice built on language and discursive
practice.
The current prominence of the war on terrorism -its domination of public political discourse - poses three
grave dangers to the functioning of political life and democratic society. At the most fundamental level, the
construction of large- scale political violence of any kind entails the destruction of the moral consensus and
the collapse of the moral community - and its replacement with discourses of victim-hood, hatred of the
other, fear and counter-violence. Once a society embraces these new political narratives, once it venerates
its grievances and truly hates and fears an enemy other, public and political morality is quickly lost in the
maze of national security expediencies. There is no starker illustration of western societys current moral
vacuity than the serious public debate about torturing terrorist suspects - not to mention its all-too-common
practice by America and its allies. This is the moral mathematics of Hiroshima, where 9-11 (the new
ground zero) represents Pearl Harbor. In this calcuation, if the torture/nuclear incineration of thousands of
evil terrorists/treacherous Japanese will save American lives by preventing another 9-11/Pearl Harbor, then
it is acceptable behaviour. As Slavenka Drakulic expresses it, once the concept of "otherness [End Page
181] takes root, the unimaginable becomes possible (Drakulic quoted in Neuffer 2001: 32). The once
unimaginable has in fact, become normal in our society and we see it all around: in the failure to demand
investigation into documented war crimes and atrocities committed by Coalition forces in Afghanistan and
Iraq; in the silence over the gross mistreatment of terrorist suspects, especially the legal minors (children)
or those who are interrogated and tortured for years and then released without charge; in the broadening
victimisation and discrimination against the Muslim/Arab other by the authorities and society at large; in
the often inhuman treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers; in the lack of protest at the policies of
assassination and extra-judicial killing, or the brutality of the occupation of Iraq; and in the widespread
acquiescence to the insidious erosion of long-held political and civil rights domestically.
The simple reason for this tacit complicity in the construction of military and structural violence is that
these kinds of all encompassing and smothering discourses destabilise the moral community and replace
non-violent political interaction with suspicion, fear, hatred, chauvinism and an impulse to defend violently
the imagined community. In addition, they automatically foreclose certain kinds of thought, simply
because the language with which to frame doubts or question official justifications no longer exists or is
inaccessible. While some individuals may initially feel unease at pictures of abused and humiliated
terrorist suspects at Camp X-Ray, of tortured Iraqi prisoners or dead Afghan civilians, they have no
language or frame of reference in which to articulate those doubts . As time goes by, and when the
discourse has been effectively absorbed by society, they may jettison such feelings altogether and consider
the harsh treatment of suspects or the collateral damage from bombing campaigns to be both justified and
morally acceptable. Certainly, this process of destabilising the moral codes of individuals has already taken
place among many in the armed forces. The pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners in April 2004 which sent

shockwaves around the world were in this regard, not unexpected; they were the direct consequence of a
discourse that constructs the enemy other as inhuman and evil. Most Americans still feel the war on
terrorism is going well; meanwhile, the moral uncertainty they feel is the direct result of the discourse of
counter- terrorism.
This is also an example of the well-known mimetic nature of violence - the instinctual psychological
tendency to respond to an act of violence with identical or greater violence, to mimic the attacker - which
has been a feature of virtually every war and counter-terrorist campaign. Townshend argues that, Probably
the biggest hazard inherent in reactions to terrorism is the impulse towards imitation (Townshend 2002:
114). History is replete with examples of just such mimetic counter-terrorist violence: Israels targeted
killings and assassinations mimic Palestinian attacks; in Northern Ireland the British security services
mimicked the IRA when it too began killing members of the para-militaries; the dirty wars [End Page
182] by the Argentine and Spanish governments mimicked those of their opponents; and during Reagans
war against terrorism, CIA officers in Beirut tortured suspects to death during interrogation and then
sponsored a car bomb aimed at Sheik Fadlallah in revenge for the Marine barracks bombing - it missed the
Sheik but killed 92 bystanders and injured more than 250 others (Wills 2003: 56, 87). Within the
atmosphere created by the present discourse of counter-terrorism it passes almost unnoticed that both sides
(the American administration and al Qaeda) are employing exactly the same discursive strategies - both
appeal to victim-hood and grievance, both enlist religion as supreme justification, both frame the struggle
as one of good versus evil, both demonise and dehumanise the other and both claim the mantle of a
just/holy war/jihad. The result of this discursive mirroring is predictable: the killing of civilians without
pity or remorse. whether by suicide bombers hoping to force the American military out of Iraq and Saudi
Arabia or by US helicopter gunships attacking insurgents on the streets of Fallujah.
There is no escape from the fact that in America and Britain discrimination and the abuse of human rights
has now been normalised and is considered an inevitable if regrettable part of the counter-terrorist effort,
including judicial abuse, torture and war crimes; we are now firmly ensconced in a dirty war on terrorism
both at home and abroad. This is a perilous position for a society supposedly built on the belief in human
dignity, human rights and democratic participation. It implies that we have retreated from a universal and
cosmopolitan vision of society to a particularistic, tribal vision; that we have bankrupted our moral vision
of universal human rights and social inclusion in favour of a dubious sense of national security. In the
past, such narrow communitarian formulations of political life have led to debilitating cycles of international violence, or at the very least, long periods of institutional and cultural racism against an enemy
within. The greatest danger of the current discourse is that we too become terrorists; and that as we
demonise, dehumanise and brutalise the enemy other it becomes a war of terrorisms, rather than a war
on terrorism.

Counter-terrorism discourse naturalizes state violence, and silences opposition to

the state
Jackson 9
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, May 18 2009, The ghosts of state terror: knowledge, politics and
terrorism studies, pp. 386-388)
In contrast to first-order critique, second-order critique involves the adoption of a critical stand- point
outside of the discourse. In this case, based on an understanding of discourse as socially productive or
constitutive, and fully cognisant of the knowledgepower nexus, a second-order critique attempts to expose
the political functions and ideological consequences of the particular forms of representation enunciated by
the discourse. In this case, we want to try and understand what some of the political effects and
consequences of the silences of state terrorism are. A number of such effects can be identified. First, the
discourse naturalises a particular understanding of what terrorism is, namely, a form of illegitimate nonstate violence. Such an understanding of terrorism functions to restrict the scholarly viewpoint to one set of
actors and to particular kinds of actions, and functions to distract and obscure other actors and actions
which should be named and studied as terrorism. It also narrows the possibilities for understanding
terrorism within alternative paradigms, such as from the perspective of gender terrorism (Sharlach 2008).
In other words, it has a restrictive and distorting effect within the field of knowledge which gives the

impression that terrorism studies is more of a narrow extension of counter-insurgency or national security
studies than an open and inclusive domain of research into all forms and aspects of terrorism.
Consequently, Silke (2001) concludes that terrorism studies is largely driven by policy concerns and
largely limited to government agendas (p. 2). In addition, the broader academic, social, and cultural
influence of terrorism studies (through the authority and legitimacy provided by terrorism experts to the
media and as policy advisers, for example), means that this restrictive viewpoint is diffused to the broader
society, which in turn generates its own ideological effects. Specifically, the distorted focus on non-state
terrorism functions to reify state perspectives and priorities, and reinforce a state-centric, problem-solving
paradigm of politics in which terrorism is viewed as an identifiable social or individual problem in need
of solving by the state, and not as a practice of state power, for example. From this perspective, it functions
to maintain the legitimacy of state uses of violence and delegitimise all forms of non-state violence (which
has its own ideological effects and is problematic in a number of obvious ways). This fundamental belief in
the instrumental rationality of political violence as an effective and legitimate tool of the state is open to a
great many criticisms, not least that it provides the normative basis from which non-state terrorist groups
frequently justify their own (often well-intentioned) violence (Oliverio and Lauderdale 2005, Burke 2008).
There is from this viewpoint an ethical imperative to try and undermine the widespread acceptance that
political violence is a mostly legitimate and effective option in resolving conflict for either state or nonstate actors. Political violence is in fact, a moral and physical disaster in the vast majority of cases. From an
ethical-normative perspective, such a restricted understanding of terrorism also functions to obscure and
silence the voices and perspectives of those who live in conditions of daily terror from the random and
arbitrary violence of their own governments, some of whom are supported by Western states. At the present
juncture, it also functions to silence the voices of those who experience Western policies directly, as in
those tortured in the war on terror, and indirectly, as in those suffering under Western-supported regimes
as a form of terrorism. That is, it deflects and diverts attention from the much greater state terrorism which
blights the lives of tens of millions of people around the world today. Related to these broader normative
and ideological effects, the treatment of state terrorism within the discourse the silences on it and the
narrow construction of state-sponsored terrorism also functions to position state terrorism (should it
even exist within the dominant framework) as seemingly less important than non-state terrorism, and as
confined to the actions that states take in support of non-state terrorism. This also distorts the field of
knowledge and political practice by suggesting that the sponsorship of Palestinian groups by Iran for
example, is an infinitely more serious and dangerous problem than the fact that millions of Colombians,
Uzbeks, Zimbabweans, and so on, are daily terrorised by death squads, state torture, and serious human
rights abuses. Within this discursive terrain, it can also function to provide legitimacy to Western policies
such as sanctions, coercive diplomacy, and pre-emptive war against politically determined state-sponsors
of terrorism which may be terroristic themselves, and which ignore the involvement in state-sponsorship
by Western states. From a political-normative viewpoint, the silence on state terrorism, and in particular the
argument of many terrorism scholars that state actions can never be defined as terrorism, actually
functions to furnish states with a rhetorical justification for using what may actually be terroristic forms of
violence against their opponents and citizens without fear of condemnation. In effect, it provides them with
greater leeway for applying terror-based forms of violence against civilians, a leeway exploited by many
states such as Israel, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, and others who try to intimidate groups with
the application of massive and disproportionate state violence. From this perspective, a discourse which
occludes and obscures the very possibility of state terrorism can be considered part of the conditions that
actually makes state terrorism possible. In addition, the silence on state terrorism within the field also
functions to undermine the political struggle of human rights activists against the use of terror by states by
disallowing the delegitimising power and resources that come from describing state actions as terrorism.
It is pertinent to note in this context that the worlds leading states have continually rejected any and all
attempts to legally define and proscribe a category of actions which would be called state terrorism,
arguing instead that such actions are already covered by other laws such as the laws of war (Becker 2006).
The silence on state terrorism has another political effect, namely, the way in which it has functioned, and
continues to function, to distract from and deny the long history of Western involvement in terrorism,
thereby constructing Western foreign policy as essentially benign rather than aimed at reifying existing
structures of power and domination in the international system, for example. That is, by preventing the
effective criticism of particular Western policies it works to maintain the dangerous myth of Western
exceptionalism. This sense of exceptionalism and the supportive discourse of terrorism studies permits
Western states and their allies to pursue a range of discrete political projects and partisan interests aimed at

maintaining international dominance. For example, by reinforcing the notion that non-state terrorism is a
much greater threat and problem than state terrorism and by obscuring the ways in which counterterrorism
can morph into state terrorism, the discourse functions to legitimise the current war on terror and its
associated policies of military intervention, extraordinary rendition, reinforcement of the national security
state, and the like. More specifically, the discourse can provide legitimacy to broader counter-insurgency or
counterterrorism programmes where the actual aims lie in the maintenance of a particular political
economic order such as is occurring in Colombia at present (Stokes 2006). Importantly, the silence on state
terrorism also functions to delegitimise all forms of violent counter-hegemonic or revolutionary struggle
(by maintaining the notion that state violence is automatically legitimate and all non-state violence is
inherently illegitimate), thereby maintaining the liberal international order and many oppressive
international power structures (also Duffield 2001). Lastly, the discourse can be used to selectively justify
particular projects of regime change,13 economic sanctions, military base expansion, military occupation,
military assistance for strategic partners, and the isolation of disapproved political movements such as
Hamas or Hezbollah. In the end, the discourse functions to permit the reification and extension of state
hegemony both internationally and domestically, and perhaps more importantly, the belief in the
instrumental rationality of violence as an effective tool of politics. Despite the intentions of terrorism
scholars therefore, who may feel that they engage in objective academic analysis of a clearly defined
phenomenon, the discourse actually serves a number of distinctly political purposes and has several
important ideological consequences for society.

Counter-terrorism paradigm supports structural state terror. Massively outweighs

non-state violence.
Jackson 9
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, May 18 2009, The ghosts of state terror: knowledge, politics and
terrorism studies, pp. 382)
A second important criticism that can be levelled at the field for upholding its silences on state terrorism is
that by any empirical measure, states have engaged in far more terrorism than non-state terrorists and their
terrorism has been far more serious and destructive. This is not surprising, as states possess far more
destructive power than non-state actors and the use of terrorism can become institutionalised in permanent
state structures. In addition, there is a great deal of evidence of Western state involvement in terrorism. As a
very crude comparison, non-state terrorism is responsible for between a few hundred and a few thousand
deaths annually over the entire world, depending upon which data set or measures are employed. By
contrast, states have killed, tortured, and intimidated hundreds of millions of people over the past century or
so (Rummel 1994, Sluka 200b), and a great many states continue to do so today in places like Colombia,
Haiti, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Tibet, North Korea,
Indonesia, the Philippines, Sudan, and elsewhere. Many of these states regularly employ extensive state
torture, extra-judicial killings, disappearances, collective punishments, and daily forms of violent
intimidation to terrorise opponents and enforce compliance to state rule; human rights groups such as
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch provide meticulous and continual documentation of these
violations. The point is that even if only a small fraction of these murders and acts of civilian-directed
violence can be identified analytically as acts of state terrorism, they would still vastly outnumber the
annual acts of non- state terrorism. Similarly, Western involvement in terrorism has a long but generally
ignored history, which includes: the extensive use of official terror by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal,
the US and other colonial powers as a form of governance and social control in numerous countries
throughout the colonial period;9 the terror bombings of civilians during the Second World War and other
campaigns; US and Western support and sanctuary for a range of right-wing insurgent groups during the
cold war such as anti-Castro groups, the Contras, Unita, the Mujahideen, and others groups which
regularly committed terrorist acts including planting car bombs in markets, kidnappings, assassinations,
civilian massacres, and blowing up civilian airliners;10 Israels extensive use of state terrorism in the form
of torture, extra-judicial assassination, and collective punishments against Palestinian populations in
surrounding countries and within the occupied territories; Israeli sponsorship of Christian militia groups in
Lebanon who engaged in numerous acts of terror during the 1980s, including the notorious Sabra and

Shatilla refugee camp massacres; US tolerance of Irish Republican terrorist activity in the US (Byman
2005, pp. 2127); US and Western support for systematic state terror by numerous right-wing regimes
across the world, perhaps most notoriously El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran often
under the cover of counterterrorism programmes (Herman 1982, Herman and OSullivan 1989, Gareau
2004); US use of terrorism during counter-insurgency operations such as Operation Phoenix in Vietnam,
and in counter-revolutionary campaigns in Latin America such as Operation Condor (McSherry 2002);
British support for Loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland (Sluka 2000c) and various other Islamist groups
in Libya and Bosnia, among others;11 Spanish state terror during the so-called dirty war against ETA
(Aretxaga 2000); French terror in Algeria and against Greenpeace in the Rainbow Warrior bombing; Italian
state sponsorship of right-wing terrorists who carried out so-called black flag operations, such as terrorist
bombings, designed to implicate left-wing groups from the late 1960s to the early 1980s; Western support
for Afghan (Gareau 2004, pp. 199200) and Somali warlords today; the provision of continuing sanctuary
to anti-Castro terrorists (Barker 2002, p. 75, Sanchez 2004), former Latin American state terrorists (Grann
2001), and various Asian anti-Communist terrorist groups12 in the US today; toleration and support for
Pakistan, despite its continued sponsorship of Kashmiri terrorist groups (Dell 2002, p. 37); continuing US
and Western support for Colombian state terrorism (Stokes 2004); the extensive use of, and sponsorship of,
torture and extraordinary rendition (Grey 2006) in the war on terror today; the toleration (or passive
sponsorship) of death squad activity in occupied Iraq today (Dreyfus 2005, Hersh 2005); among many
other examples. The most important point to note about this extensive list of examples is that even if we
were to restrict our understanding of terrorism to the actions typically employed by non-state actors and we
did not include broader forms of governance or state practices during war, we would still have to conclude
that states engage in a tremendous amount of terrorism, most of which is never subject to systematic
evaluation in the broader terrorism studies literature. Similarly, even by Western democratic measures and
understandings of state sponsorship of terrorism, it is clear that Western sponsorship of terrorism is as
long-running and extensive as many of the cases described in the US State Departments annual list of
offending nations.
Our alternative: Reject the framing counter-terrorism for coping with political violence. Only space
for new vocabularies and paradigms can prevent cycles of violence.
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 184-186]
A third danger is that the discursive straightjacket of the war on terrorism prevents clear and creative
thinking about alternative strategies and approaches; instead, it institutionalises an approach which has
already proved to be counter- productive and damaging to the very institutions and values America and its
allies are purportedly trying to protect. There is a genuine risk that the moral absolutism of the discourse
induces political amnesia about the failures and lessons from other counter-terrorist campaigns (see
Campbell 2002). For example, a clear lesson from other campaigns is that terrorism can never be defeated
by military force or coercion alone; it only eases when political compromise takes place on the issues that
instigated it. There are one or two exceptions to this: the Argentine military defeated a left-wing insurgency
through a ruthless policy of murder, disappearance, torture and hurling hundreds of people out of
helicopters over shark-infested waters. But this is perhaps the only such example, and in any case, it is a
price far too high to pay. At the very least, the discourse is actually misconceiving and misunderstanding
the nature of the [End Page 184] threat and the strategies required to deal with it - it is poor threat
assessment and poor mission definition, to use military parlance. By deliberately obfuscating the
underlying history and context of terrorism, the actual nature and causes of terrorism and the real
motivations and aims of the terrorists (who are most certainly not sacrificing their lives in suicidal attacks
simply for the sake of evil ), the search for more effective and long-term policy solutions is
cauterised. By insisting on a false ahistoricity -it is a new war, unlike any other - the possibility of
learning relevant lessons from the past is obliterated.
Given the intellectual cul-de-sac of the war on terrorism, it is not surprising that the Bush administrations
present policies are actually making terrorism worse and are intensifying those global conditions that
encourage, nurture and sustain endemic violence. There is not the space here to fully explain the effects
of current counter-terrorism policies on international relations and global violence: besides, many excellent
books have already been written on this subject (see Boggs 2003; Burbach and Clarke 2002; Callinicos
2003; Chomsky 2002; El Fadl 2002; Mahajan 2002, 2003; Sardar and Davies 2002; Scraton 2002). It will

suffice to summarise a few rather obvious points. First, the launch of a global war on terrorism has played
directly into the hands of the terrorists by giving them the recognition and attention they so desperately
sought; it dignifies their struggle (they are fighting a war against a superpower), rewards their
persistence (despite being only a small group of individuals, they have indelibly altered the worlds most
powerful countries and the conduct of international relations) and therefore encourages them to continue
with similar actions. As a consequence, it seems clear that the war on terrorism is already entrenching an
ever-deepening cycle of violence and counter-violence similar to that which has already occurred at a
micro-level in Israel, Chechnya, Kashmir, Colombia and Spain (to name a few), where neither side can win
decisively but no party is willing to abandon the military option. Second, in strategic terms, there are good
reasons for thinking that American actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have created a whole new generation of
terrorists and made terrorism an even greater international problem by scattering terrorist networks
across many more countries and further decentralising their operations. There is also little doubt that
these two wars have turned many moderate Muslims towards the extremist camp, fuelling antiAmericanism and providing potential terrorists with an even bigger sea in which to swim; they have also
provided a new focus for terrorist activity and new zones of lawlessness and chaos where terrorists can
operate more freely.
Other direct consequences of the war on terrorism which are also likely to increase terrorism in the future
include: the damage sustained to the institutions of international order and global governance, such as the
United Nations and the International Criminal Court (ICC); the undermining of the accepted laws of war
through the doctrine of pre-emptive (preventive) strikes against states harbouring terrorists and through the
failure to uphold the Geneva Conventions regarding [End Page 185] prisoners of war: the further
destabilisation of regions where internal conflicts have now been subsumed under the mantle of the war on
terrorism, such as Israel, Chechnya, Colombia, Kashmir and the Philippines; the support and aid provided
to dictatorships willing to join the war on terrorism; the misguided and poorly conceived support for
Israels recent policies; the continuation and expansion of American military bases into sensitive regions;
the new arms race to develop national missile defence and new generation nuclear weapons; the diversion
of resources from development aid and nation-building to military aid for allies; and the pursuit of oil
politics and geo-strategic objectives in the Middle East and Caspian basin under the cover of national
security. Every one of these policies increases the likelihood of future anti-American blowback ,
mounting regional violence and the intensification of global insecurity and injustice - the very conditions
which breed hopelessness and the resort to terror in the first place. At the very least, these policies are
obstacles to effective counter- terrorism. In one sense then, the war on terrorism is already being
lost; terrorists are far from being defeated and the world is no safer than it was before September 11, 2001.

Links

New Terrorism/Apocalyptic Terrorism

New terrorism discourse reproduces the flaws of conventional counter-terrorism.
Michael Stohl, 2008, Department of Communication at the University of California Santa Barbara, Critical
Studies on Terrorism 1:1, Old myths, new fantasies and the enduring realities of terrorism, page 12
The networked terrorist also forms part of the fantasy of the argument for so- called new terrorism.
The new terrorism is said to be more networked, ad hoc, lethal and dangerous than the old terrorism
(Tucker 2001). Hoffman (1998) argues that it has occurred because of the growth in the number of terrorist
groups motivated by a religious imperative, the proliferation of amateurs involved in terrorist acts, and the
increasing sophistication and operational competence of professional terrorists. These analyses suggest
that the new terrorism has been caused by the emergence of religious and millenarian terrorists, in
contrast to the political terrorists that dom- inated the old terrorism. The conclusion is that the new
terrorists are apocalyptic and not interested in coercive bargaining or direct political outcomes. Much
of the debate centres on conflicting evaluations of the continuing relevance of Brian Jenkinss observation
that terrorists want a lot of people watching not a lot of people dead (Jenkins 1975, p. 16). It is argued that
the decline in claims of responsibility for events is further evidence of the disinterest in political bargaining.
However, the evi- dence for such claims is questionable: in the ITERATE data, approximately one half
of the events since 1968 are unclaimed, non-attributed bombings. Writing in 2001, Tucker constructed a
lethality index for international terrorism employing official US State Department statistics. He concludes:
This table shows that international terrorism has literally become more lethal, whether meas- ured
over twelve year periods during the earliest and latest phases of modern international ter- rorism or in
selected five year increments over the last 31 years. The largest percentage increase in lethality occurred,
however, in the late 1970s. Since then, lethality has rested at a higher plateau rather than surged ahead.
(Tucker 2001, pp. 56) Also central to the argument of the new terrorism are the amateurs often
identified as the suicide terrorist. Robert Pape compiled a database of every suicide bombing and
attack around the globe from 1980 to 2003, 315 events in all. This included every episode in which at
least one terrorist killed himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks authorized
by a national government (like those by North Korean agents against South Korea). He argues that the
data indicate far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than
the new terrorism thesis would pre- dict (Pape 2003).2 What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks
actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to
withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider their homeland. Pape also argues
for a coercive bargaining model to understand suicide terrorism. Thus, as Spencer (2006) argues, the
distinction between old and new terrorism has clearly been over-done (p. 27). And yet, the new
terrorism argument has been used to justify many new counter-terrorism measures, many of which
involve increasing levels of force based on the unproven arguments and assumptions that the new
terrorists are not interested in coercive bargaining or creating fear in the target population, but
simply death and destruction.

WMD Terror link

Discourse of WMD terror is designed to lock in a condition of inevitable, imminent,
catastrophic dangerit isnt neutral, but politically designed to support extreme
counter-terror efforts which overstate the threat.
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 103-105]
Super-terrorism, rogue states and WMD
A third element of the discourse of danger that is a founding feature of the war on terrorism is its infusion with the
apocalyptic language of Armageddon. As mentioned earlier, an important meaning of the September 11, 2001 attacks was
their significance as the harbinger of a new age of terror. The discourse goes on to reconstruct them as the start of an
age of super-terrorism or catastrophic terrorism where terrorists use weapons of mass destruction to try and kill not
just thousands of innocent people. but millions. As Cheney contends, the threat of terrorism is supremely catastrophic:
The attack on our country forced us to come to grips with the possibility that the next time terrorists strike, they may well
be armed with more than just plane tickets and box cutters. The next time they might direct chemical agents or diseases at
our population, or attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon in one of our cities.
[N]o rational person can doubt that terrorists would use such weapons of mass murder the moment they are able to do so.
[W]e are dealing with terroristswho are willing to sacrifice their own lives in order to kill millions of others. (Cheney, 9
April, 2003)

This language is clearly and unambiguously designed to generate maximum fear. The visions presented are
apocalyptic, reflecting the most terrifying of Hollywood movies: the detonation of a nuclear bomb in a city, or the
release of a deadly [End Page 103] chemical or biological agent- resulting in millions dead (it is The Sum of All Fears,
12 Monkeys or Outbreak). It is important to note how the discourse employs the vision of a city devastated by a nuclear attack,
without openly acknowledging that the source of that vision is the only atomic attack on a city in history (Hiroshima) - committed by
America itself. The language constructs a terrifying fear while consigning the source of the fear to historical amnesia. As if this is not
enough to induce paralysing terror, Cheney then makes it seem a perfectly sane and reasonable fear to have; any rational person
should fear a nuclear holocaust.
This construction of a new world of unimaginable violence (that also seems to echo biblical visions of the last days) is
not a one-off example of over-zealous rhetoric; it is actually a common refrain among officials . For example,
Paul Wolfowitz reinforces the normalcy of the vision when he states: If they had the capability to kill millions of innocent civilians,
do any of us believe they would hesitate to do so? (Wolfowitz, 4 October, 2001). The form of this language is a rhetorical

challenge that traps the listener in its logic because the answer appears self-evident: after all, if terrorists
were willing to kill thousands in the WTC attacks, then logically they would kill more than this if they
could. The question and its context supply its own unequivocal answer and circumvent the emergence of
any alternative possibilities. In this way, it normalises the terror . Donald Rumsfeld reinforces the haunting vision.
Although his estimates of the number of casualties are much lower, they are catastrophic nonetheless: Lets assume that theres a
nuclear or a chemical or a biological attack on the United States a year from now. And that involves not thousands, but tens of
thousands of human beings (Rumsfeld, 24 October, 2001). Again, there is no reason given why we should contemplate
such an attack; the language simply assumes that such an imagining is reasonable . Finally, Powell constructs the
vision of a race against time: Even as I speak, terrorists are planning appalling crimes and trying to get their hands

on weapons of mass destruction (Powell, 30 April, 2003). This lends an aura of inevitability to the danger : the
plans are under way, only the means are missing . In this language we hear an echo of _the popular terrorist
movie script: the devilish plot is in motion and the heroes are racing against time to save the world .
The official discourse is literally saturated with the language of nuclear, chemical and biological terror . Even
without the direct and openly stated visions of horrifying death raining down on American cities, the frequency with which certain
kinds of words appear in official speeches would be sufficient to induce terror in itself. For example, apart from the ubiquitous term
weapons of mass destruction (made popular in part by its embarrassing absence during the Iraq war in March 2003), all of the
following terms appear frequently in official speeches and press conferences: weapons of mass terror (an even more terrifying
rhetorical relative of the more commonly known weapons of mass destruction), [End Page 104] chemical weapons, biological
weapons, nuclear weapons, crude nuclear weapons, radiological weapons, offensive bioweapons, chemical warfare agents,
radiological explosives, radiological devices, radiological dispersion devices, powdered anthrax, nerve gas, botulinum toxin,
ricin, mustard gas, sarin gas, smallpox, Ebola, plague, poisons and chemicals, dirty bombs, toxins, increasingly
advanced and lethal ballistic and cruise missiles, food pathogens - and many more. Clearly, the intention of the speakers is

to construct a consuming fear in their listeners, and given the vast array of such deadly weapons, it seems
perfectly reasonable to be afraid.
This discourse is not new. It actually makes use of an academic discourse of super-terrorism or catastrophic terrorism that
was popular well before September 11, 2001 (see for example, Carter et al. 1998; Falkenrath 2001; Freedman 2002; Laqueur 1999;

Schweitzer 1999; Stern 1999). A number

of academics and terrorism experts have warned of such attacks using

chemical, biological or nuclear weapons for decades, and although the WTC attacks did not involve any
weapons of mass destruction, it was still taken as a vindication of their warnings. Obviously, politicians invest
their own words with even greater authority if they cite recognised experts and respected academics .
However, as we have noted on numerous occasions, an alternative discourse was possible, not least because there is a
great deal of controversy over whether terrorists would seriously contemplate the use of such methods. A
number of academics have put forward reasons for thinking the vast majority of terrorists are unlikely to
ever use such weapons (see Jenkins 1998; Sprinzak 1998; Townshend 2002). Apart from the difficulties of obtaining
and using such weapons (they are notoriously unstable and unpredictable), there are real dangers that such
attacks would be counter-productive, would undermine support and distort the message and would probably
invite massive retaliation. Terrorists are rational actors and are acutely aware of these dangers . We
know from interviews with senior al Qaeda figures for example, that they rejected using WMD on September
11, 2001 for precisely these kinds of reasons. From this perspective, it is a massive (and deliberate) over- inflation
of the threat . In truth, even nation-states with all their resources would find it extremely difficult to
achieve what these terrorists are supposed to be capable of (the only country to have ever detonated an atomic weapon
in a city - the United States at Hiroshima -failed to kill millions.)

Imminent Threat/Timeframe
Terror threats are all hype- theyre generated by the government in order to justify
their counter-terrorism actions, real probabilities are incredibly low.
Frank 15 (Michael C Frank, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University,

Conjuring up the next attack: the future-orientedness of terror and the counterterrorist
imagination, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 8, Iss. 1 p.96-102, 2015)
What Jacques Derrida fails to mention in his discussion of the trauma of 9/11 is that the source of what
he describes as our terror before the future is not so much terrorism itself than it is the public discourse
on terrorism. When he observes that for the future and for always, the threat might be worse than any
other The threat of a chemical attack, no doubt, or bacteriological attack , but especially the threat of a
nuclear attack (2003, 97, emphases in original), Derrida seems to take these last three threats for granted.
The same applies to the following passage from philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj iek in another
much-cited early publication on 9/11: The true long-term threat is further acts of mass terror in comparison
with which the memory of the WTC collapse will pale acts that are less spectacular, but much more
horrifying. What about bacteriological warfare, what about the use of lethal gas, what about the prospect of
DNA terrorism (developing poisons which will affect only people who share a specific genome)? (2002,
36) It is worth remembering that neither of these concrete scenarios appeared in any declaration or
communiqu issued by al-Qaeda; the notion that the 11 September 2001 attacks would be followed by even
worse attacks involving weapons of mass destruction does not stem from terrorist propaganda. Rather,
these scenarios were publicised by the Bush administration in its attempt to justify an unprecedented
counterterrorist campaign which demanded severe sacrifices from the public, both at home (the USA
Patriot Act and its incursions into civil rights) and abroad (the various battlefields of the War on Terror).
Because such far-reaching measures require a large degree of consensus or at least acquiescence, the Bush
administration established a kind of public narrative with the aim of normalising its various actions
(Jackson 2005, 1). In his meticulous analysis of speeches by US officials from the day of the 11 September
attacks to the first year of the Iraq War, political scientist Richard Jackson (2005) has demonstrated how
successfully this self-legitimising narrative (or discourse) was implemented. The narrative was so
successful, in fact, that even otherwise critical commentators such as Derrida and iek repeated parts of it
without apparently noticing it. The threat of WMD is an essential element of the discourse of the War on
Terror. As the US government set out to fight terrorism by means of security and military measures, it
released statements that were better suited to increase than to diminish public concern about further
violence. Although President Bush spoke of a War on Terror, this did not mean that his administration
intended to tackle the problem of terror itself. On the contrary, the fear of a further attack became an
integral part of counterterrorist policies. At the end of January 2002, US Secretary of State Donald
Rumsfeld addressed a military audience at the National Defense University in Washington DC. His speech
was devoted to the need for transformation in the US Military in light of the current War on Terror. As he
argued, America was now facing an entirely different threat to its security than during the Cold War, one
that was not nearly as predictable: Who would have imagined only a few months ago that terrorists
would take commercial airliners, turn them into missiles and use them to strike the Pentagon and the World
Trade Towers, killing thousands? But it happened. And let there be no doubt, in the years ahead, it is likely
that we will be surprised again by new adversaries who may also strike in unexpected ways. And as they
gain access to weapons of increasing power and let there be no doubt but that they are these attacks will
grow vastly more deadly than those we suffered several months ago. Our challenge in this new century is a
difficult one. Its really to prepare to defend our nation against the unknown, the uncertain and what we
have to understand will be the unexpected. (Rumsfeld 2002) For that reason, Rumsfeld went on to assert
that the Armed Forces could no longer rely on policies developed in the context of earlier conflicts. The
purpose of his speech was to justify the so-called defence strategy of preemptive attack the tactic, that is,
of striking militarily an adversary who poses an imminent threat before the adversary can strike first
(Wittkopf, Jones, and Kegley 2007, 12). Immediately following the cited passage, Rumsfeld cautioned:
[W]e have to put aside the comfortable ways of thinking and planning, take risks and try new things so
that we can prepare our forces to deter and defeat adversaries that have not yet emerged to challenges
(2002). One would assume that this strategy of neutralising a potential threat even before that threat has
materialised requires exact knowledge of the latent menace. What is immediately striking about Rumsfelds

speech, however, is that it paints the picture of a war against the unknown. Rumsfeld emphasises that
there is no way of telling who (new adversaries) will strike the US when (we will be surprised again)
and how (in unexpected ways). The only thing that Americans can be sure of, according to the Secretary
of State, is that the new enemy will strike again and that the next attack is bound to be much worse than
even the worst terrorist incident in history. There can be no doubt about that, even if all the rest is
uncertain. In this way, a felt certainty about the world is used to compensate for the absence of actual
observable facts, which goes to show that [g]ut feeling was proudly and publicly embraced by Bush as his
peak decision making process in the lead-up to the war in Iraq and beyond (Massumi 2010, 55). Yet, it
would be too easy to dismiss this logic as an idiosyncrasy of the Bush administration, or of the neoconservative think tanks that provided its speechwriters with key words and concepts. For very similar
arguments can also be found on the other of the Atlantic. Ten months after Rumsfelds lecture, the UK
Home Office gave its own demonstration of what if reasoning in the name of counterterrorism. In
November 2002, it issued the following statement, signed by Home Secretary David Blunkett of the Labour
party: We cannot be sure of when or where or how terrorists will strike. But we can be sure that they will
try. They may attempt to use more familiar terrorist methods, such as leaving parcel or vehicle bombs in
public places, or hijacking passenger aircraft. However, they may try something different, perhaps as
surprising as the attacks on the World Trade Center, or the theatre siege in Moscow. Maybe they will try to
develop a so-called dirty bomb, or some kind of poison gas, maybe they will try to use boats or trains rather
than planes. The bottom line is that we simply cannot be sure. (Home Office, cited in BBC News 2002a)
Only minutes after it had been released, this statement was withdrawn and replaced with a toned-down
(BBC News 2002c) version, in which the passage speculating about the possible use of chemical or nuclear
weapons was deleted. The new version stated in more general terms that todays breed of terrorist is
looking for ever more dramatic and devastating effect (BBC News 2002b). As Blunkett explained, the
release of the original version was due to a simple clerical error (cited in BBC News 2002c). His
statement, he added, had been made with due regard to the risk of creating unjustified panic and disruption
which would itself give the terrorists the victory they crave (cited in BBC News 2002c). Although the
Home Secretary thus acknowledged that unspecified warnings about terrorism can be productive of terror
(and although he, somewhat revealingly, characterised such terror as unjustified), Blunkett insisted,
nonetheless, that the key message of the statement concerning the need to be vigilant was not affected by
the changes (see BBC News 2002c). It is apparent in both versions of the press release that its primary
function was to persuade the electorate of the necessity of the drastic measures taken by the Blair
administration in the aftermath of 9/11. [W]e have a duty to ensure we give priority to security, the
revised version declares: For government, it means continuing and developing the broad and vigorous
programme of protective security work that we are already pursuing (Home Office, cited in BBC News
2002b). The logic underpinning that statement seems to be that if a constant level of anxiety is maintained
in the public, potentially unpopular policies are more likely to be accepted. Like Rumsfelds speech, the
UK Home Office statement combines an assertion of absolute certainty with an admission of complete
uncertainty: we can be sure that after having attacked the United States one year ago, the terrorists will
attack once more, but [w]e cannot be sure when or where or how they will do it. This lack of concrete
evidence seems to suggest that there is nothing else to say on the matter. Instead of ending there, however,
the statement switches to a non-factual register, filling the gap in knowledge with speculative assumptions:
in their choice of targets and weapons, future attacks may resemble those of the past, but they may also
involve the use of poison gas or a dirty bomb. In the context of the whole document, these conjectures can
easily appear like statements of fact; after all, they stem from government officials who (one would like to
believe) have access to expert knowledge and intelligence resources. Yet, the employment of the
subjunctive is clearly signalled by the repeated use of the modal may, which explicitly indicates the
hypothetical nature of the corresponding passage. After having thus morphed into a narrative of fantasy
(Furedi 2007, 11), the text moves back to the indicative mood, albeit only to reiterate that we simply
cannot be sure, which completely undermines the previous specifications about nuclear or chemical
weapons. As in Rumsfelds speech, very little factual information is provided. The warning boils down to a
simple Even without any indications of an impending attack, we are strongly convinced that terrorism
continues to pose a serious threat to our security. This is followed by statements to the effect that While
we do not know any details about this threat, various scenarios are conceivable. This particular style of
argument is not restricted to texts by ministers or other government officials. It is also common among
intelligence officers. On 11 February 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller gave testimony to the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence. After having listed the successes of the War on Terrorism up to this

point (the main topic and title of his speech), he informed the American public that [t]he greatest threat is
from al-Qaeda cells in the US that we have not yet identified (Mueller 2003). This statement is
remarkable. Even while admitting that the ontological status of the danger is far from clear the
unidentified domestic terrorists may or may not exist it is surprisingly adamant about the urgency of that
danger. The use of the superlative suggests that the unknown (and as yet hypothetical) sleeper cells are
more dangerous than any known enemy. According to the counterterrorist logic, the fact that federal
agencies do not know whether potential bombers are present in the country does not diminish but increase
the threat, because it makes it incalculable, regardless of statistical probability. At another meeting of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence two years later, Mueller underlined that: while we are proud of
our accomplishments this year and the additional insight we have gained into al-Qaidas activity, I remain
very concerned about what we are not seeing (2005). Muellers counterpart at the CIA, Director of Central
Intelligence Porter J. Goss, was also present at the meeting. Not content with enumerating what his agency
did not know or failed to see, he decided to list possible future scenarios: It may be only a matter of time
before al-Qaida or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons
(CBRN) (Goss 2005). Once again, the subjunctive mood was employed to indicate that Goss lacked
concrete evidence and that his statement was no more than a conjecture (It may be ). Goss added,
however: We know from experience that al-Qaida is a patient, persistent, imaginative, adaptive and
dangerous opponent (2005). When terrorists are imaginative, counterterrorism has to be even more
imaginative. True to this principle, Robert Mueller gave a small insight into the FBIs attempts at imagining
possible terrorist schemes. In his February 2003 speech, he stressed that it would be wrong to assume that
al-Qaeda will rely only on tried and true methods of attack. Rather, several other possibilities were
plausible: Multiple small-scale attacks against soft targets such as banks, shopping malls, supermarkets,
apartment buildings, schools and universities, churches, and places of recreation and entertainment would
be easier to execute and would minimize the need to communicate with the central leadership, lowering the
risks of detection. Poisoning food and water supplies also may be an attractive tactic in the future.
Although technologically challenging, a successful attempt might cause thousands of casualties, sow fear
among the US population, and undermine public confidence in the food and water supply. Cyberterrorism
is also clearly an emerging threat. Terrorist groups are increasingly computer savvy, and some probably are
acquiring the ability to use cyber attacks to inflict isolated and brief disruptions of US infrastructure. Due to
the prevalence of publicly available hacker tools, many of these groups probably already have the
capability to launch denial-of-service and other nuisance attacks against Internet-connected systems.
(Mueller 2003) Would be, may be, probably All of these examples confirm Frank Furedis
observation that after 11 September 2001, the limitations of counterterrorist intelligence were frequently
described as a problem of imagination rather than of information (2007, xxiv). In the words of social
anthropologist Joseba Zulaika, the what-if logic of counterterrorist discourse is part of a politics whose
reality is to be decided by the experience of what could happen in the future (the imagined horrors of a
nuclear attack on a U.S. city) as much as by what is happening in the present; by alleged plots as much as
by real ones; by what does not happen as by what does (2009, 205). By repeatedly summoning the spectre
of the next, even more terrible attack, counterterrorism officials make a substantial contribution to the
terrorists intended effect. Moreover, and equally problematically, they immunise their discourse against the
corrective of empirical evidence to the point of divorcing the discourse from (the present) reality: If the
threat does not materialize, it still always would have if it could have. If the threat does materialize, then it
just goes to show that the future potential for what happened had really been there in the past. In this case,
the preemptive action is retroactively legitimated by future actual facts. (Massumi 2010, 56) These effects
are additionally reinforced by contributions from scientists, academics, and journalists acting as terrorism
pundits. In June 2005, shortly before the coordinated suicide bombings on three London underground trains
and a bus, the British public was presented with the following fictional scenario3: It is 12.45pm on
Tuesday, 23 December 2004. Oxford Street, London is teeming with Christmas shoppers and office
workers going to lunch. A post office van, later found to have been stolen, pulls up at the kerb. People
ignore the van as the driver walks off. Soon the van explodes in a fireball. The anti-terrorist police first
assume that the explosion in Oxford Street was a usual terrorist bomb, probably exploded by the real IRA.
It is now clear that it was, in fact, a radiological dispersal device, commonly called a dirty bomb, the most
primitive terrorist nuclear device. Forensic scientists soon found that Semtex and thermite, an incendiary
material, surrounded the radioactive material. People in and around Oxford Street when the bomb went
off pick up [sic] radioactivity on their clothes and bodies and carry it home with them, contaminating public
transport on their way. Vehicles travelling away for [sic] the scene also pick up radioactivity and spread it.

The authorities decide that a very large area will have to be evacuated and decontaminated. This operation
will cost many millions of pounds and take months to achieve. The social disruption and economic cost
resulting from the dirty bomb is exactly the point of the terrorist attack. (Barnaby 2005, 34) If readers had
to guess the source of this excerpt, many would probably assume that it is the outline for a potential disaster
movie set in London, or possibly a novel (albeit one of seemingly limited literary merit), but the excerpt is,
in fact, entirely unrelated to the realm of literary or cinematic entertainment. Its author is the British nuclear
physicist, military technology expert, and defence analyst Dr Frank Barnaby, who wrote the above-quoted
paper in his capacity as Nuclear Issues Consultant for the Oxford Research Group. Published in June 2005,
Barnabys paper sets out to enlighten readers about the likelihood and potential impact of terrorist attacks
using either a radiological dispersal device, also known as a dirty bomb, or primitive nuclear weapons.
The paper opens with the observation that [b]oth Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W.
Bush have warned us that nuclear terrorism is a, if not the, major threat facing the international community
today (Barnaby 2005, 1). To which Barnaby adds: The public has the right to know the risks they face
from nuclear terrorism and the consequences of a terrorist attack (2005, 1). After such an introduction, one
would expect Barnaby to counteract the emotionally overheated rhetoric of the War on Terror and its
obsessive reference to weapons of mass destruction with a sober and well-balanced analysis that weighs the
risks that terrorists may be able to procure nuclear materials or weapons against the difficulties of properly
manufacturing, storing, maintaining, transporting, and deploying such bombs. Instead, Barnaby offers
what-if scenarios that are strongly reminiscent of the political statements and documents analysed above.
[T]he next rung on the terrorist ladder of escalation of violence may well be the fabrication and use of a
nuclear weapon (Barnaby 2005, 2), he writes in the characteristic style of post- 9/11 counterterrorist
discourse. Barnaby, too, uses the subjunctive mood to indicate that what he describes are mere possibilities,
things that may or may not happen in the future. Yet, he repeatedly insinuates that the use of weapons of
mass destruction by terrorist groups is more than an eventuality. In a particularly revealing phrase, he
asserts that [t]errorists should be able to acquire radioactive material (Barnaby 2005, 6, emphasis added).
In an earlier report for the Oxford Research Group, published one month after the 11 September 2001
attacks, Barnaby said the same with regard to chemical or biological weapons: as things stand, and unless
the nations of the world make a collaborative effort to secure materials that could be used to develop
weapons of mass destruction, terrorists can easily access them. This may be the reason for Barnabys
strange choice of title, which is not explained in his essay: Waiting for Terror (Barnaby 2001). This is
exactly the formulation used by Joseba Zulaika to describe the dominant political certainty of the post9/11 years (2009, 12). Zulaika observes that the notion that major terrorist incidents are inevitable entails a
surrender to a passive temporality that is simply inevitable Fate, rather than an active temporality emerging
from a new political will to determine the actual reasons, sources, and solutions to the sudden violence
(2009, 4). Political scientist John Mueller noted in 2006 that at present rates, the lifetime probability that a
resident of the globe will die at the hands of international terrorists is 1 in 80,000, about the same likelihood
that one would die over the same interval from the impact on the earth of an especially ill-directed asteroid
or comet (Mueller 2006, 2). This fact notwithstanding, the nebulous (and therefore all the more sinister)
entity of terrorism was built up into an acute danger, requiring extraordinary measures and large-scale
resources. In June 2002, the White House issued its plan for a new government structure to protect against
invisible enemies (Bush 2002, 1). This new structure, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
would become operational in January 2003 after the passing of the Homeland Security Bill. It soon became
the nations third-largest Cabinet department with more than 180,000 employees (only the Departments of
Defense and Veterans Affairs have larger workforces) and a yearly budget of over 40 billion dollars
(Daalgard- Nielsen 2005, 39). As the earlier-cited speech by Donald Rumsfeld showed, counterterrorist
discourse often argues that extraordinary circumstances demand extraordinary measures. But the argument
can also be reversed: extraordinary measures (such as the establishment of a costly new government
structure) demand extraordinary circumstances, which is why a text released by the White House in June
2002 postulated that [t]errorists today can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon
(Bush 2002, 8). Accompanying a detailed outline of the proposed new department, this statement was
obviously designed to justify the expenditure of tax money for the DHS. The supposition that terrorists are
able to attack with virtually any weapon is symptomatic of the rhetoric under investigation here.
Although the word virtually is used in the sense of practically or almost, it also indicates the peculiar
nature of the threat a threat that is virtual rather than concrete. By legitimising political actions on the
basis of fictional scenarios the phrase any weapon insinuates that terrorists already have access to
chemical, biological, or even nuclear arsenals counterterrorism blurs the boundary between the imaginary

and the real. At the same time, it greatly magnifies the threat of terrorism. Although its proclaimed aim is to
prevent terrorist attacks from occurring (the top priority and, indeed, the very raison dtre of the DHS), it
paradoxically postulates that such attacks are inevitable. In his 2009 book Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy, Joseba Zulaika offers the following perspective on the It is not if, but when mantra of
counterterrorism: On the one hand, the real success of counterterrorism is when a foreseeable attack does
not happen. Thus counterterrorists can legitimately claim each day in which another 9/11 does not take
place as a success; these non-events prove they are right in their premises. Yet, on the other hand, if and
when an attack does occur, then counterterrorist thinking can also say we told you so and argue that they
were always right in their predictions. In short, whether there are terrorist attacks or not, counterterrorist
knowledge pretends to be always right. (Zulaika 2009, 34, emphasis in original)

The appeal to imminent terrorist attacks pacifies public opposition to national

security.
Frank 15 (Michael C Frank, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University,

Conjuring up the next attack: the future-orientedness of terror and the counterterrorist
imagination, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 8, Iss. 1 p.103-105, 2015)
I would like to close by illustrating my main points with the help of a literary text. Published in early 2005,
Ian McEwans novel Saturday opens with a description of what initially appears to be the beginning of a
British 9/11. Gazing out of the bedroom window of his house in Fitzrovia Square one early morning, the
London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne notices a fiery object in the sky, which he first believes to be a
meteorite, but which soon turns out to be a burning aircraft descending towards Heathrow airport.
Overcome by a sense of dj-vu, Perowne is struck by the uncanny familiarity of what he sees and, being of
analytical mind, he immediately offers an explanation for this impression: Its already almost eighteen
months since half the planet watched, and watched again the unseen captives driven through the sky to the
slaughter, at which time there gathered round the innocent silhouette of any jet plane a novel association.
Everyone agrees, airliners look different in the sky these days, predatory or doomed. (McEwan 2006, 16)
The assertion that Everyone agrees, airliners look different in the sky these days invites us to put
ourselves in the position of the protagonist. It is likely that most early readers of the novel would indeed
have agreed, even if they were much further removed from the events of 11 September 2001 than Perowne,
for whom only one-and-a-half years have elapsed since the attacks. The automatic association of passenger
planes with an act of aggression or disaster is one illustration of the impact of 9/11. As we are told later in
the novel, the terrorist attacks have created an attitude of anxious anticipation. People are waiting for 9/11
to happen again, both fearing and desiring a recurrence of the monstrous and spectacular scenes of that
day (McEwan 2006, 176). The phenomenon described here is more than a simple return of a traumatic past.
It is also the fulfilment of a future-oriented fear. What Perowne sees or, rather, what he believes to see
in front of his window is exactly what he has secretly been waiting for: The governments counsel that an
attack in a European or American city is an inevitability isnt only a disclaimer of responsibility, its a
heady promise. Everyone fears it, but theres also a darker longing in the collective mind, a sickening for
self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity. Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans, so the television
networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please dont let it
happen. But let me see it all the same, as its happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first
to know. (McEwan 2006, 176) In passages such as this one, Saturday reflects the emergence of terror in
the sense introduced in this essay: anticipatory fear of a terrorist attack based on both the experience of past
attacks and the repeated assertion by government officials that another attack is bound to happen.
McEwans novel reflects the condition of waiting for terror that such forecasts of disaster entail and it
stresses the ambivalence of that state. Shortly after 11 September, social anthropologist Begoa Aretxaga
described waiting for terror as a prolonged moment of suspension and anxiety, of terror transformed into
spectacle, of terror that is also a thrill (2001, 141). It is precisely this uncomfortable connection between
terror (the fear of a next time) and voyeurism (the desire of witnessing disaster, willingly catered to by the
mainstream media) that McEwan articulates in Saturday. In so doing, he tries to establish a meta-discursive
vantage point on counterterrorist discourse. As we follow the thoughts of the protagonist, we are constantly
made aware that his concerns about security are the result of an unholy alliance between terrorist networks,
government officials acting in the name of counterterrorism, terrorism pundits, and the mass media all of
which target the same audience, namely citizens like Perowne, producing a community of anxiety

(McEwan 2006, 176) across the Western world. Because McEwan makes his protagonist a positivist who
has the habit of scrutinizing his own behaviour and attitude, the author has ample room to insert essayistic
reflections such as the ones quoted above. As a result, Saturday often resembles McEwans nonfiction
writings. More than once, Perownes thoughts read like echoes and elaborations of observations made by
the author in post-9/11 essays and interviews. In a Guardian article published one day after the attacks,
McEwan recounts how the non-stop live broadcast from New York turned him into an information junkie
(McEwan 2001) craving facts and images. In an apologetic, almost confessional tone, McEwan assures the
reader that his [television] set in the corner is mostly unwatched, but that on 11 September, his son and he
surfed hungrily, ghoulishly between CNN, CBC and BBC24 (2001). In Saturday, Henry Perowne
undergoes a similar metamorphosis. Throughout the day, he tunes in to news programmes whenever he has
the opportunity to do so. Perowne resembles his creator in feeling uneasy, even guilty, about his media
addiction, which makes him give in to the pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news (2006, 176).
McEwan uses the occasion for one of his many essay-like digressions that oscillate between interior
monologue and authorial comment: Have his anxieties been making a fool of him? Its part of the new
order, this narrowing of mental freedom, of his right to roam. Not so long ago his thoughts ranged more
unpredictably, over a longer list of subjects. He suspects hes becoming a dupe, the willing, febrile
consumer of news fodder, opinion, speculation and all of the crumbs the authorities let fall. Hes a docile
citizen, watching Leviathan grow stronger while he creeps under its shadow for protection. Does he
think hes contributing something, watching news programmes, or lying on his back on the sofa on Sunday
afternoons, reading more opinion columns of ungrounded certainties, more long articles about what really
lies behind this or that development, or about what is most surely going to happen next, predictions
forgotten as soon as they are read, well before events disprove them? Hes lost the habits of scepticism,
hes becoming dim with contradictory opinion, he isnt thinking clearly, and just as bad, he senses he isnt
thinking independently. (McEwan 2006, 180181) In a moment of self-scrutiny, it seems to Perowne that
he has turned into a passive consumer of pre-selected information and pre-fabricated opinions, in danger of
losing his ability to think autonomously and critically. Wondering to what extent the media influence or
even determine his thoughts and emotions, he asks himself whether his mind can still roam freely. This, the
author emphasises, is part of the condition of the times, the new order (McEwan 2006, 176, 180)
heralded by the 9/11 attacks and the political response to them: the vast public interest in terrorism and the
War on Terror which is perfectly in line with current political priorities and interests amounts to a
consensus of a kind, an orthodoxy of attention, a mild subjugation in itself (McEwan 2006, 181).
Collective fear increases the power of the state, which is portrayed here as controlling information. Despite
such moments of meta-discursive reflection on the interplay and debilitating effects of counterterrorist
policy-making, media discourse, and the fear of terrorism, McEwans novel makes no attempt to break that
cycle. The protagonist remains convinced throughout that an attack on a European capital is only a question
of time: London, his small part of it, lies wide open, impossible to defend, waiting for its bomb, like a
hundred other cities. Rush hour will be a convenient time. It might resemble the Paddington crash twisted
rails, buckled, upraised commuter coaches, stretchers handed out through broken windows, the hospitals
Emergency Plan in action. Berlin, Paris, Lisbon. The authorities agree, an attacks inevitable. (McEwan
2006, 276) London, Berlin, Paris, or Lisbon this list of potential targets does not mention Madrid. The
Madrid train bombings of 11 March 2004 are nonetheless present in McEwans novel. Whenever Saturday
mentions the possibility of a terrorist attack on a European city, the Madrid bombings serve as a subtextual
reminder that Perownes evil premonitions are justified. McEwan wrote the novel with the benefit of
hindsight. By setting it one year before the Madrid bombings (which, at the time of publication, lay one
year in the past), he amplified the inevitability of terrorist attacks. This sheds a different light on Perownes
unquestioning acceptance of government warnings. Why should he be critical of the authorities caution
that an attacks inevitable, given that this prediction was later proved to be right? After the events of 7
July 2005, Perownes perception that London was waiting for its bomb seemed downright prophetic. In
its issue of 17 July 2005, German weekly Der Spiegel asked McEwan: Your new book, Saturday, is
written in expectation of an act of terrorism. Now it has happened. What was your first thought when you
heard it was a terrorist attack? McEwans answer was as follows: It [i.e. the terrorist attack] confirmed my
book. I mean, its not that I take any satisfaction from it, nor did I share any great insight, everybodys been
waiting. But at the same time as waiting theyre also forgetting because, you know, its been four years
since 9/11. Even Madrid, [sic] was 18 months ago. And, yes, at the end of the novel when Henry Perowne
(the protagonist) is standing in the window he talks of Londoners waiting for its [sic] bombs. Well, you
know, here it was. Its a bit like the death of an old parent. You could be waiting for it but that doesnt stop

you from being shocked by it. (Cited in Hage and Matussek 2005) This reply displays the same fatalism as
the authors Guardian essay of the day after the 7/7 attacks, which asked in its title: How could we have
forgotten that this was always going to happen? (McEwan 2005). To describe the London bombings as an
event that was always going to happen, like the death of an old parent, implies that they were not the
result of a specific configuration of circumstances and factors, but a necessary and unavoidable occurrence.
Such an attitude is precariously close to political resignation an apathetic subjection to the given. If the
future is inescapable, no matter what we do today, then why should we think about alternative responses to
terrorism? For even if we change the current state of things, we cannot prevent the next terrorist attack. One
could argue that Perownes passive acquiescence in government policies is intended as a critique of this
very attitude. Yet, Saturday does little to actively challenge the discourse of the War on Terror. Although the
novel critically reflects the general conformity (McEwan 2006, 181) in the Western public resulting from
the media-fuelled fear of terrorism, it ends with a fatalistic acceptance of that state, without attempting to
establish an alternative frame of reference. This suggests the degree to which the perpetrators of 9/11 have
been successful in establishing a sense of dread aided, paradoxically, it would seem, by counterterrorist
discourse and its media-circulated imaginations of even worse things to come.

Terrorism Islamic Fundamentalism

The colonialist intention to spread Christianity and Democracy is the hidden
backdrop for all modern counter terror operations.
Edmunds,11 (Jane, July 23 2011, Professor, Development Studies, University of Cambridge,
Contemporary Islam (2012) 6:6784, The new barbarians: governmentality, securitization and Islam in
Western Europe, pp. 72-73, accessed 7/16/15) CH
The use, by Muslim terrorist groups, of a militaristic form of resistance is met with a new negation of
human rights and the duty to protect is transformed into the loss of rights on the part of some. The series of
anti-terror laws and state of emergency imposed in the USA and the UK after the attack on the Twin
Towers and the London bombings, respectively, involved the derogation of basic human rights: the right
not to be detained without a fair trial through the indefinite imprisonment of suspected terrorists in
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib (Gearty 2009). Obamas promise to shut down Guantanamo has been
reversed, leaving detainees to be subject to military trials behind closed doors. Recent anti-terror laws in
the UK have facilitated the conviction of Muslims for celebrating terrorism, yet where convictions have
collapsed, media coverage is limited. The UKs commitment to the absolute prohibition on torture has been
compromised by its apparent cooperation with U.S. extraordinary rendition flights.3 The curtailment of the
right to freedom of speech among British Muslims has been highlighted in the case of the Luton Muslims
who protested against the homecoming parade of British soldiers from Afghanistan. While Islam is
popularly understood as irrational and aggressive, religiosity played an important rhetorical role in
justifying the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bushs war speeches contained many references
to God as did some of Tony Blairs, giving the impression that our (Christian) values are superior to
their (Islamic) ones. The mission to save Iraq (and humanitarian interventions in, for example, Kosovo)
was elided with human rights and the argument that we engaged in these painful but necessary
interventions in order to share our superior valuesthe rule of law, democracy and human rights, that is,
human rights supposedly coming out of Christianitywas propagated. The allegation against Saddam (and
other Third World leaders with nuclear programmes) is that they acquire a western technology (the bomb)
without having the western values and democratic structures that allow them to use it responsibly. When a
witness to 9/11 was quoted as asking Why do they hate us?, Bush portrayed this attack as one by people
who resented Americas threat of a good example. While Les Invasions Barbares and The Hurt Locker
focus on the threat from abroad and the need for western powers to invade Muslim countries to contain the
threat, attention has now turned, with the presence of sizeable second- and third-generation Muslims in
Europe and the US, to the homegrown threat. Part of the way the governing classes are seeking to
discipline these new rebels is through a renewed focus on their mysterious and exotic practices which,
again, turns on the idea of the body. Suicide bombers have used the object of the European gaze as a
formidable instrument for conducting a war on the west. The tactic deployed is portrayed as a form of
barbarism, irrational and rooted in outmoded and archaic religious fetishesvirgins waiting for the martyrs
in Paradise for example (Dawkins 2006).

The War on Terror relies on Orientalist stereotypes that Islam is violent and
irrational and inferior to Christianity
Edmunds,11 (Jane, July 23 2011, Professor, Development Studies, University of Cambridge,
Contemporary Islam (2012) 6:6784, The new barbarians: governmentality, securitization and Islam in
Western Europe, pp. 73-74, accessed 7/16/15) CH
This cultural racism also surfaces in the way particular identitiesMuslim, Arab or North Africanare
defaced in French political discourse based on an ostensibly commendable concept of egalitarianism which
demands the abandonment of thick attachments. Ideas about cultural inferiority associated with colonialism
continue to shape political debates about the veil or the hijab (headscarf) where the veiled Muslim evokes
this double identity of both cultural inferiority and threat (Scott 2007: 17). Muslims are regarded as a threat
because they refuse, by wearing the hijab or growing a beard, to conform with the secular and civilizing
culture of France, and opt instead (apparently) to maintain a commitment to archaic signs of faith
(Guardiola-Rivera 2009: 246). In the post-9/11 era, new surveillance strategies based on a repertoire of
terrorist look-alikes developed, resulting in cases of Sikh turbans and Muslim veils being torn off, cases
which exposed fundamental ignorance rooted in Orientalist fantasies about Eastern masculinity and

femininity (Puar 2007: 175181). Islam alone is judged, in the media, to be fundamentalist, and other
religions, which also contain fundamentalist strands, are absent from discussions of religious radicalization.
And Islam alone is portrayed as a uniquely patriarchal and misogynistic religion, ignoring the misogynist
elements of other religions (Cesari 2008). The hijab or the veil, and more still, the burqa are, to popular
western secularism, unintelligible objects or archaic fetishes (GuardiolaRivera 2009: 2). It seems self
evident that women who wear such clothing in a secular environment are doing so without freedom of
choice, reflecting the patriarchal oppression specific to Islam. Muslim women are portrayed as subdued by
the dominant, aggressive male Arab and denied autonomy, and the docile subject of old colonial
discourses is resurrected. Such views are prevalent in western media and among political leaders, with the
French government claiming that the ban on the burqa reflects the countrys respect for the principle of
equality for women. What has long characterized French debates is now, post 9/11, finding a place in
Germany, Italy, Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands. Now the social cost of being a European Muslim has
increased with governments seeing them as Muslims first and citizens second, with an implied difference
between trustful Muslims (assimilated ones) and distrustful Muslims (those who wear headscarves or
beards). Thus, they have become the current other in public discourses; what makes them this is that they
are demographically productive, apparently insensitive to European, secular values and our knowledge of
them is based on information that is focused on mosques (Amiraux 2006), now considered not to be places
of worship but a potential source of political radicalization and extremism. A growing consensus in the
media and among politicians is developing around the view that European Muslims, with their distinctive
signs and objects linked with the backward practices of the former colonies, are a new source of threat to
national identity and security. Fear of this threat pervades arguments about hidden dangers, particularly
around garments such as the hijab, which are portrayed as literally defying governmental rights to
surveillance as the face is hidden (even when it is not), thus preventing, at least in the imagination, the
western gaze from penetrating. In 2006 a storm brewed in the UK when Jack Straw sparked a debate on
wearing the niqab (which covers the face) which he saw (later supported by Tony Blair) as an impediment
to normal social interaction and as symbolizing segregation rather than integration, re-signifying religious
symbols into concealment and a threat to security. The clash is neatly crystallized at border crossing
points, when the western need for security through surveillance collides with the hijab-wearers insistence
on staying covered. The western press is keen to report stories of male Muslim criminals/terrorists who use
the hijab as a disguise, resonating with historical forms of resistance in past anti-colonial struggles

Discourse of Islamic terrorism relies on stereotype of aggressive and irrational

Muslims.
George Kassimeris and Leonie Jackson, George Kassimeris is Leverhulme Research Fellow and Senior
Lecturer at Wolverhampton University, UK. Leonie Jackson is a doctoral candidate at Wolverhampton
University, UK, 3-10-2011, The West, the rest, and the war on terror: representation of Muslims in
neoconservative media discourse, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2011.55268
The binary of active, macho Muslims versus the passive, feminised West served to paint a terrifying picture
of what could be lost should an aggressive policy not be pursued following the attacks. Neoconservatives drew
on three main points in their writings: that power is the primary motive of Muslims, that continued reliance on
feminised policies leaves the West open to ridicule, and that the West must assert itself and its values in the face
of an ideological attack by active (bad) Muslims. In The coalition delusion, Reuel Marc Gerecht critiqued Colin Powells attempt
to build a Muslim coalition in order to fight the war on terror and emphasised the futility of such an option by referring to the
essential characteristics of Muslims as power driven: In the power politics of the Middle East, there is no such thing as soft power,
multiculturalism, or liberal guilt. Muslims ... do not spend much time worrying about hurt feelings (Gerecht 2001a, p. 29). For
neoconservatives, being grown-up about power means ridding themselves of feminised notions of
multiculturalism and liberal guilt. Since Muslims are presumed to be macho, masculine beings who

understand power as it truly is, America must meet them on their terms or risk being rightly despised by
them. An underlying fear about being ridiculed by strong, masculine Muslims who laugh at Americas weaknesses pervades the
discourse. Gerecht stressed in a later article (Pakistans Taliban problem) that a Pakistan-centred strategy in the war on terror will
leave the USA weakened. Since Muslims are presumed to admire only strength and power, the USA is left open to onslaught by forces
who neither respect nor fear them: If we do not scorch all those in the Middle East who gave aid to al Qaeda, we
will mercilessly belittle ourselves before men who have an acute sense of the jugular (Gerecht 2001b, p. 26).
The inference is that Muslims are impressed only by displays of dominance, and cannot understand complicated geopolitical concepts
such as sanctions and the rule of law, hence Americas civilised manners appear as weakness to them, causing a crisis of
US credibility in the macho Muslim world.

The war on terror relies on Eurocentric discourse and islamophobia

George Kassimeris and Leonie Jackson, George Kassimeris is Leverhulme Research Fellow and Senior
Lecturer at Wolverhampton University, UK. Leonie Jackson is a doctoral candidate at Wolverhampton
University, UK, 3-10-2011, The West, the rest, and the war on terror: representation of Muslims in
neoconservative media discourse, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2011.55268
The essential role of identities in the war on terror discourse has been noted by several scholars, who picked out themes of
Orientalism (Lazar and Lazar 2004, Silberstein 2004, Jackson 2007) and the clash of civilisations narrative (Llorente 2002, Renold
2002, Jackson 2005, Blain 2009), which, given their reliance on the articulation of a stable, civilised West under
threat from a dangerous and bellicose Islamic other, may be seen as aspects of a Eurocentric narrative. Key
signifiers such as freedom and evil are central to a narrative structured around identity. In this sense, the

West is portrayed as the defender of freedom and the other is represented as motivated to act out of an
unfathomable hatred of our freedoms (Lazar and Lazar 2004, Burke 2005, Nabers 2009). Evil plays a similar role,
effectively removing political or instrumental motivations and replacing these reasons for action with
dispositional motives, thus rendering all actions of those marked out as evil impossible to empathise with or
understand (Bhatia 2007, Ivie and Giner 2007, Jackson 2005). These signifiers reveal how deeply Eurocentric the war
on terrorism discourse is, in that it is reliant on a shared common-sense assumption that the West represents
freedom, progress, and good, which, in turn, allows any challenge to the West to be represented as evil
or despotic. The framing of the September 11, 2001 attacks in terms of national identity discourse was highlighted by
Krebs and Lobasz (2007, pp. 423 425) and McCartney (2004, p. 400), and it is this frame that makes the articulation of
Muslim identity so important. If America was attacked because of what it is, rather than for what it has done, then
the perpetrators must be acting in this way because of who they are. Jackson (2007) addressed this, turning
specifically to the construction of an Islamic terrorist identity and arguing that it is based upon the assumptions
that violence is inherent to Islam and that Islamic terrorism poses an existential threat to the West. All of these studies
address the issue of identity in the war on terror discourse, but none concentrates specifically on the
neoconservative efforts to frame the attacks and the post-September 11 world. This is important because of the unwavering
neoconservative commitment to war as the only possible and plausible response. This study seeks to address how neoconservative
media discourse worked to shape the identities of both Muslims and Americans in order to make the case for war, and argues that the

discourse was framed within a Eurocentric narrative, which drew upon several binaries that worked to
distinguish Muslims and Americans as separate, opposing, and irreconcilable identities.

Terrorism Dirty Word

Terrorism reduces violence to evildoing and obscures the political motivation of violence
Eric Herring 2008, Reader in International Politics at the University of Bristol, author of Iraq in
Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies,
Critical Terrorism Studies: An Activist Scholar Perspective
Terrorism is a delegitimising concept, and delegitimising an act can translate or be translated by
others - into delegitimising an actor. The delegitimation approach to Israels policies is evidenced in other
ways, such as the framing of its policies in terms of ethnic cleansing (Pappe 2007), apartheid (Carter
2007, Pappe 2008) or even evil (Pappe forthcoming 2008). The most useless word of all, though it is
difficult to avoid, is the noun terrorist due to its reductionist, essentialising character. There is
always more to anyone and any group that engages in terrorism, and it may be that their use of
terrorism is secondary or temporary. Delegitimation by application of terms such as terrorism may
turn out to be a useful political practice naming and shaming to increase the political cost of terrorism.
An alternative political practice would be to hold it up as a mirror to those who apply it to their
opponents. This would involve arguing the following: If you label those actions of your opponent as
terrorism then the following actions of yours are also terrorism. So lets drop the label. When people
stop calling each other terrorists, the chances are that they are ready to negotiate seriously. Moving
beyond the category of terrorism is necessary because the label can obstruct understanding (meaning
comprehension and empathy as opposed to sympathy). Googling the phrase I am a terrorist produces
57,300 hits and diverse meanings and contexts. Still, generally speaking, people who are in favour of acts
that definitely satisfy part of and possibly satisfy all of the definition of terrorism used in this article
rarely categorise those acts as terrorism themselves. The label frequently steers the discussion
towards notions of evil and abnormal psychology, when the calculations and feelings involved are
more common than such notions suggest. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (1999b)
carried out important research in 1999 across 17 countries worldwide into what publics think of war and in
particular restraints on war. One of the cases explored in depth was Israel and the occupied and autonomous
territories (ICRC 1999a): restraints on war in relation to civilians were weaker in this case than all the
others studied by the ICRC. 36% of Israelis and 9% of Palestinians thought that everything is allowed in
war. 7% of Israelis and 16% of Palestinians thought that it is acceptable to attack civilians as well as
combatants. 22% of Israelis and 31% of Palestinians thought that selectively attacking civilians is
acceptable if the other side is doing it. There were also considerable amounts of support for attacking
civilians who voluntarily give food and shelter to the enemy (38% of Israelis, 40% of Palestinians) or
voluntarily give information to the enemy (60% of Israelis and 71% of Palestinians) and for setting off
explosives in populated areas (12% of Israelis and 17% of Palestinians).

Terrorist Personality/Individualist Paradigm

Individualist explanations of terrorism neglect structural dynamics driving political
violence.
Lee Jarvis, 2009, department of Politics and International Relations at Swansea University in the UK,
Security Dialogue, The Spaces and Faces of Critical Terrorism Studies
An intuitively appealing location from which to commence searching for the causes of terrorism is, of
course, the individual agent turning to violence. Such explanations typically begin with the premise that
relatively few actors partake in terrorist activities despite the pervasiveness of socio-economic
inequalities, religious beliefs or other potentially relevant structural dynamics (Crenshaw, 1981: 380).
In Laqueurs (2003: 2223) rather forthright formula- tion: if terrorists are, indeed, as some claim, people
like you and me there would be billions of terrorists, but there are only relatively few. With this
apparent disjuncture in mind, one response has been to search for psycholog- ical similarities within
terrorist actors, albeit with a frequent scepticism towards any universal terrorist mind (Post, 2002:
4749; Kruglanski & Fishman, 2006; Richardson, 2006: 61). Although popular images of terrorists as
deviant, pathological fanatics are frequently rejected (Ruby, 2002; Whittaker, 2002: 82), personality
traits such as a desire for certainty or fixity of identity, or paranoia fuelled by perceptions of loss or
injustice, have been discussed here as poten- tially relevant factors (Post, 2002: 48; Scruton, 2002: 109;
Durodi, 2007: 429). These psychological explanations of terrorism are relatively rare in contemporary debate, confronting considerable analytical and methodological criti- cisms whenever
pursued (Arena & Arrigo, 2005: 486487; Kruglanski & Fishman, 2006). A more popular individual-level
explanation, however, approaches terrorism as a rational, utility-oriented strategy aimed at achiev- ing
specific (political) ends. Whether intended to stimulate an over-reaction from particular targets (Rogers,
2004: 156158), to coerce those targets into policy change (Pape, 2003: 344) or to mobilize support within
potentially sympathetic populations (Jenkins, 2001: 13), terrorism remains explicable for many as an
instrumentalist calculation undertaken by an individual or group (Kruglanski & Fishman, 2006;
Freedman, 2007). Conceptualized thus, there is no qualitative distinction between engagements in
terrorism and other forms of action: this behaviour offers, quite simply, a choice among
alternatives (McCormick, 2003: 474). A second broadly structural account focuses on the
significance of religious systems and beliefs. Explanations of this type have achieved a growing
prominence in recent years, with several authors seeking to subsume the ostensibly political demands of
contemporary actors beneath their theologi- cal claims. As Philpott (2002: 9293) suggests, discussing
radical Islamic revivalism: we must come to understand that these groups are defined, constituted,
and motivated by religious beliefs, beliefs about the ultimate ground of existence. Out of these beliefs,
they then construct a political theology as well as a social critique that measures the distance between that
theology and contemporary social conditions and prescribes action accordingly. Despite the repeated
denial by critics of any direct linkage between religion and terrorism (Armstrong, 2001; Jackson, 2007b),
many authors remain keen to connect Al-Qaeda and its equivalents with (radical) Islam. From this
per- spective, Islamic self-sacrificial ideals, extremist texts and the continuing desire for a limited or
global caliphate emerge as significant theological factors in their own right (Israeli, 2002; Scruton,
2002: 126128; Byman, 2003: 152153; Zimmerman, 2004). This Huntington-inflected view has
encouraged certain writers to locate a tradition of bellicosity throughout the Islamic world. Both Berman
and Laqueur, for example, posit this linkage in recent discussions on terrorism, arguing, respectively, that
in every place where Muslim populations border on non-Muslim populations some kind of war, large
or small, had broken out in recent years, Muslims against non-Muslims (Berman, 2003: 15); and: A
review of wars, civil wars, and other contemporary conflicts shows indeed a greater incidence of violence
and aggression in Muslim societies than in most others. If we ignore tribal warfare in sub-Saharan Africa
(notably in Nigeria and Somalia as well as the Sudan), the Islamic factor has been prominently involved;
almost 90 percent of these conflicts appear to affect Muslim countries and societies (Laqueur, 2003: 19).
A final set of structural accounts focuses on the more narrowly political determinants of terrorism.
Frequently counterposed to the above religious explanations, these approaches locate the actions of AlQaeda and others within the context of corrupt state regimes (Tan, 2003: 134135) or US foreign

policy and global hegemony (Green, 2002; Jackson, 2005: 5457). From such a perspective, Cronin
(2003: 33), for example, argues that terrorism always has a political nature. It involves the commission of
outrageous acts designed to precipitate political change. In this sense, Anti-American terrorism is
spurred in part by a desire to change U.S. policy in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions as well
as by growing antipathy in the developing world vis--vis the forces of globalization (Cronin, 2003: 52).
In a similar vein, Burke (2003: 24) takes us beyond a restrictively theological approach to Al- Qaeda,
arguing that Bin Ladens agenda is a basically political one, though it is couched, of course, in religious
language and imagery. While Bergen, finally, similarly cautions against reducing Bin Ladens political
demands to a simplified cry against cultural-religious differences: [he] does not rail against the pernicious
effects of Hollywood movies, or against Madonnas midriff, or against the pornography protected by the
U.S Constitution. Nor does he inveigh against the drug and alcohol culture of the West, or its tolerance for
homosexuals. He leaves that kind of material to the American Christian fundamentalist Jerry Falwell (Peter
Bergen, cited in Byman, 2003: 145). As the above discussion suggests, this longstanding question of
causation remains a central concern within contemporary studies of terrorism. For the purposes of
this article, my interest in this debate relates far more to the ques- tions asked than the answers forwarded
by particular contributors. Bluntly, it matters far less that we are encouraged to view this phenomenon as a
product of specific agential or structural factors, than that we are encouraged to enquire into its causes at
all. A shared attempt to reduce this behaviour to a number of identifiable, perhaps directly
observable, points of origin clearly traverses contributions to this literature despite the diversity of
perspectives on offer. As argued below, this attempt again offers evidence of a remarkably coherent
research agenda within contemporary work in this field.

Terror as a crime
Viewing terrorism as a crime removes any chance of negotiation and results in the
loss of liberty
Spencer, 12 (Alexander Spencer, Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich, Fall 2012, The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy
implications, Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 15, Number 3, pp. 403-404,
Accessed 7-15-15)
A second conceptual metaphor one encounters in The Sun constitutes terrorism as something criminal.
While many in the literature on terrorism point to the almost dichotomous relationship between the war and
the criminal justice models of engaging terrorism (Crelinsten and Schmid 1992), the discourse on terrorism
in the media contains both metaphors of war and crime at the same time. Here terrorists are not only
soldiers,51but also murderers,52and Al Qaedas army53full of troops54is also a gang55or
mob56of criminals57who commit murderous58crimes.59The aftermath of an attack is not only
likened to a warzone,60but also to a crime scene,61and the casualties ofwar62are also considered
victims63of crime.64By constituting an act of terrorism as, for example, murder,65the metaphorical
expressions map the source domain CRIME onto the target domain TERRORISM. In contrast to the war
metaphors, the crime metaphors predicate terrorism as something rather ordinary. While the event of a war
is something unusual, something that has a beginning and an end, crime is very common and can be
considered almost a constant phenomenon in every society. In comparison to war, anybody can be a
victim of crime, not just soldiers and those close to the front. Importantly, criminals are part of society and
crime is generally understood as something that happens inside a community, while war is something that
involves engagement with the outside. Regardless of what country we live in, we are taught from
childhood that people who are criminals live among us (Kappeler and Kappeler 2004: 176).Essentially, the
predication of terrorism as crime automatically involves a judgement of legitimacy not inherent in the
constitution of terrorism as war. While war can be a legitimate endeavour, crime can generally
not.66Onegenerally accepts the right of a military adversary to exist, while the criminal is considered a
menace who lacks any kind of legitimacy. As Kappeler andKappeler point out, the eradication and
punishment of criminal behaviour is Alexander Spencer The social construction of terrorism403 seen as a
desirable and just goal (ibid.). The military adversary is similar to us, but on the other side of the front,
almost a like unit, who generally follows certain rules of engagement. The criminal on the other hand is
deviant; he or she does forbidden things and does not adhere to rules. In fact, criminals by definition break
rules and therefore have to be punished in some way. Therefore, some point out that the policy of
criminalization makes it hard for the state to negotiate with its armed opponents. Just as it is inappropriate
to deal with bandits, since the rule of law is thereby prejudiced, so, it is often supposed, it is inappropriate
to negotiate with terrorists(Gilbert 1994: 167). Others may disagree with this interpretation, as there are
ample examples of plea bargaining or reduced sentences in which the prosecution strikes a deal with the
criminal. What is clear, however, is that the conceptual metaphor TERRORISM ISCRIME, in contrast to
TERRORISM IS WAR, calls for a judicial rather than a military response. As Peter Sederberg (1995:
299300) points out, the view that terrorism is war leads its proponents to favour repressive responses; the
view that terrorism is crime leads its proponents to favour legal solutions. This, however, does not mean
that the two understandings are dichotomously opposed to each other in all aspects. In fact, both conceptual
metaphors seem to overlap to a certain extent, as a legislative response can make sense in both
TERRORISM IS WAR and TERRORISM IS CRIME. For example, one encounters the implementation of
new laws such as a war powers act or remergency powers for police in both situations of war and situations
of crime. The mapping of the source domain CRIME to the target domain TERRORISM is clearly visible
in the policies implemented in the United Kingdom following 9/11. Although the British government had
only just passed a new set of fairly substantial anti-terror laws in 2000 (the Terrorism Act of 2000), there
was an understanding that further legislation such as the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001
(ATCSA); the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005; and the Terrorism Act of 2006, which included measures
such as new rules for freezing terrorists criminal assets, increased police powers, control orders and
increased detention of suspected terrorists would be an appropriate means of responding to this kind of
criminal terrorism(c.f. Walker 2003; Cornish 2005; Beckman 2007). As Sebastian Payne(2002: 44) points

out, the government could have responded to 9/11 without making new laws, but the government chose to
legislate.

Terror as Disease
The view of terrorism as a disease, characterizes the terrorist as a lesser human and
destroys any chance of negotiation.
Spencer, 12 (Alexander Spencer, Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich, Fall 2012, The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy
implications, Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 15, Number 3, pp. 408-409,
Accessed 7-15-15)
The fourth conceptual metaphor underlying the discourse constitutes terrorism as a disease. Here the
discourse constructs terrorism as a sick, wickedplague, or as lunacy perpetrated by insane
psychopaths.One comes across a number of metaphorical expressions that constitute the actor asmad;for
example, terrorists are often metaphorized as madmen,lunatics,or nutters,and terrorism is constructed
as sickeningandderangedmadness. Terrorists are considered maniacsor crazedfanaticswho have
been infected by poisonous clericsand nowinfestthe world. Thereby, expressions such as suicide nuts
or terroristmadness map the source domain DISEASE onto the target domain TERRORISM .In a manner
similar to the metaphors of uncivilized evil, metaphors of disease indicate a deep political rift. For
example, disease, like uncivilized evil, cannot be reasoned with. This is especially true when we consider
the notion of madness as a disease. While negotiations and ceasefire agreements do make sense if we
constitute the terrorist as a soldier in a war, they are absurd in a conflict with an army of lunatics who lack
the ability for rational thought. One simply cannot trust the insane, be they soldiers or criminals .A
psychological study by Emily Proninet al. shows that people are far less likely to advocate the use of
diplomacy against terrorists if these are depicted as irrational. Not only can one not negotiate with the
insane or with diseases such as cancer, but many other illnesses such as the plague are in fact contagious
(Proninet al. 2006). So any kind of contact with the disease of terrorism or the disease riddled terrorist
may infect you. Therefore, terrorists should not be talked to, but rather isolated and quarantined, as
[c]ontact with them is polluting (Zulaika and Douglass 1996: 62). Overall, the construction of terrorism as
evil or disease rather suggests that certain policies such as engagement or negotiations are not
considered as possible options. In contrast to the other concrete policies mentioned above, it is obviously
more difficult to indicate the non-existence of a policy. However, one may gain some insight into the
implications of the conceptual metaphor TERRORISMIS DISEASE when we consider concrete examples
of suggested negotiation possibilities between the two sides in the war on terror. One such event occurred
in April 2004, when Osama Bin Laden proposed a truce with European states. In an audio tape sent to the
broadcasters Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, Bin Laden proclaimed: I also offer a reconciliation initiative to
them [Europe], whose essence is our commitment to stopping operations against every country that
commits itself to not attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs. The reconciliation will start with the
departure of its last soldier from our country. The door of reconciliation is open for three months of the date
of announcing this statement. The British government announced that Bin Ladens first truce offer to
Europe was absurdand ludicrousas a number of government spokesmen stated that [t]he idea of an
armistice with a group that defines itself by violence is an absurdity, and the peace offer was evidence for
the confusion of Al Qaeda. Individual politicians also strongly rejected the idea of any kind of ceasefire
with such a terrorist group. For example, the Foreign Secretary at the time, Jack Straw, proclaimed: One
has to treat such proposals by Al-Qaeda with the contempt they deserve. It is a murderous organization
which seeks impossible objectives by the most violent means. So negotiations with mad terrorists such as
Bin Laden seem to be considered quite impossible. As former Home Secretary David Blunkett put it: It is
ludicrous to think that his suggestion has any sense of reality, and even the Liberal Party leader Charles
Kennedy points out that [t]here can be no negotiation with Al Qaeda, and [that] Bin Ladens truce offer
was repellent. Even terrorism experts seem to agree on this interpretation of Al Qaeda, as Peter Bergen
believes that this whole offer is, in a sense, sort of pretty ludicrous.11

Domestic Terrorism Frame

Portraying the threat as the enemy within creates fear justifying extreme measures
of social discipline
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 112-3]
The enemy within
As if the threat could not be greater (tens of thousands of highly trained killers lurking everywhere, plotting to deploy weapons of
mass destruction in our cities in an insane attempt to kill millions of us and end our way of life), the final curtain of fear is

drawn across our terrified imaginations: the threat is not confined to enemies outside the borders of the
community, it is already inside -it resides within. As Bush put it, there is a need to give law enforcement the additional
tools it needs to track down terror here at home (Bush, 20 September, 2001). This language is designed to reinforce the idea that the
home, a place of comfort and security, has been invaded and infected by the scourge of terrorism. John Ashcroft constructs it even
more forcefully:
The men and women of justice and law enforcement are called on to combat a terrorist threat that is both immediate and
vast: a threat that resides here, at home, but whose supporters, patrons and sympathizers form a multinational network of
evil. The attacks of September 11 were acts of terrorism against America orchestrated and carried out by individuals living
within our borders. Todays terrorists enjoy the benefits of our free society even as they commit themselves to our
destruction. They live in our communities - plotting, planning and waiting to kill Americans again. [...] Yet, terrorists people who were either involved with, associated with or are seeking to take advantage of the September 11 attacks - are
now poisoning our communities with Anthrax. (Ashcroft, 25 October, 2001)
Again, there is a reference to the home being violated. This is deliberately emotive language, as the threat to the

home touches upon some of our deepest cultural insecurities. This language also puts the notion of threat
into the mode of disease -terrorism as a cancer or plague - which poisons the body from Within. The notion of
poisoning our communities is a powerful metaphor invoking very deep cultural fears about the role of poison. In the same speech.
Ashcroft articulates the implications of constructing this dangerous enemy within:
To date, our anti-terrorism offensive has arrested or detained nearly 1,000 individuals as part of the September 11 terrorism
investigation. Those who violated the law remain in custody. Taking suspected terrorists in violation of the law off the
streets and keeping them locked up is our clear strategy to prevent terrorism within our borders. [] The federal
government cannot fight this reign of terror alone. Every American must help us defend our nation against this enemy.
(Ashcroft, 25 October, 2001) [End Page 112]
There are two clear logics here. First, the enemy within (anyone suspected of being linked to terrorism) must be
quarantined and isolated from the general population - taken off the streets and locked up - and second, every

true American must join the light to secure the homeland. In this way, the language normalises both the
preventive detention of thousands of suspected Muslims and the creation of informant-based systems like
the Responsible Cooperators Program and the Terrorism Information and Prevention System Program (TIPS).
In short, just like the American red scares of the past, the discourse of danger is deployed to create social fear,
enforce social discipline, mute dissent and increase the powers of the national security state. Writing a
dangerous enemy that lives among the community makes it easier to make policies that serve a wider range
of goals than just counter-terrorism. As John Ashcroft put it, we seek new laws against Americas enemies, foreign and
domestic (Ashcroft, 24 September, 2001). Lastly, the language is designed to bring the war home, or, as Bush puts it:
And make no mistake about it, weve got a war here just like weve got a war abroad (Bush, 29 November, 2001). This is part of
the attempt to maintain the supreme emergency domestically, to create a war-time atmosphere in the
American heartland. It is designed to make every individual feel and act as if they themselves were fighting
the war in some way.

Precision/Targeted Killing Link

The affs discourse of precise/targeted weaponry is a rhetorical attempt to sanitize
slaughter and relegitimize the war on terror
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 132-134]
Another major element in discursively constructing the good and just war on terrorism involves
establishing that it is rightly conducted with due regard for the safety of non-combatants; this is the
establishment of jus in bello -justice in war or right conduct in war. It is one of the most constantly heard refrains in
official counter-terrorism texts that extreme care is continually being taken to avoid civilian casualties (or
collateral damage), and that the combination of smart weapons and careful targeting actually makes modern
warfare relatively bloodless (see Wheeler 2002). This rhetorical strategy has a long genealogy in Western
military language , but first came to prominence in the 1991 Gulf War when the first generation of smart
weapons began to be used; arguably, it was perfected during the Kosovo campaign in 1999. For example, it has been the
practice of government and military officials for some time now to refer to aerial bombing as surgical strikes;
this metaphor invokes the discourse and practice of medicine, transforming the dropping of hugely
injurious bombs from acts of tremendous destruction and terror into positive acts of healing (see Macallister
2004; Shpiro 2002). The language of targets helps to move the actions of war into the realm of the abstract,
thereby objectifying human life and obscuring the human toll (see Neisser 2002). Instead of our forces attacked
bridges and roads vital for everyday economic life or we attacked young conscripts from poor families, it is expressed as we struck
military targets or we attacked strategic targets. Similarly, the term collateral damage, which is frequently used as a
euphemism for civilian dead and wounded, is part of a large and sophisticated technical-military language that is

deployed by military public relations experts to sterilize the horrors of war

(see Louw 2003: 220). As I have

previously mentioned, it

is also part of a wider effort to relegitimise war by remaking it appear clean,

redemptive and therapeutic - instead of cruel, destructive and horrifying.
Actually, the internationally agreed norm of non-combatant immunity has deep roots in western and non-western
moral thought and international humanitarian law (see Wheeler 2002 ), making it an ideal narrative for officials to
draw upon. The day after the initiation of strikes against Afghanistan for example. Donald Rumsfeld took pains to emphasise the
careful and legitimate targeting and the use of the almost magically guided munitions which protect human life: So to summarize,
every target was a military target. The reports [End Page 132] indicating that there were attacks on Kabul are incorrect. The attacks
were on the military targets surrounding the city (Rumsfeld, 8 October, 2001). The

strategy here is to fix the legitimate

credentials of the campaign by emphasising that no civilians are ever deliberately targeted and that only
legitimate military targets are attacked. In other words, any civilian deaths could be justified because they
would be an unintended consequence of attacks against legitimate targets. Linguistically, it is important to
note the way in which the primary noun stands for the process: The attacks were on the military targets
instead of, for example, we were attacking military targets. This linguistic form reduces human Agency,
depersonalises the process and makes the attacks appear like a natural phenomenon - something which
happened without a responsible agent.
In addition to this subtle message there is also the claim that special guided munitions allow for such precision that
the war can be conducted with almost absolute safety for civilians and non-combatants: these weapons
are a way of protecting the innocent . This message is repeated numerous times by officials:
[T]he United States of America is very careful about collateral damage. We have weapons that are undoubtedly more
accurate and more precise than probably any country on earth, and we are careful about what we do. (Rumsfeld, 28
October, 2001)
Afghanistan proved that expensive precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives, and we need more of
them. (Bush, 29 January, 2002)
The new technologies of war help to protect our soldiers, and as importantly, help protect innocent life. You see, new
technologies allow us to redefine war on our terms, which makes it more likely the world will be more free and more
peaceful. (Bush. 2 May, 2003)
In this case, we also note the way in which the modality of the statements is always categorical and truth-based, in
the sense that the speakers commit themselves completely to the statement. For example, the form, expensive

precision weapons defeat the enemy and spare innocent lives presents the knowledge claim as true and
incontrovertible. Crucially, it transforms the weapons into active agents of good - these weapons
actually spare lives . In one sense, this language deflects and obscures the reality that weapons can only ever
destroy lives, that killing and maiming human beings is their entire raison dtre . Bush could have said, expensive
precision weapons often, but not always, spare innocent lives as a more neutral mode of speech. In addition, it is expressed in an
objective rather than subjective modality: the structure is The new technologies help protect innocent
life, rather than a subjective form like, We think the new technologies will help to protect innocent lives.
The use of categorical, objective modalities both reflects and reinforces the authority of the speakers
(Jorgensen and Phillips 2002: 84). In other words, there is a consistent attempt to emphasise [End Page 133] the care that
is being taken by the authorities and the unintentional nature of any civilian casualties. This is an explicit
attempt to fix the conduct of the war within the precepts of just war doctrine .

Attack Turns Democracy/Rights Link

Treating democracy as a fortress threatened by terrorism constitutes the world in
violent terms.
Domke et al (Fahed Al-Sumait , Colin Lingle & David Domke. Dept Comm @ U Washington.
Terrorism's cause and cure: the rhetorical regime of democracy in the US and UK, Critical Studies on
Terrorism, 2:1, 7-25, April 2009 thw_)
We begin by illustrating that starting with their coverage of 11 September, despite differences across national and economic contexts, all four news
sources showed an increasing articulation of terrorism and democracy overall (Figure 1). Within this general trend, certain differences among
organisations stand out. For example, the US outlets maintained an active discourse connecting these terms across the entire timeframe of this study
(particularly in relation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but started a relative decline by 2005. By contrast, the two UK sources primarily formed (or
repeated) this articulation fol- lowing 11 September and then again when London was attacked in 2005. By the later attacks, UK sources appeared to give
greater attention to dissenting voices and concerns about the articulation than many of their US counterparts. Figure 1 shows the relative fre- quency of
articles in each country that linked democracy with terrorism in the month after each of the five attacks. It should be noted that these numbers do not
reflect the total news coverage of each event, which was observably disproportionate due to the differing values placed by news organisations on each of
the incidents themselves. Rather, they reflect the evolution of the specific terrorism/democracy binary articulation over time. News value was
undoubtedly a factor contributing to the efficacy of this articulation in different con- texts, since more significant events can propel such an articulation
especially when it was employed as a primary interpretive frame. However, it is our thesis that this

articulation greatly increased

following 9/11 because of its rhetorical utility and embedded assumptions, rather than simply as a result of heavier news
coverage in the latter three events. The key point of this figure is not the total numbers or the quantitative differences between countries, but rather the
relative levels of articulation that appear across time and context. This

articulation is the first, crucial move in constructing a

rhetorical regime. Following the initial World Trade Centre attack in 1993 and the US Embassy bombings in 1998, we saw the second of the
three moves: the association of democracy with a host of other positive terms. The democracy ideographs meaning is anchored in the unassailably
positive territory created by the clustering of these floating signifiers. This process that is by no means limited only to our sampled time frames but is
thoroughly evident within them. Different countries highlighted different associations, based on localised political contexts. For example, these
associations included ideas of freedom, peace, and market reform in such countries as Russia and El Salvador. In Spain, Haiti, and Northern Ireland,

democracy was repeatedly represented as being co-constitutive with peace and a cure for violence. In a telling
example, New York Times writer A. M. Rosenthal (1993) defined democracy in India as economic decency,
secularism, and pluralism, as well as the only practical way for Hindus and Muslims to live together
instead of killing each other off (p. A27). Echoing President Clintons statement after the embassy attacks, US Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright (1998) extended the positive values linked to democracy: Our memory is long and our reach is far, and we will
not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for which is
freedom and democracy, and the fight against poverty and disease and terrorism. By establishing the
unassailable goodness of democracy in associative ways, it became possible to pre-empt broader discussions
about terrorists motives. Any attack became an irrational objection to the cluster of incontrovertible blessings of freedom, peace,
and health, instantly invalidating alternative explanations. That is, since we know what the problem is (irrational hatred), we can simply acknowledge it
and move on to fixing it. This construction of the democracy ideograph was the second move in the rhetorical regime. The third move the

emphasis on a particular type of binary relationship between terrorism and democracy offered the gravest implications. This
seemingly mortal con- flict compelled specific types of responses, such as the need to protect the sanctity of democracy by invoking
international alliances and, later in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, taking military action toward this end. President Clinton illustrated
the efficacy of such articulations: Americans are targets of terrorism, in part, because we have unique leadership responsibilities in the world, because we
act to advance peace and democracy, and because we stand united against terrorism (Clinton 1998). Such rhetoric was commonly echoed by
commentators, experts, and other political actors in all four media sources. In 1993 and 1998, as Figure 1 suggests, this articulation did not generate the
far-reaching reverberations that later appeared in discourses after 11 September. But it is clear that the first stages of this rhetorical regime were being
established in editorials and expert commentaries at that time. On 24 August 1994, for example, CNN hosted a discussion between Rachel Ehrenfeld
from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Cynthia Tucker, an editorialist for the Atlanta Constitution
newspaper. Tucker

explained Osama Bin Ladens motive as a fundamental opposition to Western-style

democracy and proclaimed the embassy attacks were an example of an old- fashion jihad. This rationale was a self-evident
justification for the US to take military action. Ehrenfeld, the presumed expert, not only failed to point out Tuckers misuse of the
term jihad but advanced the same conclusion: [T]his is part of the jihad, the holy war, as Cynthia had mentioned before, and it is geared
towards what the United States is really standing for. Its democracy, its freedom, and its advance and modernisation. And these people are [. . .]
dead set against anything which is not Muslim. We are infidels, and infidels have to be killed. This is what jihad is all about.
(Ehrenfeld and Tucker 1998) Such assertions embody the binary articulation and also advance dangerous conceptions about
Muslims and Others against which Said (1979, 1997) has regularly cautioned. These contributions to the discourse establish
terrorisms cause in such a way as to suggest that reasonable responses (the cure) do not need to focus on whether or how
to retaliate, but rather when and against which targets. Manichean visions always demand action to defend the good in this case
the state and its values, particularly democracy and to rid the world of danger and evil. In the case of 11 September that defence was manifested in
wars against two sovereign nations. In order to effect these military operations, leaders in the US and UK exerted considerable influence to assemble and
sustain a coalition of the willing that would confer international legitimacy. Shortly after the attacks, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was
among the first high-level US figures to speak out: What is essential [in responding] is that the countries of the world who believe in democracy and
human rights stand together. And the statements that have come out, I think, from other world leaders [showing solidarity] are very important. We all
have to stand together. (Albright 2001) Hours later President Bush famously addressed the world and stated: The deliberate and deadly attacks which
were carried out yesterday against our country, were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. This will require our country to unite in stead- fast

determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack. (Bush 2001) Mr. Blair also emphasised a need at this time for democracies to join
in the coming fight. Illustrating the media appeal of this rhetoric, on 13 September The Times ran an article titled Blair seeks united democratic
response, in which it described the Prime Ministers many activities the previous day in response to the attacks. Of the many things he said that day,
certain statements were clearly constructed as strategic sound bites and these were, in turn, presented to the public by The Times and other organisations. These included both the simplified motives behind the attacks and the urgent need for alliances supporting retaliation. According to The Times:
Blair said that the nature of the terrorist attack required a fanaticism and wickedness that is beyond our normal contemplation. The common cause of all
democracies was now to identify this machinery of terror and to dismantle it as swiftly as possible. [. . .] Mr. Blair said, however: This was not an
attack on America alone, this was an attack on the free and democratic world everywhere and this is a responsibility that the free and democratic world
has got to shoulder, together with America. (The Times 2001a) In this post-11 September discourse, we found hundreds of such instances, indicative of
an immediate and sustained emphasis on the terrorism versus democracy binary. More than in the 1993 and 1998 attacks, here the two ideographs were
more directly bent toward a point of intersection. Although the articulation was not new, it immediately emerged in these texts as a robust and patently
obvious claim. As such and alongside other articulations this altered the trajectory of the broader discourse, redrawing the field of common sense

The metaphor of
democracy as a unified, international fortress under attack became a naturalised symbol in the context of a
war on terror. New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, one of the more credible and voluble icons of the 11 September discourse, fully
embraced the bright lines of the strategic binary: On one side is democracy, the rule of law and respect for
human life. On the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions and mass murder. We are right and they are wrong.
Its as simple as that. And by that I mean that America and its allies are right about democracy, about religious, political and economic freedom,
and the terrorists are wrong. (Giuliani 2001) With such full-throated reinforcement from such (temporarily yet powerfully) influential
political figures and with the support of an echoing press a rhetorical regime was firmly established and maintained in the context of
such that certain responses (e.g., military strikes) would seem more appropriate than others (e.g., intensified diplomacy).

these attacks. Over time this basic articulation weathered a number of consequent and potentially disrupting events, including expansive and expensive
wars, scandals of torture and rendition, historic reversals of civil liberties, and subsequent attacks of political violence. But we know, from Gramsci
through Hall and others, that ideology inhabits a realm of constant change and must adapt to remain effective. We now turn to the later attacks in Madrid
and London to show how this articulation grew in sophistication by forming four primary, interrelated strands that, collectively, helped sustain the
rhetorical regime.

Impact

Ethics
The The War on Terror frame is unethical. War-framing produces civilian
casualties, mass incarceration and authoritarianism.
Spencer, 12 (Alexander Spencer, Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversity Munich, Fall 2012, The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy
implications, Journal of International Relations and Development Volume 15, Number 3, pp. 401-403
Accessed 7-15-15)
So how does the metaphor war constitute terrorism and what policies does it make possible or logical?
People associate a large number of things with war and these associations are included in the transference
of the source domain war to the target domain terrorism. For example, this includes allocation of funds
in the war effort. As Susan Sontag argues, [w]ar-making is one of the few activities that people are not
supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In an all-out war,
expenditure is all out, imprudent war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive
(Sontag 1989: 99). So the normal budgetary concerns and the idea ofa costbenefit analysis go out the
window to a certain extent as the whole nations industry has to be mobilized and sacrifices have to be
made to ensure the ultimate victory. War is not considered a normal state of affairs; it is an unusual period
of time where unusual measures have to be implemented to stop the enemy from Alexander Spencer The
social construction of terrorism401 winning. Securing the borders of a country and preventing the enemy
from entering make sense in a war. As the enemy is usually another country, those from that country or
region are suspected of automatically supporting the opponents cause. They are therefore treated with
suspicion and subjected to different treatment. For example, in the Second World War, it was normal to
apprehend potential saboteurs from the country one was fighting. Here the incarceration in camps of
Germans and especially Japanese and even second- or third-generation Japanese Americans was
considered a necessary precaution (Cole 2003). The state of emergency in a war calls for such new
legislation where checks and balances are reduced and civil liberties are restricted, both sacrificed in the
war effort (Shimko 1995).In addition, the war metaphor simplifies the issue that it frames. The problem is
made manageable as it is reduced to a question of defeating the enemy and winning the war. Searching for
the root causes of the problem is discouraged as critical voices are silenced. Criticism of the war becomes
unpatriotic, cowardly and treacherous. The problem becomes apolitical, something which cannot be
debated in the public realm. What feedback are we allowed in wartime? Acceptable questions include,
Are we winning? What weapons should be used to defeat the enemy? What war strategies should be
applied? We cannot ask if the war is necessary, or if the enemy is ourselves. We cannot back away saying
that we were wrong (Hartmann-Mahmud 2002: 429).Most obviously, a military-style constitution of
terrorism calls for a military response. As early as 1987, Jeffrey Simon (1987: 9) of the RAND corporation,
a think tank not really known for its expertise on metaphor analysis, realized the importance of the war
metaphor in the fight against terrorism: Equating terrorism with war effectively ends any debate over
whether military responses are justified: If a nation is at war it must respond militarily to attack. So the
war metaphor influences the publics perception of the enemy and makes a military response appear logical
(Bates 2004). As Sarbin (2003: 1501) points out: An important feature of the war metaphor is that
problems engendered by terrorist acts can be solved through the deployment of military forces. So, more
than anything the public associates war with violence, insecurity and the application of military force to
achieve victory and solve the threat of terrorism. If the problem is considered to have military dimensions,
a military solution seems appropriate. Metaphors such as terror army or war on terroroutlined above are
all part of the language of war and thereby frame the issue of terrorism and the conflict with Al Qaeda as a
war that can be won by military means (Shimko 1995). These words may not cause a certain policy, but
they increase the likelihood of a military response as it seems appropriate to the constructed image of
terrorism. Obviously, a military response entails violence, and therefore casualties both at home and abroad
are naturally accepted. Although sad and regrettable, civilians always perish in a war, where collateral
damage is part of the fighting. After all, it is war! The British military response to terrorism and their
participation in Operation Enduring Freedom following 9/11 fits the conceptual metaphor TERRORISM IS
WAR very well. The response of sending thousands of troops and sophisticated military hardware to fight
terrorism in, for example, Afghanistan appears appropriate against terrorism that is constituted as a
war(Dorman 2003; Bamford 2004; c.f. Donohue 2007). This understanding isvisible both among the

political elite as well as the public. Tony Blair, for example, stated: Whatever the technical or legal issues
about the declaration of war, the fact is we are at war with terrorism

State Terrorism
State terrorism produces mass atrocities national security agencies cooperate with
authoritarian governments.
Ruth Blakeley, Blakely works at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of
Kent in Canterbury, UK, 8-12-2010, Liberal democracies and the globalisation of state terrorism in the
21st century, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2010.491314
The forms of state terrorism to which Deghayes and many other victims of rendition and proxy detention in the War on
Terror have been exposed are not new. Neither is it the first time that US complicity in such practices has
been exposed. That same week in March that the film was screened at Kent, I assessed the accounts submitted by my final- year
undergraduate students 1 of the findings of the 1996 Guatemalan Truth Commission. The Truth Commission was established
following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1994 to provide a historical account of three decades of violent conflict, during
which tens of thousands of Guatemalans lived under the shadow of fear, death and disappearance as daily
threats (Tomuschat et al. 1999). The Truth Commission documented 42,275 individual cases of serious

violations of human rights. Of these, 23,671 men, women and children were victims of arbitrary execution,
and 6159 were victims of forced disappearances. The Commission also provided detailed evidence of the widespread
use of numerous forms of torture and rape, including women and children, and estimated that over 200,000
people were killed or disappeared over a 30-year period. The Commission concluded that these atrocities
constituted a deliberate policy of state terrorism, and found the state, through the conventional armed
forces, intelligence agencies, allied paramilitaries and death squads, to be responsible for 93% of them . The
Truth Commission also concluded that US support for state-led counterinsurgency operations, through training and financing of
the Guatemalan officer corps, had a significant and negative effect, exacerbating human rights abuses by the state. Just as
Guantnamo provides only a small snapshot of a much wider, pernicious, and largely hidden network of
state terror, the Guatemalan Truth Com- mission is just one of numerous Commissions conducted in Latin America at the end of the
Cold War which uncovered many of the same practices of state terrorism, orchestrated and led by the National Security States in the
region, in cahoots with successive US administrations that armed, funded and facilitated regimes that were

responsible for the torture, detention and murder of hundreds of thousands of citizens.

We fail to account for the magnitude state terror because its victims are silenced.
Henrique Tavares Furtado, Furtado works in Politics at the University of Manchester, 4-9-2015, Against
state terror: lessons on memory, counterterrorism and resistance from the Global South, Critical Studies
on Terrorism Vol.8,No.1,72 89 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2015.1005936
State terrorism does not end when violations of human rights cease. When a sovereign state tortures,
disfigures, exiles and disappears the very individuals it was bound to protect (Edkins 2003 ), it creates a
trauma that echoes through time. Interestingly, this traumatic betrayal by a sovereign that terrorises its own population
(Jackson, Murphy, and Poynting 2010 ) in order to maintain political order has a double phantasmagorical function in the aftermath of
a conflict. The silence of survivors, disenfranchised by official narratives that appropriate their individual
memories for the waging of war (Edkins 2004 ), coexists with the silence of a discipline that refuses to
acknowledge the state as a source of terrorism (Jackson 2008 ). Both silences only result in a spiral of violence;
by not contesting national narratives of the past, we allow the state to claim death as a political sacrifice in the name

of a just war; and by rejecting the notion of state terrorism, we allow violence perpetrated by the state to
remain unquestioned. When it comes to the remembrance of state terror, the silence of survivors and the silence of
academics feed into each other in a joint and vicious forgetting. This forgetting of the state as a source of
illegitimate violence only serves to render instances of state repression and arbitrariness, such as those enabled by
the war on terror, more easily justifiable. It effectively makes preposterous the possibility that the state would
perpetrate terrorism in the name of national security. Accordingly, both memory studies and CTS insist that by
forgetting state terror through silencing survivors of trauma and solely defining terrorists as non-state
actors we create the very conditions for state violence to return as a ghost, haunting the present and future
of global politics.

The discourse of orthodox terror studies refuses to acknowledge state violence.

Jackson 9
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, May 18 2009, The ghosts of state terror: knowledge, politics and

terrorism studies, pp. 382)

Beyond these ghostly traces of state terror however, a discourse analysis of the field reveals that the most
notable aspect of the state terrorism discourse is its near complete absence; there is almost a total silence on
the subject within most books, papers, and writings in the terrorism studies field today. In the vast majority
of the more than 100 texts I examined, the terms state terrorism or state terror did not even appear, much
less form the basis for any kind of sustained analyses or discussion. This basic finding, that there is a
profound silence on state terrorism within the field, is supported by a broader set of findings. Andrew Silke for
example, found that only twelve or less than two percent of papers from 1990 to 1999 in the core terrorism studies journals focused on state
terrorism (Silke 2004, p. 206), a finding that echoes Schmid and Jongmans (1988) authoritative survey of the field which concluded that,

There is a conspicuous absence of literature that addresses itself to the much more serious problem
of state terrorism (pp. 179180). Similarly, it has been noted that only twelve of the 768 pages in the Encyclopaedia of World
Terrorism (1997) examined state terrorism in any form (quoted in Goodin 2006, p. 55). Along the same lines, an analysis of John Thakrahs
popular Dictionary of Terrorism (2004) demonstrates that reference to, and discussion of, state terrorism makes up less than eight out of 308
pages (Thakrah 2004). Extraordinarily, Thakrahs entry on History of Terrorism does not mention a single example of state terrorism (Thakrah
2004, pp. 114120). My own examination of conference paper titles and abstracts found that of 113 papers related to terrorism presented at
the 2007 ISA annual convention, only one focused on any aspect of state terrorism; and of 95 papers on terrorism at the 2007 APSA annual

We might also note that the wider terrorism studies field does
not include statistics on state terrorism in any of its recognised data bases, most notably the highly
influential RAND database (Burnett and Whyte 2005, RAND 2006). In addition to this silence on the
broader subject of state terrorism, we can detect a series of other silences. In particular, there is within the
terrorism literature virtually no mention or analysis of Western state terrorism, the terror of strategic
bombing, the terror of democratic state torture, Western sponsorship of mostly right-wing terrorist groups,
Israeli state terrorism, and the terrorism of Western allies during the Cold War and the war on terror
among others. In much contemporary terrorism studies publications, there is an ongoing silence on the
terrorism of state-sponsored death squads in Iraq, the terrorism of Western-backed warlords in Afghanistan,
and the state terror of Western allies such as Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and the like. In
large part, the silence on state terrorism in the discourse is due to the frequent practice by terrorism scholars
of defining terrorism exclusively as a form of non-state violence, thereby excluding states a priori from
being able to employ terrorism at all. Bruce Hoffman, for example, argues that terrorism involves violence
perpetrated by a subnational group or non-state entity (Hoffman 1998, p. 43). This is in keeping with the
US State Departments highly influential definition of terrorism, a definition employed by a significant
proportion of terrorism scholars today, which conceives of terrorism as premeditated, politically motivated
violence perpetuated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually
intended to influence an audience (quoted in Martin 2003, p. 33). For the many scholars who adopt this
definition, terrorism is both largely indistinguishable from insurgency, militancy, guerrilla warfare, and the
like, and more importantly, states are a priori and by definition excluded as actors who can practice
terrorism. For these scholars, state violence that is intended to cause terror and intimidate may be described
as repression, oppression, human rights abuses, war crimes and the like, but never as terrorism.
convention, only four focused on aspects of state terrorism.

Cycle of Violence
Terror discourse is self replicating and propels imperialism
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Unknown
Knowns: the subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5:1, 19 thw_)
There is no need to reproduce here the main findings of the growing literature which explores the ideological consequences of the
dominant terrorism discourse (see, among others, Silberstein 2002, Jackson 2005, 2007, Jarvis 2009). Broadly, processes of

knowledge subjugation function to stabilise meanings, discipline boundaries and maintain hierarchical
knowledge-power structures within the broader social structure. In turn, such discourse stabilisation allows the field to
perform its key legitimising role in maintaining state hegemony, in part through its securitising role. More specifically, it
allows the field to be used instrumentally by state elites as a source of legitimacy for a range of political
projects, domestic and foreign, such as extending processes of governmentality (Foucault 1991, pp. 87104)
through practices like social surveillance, counter-radicalisation programmes and the suppression of dissent, to regime
change, security assistance programmes and other forms of imperialism (see Jackson 2007). More specific consequences of
knowledge suppressions and exclusions for the ter- rorism field include the maintenance of a particular series of
dominant myths about the nature, threat, causes and resolution of terrorism which are reproduced in
academic, political and cultural discourse (Jackson 2009), thereby maintaining a shared society-wide commonsense about
terrorism; the continuing distortion, ideological bias and restricted focus of the terrorism fields research, including the ever-growing
literature on issues such as bio-terrorism, radicalisation and religious terrorism (see Silke 2009), and the continuing neglect of
systematic research by the fields scholars on Western state terrorism (see Jackson 2008, Blakeley 2009); and advocacy and
support by many terrorism scholars for ineffective and counterproductive counterterrorism policies what
has been described as a passion for ignorance which has actually led in recent years to a counterterrorism self-fulfilling
prophesy (Zulaika 2009).

Orthodox terrorism studies fail at combating terror and end up reproducing it

multiple warrants
Jackson 7
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, the core commitments of critical terrorism studies, European
Political Science 2007, pp. 244-246)
The argument for critical terrorism studies (CTS) begins with four main criticisms of the traditional
terrorism studies field. First, both past and more recent review exercises of the field reveal an embarrassing
list of methodological and analytical weaknesses, including among others: a reliance on poor research
methods and procedures, an over-reliance on secondary information and a general failure to undertake
primary research (Zulaika and Douglass, 1996: 14950; Silke, 2004a); a failure to develop an accepted
definition of terrorism and to formulate rigorous theories and concepts (Schmid and Jongman, 1988); the
descriptive, narrative and condemnatory character of much terrorism research output; the dominance of
orthodox international relations (IR) approaches and a lack of interdisciplinarity; the tendency to treat
contemporary terrorism as a new phenomenon that started on September 11th, 2001 and a persistent lack
of historicity (Silke, 2004c: 209); a restricted research focus on a few topical issues and a subsequent
failure fully to engage with a range of other important subjects, not least the issue of state terrorism (Silke,
2004c: 206); and an overly policy prescriptive focus (Silke, 2004b: 58; Ilardi, 2004: 215). Second,
traditional terrorism studies has its theoretical and institutional origins in orthodox security studies and
counterinsurgency studies (Burnett and Whyte, 2005: 1113; Schmid and Jongman, 1988: 182). An
influential review de- scribed much of the fields early output as counterinsurgency masquerading as
political science (Schmid and Jongman, 1988: 182). As a consequence, much terrorism research adopts
state-centric priorities and perspectives and tends to reproduce a limited set of assumptions and narratives
about the nature, causes and responses to terrorism. Collectively, these narratives make up a widely
accepted knowledge or discourse of terrorism (see Jackson, 2005, 2007). The key problem is that much of

this knowledge is highly contestable and largely unsupported by empirical research. In effect, this means
that the field is in large part dominated by a cabal of virulent myths and half-truths whose reach extends
even to the most learned and experienced (Silke, 2004a: 20). A third and related criticism of the field
pertains to the embedded or organic nature of many terrorism experts and scholars; that is, the extent to
which terrorism scholars are directly linked to state institutions and sources of power in ways that make it
difficult to distinguish between the state and academic spheres (see George, 1991; Herman and OSullivan,
1989; Ilardi, 2004). Crucial in the evolution of what has been called the terrorism industry has been the
influence of the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research foundation founded by the United States Air
Force with deep ties to the American military and political establishments (Burnett and Whyte, 2005: 8).
The main consequence of such links is that together with certain state, military, think-tank and public
intellectuals, the leading terrorism studies scholars now constitute an influential and exclusive epistemic
community a network of specialists with a common world view about cause and effect relationships
which relate to their domain of expertise, and common political values about the type of policies to which
they should be applied (Stone, 1996: 86). From a Gramscian perspective, the core terrorism studies
scholars can be understood as organic intellectuals intimately connected institutionally, financially,
politically and ideologically with a state hegemonic project. A fourth main criticism is that the dominant
knowledge of the field is an ideal type of problem-solving theory (Gunning, 2007). As Robert Cox argues,
problem-solving theory takes the world as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and
the institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework for action, and then works to make
these relationships and institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble
(Cox, 1981: 1289). It does not question the extent to which the status quo the hierarchies and operation
of power and the inequalities and injustices thus generated is implicated in the problem of terrorism and
other forms of subaltern violence. Moreover, through the use of social scientific language and modes of
inquiry, political assumptions about terrorism are masqueraded as technical issues and sides are taken on
terrorisms major ethical and political questions. These four criticisms have important analytical and
normative implications. Analytically, the state-centric orientation of the field functions to narrow the
potential range of research subjects, encourage conformity in outlook and method and obstruct vigorous,
wide- ranging debate, particularly regarding the causes of non-state terrorism and the use of terrorism by
liberal democratic states and their allies. More importantly, a normative perspective suggests that terrorism
studies is a largely co-opted field of research that is deeply enmeshed with the actual practices of counterterrorism and the exercise of state power.

Alternative
Our alternative treats terrorism as a political strategy not an ideology. Refusing to
distinguish between state and non-state political violence is a pre-requisite for
conflict resolution.
Jackson, 7( 2007, Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, the core
commitments of critical terrorism studies, European Consortium for Political Research, Accessed
7/15/15) CH
Ontologically, CTS is characterised by a general scepticism towards, and often a reticence to employ, the
terrorism label because it is recognised that in practice It has always been a pejorative rather
thananalytical term and that to use the term is a powerful form of labelling that implies apolitical judgement
about the legitimacyof actors and their actions. Terrorism is fundamentally a social fact rather than abrute
fact; while extreme physical vio-lence is experienced as a brute fact, its wider culturalpolitical meaning is
decided by social agreement and inter-subjective practices. In this sense, just asraces do not exist but
classifications of humankind do, so too terrorism does not exist but classifications of different forms of
political violence do (Sluka, 2002: 23).That is, The nature of terrorism is not inherent in the violent act
itself. One and the same act can be terrorist or not, depending on intention and circumstance(Schmid and
Jongman, 1988: 101) not to mention cultural and political context. For this reason, CTS refuses to define
terrorism either in ways that de-legitimise some actors while simultaneously accord-ing the mantle of
legitimate violence to others, or in ways that legitimise violence Terrorism is fundamentally a social fact
rather than a brute fact; just as races do not exist but classifications of humankind do, so too terrorism
does not exist but classifications of different forms of political violence do. simply because they are
conducted in particular circumstances, such as during war. Instead, CTS views terrorism funda-mentally as
a strategy or tactic of political violence that can be, and frequently is, employed by both state and non-state
actors and during times of war and peace. As Charles Tilly puts it, Properly under-stood, terror is a
strategy, not a creed. Terrorists range across a wide spectrum of organizations, circumstances and be-liefs.
Terrorism is not a single causally coherent phenomenon. No social scientist can speak responsibly as
though it were (Tilly, 2004: 5). Moreover, as a strategy, terrorism involves the deliver-ate targeting of
civilians in order to intimidate or terrorize for distinctly political purposes. Alex Schmid explains that like
war, terrorism is also a continua-tion of politics by other means (Schmid,2004: 202).The important point is
that terrorism is not an ideology or form of politics in itself;it is rather, a tool employed at specific times,
for specific periods of time, by specific actors and for specific politica l goals. Groups specialising solely in
terror do sometimes form, but they are extre-mely rare and, typically, they remain highly unstable and
ephemeral. In reality, most terrorism occurs in the context of wider political struggles in which the use of
terror is one strategy among othermore routine forms of contentious action(Tilly, 2004: 6; Schmid, 2004:
199). In this sense, terrorism is not a freestanding phenomenon: there is no terror is mas such, just the
instrumental use of terror by actors. This has important implications for notions of identity, and
subsequently for the strategies and ethics of counter-terrorism, not least because it implies that the
terrorist label is never a fixed oressential identity and that terrorists may choose to abandon its use as a
tactic for achieving political aims. A pertinent illus-tration of the ontological instability of the terrorist label
and the potentialities for political metamorphosis is the observa-tion that there are four recognised
terrorists who have gone onto win the Nobel Peace Prize: Menachim Begin, Sean McBride, Nelson
Mandela andYassir Arafat (Zulaika and Douglass,1996: x). In other words, Once a terror-ist, is not always
a terrorist (Schmid,2004: 205). Similarly, the inability of the UK and US governments to agree on a
common list of proscribed terrorist organisations, despite holding very similar definitions of terrorism,
speaks to the inherent subjectivity of applying this label in the real world (see Silke,2004a: 56).

The alternative is epistemic disobedience as academics we have an obligation to

deconstruct the dominant discourse of counter-terrorism.
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, P. 4950]//dickies

Given the vast suffering engendered by the global war on terrorism since 2001, the spread of unethical, illegal and
counterproductive practices such as torture, rendition, extrajudicial killings, mass surveillance and control orders (among others), and
the economic and social costs of contemporary counterterrorism, there is a clear normative responsibility to try and
resist and deconstruct the current epistemological crisis and all its harmful effects. Notwithstanding the iron logic of the
epistemological crisis, its widespread acceptance and its inherently expansionary and self-replicating nature, there are a number of
potential avenues for resistance. However, to initiate resistance, it is crucial that we first adopt an attitude of what
Walter Mignolo (2009) calls epistemic disobedience to the dominant paradigm. Although this term is employed by
Mignolo in the context of de-colonial thought, it can readily be applied to the hegemonic counterterrorist paradigm

and the urgent need for the epistemic de-linking of the unknown and the imperative to act; the unveiling
of epistemic silences or knowledge de-subjugation (Jackson 2012b) about risk, actors and political violence;
the challenging of the epistemic privilege held by security experts and officials; and the need to change
the terms of the conversation regarding how we as a society deal with potential threats of political violence, particularly in
terms of the material and legal sacrifices we are prepared to take. More specific suggestions for resisting the epistemological crisis
include Zulaika and Douglasss (1996) suggestion of employing strategies of exorcism to try and rid society of its ontological terror. In
this regard, Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2012b) argues for the important role of laughter and humour as a way of creating space within
which terrorism fears and obsessions can be exorcised and deconstructed. In a similar vein, Zulaika (2012) suggests a strategy aimed
at heightening the contradictions within the epistemological crisis through encouraging more fantasy and cooperating with official
activities, particularly those that are obviously bizarre. In this respect, proliferating fantasy scenarios and engaging in constant
reporting of suspicious activities could overload and overwhelm counterterrorist structures, thereby making the paradigm practically
unworkable. Other more traditional modes of resistance include the employment of academic research and
counter-evidence to contradict official statements and justifications, fill purported knowledge gaps and
demonstrate alternative policy options (see Mueller and Stewart 2011, 2012). While providing an evidentiary base cannot
break down the epistemological crisis on its own (due to the built-in rejection of evidence and knowledge), it is nonetheless
crucial in the broader struggle to win legitimacy for change in the dominant policy paradigm . Related to this,
there is an important role for activist groups and individuals, as well as investigative journalists such as Glenn
Greenwald, WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and others, to publicise the nature and extent of counterterrorist activities,

particularly when they involve secret wrong-doing and social harm such as mass surveillance, torture,
rendition, shoot-to-kill policies and the like. Other groups like Cageprisoners can then use this information to provide legal
support for victims and challenge government programmes. Whatever approach is adopted, there is an urgent need for greater
efforts by critical scholars and concerned citizens to discover and develop many more effective strategies of
resistance to the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism and its damaging practices and Critical Studies on
Terrorism 49 Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 consequences. Scholars, including many
within critical terrorism studies (CTS), have done an excellent job so far of deconstructing the counterterrorism paradigm and its
dominant practices. They have been much less successful, with some notable exceptions (see, among others, The Rendition Project,
n.d.), at devising practical ways of resisting counterterrorism, rolling back harmful policies and offering alternative forms of
counterterrorism.

We can exploit fissures in the counter-terrorism consensus reframing is possible.

Jackson 7 (Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.
Government and Opposition, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 394426, 2007.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2007.00229.x/epdf thw_)
The purpose of this article is not to assert that the terrorist threat does not exist or that terrorism and religion are not linked in some
fashion. Rather, its central aim is to draw attention to the contestable and politicized character of the dominant
narratives, the ways in which Islamic terrorism is interpreted and socially constructed as an existential
threat and the means by which the broader discourse functions to promote a number of discrete political
projects and reify a particular kind of political and social order. Exposing the ideological effects and political
technologies of the discourse has the potential to open up critical space for the articulation of alternative and
potentially emancipatory forms of knowledge and practice. Moreover, given the enormous material and social
destruction of the war on terrorism thus far, the possibility of articulating non-violent or constructive responses to
acts of terrorism takes on immense normative signicance. Fortunately, discourses are never completely hegemonic;
there is always room for counter-hegemonic struggle and subversive forms of knowledge. In this case, not only
is the discourse inherently unstable and vulnerable to different forms of critique, but the continual set-backs in Iraq and Afghanistan,
ongoing revelations of torture and rendition and increasing resistance to government attempts to restrict civil liberties suggest that the
present juncture provides an opportune moment to engage in deliberate and sustained critique. Recent moves by ofcials of the
European Union for example, to review its lexicon of terms regarding Islamic or jihadi terrorism are indicative of a growing
dissatisfaction with the discourse within parts of the political establishment .112In particular, given their public role,
scholars in the eld have a responsibility to challenge the articulation of the central labels and narratives of
the dominant discourse and to explore alternative forms of language and knowledge . As an initial starting

point, reclaiming the labels and narratives of political violence, revolutionaries, militants,
nationalism, anti-imperialism, self-determination, insurgency, ideology and the like to describe the
current conict, could provide a more exible and ethically responsible alternative to the oppressive connes of
the discourse of Islamic terrorism.

Critical terrorism studies are necessary to counteract the Global Norths use of
political violence
Eric Herring 2008, Reader in International Politics at the University of Bristol, author of Iraq in
Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy, School of Sociology, Politics, and International Studies,
Critical Terrorism Studies: An Activist Scholar Perspective
There is a pressing need for critical terrorism studies. Mainstream terrorism studies obscures the
class function of terrorism, values the worthy victims of official enemies over the unworthy victims of
official allies, keeps Northern state terrorism off the agenda and deploys the concept of terrorism in a
way that delegitimises opposition to the power of the global North while legitimising the global
Norths own political violence. Critical terrorism studies should break with mainstream terrorism
studies on all of these fronts. It should address how terrorism has evolved as an instrument of the
power and privilege of the global North. It should treat the victims of terrorism equally on the basis of
their common humanity, which means the terrorism of the global North or global South should not be
treated as the only terrorism that matters. And it should use the label terrorism to hold up a mirror to
those who accuse others of terrorist acts but who engage in, sponsor or are complicit in such acts
themselves. Finally, it should situate its challenge to terrorism within a challenge to the use of
political violence in general. In 1979, Chomsky and Herman (1979, p. ix) argued that: The basic fact is
that the United States has organized under its sponsorship and protection a neo-colonial system of client
states ruled mainly by terror and serving the interests of a small local and foreign business and military
elite. The fundamental belief, or ideological pretense, is that the United States is dedicated to
furthering the cause of democracy and human rights throughout the world, though it may occasionally
err in the pursuit of this objective. 28 years later, Duffield (2007, p. 226) observed: If the outlawing of
exiled regimes calling for political change has been a gift to despotic regimes, these regimes are
reciprocating by providing democratic states with covert security services such as detention without
trial, torture and extrajudicial murder that are otherwise illegal under their own laws. Furthermore, as
Human Rights Watch showed, these despotic regimes seek to pass themselves off as democratic (Human
Rights Watch 2008, Roth 2008). Hence the argument that Northern state terrorism use, sponsorship
and complicity - is part of the class ordering of contemporary capitalism is not new. However, that
argument must be taken up anew for critical terrorism studies to make a politically and intellectually
worthwhile contribution. If this project is to succeed it must have an analysis of why past work of
Chomsky, Herman, Alexander George (1991) and others did not remake the mainstream. It must have a
strategy so that it will succeed this time, persuading and building bridges to those currently in the
mainstream who are open to a new approach and agenda. It also must explore the extent to which the role
of terrorism is changing and possibly even declining in importance in terms of buttressing the class
relations that protect the privilege of the global North. Chomsky and Herman were writing when coercion,
and especially terrorism, were uppermost in maintaining US dominance in Central America. Class rule
probably rests more commonly on consent through ideological hegemony in Gramscian terms (Overbeek
2004, p. 3). This kind of research and political agenda are a far cry from the preoccupations of mainstream
terrorist studies. Overall, critical terrorism studies needs to reflect on how to remake the mainstream
rather than be a marginal alternative to it (Herring 2006, Gunning 2007, Lawson 2008). At a minimum
this will involve generating substantial amounts of theoretical and empirical scholarly output of the highest
possible standard to alter the current path dependency; engaging with non-academic activists so that
scholarship and political practice are connected; taking the argument onto the home ground of
mainstream scholarship; assessing how scholarship contributes to actually existing non-violent struggles
against terrorism and political violence including that of Northern states; and measuring the worth of our
scholarship by all of the above rather by the priorities of what is currently the mainstream of terrorism
studies.

Problematizing dominant approaches to terrorism opens space for new forms of

peacemaking.
Jackson 12
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Unknown
Knowns: the subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5:1, 21-22 thw_)
Guided by its normative and analytical commitments (see Jackson et al. 2009a), and taking note of the potentialities present in the
current historical juncture (see below), I would argue that there are three kinds of knowledge in particular need of de-subjugation
within the broader project of CTS. First, there is a need to try and de-subjugate the suppressed knowledge within
terrorism studies itself the immediate and intimate knowns which remain simultaneously unknown. This includes the

suppressed knowledge of the ways in which terrorism closely resembles war as a form of political violence,
the limited threat to state survival and personal safety that terrorism poses, the ways in which military intervention
and political grievance causes terrorism and how terrorism can be reduced through policy change, dialogue and reform. In a sense, this
is potentially the easiest knowledge to de-subjugate, as it originates from within the legitimised field, often from respected, authorised
experts. Second, there is a particular need at this time to try and de-subjugate the suppressed knowledge in fields
like peace and conflict studies, criminology, anthropology, history, feminist studies and many others. Peace and conflict studies
in particular, by virtue of its hard-won knowledge about conflict resolution and its normative commitment to nonviolence, holds out real emancipatory potential, especially given the general disillusionment with the profound failures of
the past 10 years of war on terror. It would be something of a missed opportunity if CTS did not play a key role in liberating relevant
knowledge from the peace and conflict studies field in the coming years. Finally, there is a normative and analytical imperative
to try and de-subjugate the suppressed knowledge of individual and group subjectivity, including those who
commit violence (see Mahmood 1996), those who suffer it, those who seek to control it and those who suffer
from the broader effects of counterterrorism policies (see Hillyard 1993). In other words, we need to de-subjugate the
human experiences, perceptions and understandings of the human beings we seek to study. Such knowledge, I believe, has
genuine normative and analytical potential for informing both theory and counterterrorism practice, but remains
largely subjugated in the field today in favour of general quantitative research . There are a wide array of different
modes and strategies for de-subjugating knowledge, many of which unfortunately remain underutilised to date. Most obviously,
knowledge de-subjugation can be pursued through established forms of academic struggle, including pursuing
analytical re-description and disrupting the construction of categories , such as the widely accepted category of
religious terrorism (see Gunning and Jackson 2011); engaging in primary research, especially in terms of field research into the
subjectivity of different actors (see Toros 2008); applying rigorous standards of scholarship, particularly in terms of
definition, concepts and theory and the use of data; examining questions and subjects which remain under-explored
within the field, such as the hidden histories of particular episodes of terrorism; and promoting inter- and multi-disciplinarity in
teaching and research, among others. Specifically, knowledge from peace and conflict studies its key authors and major studies
can be deliberately employed in teaching programmes on terrorism, and as the basis for future research projects, as a mode
of knowledge de-subjugation. Related to this, forms of critical deconstruction can be employed as a means of

exposing contingency and hegemony in order to destabilise the discourse and create new openings for
alternative forms of knowledge. This can be pursued by, for example, revealing ideological bias where objectivity
is claimed (see Raphael 2009); unearthing the silences and closures within authoritative terrorism texts (Fortin 1989, p.
190); testing moral reasoning in relation terrorism and counterterrorism (see Goodin 2006, Brecher 2007); re-problematising
political violence in general to reveal similarities rather than differences (see Jabri 1996); giving voice to the subjugated
and adopting the viewpoints of the subaltern (Mahmood 1996); exposing contradictions, contingencies and hegemonic practices
within accepted narratives (Jarvis 2009); and de-exceptionalising terrorist violence within the broader array of
violent politics (Dexter 2011). Practical deconstructive methods for such struggle include forms of critical discourse analysis
(CDA), predicate analysis, metaphorical analysis, the juxtapositional method and the genealogical method (see Milliken 1999). In
particular, following Foucault (1997, p. 10): genealogy is, then, a sort of attempt to desubjugate historical knowledges, to set them
free, or in other words to enable them to oppose and struggle against the coercion of a unitary, formal, and
scientific theoretical discourse . . . to reactivate local knowledges . . . against the scientific hierarchicalization of knowledge
and its intrinsic power-effects.

Collective intellectual criticism resists the imposition of the war on terror frame.
Jackson 12
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Unknown
Knowns: the subjugated knowledge of terrorism studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 5:1, 21-22 thw_)
It is in this context in which CTS is attempting to de-subjugate knowledge and provide a critical challenge to the field but with
limited success thus far that we need to move from Foucaults notion of subjugated knowledge to Bourdieus conception of the
collective intellectual.5 While the former provides a useful diagnosis of the fields condition, the latter provides a helpful
practical prescription for liberating subjugated knowledges. In fact, it now seems clear upon reflection that although it

was unconscious and unintentional at the time, the CTS project has much in common with Bourdieus conception and practice and the
particular pathway he followed in his efforts to promote critical sociology at the time (see Swartz 2003, Lenoir 2006, Oslender 2007).
For example, similar to Bourdieus critical sociology, CTS aimed in part to subject the terrorism studies field to systematic critique of
its problematics, concepts, procedures, practices and, most importantly, accepted knowledge (Lenoir 2006, p. 38). In particular, it
aimed to challenge the binary thinking and dualisms of the field, dissect dominating powers unproblematic
self-portrayal (Swartz 2003, p. 797, Oslender 2007, pp. 98, 101) and study relations between the fields of cultural
production of terrorism and the political field of counterterrorism (Lenoir 2006, p. 41), among others. This would,
CTS scholars believed, help to expose underlying power relations and denaturalise accompanying forms of takenfor-granted knowledge, consequently opening up new possibilities for modifying those relations and generating new
forms of knowledge, and perhaps even having a broader normative political effect (Swartz 2003, p. 797). In an important sense then,
the CTS project envisaged the production of realistic utopias through bringing collaborative expert research to bear on urgent civic
issues and making common cause with others to resist the entrenched dogmas of domination. In par- ticular, it sought to bridge the
gap between theoretical knowledge production and the practical, directly interested aims of practical understanding of the interaction
of social actors (Oslender 2007, p. 107). Like Bourdieu, CTS has tried to engage in both a (neg- ative) critique of existing
structures and practices and a (positive) construction of new research approaches, questions and knowledge
in part through bringing other knowl- edges and alternative proposals into the terrorism studies knowledge
system (Swartz 2003, p. 814, Oslender 2007, pp. 117118). Importantly, CTS scholars have also worked hard to build legitimacy for
critical research on terrorism at the broadest possible level, begin- ning with the terrorism studies field and then moving outwards into
social and political spaces (Swartz 2003, p. 795). Moreover, similar to Bourdieus normative orientation, CTS scholars view critical
social science as an act of resistance; its choice of research topics, for example, has often been guided by moral
and political considerations: inequality, suffering, and domination (Swartz 2003, pp. 798, 808).

Alternative Reject War Framing

Rejecting the war framing of terrorism generates new political approaches to
violence.
STEUTER AND WILLIS 8 [Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills in 2008. At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda,
and Racism in the War on Terror. CH 1, PP 10-14. Steuter is the head of media analysis including media coverage of the
"War on Terror" at Mt. Allison University. Wills is a professor of English at Mt. Allison University, focusing on contemporary
literature and theory, cultural studies.]
Justaswarsinvolvetwoclearlydefinedsides,sothemetaphorofwarenticinglypromisesaclearnarrativeof

aggressorsandvictims,winnersandlosers,soldiersandinsurgents.ImmediatelyafterSeptember11,
thewarmetaphorseemed,atfirstglance,tobereasonable:afterall,theattackonthePentagonwasagainstamilitary
target,theattackswereintendedtochallengeAmericaneconomicandmilitarypower,andthelevelofdamagemadethesouthendof
Manhattanlookverymuchlikeawarzone,withalltheattendanthorrorandchaos.However,otheraspectsoftheattackdo

notfitthisframingaswell:TheWorldTradeCenterwasnotamilitarytarget;theattackvehicles
werenotmilitaryweapons;theattackwascarriedoutentirelywithinthiscountry;and,perhaps
mostimportantly,theattackersdidnotrepresentthepolicyofanothersovereignstate.Aseventsunfold,

manycommentatorshavecastdoubtsonthewarmetaphor,arguingthatthisisnot(orshouldnotbe)awaragainstIslam,justagainst
violentIslamicfundamentalists.Theseobserversarguethatthefalseclarityofthewarmetaphoreffectivelymasksthemany
uncertaintiesandambiguitiesoftheWaronTerror.Forexample,asweepinglycategoricaltermsuchasenemycan

beusedtoobscurethefactthatinthisconflicttheenemyisnotaspecificallynationaloraspecifically
religiousone.Ascriticsofthewaronterrorremindus,weneedtobewareoffalselogical
propositionssuchasAllterroristsareMuslimsthereforeallMuslimsareterrorists.19Inthewar
onterror,theidentificationoftheenemyhasbeenincreasinglydifficultandproblematic. Istheenemy
terroritself?Howissuchanabstractiontobefought?Whatterritorycanbegainedinsuchahypotheticalbattle?Whatwillbethe
frontlinesinthisterrainofabstractionandsymbolism?Inspiteofitsdifficulties,thewarmetaphorhasremained

dominant.Ifweareinawar,thenwehaveaspecificlexiconorvocabularytodrawupon.Likethelexiconofanymetaphorical
system,thisonedoesnotsimplydescribethings,butshapesthewayweseethem:ourvocabularyguidesourthinking,
urgingustointerpreteventsaccordingtoandwithintheframeofthatlanguage.Thelexiconofwar
raisesthestakesofthediscussionandgeneratesintensity:war,afterall,isaboutourverysurvival.

Whatisthislexicon?Itsnounscruciallydefineidentities:oursidehasanenemywhobecomestheenemy.Wehave
adversariesandantagonists.Thesenounsdefinethepeopleandcountriesinvolvedinconflictprimarilyintermsofopposition:
wearedefinedbywhoweareagainst,andouropponentsaredefinedasouropposites;bothsidesarethuslockedintorolesof
essentialdifferenceandeternalopposition.Theverbsinourlexiconofwaralsoperformthiskindofideologicalwork. Inwar,we

attack,defend,strike,andengagetheenemy;wedeveloptacticsandstrategicobjectives
andemploynecessarymeans.Theverbsofwarallowforgloriousactivity:wearenotpassivebut
active,notacteduponbutacting.Theverbsofwarare,frankly,ratherexciting:theysupportasense
ofprogressandmovement,whiletheynegateanyundesirableselfpicturingofourselvesashesitant,
static,oruncertain.Theyreplacetheroleofvictimwiththemorepotentroleofaggressivedefender.Inthisvocabulary,weare

definedashunterratherthanprey,warriorratherthanvictim.Eventheadjectivesofwarhaveasignificanteffect:soldiersarestrong,
active,powerfulagents,whileciviliansarelessthanthis:lessexperienced,lessknowing,lessinvolvedintheconflictfirsthand,and
thereforelessdeservingofavoice.Thelexiconofwartacitlyendorsesthemilitarysvaluingofhierarchyandauthority.Withinthis
model,ascitizens,partofthepriceofourrecoveredsecurityistodefertothoseingovernmentandmilitarywhoareseenasexpertsin
thenecessarydeploymentsofwar.Thisissignificantbecause,inwar,civilianshavealimitedimportancerelativetothemartialarena:
theirjobistosupportthetroops,nottoquestion.Thesuccessofthewar,wearetold,requiressinglenessofvisionandvoice;anation
atwarrequiresaharmoniouschorusofsupportfromitscitizens,notacacophonyofdissentingvoices.Anyvoiceraisedinprotest,
andthusoutoftunewiththeprevailingchorus,issilenced,excoriated,orexpelled.Voicesofresistanceorquestioningaretold,asthe
DixieChickswerefamouslytoldbyanangryfan,toshutupandsing.20Inthiswaythediscourseofwarenlistsus

intoparticularroles,andofferslittlespaceforthecreativerecastingoftheseroles.Thewar
metaphoroffersthepromiseofvictoriousdominationandprotection:itimplieswecansothoroughly
defeatourenemiesthatwecankeepthemfromeverhurtingusagain.Thisisasuspectpromise,however;we
haveneversuccessfullymanagedtofightthewartoendallwars,andsoclearlytheclosureandfinalityimplicitlyofferedbythewar
metaphorisatleastinpartwishfulthinking.Dochertyarguesthatthewaronterrorwillbenoexception:thedifficultiesofidentifying

andlocatingtheterroristperpetratorswillmakeafinalreprisaldifficult,andtheverymilitaryattacksthatcreaterefugeeswillcreate
newenemiesemergingfromthecrowdedrefugeecamps,perpetuatingthecycleoffearandterrorforourchildrenand
grandchildren.21Thewarmetaphorthusservesuspoorlypragmaticallyandstrategicallyaswellasideologically:wehamper
ourselvesifWeaponizingWords11weassumeweunderstandthenatureandmotivationofourenemies,orifweassumewecan
predicttheirresponsetoouractivities.Wehamperourselvesfurtherifwedontexaminethecontextsandconditionsthathavegiven
risetotheworldsescalatingcyclesofunrestandviolence.Anotherimportantaspectofthewarmetaphorisits

inherentselfjustification.Itoffersusamodelthatisreactive:ourretaliationisrightand,indeed,
inevitable.Weweregivennochoiceinthematter,wemightsaytoourselves;weareinawar,this
paradigmsuggests,becauseothershavedeclaredwaronus.Morally,thewarmetaphorrisks
everythingasocietybuildsbyoverfocusingresourcesonthewareffort:Thegreatchallengeofthis
metaphoristhatitcarriesanallornothingelement.Ifyouarenotforwar,youmustbefordoing
nothing.Withoutalternativemodels,criticsofwardolookweakandindecisive.Alternativemetaphorsare
sobadlyneeded.22Manywhourgeacautious,critical,orreflectiveattitudetowardsthewaronterroremphasizenotonlythe
metaphorsideologicalwork,butitspowerfulpoliticaleffect.LakoffandFrischarguethatthewarmetaphorwasprimarilyadopted
forpoliticalreasons.SusanSontagarguesthatbecauseofitsindefiniteenemy,theantiterrorwarcanneverend,a

signthatitisnotawar,but,rather,amandateforexpandingtheuseofAmericanpower.23Thewar
metaphorallowsforthisexpansionofpower:whenthegovernmentdeclareswaroncancerorpovertyordrugsitmeansthe
governmentisaskingthatnewforcesbemobilizedtoaddresstheproblembutwhenthegovernmentdeclareswaronterrorism,itis
givingitselfpermissiontodowhatitwants.Whenitwantstointervenesomewhere,itwill.Itwillbrooknolimitstoitspower.24
Thewarmetaphornegatesanyothernonmilitarypossibilityasawaytodefendthecountry.Sincenationalsecurityisinextricably
tiedtothewarssuccess,tobeagainstthewaristobeagainstthenationsverysurvival,andthereforetobeanationalthreat.

Withinthewarmetaphor,anyhesitationtosupportthewarbecomesunpatriotic.Whilethewar
metaphorencouragesthegovernmenttodowhatitwantsinternally,anequallyimportantfeature
isthewarmetaphorsrepressivepowersdomestically.LakoffandFrischinsistthatthewarmetaphorputsdissenters
onthedefensive,sincehesitationtogivethePresidentfullerauthorityopenscriticsandCongresstochargesofdefeatism,weakness,
andlackofpatriotism.Oncethemilitaryextendsthefieldofbattle,thewarmetaphorcreatesanewliteralreality,onethat
substantiatesandreinforcestheoriginalmetaphor.ThewarmetaphoroffersthePresidentenlargedwartimepowersandconferson
himanextraordinarydomesticpowertofulfilltheagendaoftheradicalrightinmovingresourcesawayfromsocial12Chapter
Oneneedstowardsmilitaryneedsinoverridingenvironmentalsafeguards,andinestablishingsystemsofsurveillanceand
intimidationtoinfluencebothenemiesandcitizens.25Sincewartrumpsallothertopics,thewarmetaphor

oftenexpandspowersnotjustintheinternationalbutindomesticarenas,grantingthePresidenta
degreeofpoweroverpoliticaldiscussionaswellasaction.26Sontagseditorialechoestheseconcerns,arguingfor
theexplicitconnectionofthewarmetaphortothesubjugationoffree,openpoliticaldebate.FramingAmericaspost911
foreignpolicyasactionsundertakeninwartime,shesays,actsasapowerfuldisincentiveto
criticaldiscussion:intheaftermathoftheattacks,individualsobjectingtothejihadlanguageused
bytheAmericangovernment(goodversusevil,civilizationversusbarbarism)wereaccusedofcondoningthe
attacks,oratleastthelegitimacyofthegrievancesbehindtheattacks.27Becausethewarmetaphor
elevatesvirtuessuchassolidarityandunanimity,evenasimplecalltoreflectivenessisequatedwith
dissent,dissentwithlackofpatriotism.28Withinthismodel,reflectionsideswiththeenemy,acting
asachallengetothemoralclarityrequiredtosustainawar

Alternative Counter-Memory
We should resist the normalization of state terror by remembering vicitims of states
violence. Counter-memorialization confronts the trauma and victimhood that ties
us to the War on Terror.
Henrique Tavares Furtado, Furtado works in Politics at the University of Manchester, 4-9-2015, Against
state terror: lessons on memory, counterterrorism and resistance from the Global South, Critical Studies
on Terrorism Vol.8,No.1,72 89 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2015.1005936
Resistance is, arguably, one of the major tenets of critical scholarship. Since Foucault, it has become something of a
common place to constantly remember that where there is power, there is always resistance (Fontana and Bretani
2003 , 280). Resistance, this somehow vague and ill-defined concept, plays a fundamental role in countering the violent
effects of both western modes of knowledge and western forms of domination/ exploitation. Hence, critical
academics constantly remind us of the ongoing imperative to resist: wherever and whenever power relations impose
modes of violence , we shall foster micro-political modes of resistance . Ironically, one could say that
resistance has become, to a certain extent, the uncritically accepted imperative of critical theory, as such. In critical
terrorism studies (CTS), this imperative to resist emerged with a particular problem: International Politics
obliviousness towards state terrorism. CTS has recently brought attention to how the concept of state terror
has been constantly and systematic neglected by mainstream research on terrorism , especially post-September 11.
For CTS scholars, this lack of acknowledgement about a particular form of terror that emanates from sovereign
states is deeply problematic. It contributes, as it were, to the unquestioned perpetration of state violence.
This is to say that, by constructing terrorism as a prerogative of individuals, mainstream scholars render one mode of illegitimate state
violence, state terror, conceptually impossible. In other words , by forgetting about state terrorism, academics and

practitioners create the conditions for state terror to blatantly happen, over and over again, without even
being noticed. Thus, for CTS, this forgetting must be resisted: we need to bring the state back into
terrorism studies (Blakeley 2007 ). Such an invitation to resistance appears to come naturally: remembering is
commonly understood as the logical way of resisting oblivion. Interestingly, with the post-September 11 war on
terror, the political importance of practices of remembrance the need to counter repressive regimes of
oblivion became increasingly evident to critical scholars. Shortly before Blakeley called for a re-appropriation of the
concept of terror , other academics had criticised the politics of memory behind counterterrorism discourses. This criticism was
based on how the war on terror was justified by the memorialisation of September 11 as a national trauma
that required proper response. A response that, in fact, turned out as a concealed series of violent actions

torture, death and social exclusion that remained, as it were, forgotten by an official narrative stressing
the just nature of such violence. In order to counter this active oblivion carried out by counter- terrorism
discourses, critical scholars proposed to resist the official, national memorialisation of traumatic events via a
practice of counter memory (Zehfuss 2007 , 21).

Alternative Reject Discourse of Fear

Rejection of the affs politics of fear is a prerequisite to informed policy making
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 15-16] //dickies
All social change and expansion of social control occurs through an act of power, which may be defined as the
ability to define a situation for self and others. When social control changes are institutionalized, they
become part of the fabric of social life. To the extent that formal social control efforts expand, we can see the growth
in the politics of fear. To repeat, the politics of fear refers to decision makers promotion and use of audience
beliefs and assumptions about danger, risk, and fear in order to achieve certain goals. The politics of fear

should correspond well with the amount of formal social control in any society. The source of fear may be
an authority, God, or an internal or external enemy. Tracking the expanded control efforts over time can illustrate how the
politics of fear has evolved in any social order. Moreover, behind most efforts to enact more control will be a series of events and
accounts about what should be done. Changes in public language and in the discourse of fear will also
accompany social control changes. However, once such changes are enacted, they symbolically enshrine the politics
of fear even when public perceptions about the specific source of that fear process may diminish . The
politics of fear is exercised during times of conflict, but it accumulates and gradually informs policy and everyday
life behavior, even if there are occasional bouts of resistance. The politics of fear does not imply that citizens are constantly afraid
of, say, a certain enemy, day in and day out. The object of fear might change, but fear of threats to ones security is fairly
constant. The context of control promotes this, as do numerous messages about menaces that justify general social control measures.
This chapter examines how fear has informed political decisions that resulted in social control and the enactment
of policies and programs that had long-term effects on social life. This overview includes crime control, previous
wars, the expansion of surveillance, the role of business and universities in promoting fear, organized religions complicity in playing
to the politics of fear, and the importance of uniforms in communicating control in everyday life.

K Prior

K Prior Discourse
Critique of the dominant discourse of the war on terrorism is a prerequisite to aff solvencywe can
build better alternatives only if we can create new languages to articulate them in
Richard JACKSON is Lecturer in International Security at the Centre for International Politics at the
University of Manchester, 5 [2005, Writing the War on Terrorism, pg. 1-4]
This book is about the public language of the war on terrorism and the way in which language has been
deployed to justify and normalise a global campaign of counter-terrorism. The enactment of any large-scale
project of political violence - such as war or counter-terrorism - requires a significant degree of political
and social consensus and consensus is not possible without language. For a government to commit
enormous amounts of public resources and risk the lives of its citizens in a military conflict, it has to
persuade society that such an undertaking is necessary, desirable and achievable. In addition, governments
have to regularise and institutionalise the practice of war, especially when it appears likely to last for many
years. The authorities have to make it seem reasonable and unquestionable because once public consensus
begins to break down and large sectors of society start to doubt the necessity or rightness of the conflict, as
occurred during the latter stages of the Vietnam War, it becomes extremely difficult to sustain. The
process of inducing consent - of normalising the practice of the war -therefore requires more than just
propaganda or public diplomacy; it actually requires the construction of a whole new language, or a kind
of public narrative, that manufactures approval while simultaneously suppressing individual doubts
and wider political protest. It requires the remaking of the world and the creation of a new and
unquestioned reality in which the application of state violence appears normal and reasonable.
In this book I explain how the public language of the American administration has been used to construct a
whole new world for its citizens. Through a carefully constructed public discourse, officials have created a
new social reality where terrorism threatens to destroy everything that ordinary people hold dear - their
lives, their democracy, their freedom, their way of life, [End Page 1] their civilisation. In this new reality,
diabolical and insane terrorists plot to rain down weapons of mass destruction across western cities, while
heroic warriors of freedom risk their lives in foreign lands to save innocent and decent folk back home;
good battles evil and civilisation itself stands against the dark forces of barbarism. Within the confines of
this rhetorically constructed reality, or discourse, the war on terrorism appears as a rational and reasonable
response: more importantly, to many people it feels like the right thing to do. In this way, the language of
the war on terrorism normalises and reifies the practice of the war on terrorism; it comes to be
accepted as part of the way things naturally are and should be. Language and practice, in other words,
reinforce each either - they co- constitute the reality of counter-terrorism.
This book has two primary goals. First, it seeks to explore the nature of the overarching narrative or story
of the war on terrorism: its main themes and appeals, its forms and expressions and the kinds of cultural
and political myths that it encompasses. It examines the language that officials in the Bush administration
have used to explain to the American (and global) public why the war was necessary in the first place, who
the enemy is, what kind of threat they pose and why the war will succeed. Second, it explains how the
language of the war on terrorism has become the dominant political paradigm in American foreign policy
since September 11, 2001, and the different kinds of reality- making affects that the adoption of this
language has. It describes how the official language of counter-terrorism has been reproduced and
amplified across society, and the impact this has had on American political life.
The overall argument is fairly simple: the language of the war on terrorism is not simply an objective or
neutral reflection of reality; nor is it merely accidental or incidental. It is not the only way to talk and think
about counter-terrorism. Rather, it is a deliberately and meticulously composed set of words, assumptions,
metaphors, grammatical forms, myths and forms of knowledge -it is a carefully constructed discourse -that
is designed to achieve a number of key political goals: to normalise and legitimise the current counterterrorist approach; to empower the authorities and shield them from criticism: to discipline domestic
society by marginalising dissent or protest: and to enforce national unity by reifying a narrow conception of
national identity. The discourse of the war on terrorism has a clear political purpose: it works for someone
and for something: it is an exercise of power.
This book also argues that to a great extent, this project of rhetorically constructing a massive counterterrorism campaign has been highly successful; the war on terrorism is now the dominant political

narrative in America, enjoying widespread bipartisan and public support. Individuals and social actors from
across the spectrum now speak the language of the war on terrorism and accept its assumptions, its forms
of knowledge and its policy prescriptions; and those who oppose it are largely ignored, silenced and
excluded from the policy [End Page 2] debate. Even more critically, the war on terrorism is embedded
into the institutions and practice of national security and law enforcement, the legal system, the legislative
and executive processes and increasingly. the wider political culture: it is now fully institutionalised and
normalised. From this perspective, the outcome of the American presidential race in November 2004 was
inconsequential: the war on terrorism has taken on a life of its own and any administration would find it
extremely difficult to unmake or alter to any significant degree, even if they wanted to. In either case, it is
fairly clear that the Democrats are just as eager to pursue and expand the war on terrorism as the
Republicans, if not more so. John Kerry, for example, stated in 2004 that the war on terrorism needed to
be refocused on other terror-supporting states and reoriented to include greater international cooperation,
not that it should be completely reformulated. Thus it is highly unlikely that the troops in Afghanistan and
Iraq will be brought home any time soon, or the defence budget slashed, or the USA Patriot Act repealed or
the Department of Homeland Security disbanded. The architecture of the campaign is firmly established;
although it has taken a relatively short time to construct, the war on terrorism is going to be with us for a
long time to come.
There are therefore, a number of reasons why this is a critical subject for inquiry In the first instance, the
war on terrorism is more than just a passing phase of American foreign policy: it is actually the most
profound conflict since the cold war and it has already made an indelible mark on both international
relations and the domestic politics of most countries. Its effects are horizontal and vertical, penetrating
outwards towards other states and inwards into the belly of domestic politics. Its impacts can be clearly
seen in security, policing, foreign policy, the legislative process, immigration, banking, travel, the media,
race relations, popular culture, education, health and sport - to name just a few. Clearly, no country or
people can remain immune from its effects. It is vitally important that we understand such a profound
transformation of global interactions, if for no other reason than so we can retain some control over its
potential outcomes.
Second, and of greater consequence, the deployment of language by politicians is an exercise of power and
without rigorous public interrogation and critical examination, unchecked power inevitably becomes
abusive. This is never more true than during times of national crisis when the authorities assume enhanced
powers to deal with perceived threats; unfortunately, the abuse of state power under the banner of the war
on terrorism is already well advanced -from the unconstitutional powers to try enemy combatants in
secret courts to the manipulation of intelligence information about Iraq and the unconstitutional violation of
civil liberties in America and elsewhere. The systematic and institutionalised abuse of Iraqi prisoners first
exposed in April 2004 is a direct consequence of the language used by senior administration officials:
conceiving [End Page 3] of terrorist suspects as evil, inhuman and faceless enemies of freedom (and
with hoods on they really are faceless) creates the atmosphere where abuses become normalised and
tolerated. There is therefore, an urgent need to cross- examine and scrutinise the language of political
leaders, to challenge what they say, rather than just passively and uncritically absorb it.
In a related sense, this is a critical subject for inquiry because the threat of political violence in all its forms
- terrorism, counter-terrorism, war, insurgency, revolution, ethnic cleansing - is real and pervasive and we
need to discover genuine solutions that go beyond the reflexive application of massive counterviolence. Unless we acquire a proper understanding of the nature of terrorism, the reasons why people are
willing to kill themselves and others in pursuit of political goals, and the dangers and consequences of
violent forms of counter- terrorism (such as the moral hazard of becoming terrorists ourselves through the
abuse of suspects and prisoners), there is a genuine risk that we will end up worse off than when we
started: that through misplaced and misguided policies we will make the world a more violent and unjust
place, instead of making it safer and more stable. Terrorism is a complex problem; it will require a
complex solution based on clear thinking, informed analysis and realistic assessment.
One of my key concerns in writing this book is that the language of the war on terrorism actually prevents
rather than facilitates the search for solutions to political violence; that it actually encourages terrorism and
increases the risk to vulnerable populations: that it is entrenching cycles of global violence which will be
extremely difficult to break; and that it misunderstands and misinterprets the nature of terrorist violence
thereby handicapping the counter-terrorist campaign before it has even started. My purpose is not to engage
in a critique of American foreign policy or simply to blame America for its own problems: rather, it is to
assist the search for genuine and lasting solutions to the problem of political violence. I believe that it is

only through a careful and systematic interrogation of the discourse that we can go back to ground
zero as it were - the beginning - and start to think clearly about the problem. And it is only by finding a
new language of counter-terrorism - one that illuminates rather than obfuscates - that we can imagine (and
perhaps build) a better world than this.

The discourse of terrorism uses fear and risk to institutionalize violent politics.
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 113-114] //dickies
Previous chapters have set forth the concept of the politics of fear and provided explanations and examples of its logic and how it is
connected to the mass media and popular culture. I also examined how the context of crime reporting by an increasingly
entertainment-oriented mass media contributed to the expansion of media logic throughout social life. Increasingly it seems that what
people experience as audiences of popular culture is reflected in their experiences with social institutions, especially agents of social
control. The preceding chapter argued that the war on terrorism was enmeshed in this same politics of fear but
greatly extended it by drawing analogies with crime and the drug war and even suggesting that dissent at
home was aiding the enemy. A number of examples were given about how social life changed to accommodate this
newest politics of fear, particularly the intrusiveness of social control and surveillance into more of our lives. This
chapter examines another aspect of the politics of fear: language. The argument is that changing the meanings and

definitions of words and symbols of everyday life to reflect fear and social control is a very powerful way
to connect social changes with social consciousness. This chapter examines how fear as a topic was presented in
news reports about terrorism and victimization. The news medias use of these terms is tied to a longstanding linkage of fear and victimization with crime that has been fueled by government and police officials
who serve 6 E Terrorism and the Politics of Fear as dominant news sources and therefore are significant actors in
defining problems and setting political agendas (Chiricos, Padgett, and Gertz 2000; Kappeler, Blumberg, and Potter 1999;
Surette 1998). As noted several times in previous chapters, propaganda research shows that decision makers who serve as key
news sources can shape perceptions of mass audiences and promote acquiescence to state control measures
(Ellenius and European Science Foundation 1998; Gerth 1992; Jackall 1994). An expansive use of the word fear in news reports has
been documented (Altheide 2002b; Altheide and Michalowski 1999; Furedi 1997; Glassner 1999). Indeed, the extensive use of fear to
highlight crime news has produced a discourse of fear that may be defined as the pervasive communication, symbolic awareness, and
expectation that danger and risk are a central feature of the effective environment, or the physical and symbolic environment as people
define and experience it in everyday life. Journalistic accounts about terrorism reflect news organizations reliance on official news
sources to provide entertaining reports compatible with longestablished symbols of fear, crime, and victimization about threats to
individuals and the United States in the fight against terrorism. I argue that tying terrorism coverage to an expansive
discourse of fear has contributed to the emergence of the politics of fear, or decision makers promotion and
use of audience beliefs and assumptions about danger, risk, and fear in order to achieve certain goals. This
chapter examines how news reports about terrorism in five nationally prominent newspapers reflect the terms and discourse associated
with the politics of fear. I wish to examine the conceptual and empirical support for the politics-of-fear thesis, which may be stated as
follows: the terms crime, victim, and fear are joined with news reports about terrorism to construct

public discourse that reflects symbolic relationships about order, danger, and threat that may be exploited
by political decision makers. An overview of the discourse of fear will be followed by an elaboration of the politics of fear and
a discussion of the materials and content analysis of news reports. Data about the emerging politics of fear and how it is manifested in
news coverage involving fear, victimization, terrorism, and crime will then be presented.

Changing the discursive frame of the war on terror is key to avoid cycles of violence.
Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills in 2008. At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the
War on Terror. Intro Page xvi. Steuter is the head of media analysis including media coverage of the "War
on Terror" at Mt. Allison University. Wills is a professor of English at Mt. Allison University, focusing on
contemporary literature and theory, cultural studies.
As the work of scholars studying propaganda makes clear, the weapons of war are never solely physical.15 Language
itself, in the way it invites us to understand both the enemy and ourselves, becomes a potential weapon. But propaganda
is found in more than the blatantly jingoistic WWII posters and martial sloganeering that the word conjures up. Because language
embeds our values and assumptions, even in apparently calmer, more neutral discussion, language is always hard at work. In the war
on terror, as in past wars, language serves the purposes of propaganda. It is language, rather than logic, that summons us through its
emotional affect to a war we can no longer justify. The
in metaphor, matters. Through

way that we frame the war, in language, in public debate , and

selecting and reporting only certain facts, through overlooking or distorting others of

equal relevance, through the associations we conjure to describe our opponents, we neglect or invalidate genuine
discussion and debate, and promote instead public hysteria, panic, and witch hunts. We rally the public to a cause that is
misrepresented or confused against an enemy who is never understood. Edward S. Herman notes that in the seventeenth century
Daniel Dafoe reported that there were a hundred thousand stout country fellows . . . ready to fight to the death against Popery,
without knowing whether Popery was a man or a horse; in our day, likewise, there are millions of stout-hearted fellows ready
to fight to the death against terrorism without knowing anything of its real nature.16 The language of war, which
includes the metaphors it draws on, does not simply hold a mirror up to the enemy. It does not reveal a clear, objective, or pre-existing
image of what we fight. What is reflected in language is not reality but construct, something conditioned and assembled,
put together from fragments of information and observation. Parts of these observations may very well be accurate, but they
are always influenced and shaped by the processes and contexts of their assembly. In this sense, we really do, through the metaphors
we choose and reiterate, make enemies. The mirror of language thus ultimately reflects back to us both the constructed image of the
other and, also, something of ourselves. And this, when it comes down to it, is why metaphors matter. When they are called upon to
justify acts of violence that we would not normally endorse or tolerate, it becomes imperative to examine these metaphors with care,
to unpack their freight of assumptions about race and culture, virtue and violence. We need to know not only whether the

enemy is a man or a horse, but more importantly, how representing that enemy as bestial shapes both our
understanding and our response. There are many fertile examples of how enemies are made into the Other,
dragged symbolically backwards down the evolutionary ladder until they, and the people who look like them, are no
longer seen as human, but as insect or animal, germ or disease. This comes at a double cost. First, it fuels the kind of
violence that has so horrified us at Abu Ghraib, furthering the cycles of offense and retaliation. Second, it binds our imagination
into an adversarial pattern that works against the humanity and creativity required to break free of the kinds of
cyclical violence central to the war on terror.

Terrorism studies are a regime of governmentality even those critical of specific

counter-terrorism policies are committed to support for existing state power.
Claire Lyness, 2014, Politics Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, Critical Studies on
Terrorism 7:1, Governing the suicide bomber: reading terrorism studies as governmentality, pgs 83-84
We can understand strategic studies and terrorism studies as knowledge-producing practices that are
engaged in the production of what Carol Cohn calls techno-strategic discourse (Cohn 1987, 690).
Cohn uses the term to describe how: strategic theory not only depends on and changes in response
to technological objects, it is also based on a kind of thinking, a way of looking at problems formal,
mathematical modeling, systems analysis, game theory, linear programming that are part of technology
itself. (Cohn 1987, 690) Cohns description of how strategic thinking is animated by a desire to render
violence as a technology or tool that can itself be mastered and understood through technology resonates
with much (although not all) of mainstream terrorist studies. For example, with reference to suicide
bombing in particular, a recent joint study by RAND and the Naval Research Laboratory sponsored by the
Department of Homeland Security, Predicting Suicide Attacks, uses statistical modelling techniques to
establish connec- tions between multiple geospatial, socio-economic and demographic variables derived
from data collected from suicide bomb attacks in four Israeli cities. Here we see techno- logical thinking
and methods brought to bear on the problem of suicide terrorism which is a priori determined to
be a threat to the US and elsewhere, as the report vaguely states (Perry et al. 2013, xi). The
involvement of RAND Corporation, a non-profit organisation largely funded by the US government and a
prolific producer of research on terrorism, is significant here as it also brings us to an examination of the
power relations of the discipline more generally. In Cohns work, she examines the civilian defense
intellectuals who move in and out of government, working sometimes as administrative officials or
consultants, sometimes at universities and think tanks (Cohn 1987, 688). Many scholars of terrorism
studies have followed a similar career trajectory, moving through institutional networks that include RAND
and other think-tanks, as well as specific research institutions that are explicitly tied to a national security
agenda, such as, for example, the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, which has produced a
significant amount of work on suicide bombing in particular. All this is not to say that terrorism studies
scholars, because of their proximity to state counterterrorism, are never critical of state policies (they
often are1), but it is to say that this proximity has specific results that profoundly shape the discipline.
One such result is the persistent blindness to the study of state terrorism (Blakeley 2008). Furthermore, this
close relationship between state power and terrorism studies as a discipline has led some critics to
dismiss it as state-led counter-insurgency by another name (Miller and Mills 2009; Greenwald 2012).
For the purposes of this article, however, I trace this proximity as a primarily epistemological one and argue

that it is the transmission and production of knowledge about how to govern the threat of the suicide
terrorist that is significant. The work of this article will be to trace the relationship between terrorism
studies and political power through an analytical framework of governmentality. I argue that terrorism
studies and the forms of knowledge production it engages in should be understood as part of a regime
of governmentality in which power is dispersed and decentred. Hence, it is not enough to say that
terrorism studies serves the interests of the powerful; rather, I argue that the field itself is a part of a
larger governmental apparatus of counterterrorism that works to ensure a specific formulation of
security.

Policy responses to terrorism rely on prior epistemological assumptions. National

security institutions and think tanks have made terrorism intelligible as a non-state,
extremist, and unique form of violence.
Hagmann 13 [Jonas Hagmann is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) and Lecturer at the Department of
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zrich. His research focuses on political sociology of risk and security politics, 2013,
Representations of terrorism and the making of counterterrorism policy, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6:3, p. 439-441] //dickies
A brief look at contemporary terrorism politics in Switzerland exemplifies this understanding, and shows how it improves over a
constitutive reading of the same case.6 First, regarding the construction of terrorist danger, one finds terrorism to have emerged as a
primary national security theme in the early 2000s (Hagmann 2010; Wenger, Mckli, and Mauer 2010). Following 9/11, terrorism
became generically defined as acts of indiscriminate violence against civilians in Switzerland, and more
specifically circumscribed as a political agenda, as an unpredictable danger (that is, risk), as non-state actor-driven, and as a
collective problem for the entire international community (Barthelmess 2003; Wenger 2005; Nachrichtendienst des Bundes 2011).
Presented this way, terrorism was made intelligible in the Swiss case, and it was also delineated from other,
competing or older perspectives on the subject matter. For instance, terrorism was differentiated from
organised crime, whose pursuit of wealth and clandestine influence was held to be apolitical, and it also came to focus
exclusively on foreign extremists, with local and European left- and right-wing extremists no longer forming
part of the concept. Also unlike earlier and others readings, terrorism was disconnected from state agency, even
though it is recurrently associated with statist means of destruction, such as nuclear and biological weaponry.
Geospatially, it became construed as a challenge that applies to the entire world and not just some, such as the United
States, the North Atlantic region or even Switzerland alone. Procedurally, this construction process evolved across quite some time,
and it included a variety of actors, with individual government officials (for example, Blattmann (2012)), entire ministries (for
example, USIS (2003)), academics (for example, Stahel and Nick- Mller (2012)), politicians (for example, Blocher (2002)) and
journalists (for example, Winkler (2013)), all contributing to this Swiss conception of terrorism. Also, the construction process as such
rested on a combination of different types of agential practices. In some parts, it involved considerable translation of international
understandings of terrorism, this to say a fairly simple transposition of prefabricated foreign knowledge of that danger into the Swiss
polity. The association of terrorism with Islamic fundamentalism but not left- or right-wing, animal rights or ecological extremism, for
instance, echoes American conceptions (cf. Wilner 2009). The stipulated linkage between terrorism and weapons of

mass destruction often draws explicitly on statements produced by North American and European
governments, international organisations and Western academic scholarship (for example, Barthelmess (2003) and Guery (2004)),
and the presentation of terrorism as a global danger can also be found to directly derive from UN resolutions and European ministerial
declarations in numerous instances (for example, Eidgenssisches Departement fr auswrtige Angelegenheiten (2013)). In other
parts, the Swiss construction of terrorism drew more creatively on local assembly and articulation practices. Preoccupation with
critical infrastructures, for instance, can be discerned as a more originally Swiss element to the construction of terrorist danger. In
Switzerland, the focus on such infrastructures by and large resulted from a theoretico-deductive national vulnerability assessment. In
the absence of a history of terrorist attacks on national targets, this assessment identified a number of objects, such as power plants,
communication infrastructures and public health services as critical to the Swiss population, and thus potential targets of terrorist
activity (Bundesamt fr Bevlkerungsschutz 2012). Other more distinctly local and creative elements to the Swiss construction of
terrorism included strong association of that danger with financial transactions (that is, attention to the funding of terrorist operations
as such), as well as sustained focus on cyberterrorism. Both of these two aspects connected to further worries of the Swiss political
system, traditional concerns with the activities and economic relevance of the financial industry on the one hand, and a more recent
preoccupation with cybersecurity on the other. Taken together, then, the Swiss case is not only marked by a rather distinct substantive
definition of terrorism. Its construction process as such also included a fairly specific set of actors, evolved across a considerable
period of time, and drew on a variety of different agential practices. In terms of linking up with the enacting of terrorist danger, this
construction of terrorism then proved necessary for making Swiss counterterrorism policy possible at a
fundamental epistemological level. Rationalising the international security context in distinct ways, the articulation of
terrorism as a specific kind of danger provided truthful knowledge of the latter to policymakers . The
construction of terrorism as a national challenge proposed a framework of reality with which policymakers could and had
to deal when designing counterterrorism policy; it enabled policymaking in a way structuration and constitution
claim. Yet, as the above account also suggests, the social construction of terrorist danger itself was already intimately meshed with a
variety of agential practices ranging from instantiation, reproduction and translation to original construction. These different sets of
practices evolved in pre-structured social fields themselves.7 As the list on constructing actors suggests, the Swiss articulation of

terrorism as danger relied on a fairly distinct cast of agents ranging from public administration to academia, politics and the media,
that is, to systems of authority and knowledge production that already existed a long time before 9/11. Even before discussing the
seizure of terrorism for specific counterterrorism responses at the policy-level, then, the construction process itself already points to a
complex process of knowledge construction and validation, and a process in which a variety of structural and agential elements
intertwine. At the level of policymaking, further kinds of agential practices then made Swiss counterterrorism
policy actual in a policy-practical sense of that term. Here, one finds mainly politicians to have drawn on
terrorism to advocate for distinct kinds of government responses.8 Larger alliances of policymakers, for
instance, drew on terrorism to demand better intelligence services (Burkhalter 2004; Lscher 2010), to promote
international security cooperation (Sicherheitspolitische Kommission 2005), to establish tighter control of financial transactions (De
Dardel 2001; Burkhalter 2004) or to demand codification of terrorism as criminal act in penal law (Hess 2001; Bigger 2003; Seydoux
2009). Smaller coalitions appropriated it with a view to expanding preventive policing, including video
monitoring and digital eavesdropping on nationals (Malama 2011), while others claimed it to necessitate a global
promotion of human rights instead (Berberat 2003; Calmy-Rey 2011). Some policymakers seized the danger of terrorism to demand
for a distinctively military approach to the protection of national infrastructures (Heller 2003; Baumann 2005); others used it to ask for
national counterterrorism operations in cyberspace (Bchler 2007). Individual politicians, finally, suggested terrorism to
require targeted action against highly specific actors, such as Muslims (Chevrier 2004; Baumann 2007), Palestinian
groups (Waber 2001) or the US government (Mller 2006). All these policy demands were enabled by the locally

available understanding of terrorism, and from this point of view, these demands were made possible by
knowledge about terrorism in the first place. However, the same policy demands were also made actual by agential
practices of activating this prevalent understanding of terrorism, and by practices appropriating it for specific ends.

We must consider the representational frameworks underlying policy responses to

terrorism.
Hagmann 13 [Jonas Hagmann is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) and Lecturer at the Department of
Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zrich. His research focuses on political sociology of risk and security politics, 2013,
Representations of terrorism and the making of counterterrorism policy, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6:3, p. 436-437] //dickies
With such a stratified and transformative conceptualisation of social action,4 morphogenesis is helpful for gaining analytical leverage
about how/why representations of things relate with practical policymaking precisely. Since by analytically and
temporally separating the various powers that are involved in the production of social behaviour, morphogenesis addresses
both the construction of representations of danger and their enactment, or appropriation. In morphogenesis,
actions that are involved in the production of representations of terrorism, for instance, can be differentiated
from actions that are involved in the instantiation and seizure of such imageries in and for counterterrorism
policies even if both kinds of actions come together to form terrorism politics in the larger sense . At the
same time, the disentangling of the structureagency interplay also permits us to move away from snapshot
moments, and to analyse how the two processes Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:09 15 July
2015 Critical Studies on Terrorism 437 Counterterrorism policymaking Representation of terrorism: defined/accepted nature of danger
Interact and evolve over time, produces counterterrorism policy epistemologically (as potential) and empirically (as
actuality) Activates: causally instantiates and appropriates Conditions: causally empowers and restricts Figure 3. Representations of
terrorism and the making of counterterrorism policy. of conditioning and enacting evolve over time, given that time (or duration)
has a place in their interplay. Taken together, then, morphogenesis permits allocating political forces and

responsibilities in a more differentiated manner than either structuration or constitution. Representations of

danger not only matter by virtue of constituting reality and making polices possible, but also matter by
virtue of being enacted. Representations of danger connect to security policymaking in a dialectical and
evolving process of both making possible and making actual (cf. Figure 3).At the level of social theory,
morphogenesis thus conceptualises how the making possible intertwines with making actual . In doing so,
morphogenesis not only provides a fuller framework of how social representations matter in (and for)
practice. Importantly, it also allows moving this framework closer to explanation and causation, given that
morphogenesis is directly interested in how social representations stand in relations of influence with actual
policymaking practice and vice versa. Morphogenesis directly engages the question of what (or who) has
power over what (or whom) in the interrelated politics of representing and enacting international danger , and
this is why it allows reflexive IR to rejoin causal inquiry, broadly defined. In order to think of causal enquiry in a dialectical (nonlinear) manner, however, an alternative conceptualisation of the term has to be adopted. In IR, causation is usually understood akin to
mechanistic processes as regular push and pull factors. As Milja Kurki (2006) points out, causation in this sense of the term is
distinctly Humean and Cartesian. It refers to constant conjunctions between two observable events, or temporarily separable
independent and dependent variables (cf. Salmon 1989; King, Keohane, and Verba 1994).

Metaphors undergird our responses to terrorism. We must consider the

constitutive effects of our policy languages.
Spencer 12 [February 10, 2012, alexander spencer works for Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, LudwigMaximilians-University Munich, Oettingenstr.,, The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy implications, pp.
conclusion]
This article has argued that metaphors do not cause policy in a positivist kind of way. Yet metaphors do

play a vital role in the discursive construction of terrorism and thereby contribute to our
understanding of how to react to such a phenomena. Our reaction to terrorism depends strongly on
how we perceive the terrorist to be. The article applied metaphor analysis to the discourse on terrorism found in the
tabloid newspaper The Sun and illustrated how four of the most salient conceptual metaphors constructed terrorism as a war, a crime,
an uncivilised evil and a disease. In doing so, the article showed that metaphors predicate terrorism in a specific way,
which then makes certain responses appear more appropriate than others. For example, understanding

terrorism as a war calls for a military reaction, while the constitution of it as a crime necessitates a
judicial response. Classical predications of othering found in the metaphors of uncivilised evil
imply the tightening of borders and immigration to keep the foreign other out, while the concepts of
evil and disease indicate the impossibility of engagement or negotiations with terrorists.119 In
particular, the ability of metaphor analysis to indicate impossibilities is valuable, as it highlights reactions previously ignored and
opens up new areas of research that were previously considered taboo, such as engagement and possibly reconciliation with Al Qaeda
(Renner and Spencer 2012). By considering terrorism as a social construction and reflecting on the idea that

there are no externally existing facts about terrorism, one can start questioning the established
absurdity of unthinkable policies. It would therefore be highly interesting to investigate further the policy options that
have fallen outside of the measures considered appropriate against terrorism. Such research would not only further elaborate a
constructivist understanding of terrorism research, but indicate that not only terrorism but also counter-terrorism is

what one makes of it.

We must consider linguistic framing in counterterrorism policymaking

Spencer 12 [February 10, 2012, alexander spencer works for Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science, LudwigMaximilians-University Munich, Oettingenstr.,, The social construction of terrorism: media, metaphors and policy implications, pp.
conclusion]

One has to be careful when talking about the idea that metaphors shape or cause politics, in
particular counter-terrorism policy, as metaphors are only one among many linguistic devices and
practices that play a role in the discursive construction of reality. As Andrew Anderson points out, [w]hen
metaphors are said to cause political phenomena, political science often objects (Anderson 2004: 91, emphasis in original). The
nature of metaphor does not lend itself easily to rigorous demonstrations of causality. Metapho- rical
power may exist, but it is hard to nail down (Beer and Landtsheer 2004b: 7). It is therefore important to realise that
metaphors do not cause a certain counter-terrorism policy in a positivist sense, where the metaphor is the
independent and the policies are the dependent variable. Metaphors do not entail a clear set of policies, but open up
space for policy possibilities. Metaphors offer a discursive construct that frames the situation in a
certain way. Metaphors are more likely to influence policy indirectly through their impact on the
decision makers general approach to an issue; they will be part of the conceptual foundation, not a
detailed policy map (Shimko 1994: 665).
The issue of causation in discourse analysis in general is a contentious one and is often connected to
concept of explaining or understanding political phenomena (Hollis and Smith 1990) and to the difference
between why and how possible questions (Doty 1993). While some such as Patrick Thaddeus Jackson (2006a: 43) argue in favour
of an adequate causality,5 others such as Lene Hansen (2006: 26) negate the idea of causality: adopting a rigid conception of
causality, for discursive causality to be considered an actual effect, one needs to separate two variables and to observe each
independently of the other, something that is impossible from a constructivist perspective, where structures and agents are constituted
by discourse and vice versa. As a result, one may refer to constitution rather than causation when considering the power of discourse
and metaphors.6 As metaphors help construct reality in a certain way, they are able to define the limits of

common sense, the limits of what is considered possible and logical, while excluding other options
from consideration (Hu lsse 2003: 225). In Dotys words: What is explained is not why a particular outcome obtained, but
rather how the subjects, objects, and interpretive dispositions were socially constructed such that certain practices were made possible
(Doty 1993: 298, emphasis in the original).
The following four sections will investigate metaphors of terrorism in parts of the UK media in more detail and will consider how
these constructions allow for particular counter-terrorism options. While some have applied metaphor analysis to elite discourse (Hu
lsse 2006; Ferrari 2007), others have considered the media their realm of analysis (Lule 2004; Hu lsse and Spencer 2008); this article
will follow the second kind of focus. The central idea behind analysing the media rather than the political elite is that the media, and in
particular the widely read tabloid media,7 gives an insight into the construction of terrorism possibly held by large portions of the
general public. As very few people follow parliamentary debates or listen to public speeches by politicians, most get their ideas about

Although it is clear that media discourse is influenced by the political elite, the
converse is true as well. Overall, the analysis of metaphors in a widely read media discourse can offer
a good indication of the general understanding of a phenomenon. The following paragraphs will focus on the
the world through the media.

metaphorisation of terrorism in The Sun newspapers by analysing 1 month of articles, following five large attacks perpetrated by Al
Qaeda: 9/11 in 2001, the bombings in Bali in 2002, the attacks in Istanbul in 2003, the train bombings in Madrid in 2004 and the
London tube attacks in 2005.8 The Sun was chosen due to the fact that with around 7.7 million readers, it has the largest readership in
the UK,9 and it can therefore, from a cognitive perspective, be considered to have a lot of influence on peoples perception of
terrorism.10 These events were chosen not only due to their fairly significant nature and their focus on Western targets,11 but also
because they offer a relatively regular timeline, which indicates the regularity of the metaphoric constructions of terrorism. A time
frame of 1 month after each attack was chosen, as further research beyond this time period did not add further kinds of conceptual
metaphors. As is visible in Figure 1, the four most salient conceptual metaphors over this time period included: TERRORISM IS
WAR, TERRORISM IS CRIME, TERRORISM IS UNCIVILISED EVIL and TERRORISM IS DISEASE.12

K Prior Epistemology
Dominant epistemological assumptions limit possible responses to terrorism.
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, P. 4647]//dickies

The significance of the epistemological crisis lies primarily in its consequences for counterterrorism
thought and practice which are inextricably bound together and inseparable, in any case. That is, the
epistemological crisis can be understood as generative of certain kinds of thinking, actions and practices. As Daase and Kessler (2007,
412) describe the process by which contemporary understandings of terrorism construct the basis for action: It is the relationship
between what we know, what we do not know, what we cannot know and what we do not like to know that determines the cognitive
frame for political practice. Or, as Zulaika (2012, 58) quoting Merton notes: If men (sic) 46 R. Jackson Downloaded by [University
of California, Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 define situations as real, they are real in their consequences (1968, 475). Once the
premises of the epistemological crisis have been accepted as true, and especially once they have been institutionalised
and internalised, they then form the logic or cognitive frame for action. From another perspective, it can be argued
that, once accepted and institutionalised, the epistemological crisis acts as a kind of policy paradigm,

forming a central part of the elite assumptions that constrain the cognitive range of useful solutions
available to policy makers (Campbell 1998b, 385). Crucially, the epistemological crisis is not about individual or
collective negligence or the personal failures of counterterrorist officials; those in charge of preventing terrorism are likely to be
genuinely concerned, responsible individuals acting in what they perceive to be the best interests of society (Zulaika 2012, 52).

Rather, counterterrorist failings and abuses are the result of the broader epistemic structures and conditions
the policy paradigm under which officials are forced to think and act.

K Prior Terrorism Studies Flawed

Terrorism studies lack empirical rigor there is an epistemological echo chamber
where experts repeat false assumptions
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, P. 3335]//dickies
Following the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) introduced a National
Response Plan aimed at preparing for a broad range of disasters, including terrorism and various natural disasters. The heart of the
plan involved 15 National Planning Scenarios designed to dramatise and guide response and recovery capabilities. Interestingly, 12 of
the 15 scenarios depicted mass casualty terrorist attacks by an enemy cipher identified simply as the Universal Adversary (GhamariTabrizi 2006, 21; see also Neocleous 2014 and this issue). Importantly, the planning scenario report states that the scenarios are
not based on any actual credible evidence of planned attacks. As such, the DHS plan mirrored the Defense
Departments 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report which stated that: uncertainty would henceforth frame national
security analysis. Because no one can know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or
nonstate actor will pose threats to vital U.S. interests, the report stated that it made better sense to guess
what targets an enemy could plausibly attack. The new capabilities-based model for threat assessment

focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be and where a war might
occur, nudging national security analysis into the realm of the hypothetical, the generally suspected, the
possible, and conceivable. (Ghamari-Tabrizi 2006, 21; emphasis added) This epistemic posture is reflective of a new dominant
security paradigm in which security officials are engrossed in the contemplation of nightmares rather than
identifiable social, political and climatological realities, and where they have renounced the wisdom of
engaging with the actual world in favour of their own best guesses (Ghamari- Tabrizi 2006, 22). In this article, I
describe this new paradigm as the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism and analyse its origins, nature and
effects. The notion that security policy, and counterterrorism in particular, is characterised by epistemological uncertainty and the
interplay between Rumsfelds infamous knowns and unknowns is not necessarily a new one. The cultural anthropologist Joseba
Zulaika refers to the persistent crisis of knowledge in counterterrorism (2009, 2; see also Daase and Kessler 2007) caused primarily
by a faulty epistemology and what he sees as an unconscious passion for ignorance (2012, 52, 56). Andreas Behnke and Christina
Hellmich similarly argue that there is an epistemological problem or a problem of knowledge and interpretation in
relation to current understandings of al Qaeda in particular (Hellmich and Behnke 2012, 3). Similarly, Charlotte HeathKelly (2012a, 70) argues that counterterrorism discourse needs to conceal gaps in its own knowledge about the
production of terrorism, which it does by decisioning and forcibly locating indeterminate subjects within the terrorist
frame. For her part, Lisa Stampnitzky (2013, 20) argues that a politics of anti-knowledge which rejects rational explanation for
terrorism has been present in the academic field since the very beginning. More recently, Michael C. Frank (2014; see also this issue)
explores the inherently future-oriented, what if? character of terrorist violence itself in which the fear generated by the
violence is directly related to the anticipation of further (indeterminate) violence. He argues that the known
terrorist attack is imbued with the unknown probability of another attack; epistemologically, the known functions
as a harbinger of the unknown, and the lack of evidence functions as a prospective indicator of coming terror (see
also Zulaika and Douglass 1996, 141). In this article, I build upon previous research which examined how the epistemological
crisis of counterterrorism prevents us from knowing what effects the death of bin Laden has had, or will have,
on the threat posed by the thing known as al Qaeda (Jackson 2015). I conceive of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism
as an identifiable epistemic posture towards knowledge about, as well as a way of acting towards, the terrorist threat. It manifests
itself discursively in the manner in which officials, scholars, pundits and others speak about the threat of

terrorism and the way counterterrorism and security practitioners then act in pursuit of security against that
perceived threat. In the first section below, I provide a brief description of the epistemological crisis and note its central
characteristics and internal dynamics. Following this, I discuss a few examples of the epistemological crisis in different areas of
counterterrorist thought and 34 R. Jackson Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 practice to
illustrate its diverse manifestations and primary characteristics. In the third section, I explore the origins and development of the crisis,
before discussing some of the main consequences that flow directly out of its iron cage-like, paranoid logic. The final section of the
article suggests a few ways in which the self-imposed crisis can be resisted and deconstructed, while the conclusion reflects on the
nature of the epistemological crisis and its meaning for contemporary society. Overall, I argue that the notion of the epistemological
crisis of counterterrorism as I have outlined it here provides a useful analytical framework for understanding the current logic and
practices of counterterrorism, particularly its seemingly irrational, counterproductive and damaging aspects. I also suggest that the
epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is neither necessary nor inevitable; rather, it is functional to power holders, harmful to the
aims of counterterrorism as well as to human security, and ought to be resisted and deconstructed by citizens and scholars.

AT: Terrorism Experts

We should be skeptical of claims of so-called terrorism experts they assume a
distinction between non-state and state sanctioned violence
Toivanen 10 [Reetta Toivanen, Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research , University of Helsinki, August 12, 2010,
Counterterrorism and expert regimes: some human rights concerns, Critical Terror Studies, 3:2, p. 278] //dickies
This article tackles two different but interrelated problems in relation to the peculiar relationship between the governments and expert
bodies, which may result in the lowering of human rights standards or in a direct violation of inherent human rights. On the one hand,

the governments have used the rhetoric of terrorism to advance their own goals in targeting unwanted
groupings in the country by defining them (with the help of experts) as terrorists. On the other hand, and maybe
even more fundamentally, the problem is that some of the expert bodies are veiled in deep secrecy and civil society
has no effective means to determine the contents of their expert information which impacts the
governmental policies in the the War on Terror.3 Without discarding the fact that there is a historical continuum in
governmental repression towards persons defined as national enemies, the rhetoric of the global War on
Terror gives the phenomenon a new quality.4 More importantly, I shall tackle the question of the potential dangers of
using covert security expert information to guide governments in their actions, from the perspective of
internationally agreed human rights. In the first part of this article, I shall ponder on the popular rhetoric of the War on Terror and
analyse the usefulness of such rhetoric in the production of expert knowledge capable of ignoring fundamental human rights
standards. Governments all over the world are troubled in the face of national and international security challenges. However, in

their efforts to create stability and security, they seem to carry an inbuilt weakness which results in serious
harm to the human rights standards, as some individuals and groups become categorised as the others who
deserve less rights or no rights at all. I shall then introduce the theoretical framework for analysing counterterrorism as
masked in something that can be called authoritative or expert knowledge. The focus of this section lies on the authoritative
knowledge of the security experts who are pivotal in the production of the practice labelled here as
othering. At the end of the article, the consequences of such rhetoric for the very core values of democratic societies human
rights and freedoms are scrutinised. I shall argue that the fact that democratic decision-makers agree to rely on expert knowledge
that casts security as an opposite of freedom has the potential to increase terrorist threats.

Their reliance on so-called experts reifies governmental control and legitimizes

violence against those deemed threats
Toivanen 10 [Reetta Toivanen, Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research , University of Helsinki, August 12, 2010,
Counterterrorism and expert regimes: some human rights concerns, Critical Terror Studies, 3:2, p. 277-278] //dickies
This paper focuses on counterterrorism measures practised by governments and on what is called authoritative or expert knowledge on
terrorism and counterterrorism, i.e. the knowledge that affects how the governments plan and carry out their counterterrorism
activities. It contends that the expertise behind the governmental positions and actions taken to counter the phenomena
defined as terrorism is problematic in various ways: many of the expert bodies are veiled in secrecy, and they
cannot be made accountable for their advice. Therefore, there is a danger of abuse and false calculation of risk,
as well as a high danger that the experts act in political conformity with the dominant forces in the state .
Accordingly, this article poses the following question: what are the consequences of unaccountable and secret expertise for the
application of internationally agreed human rights standards? I am especially interested in knowledge which seems to produce a
coherent and consistent body of facts which is then used by governments and intergovernmental organisations alike in the creation
and application of their counterterrorism policies and strategies. This body of facts has been criticised by some scholars,

because it seems to overemphasise non-state terror and to overlook terror that emanates from the states
(Jackson 2009, Breen Smyth 2007, Miller and Mills 2009, Toivanen 2008). It is also said to resemble a political ideology through
which the actions taken by the government are legitimised and the acts of those opposing the governmental
actions are discredited as terrorism. Some researchers have also blamed the terrorism experts for adopting an uncritical view
of the sources of terrorism studies, i.e. the sources from which their knowledge emanates (Jackson 2007, Silke 2004, Breen Smyth
2007, Gunning 2007).1 My recent research has addressed, from a legalanthropological perspective, the ways in which the expert
bodies contribute to the process which is here called othering, i.e. the practice of depicting potential
terrorists as foreign and as strange as possible. It is through this process that they are stripped of their basic
human rights. In this contribution, I shall argue that governments across the globe have adopted counterterrorism
measures which have resulted in human rights violations. This is not just the case in countries such as Nigeria and
Myanmar (which are regularly accused of human rights abuses in the media). All countries of the world, even countries with no direct
experience of international terrorism, such as Finland,2 have adopted anti-terrorism laws and policies. As the phenomenon of terrorism
is highly complex, the governments have relied on both international and national expert bodies to give them advice and consult them
on how terrorist attacks could be effectively avoided.

Mainstream terrorism studies reinforce notions of Western prestige they

predetermine causes and responses.
Claire Lyness, 2014, Politics Department at the University of California Santa Cruz, Critical Studies on Terrorism 7:1, Governing the
suicide bomber: reading terrorism studies as governmentality, pgs 84-85
We can find an example of such an approach to knowledgeproduction in the work of Robert Pape. In his book, Dying to Win, Pape
defines terrorism as that which involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to intimidate
or frighten a target audience (Pape 2005a, 9, my emphasis). This definition is directly lifted from the US State Departments
document Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 (US Department of State 2004). Acknowledging that such a definition could be
broadened to include the actions of states, Pape maintains that such a definition would distract attention from what policy
makers would most like to know: how to combat the threat posed by non-state actors to the national security of the United
States and our allies (Pape 2005a, 280). In tying the value of his intellectual project to the governmental requirements of the US and
their allies, Papes work is fairly typical of mainstream terrorism studies. For example, Martha Crenshaws review article on
recent work in the field, which criticises the lack of a shared definition of suicide terrorism, cautions that this lack of precision matters
not only for analytical clarity and consistency and data collection but also for the policies of state actors (Crenshaw 2007, 140). In
more general terms, David Miller and Tom Mills 2009 article on the presence of terrorism expertise in the main- stream media
quantitatively examines the political narratives of the top-100 most-cited terror experts in the English-speaking news media. They
find that the majority of these experts are ideologically committed and practically engaged in supporting Western state
power (Miller and Mills 2009, 414415). Terrorism studies accepts as authoritative the states articulation of terrorism as a security
problem and mobilises the authority of the state for the purposes of establishing the legitimacy of its intellectual project. In return
the state is associated with the prestige and authority of terrorism studies as an academic field, which is itself tied to the
institution of the university as a privileged domain in the production of truth and knowl- edge. A treatment of terrorism studies in
terms of an analytics of governmentality forces us to pay attention to these mutually constitutive relations of power and authority. It
also requires us to consider terrorism studies not as mere academic exercise, but as a practice; that is, as a specific way of
acting in and on the world. Furthermore, we are pressed to think about how this practice interacts with myriad other practices
that are simultaneously at work in our contemporary regime of governmentality, one that I am calling counter- terrorism, and
how this network of practices (Rose 1999, 234) supports, reinforces and guarantees certain conceptions of security.

Homeland security funding drives terrorism research academic consensus on

terrorism is corrupt.
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 36-37] //dickies
The penchant of universities for chasing large research grants continued following the 9/11 attacks, but now the emphasis
shifted from crime to terrorism. As with many institutions in the United States that pursued the multi-billion-dollar largesse to
fight terrorism, universities ramped up their typically slow bureaucratic processes to approve new academic
majors by adding terrorism and security to their repertoire: Over the last three years, nearly 100 private and state
colleges have introduced programs in terrorism and emergency management. In New York City, both Metropolitan
College, which changed its name from Audrey Cohen College in 2002, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice have introduced
masters programs that specialize in terrorism and disaster management. New York University is putting together a certificate program
focusing on homeland security. (Hoffman 2004) Some of the programs were tied to established areas of study involving disaster and
emergency preparedness, but more was involved than just offering a timely curriculum to curious students: This year, the
Department of Homeland Security has doled out about $70 million in grant money to colleges and universities.
With the agencys annual budget of $32 billion, there is the powerful lure of new jobs at state and local agencies, as
well as corporations that benefit from its grants. (Hoffman 2004) The universities most recent linkage to

agencies perpetuates the framing of fear rather than offering alternative perspectives that may generate
research questions to help uncover other takes on the problem. The politics of fear is self-sustaining,
guiding even the study of fear along certain directions. Thus, these new programs were not oriented to
such questions as, What do the 9/11 attacks (and other events) tell us about the place of the United States in
the international order? Rather, the questions deal with reaction and adjustment within a fear framework:
All the students we have been involved with havent seen this as a political issue, but as a way to come
together for their country, said Melvin Bernstein, the director of university

Orthodox terror discourse is inextricably linked to the military-industrial-academic

complex
David Miller & Tom Mills (2009) The terror experts and the mainstream media:
the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media, Critical Studies on Terrorism,
2:3, 415-418, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150903306113

The early experts created an invisible college of terrorism expertise, described by researchers such as Reid who has done more than
any other to introduce the term to studies of terrorism expertise (Schmid et al. 2005, Reid 1983, 1993, Reid and Chen 2007). The term has even been used by orthodox authors such
as Alex Schmid (Schmid et al. 2005, p. 185). The term invisible college originates in the sociology of science. Although he did not coin it, Derek de Solla Price first developed it
in the early 1960s to describe informal communication networks of scientists who come to form an elite and to dominate a field (Price 1963). Price noted that elite scholars come
to form an in-group of around 100 people and that: For each group there exists a sort of commuting circuit of institutions, research centers, and summer schools giving them an

In
extensive work on the invisible college of terrorism experts, Reid (and latterly Chen) have noted that the
terror experts met the definition of an invisible college because they communicated informally, convened
periodic terrorism meetings, developed terrorism incident databases . . . shared ideas, and secured funding
(Reid and Chen 2007, p. 43). It is important to note that Price did not conceive of the invisible college as a
power group and in fact saw them as an elite resulting from an expectable inequality, which
automatically reinforce their exclusiveness only by their excellence (Price 1971, p. 74). In our view, this
rather sanguine view is certainly mistaken in the case of terror experts. As Reid (1997) notes: In terrorism
research, the influence of knowledge producers is severely skewed by the limited types of data used: the
invisible colleges publications, government documents and media coverage. Thus, development of
knowledge in terrorism research has resulted in . . . political bias and policy-oriented studies. (p. 101) However, Price
opportunity to meet piecemeal, so that over an interval of a few years everybody who is anybody has worked with everybody else in the same category. (Price 1986, pp. 7476)

is correct to note that the hierarchical status of the experts is accomplished in part by the overpowering effect of their contribution relative to that of the rest (Price 1971, p. 74).
This can be seen in the terrorism field where the control and arbitration of access to the field and to the in-group is tightly organised around a small number of journals (Burnett
and Whyte 2005, Raphael 2008, Reid and Chen 2007). But the in-group is not simply a network that whilst politically or ideologically biased exists either in parallel with, or apart

Both counterinsurgency theoryst and terrorism studies have a shared history of

intertwined relations with the military, the government and the arms industry. These kinds of connections
were famously called the militaryindustrial complex by President Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961
farewell address (Eisenhower 1961). Later, in the 1960s, Senator William Fulbright spoke out against the
military influence on academia, warning that, in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a
university fails its higher purposes (cited in Turse 2004). He also called attention to the existence of a
militaryindustrialacademic complex (Fulbright 1970). This directs our attention to the ideological and
practical role of terror experts in reproducing power relations, as opposed simply to studying and writing
about terrorism in a political and social vacuum. Our argument in this article conceives of the official nexus
of terror experts as performing useful services for other elements of the power elite, to use the phrase
coined by the sociologist C. Wright Mills (Mills 1956). Thus, we are interested not just in the network of
experts, but the way in which they operate in wider networks of power. We are interested, in other words, in
embedded expertise to use the phrase recently adopted by critical authors (Burnett and Whyte 2005).
Embedded expertise implies both a network of knowledge and integration with other powerful institutions,
including policing, the military, intelligence agencies, the arms and security industry, and last but not least,
the media industries. It also implies a conception of orthodox terrorism expertise as part of hegemonic
processes, meaning specifically, those which contribute to the reproduction of the common sense
consensus of policy and other elite fora (including the mainstream media) (Miller 2001). To be more explicit about this,
from, other structures of power

we are also saying that the contribution that orthodox terror expertise makes is a matter of information management. This puts us squarely on the territory of the discussion of

the state is much

more limited in its capacity to control behavior by force than in totalitarian societies: Since the voice of
the people is allowed to speak out, those in power better control what that voice says in other words,
control what people think. One of the ways to do this is to create political debate that appears to embrace
many opinions, but actually stays within very narrow margins. (Chomsky 1987) While it may be hard for
some to accept this characterisation, we are trying here to outline the kind of territory of discussion that is
necessary if we are to take the field of terror expertise and the study of the state seriously. In this article, we
emphasise just one such arena, that of the mainstream news media.
propaganda in Western nations. Noam Chomsky has put this in his characteristically straightforward way. In democratic societies, he notes,

Terror scholars inevitably support state agendas, upholding traditional notions of

terror
David Miller & Tom Mills (2009) The terror experts and the mainstream media:
the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media, Critical Studies on Terrorism,
2:3, 414-415, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150903306113
Terrorism experts are ubiquitous in mainstream media coverage of political violence. They provide
commentary and analysis and are used as a resource especially to fill news space in the absence of hard
information. But before the 1970s, there were very few academics who studied terrorism. War, revolution, political violence, social movements, and counterinsurgency
were all topics of some note in the social sciences but not terrorism. Of course, terrorism studies is not sharply divorced from such
previous work. It emerges as an academic specialism from these topics and in particular from the theory

and practice of counterinsurgency, itself only forged in the 1950s and 1960s in relation to decolonisation
and the rise of the United States as a global superpower (Maechling 1988, Schlesinger 1978). The ideas
prominent in orthodox terrorism studies, and often the theorists themselves, have strong roots in
counterinsurgency doctrine and practice (Klare 1988, McClintock 1992). Orthodox terrorism experts are, in
other words, ideologically committed and practically engaged in supporting Western state power. Of
course, the defenders of the orthodoxy deny this characterisation of their craft (Horgan and Boyle 2008),
but as we will show, it is hard to draw any evidentially based alternative conclusion. This paper reports the first findings of
a study of the phenomenon of terrorism expertise.1 It focuses in particular on the relationship between the experts and the mainstream media rather than on their relations with
policy processes, the private sector, think-tanks and other private institutes, the legal system, or directly with government, police or armed groups. These will be the subjects of
later work. Our analysis of the media is largely quantitative and is not intended to rehearse arguments about how and why the patterns that emerge exist. Rather, we are interested

We
see terrorism knowledge not as some ideologically neutral expertise on a natural phenomenon, but as being
created to reflect the priorities and values of certain social interests. The very existence of terrorism
experts promotes the idea that the surface similarities between acts of violence provide a solid foundation
for generalisations about terrorism, whatever the political or social context. We use the term
terrorologist to designate those writers whose main work is focused explicitly on terrorism, as opposed
to those active in area studies or in examining some other dimension or macro levels in which terrorism
might play a part (Herman and OSullivan 1989).
here in questions about the relative status of the experts featured in the media, as compared with other measures of their expertise such as citation or publication analysis.

Comprehensive studies prove being considered a terrorism expert requires

connections to the military-industrial complex.
David Miller & Tom Mills (2009) The terror experts and the mainstream media:
the expert nexus and its dominance in the news media, Critical Studies on Terrorism,
2:3, 424-418, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150903306113
The analysis of the top 100 most prominent experts provides a clear picture of the tendency of such
experts to be linked to parts of the militaryindustrialacademic complex. We have also shown that their
views coincide with the values and policies pursued by the militaryindustrial complex to a significant
degree. This is no minor point. It is clear that to be regarded as a terror expert it is important though not
essential to be close to the institutions of the state, the military and associated industrial interests. But our data
does not show which way round the influences run. Is it the centres of power in the militaryindustrial complex that drives the activities and ideas of the terror experts or the other
way around? Do the experts in other words make any difference to the operations of power? To explore this we need to examine the extent to which the terror experts are part of a
network including other experts, academic and private institutions and think-tanks, state institutions and corporate entities. We have chosen four experts to profile here. We selected
three experts who are very widely cited in the news media (all of them being amongst the top twelve in terms of citations in our sample), together with one outlier to illustrate the
similar but not identical paths to prominence of a new breed of expert since 11 September 2001. We chose terror experts who have some university affiliation but who are also
very well networked with private and state agencies. It is important that we focus on the academic component of the network because they have more credibility than those whose
expertise are based in experience, or is in effect paid advocacy (as in many of the think- tanks). Thus, we did not select Noam Chomsky (number 2, not at the core of the network
and very much a lone critical voice), Sidney Jones, Daniel Pipes, Jason Burke, Avi Dichter (numbers 3, 6, 8, and 9, respectively, who do not have academic tenure). We also choose
not to focus on Clive Williams (number 4), Francis Fukuyama (number 5), Anthony Cordesman (number 10) or Alan Dershowitz (number 11), on the grounds that Williams is a
former intelligence officer, Fukuyama and Dershowitz are not primarily known for their work on terrorism, and Cordesman, though well connected, is no longer at an academic
institution but at a think-tank. We selected Rohan Gunaratna, Paul Wilkinson and Bruce Hoffman (numbers 1, 7 and 12) as academics that are also at the centre of the terror expert

Our findings on the connections and on the quality of some of the work of these
experts is a cautionary tale for those seeking to rely on the information and knowledge supplied by the most
credible media experts on terrorism. We also chose Evan Kohlman who does not have academic tenure and is, as we shall see, a representative of the more
network and are amongst the most reputable.

overtly propagandistic elements of the nexus of interests. Although some 27% of the 100 terror experts with the most press prominence were either alternative or critical in our
terms, we excluded them for our current purposes as we want to show how the core of the network coheres. The aim here is not to outline the ideas and views of the experts and

we want to demonstrate how some of the

key most prominent experts in global English language press are actually part of an invisible college of
interconnected public terror experts whose views are strikingly similar and whose activities are linked to
state and corporate priorities. The case studies were compiled using publicly available bio- graphical data in
the standard way of Power Structure Research (Domhoff 2007). We have also utilised investigative
research techniques to unearth obscure data and hidden information (Northmore 1996).
subject them to critique, nor to produce an analysis of their impact on the media or on public opinion. Rather,

AT: Framework
We should generate space for debates over the epistemological and ontological
assumptions of counter-terrorism.
Jackson 9 (Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict

Studies, PhD from the University of Canterbury, Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a
Defence and a Way Forward, p.6-8, 12-15-2009,
In addition to the particular ontological position outlined above, I argue that critical research on terrorism
should also exhibit a deep awareness of key epistemological issues, including the way in which knowledge
is produced as a social process, the subjectivity of the researcher, and the link between knowledge and
power, and consequently, the ways in which knowledge can be employed as a political technology in the
maintenance of hegemony by elites, institutions, and groups. In other words, a critical approach to terrorism
research begins with the fundamental acceptance that wholly objective or neutral knowledge truth
about terrorism is impossible and there is always an ideological, ethical-political dimension to the research
process (Toros and Gunning, 2009). This does not mean that all knowledge about the social world is
hopelessly insecure, that we reject scholarly standards and procedures in research, or that anchorages
relatively secure knowledge claims cannot be found and built upon (Booth, 2008; Herring, 2008; Toros
and Gunning, 2009). Rather, it suggests that, in addition to a commitment to the highest standards of
scholarship, research on terrorism should also be characterised by a continuous and critical reflexivity in
regards to its epistemology, ethics, and praxis. Importantly, such reflexivity itself opens up new areas of
research, starting with the key question: who is terrorism research for and how does terrorism knowledge
support particular interests? The ontological position that terrorism is socially constructed and constituted
by its context leads us, epistemologically, to call for a broadening of the focus of terrorism research to
include both state and non-state terrorism, counter-terrorism, and other forms of violence such as structural
or domestic violence, as well as (relevant) non-violent behaviour and social context (see Toros and
Gunning, 2009; Gunning, 2009). Such a broadening will serve to de-exceptionalise terrorist violence by
placing socio-historical context at the heart of the investigation, restoring a past and a future to terrorism,
allowing the concept to evolve along with the social world, and seeing (counter-)terrorism as part of wider
political, societal, and economic dynamics. Engaging social movement theory, specific area studies
expertise, and ethnographical methods constitute three practical paths to making context more central to
terrorism research (Gunning, 2009; Sluka, 2009; Dalacoura, 2009; Breen Smyth, 2009). Similarly, a central
concern of CTS scholars must be to expand the set of accepted research topics to include those which have
been ignored or silenced as a result of dominant ideological commitments. In particular, besides a greater 7
focus on historical context, there is a real need to bring the state back in to terrorism studies (Blakeley,
2007) to examine the nature and causes of state terrorism, particularly that by Western democratic states.
It is also vital to make gender much more central to terrorism research (Sylvester and Parashar, 2009),
among many other topics (see below). The ontological rejection of traditional theorys fetishization of
parts means, among other things, that epistemologically, a critical approach to terrorism should embed the
phenomenon in broader social and political theory. Greater inter-disciplinarity with a view to eventually
doing away with disciplinary boundaries altogether is one way to do this, although it is important to heed
Booths warning against lowest common denominator inter-disciplinarity (Booth 2008). The establishment
of an explicitly critical field should help to bring in those from cognate disciplines who have so far
shunned Terrorism Studies because of its reputation, earned or not, for political bias and lack of theoretical
sophistication (see Gunning 2007a; Dalacoura, 2009). Another way to embed terrorism research in broader
theory is to link terrorism more explicitly to the broader social processes of which it is part, and study it for
what it has to say about these broader processes (see Gunning, 2009). One of the consequences of the
ontological and epistemological positions adopted by CTS is a commitment to transparency in regard to the
researchers own values and standpoints, particularly as they relate to the geo-political interests and values
of the society in which they live and work. In turn, this implies an abiding commitment to seeking to
overcome the Euro/Westo-centric, Orientalist, and masculinised forms of knowledge which currently
characterise the Terrorism Studies and Security Studies fields and social science more generally (see Toros
and Gunning, 2009; Gunning, 2009; Sylvester and Parashar, 2009). It also implies a commitment to taking

subjectivity seriously, in terms of both the researcher and the research subject (see Breen Smyth, 2009).
This means being aware of and transparent about the values and impact of the researcher on the process and
outcomes of the research, and being willing to seriously engage with the subjectivity of the terrorist .
Importantly, this latter point implies an additional commitment to engaging in primary research when
relevant, as opposed to relying primarily on secondary sources a long-standing practice in terrorism
research due to the perceived difficulties and dangers of face-to-face encounters with terrorists (see
Zulaika and Douglass, 1996). In terms of methodological issues, as already suggested, CTS is committed to
methodological and disciplinary pluralism in terrorism research. In particular, CTS sees value in postpositivist and non-International Relations-based methods and approaches, including discourse analysis,
poststructuralism, constructivism, Critical Theory, historical materialism, and ethnography. Importantly,
CTS refuses to privilege materialist, rationalist, and positivist approaches to social science over interpretive
and reflectivist approaches (in the context of critical international relations, see Price and Reus-Smit, 1998:
261), and seeks to avoid an exclusionary commitment to the narrow logic of traditional social scientific
explanation based on linear notions of cause and effect. Instead, CTS argues that post-positivist approaches
which subscribe to an interpretive logic of understanding can usefully open space for questions and
perspectives that are often foreclosed by positivism and rationalism. Furthermore, it can be argued that this
stance is more than simply methodological; it is also political in the sense that it does not treat one model of
social science as if it were the sole bearer of legitimacy (see Smith, 2004: 514).

Current approaches to the study of terrorism reify notions of illegitimate violence.

Bringing into the debate questions behind the process of terrorism is necessary to
break this cycle
David Jones and MLR Smith, 2009, Jones is an associate professor in the Political Sciences at the
University of Queensland in Australia, Smith is a professor of Strategic Theory at Kings College in
London, Studies in Conflicts and Terrorism, Were all Terrorists Now
Although there may exist strategic, even normative, grounds for conceptu- alizing terrorism as a coherent
object of knowledge, this essentialist ortho- doxy is unfortunate for two reasons. First, by attributing
terrorism an objective existence, mainstream terrorism studies offers very limited space for reflecting
on the historical and social processes through which this identity, behaviour or threat has been
constituted. With the interpretive, symbolic and discursive contexts of its creation to say nothing of the
power relations traversing these contexts presumed largely irrelevant for under- standing this
phenomenon, terrorism remains consistently and artificially detached from the processes of its
construction. In this sense, we could do far worse than remember Foucaults (1981: 67) famous cautionary
note when encountering claims to speak the truth about terrorism: We must not imagine that the world
turns towards us a legible face which we would have only to decipher. Foucaults meta-theoretical
caution will not, of course, convince everyone that further critical reflection in this field is needed. By
turning to the very specific, and narrow, essence attributed to terrorism within the mainstream debates,
however, it may be possible to garner further support for such a programme. As the above discussion
suggests, existing studies remain over- whelmingly structured by a conception of their object as an
unconventional form of illegitimate violence. With relatively few exceptions, the majority of scholars
working here are content to tie their understanding of terrorism both to activities of particular non-state
actors and to the targeting of par- ticular victims: non-combatants or (more emotively) innocent civilians.
With reflections on the nature and causes of terrorism already framed around this double
condemnation, then, discussions relating to the legitimacy of terrorism, or, indeed, the possibility of
state terrorism, become systematically excluded from this field of enquiry before they emerge. As
outlined below, it is an attempt to contest these exclusionary practices that largely motivates the first,
broadening, face of critical terrorism studies. Given the above preference for a specific and narrow
essentialist frame- work, it is perhaps unsurprising that terrorism studies has oriented towards policyrelevant research. In seeking not only to define and explain, but also to prevent or resolve, its object of
knowledge, this structuring of the discipline necessarily mobilizes a very limited conception of
academic responsibility. In Coxs (1996: 88) famous terminology, as noted by Gunning (2007), terrorism
studies has overwhelmingly functioned as a problem-solving pursuit that: takes the world as it finds it,
with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organized, as the
given framework for action. The general aim of problem solving is to make these relationships and

institutions work smoothly by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble. As Coxs
remarks suggest, the problem-solving approach to the study of terrorism is normatively problematic
in reducing academic responsibility to a technical exercise of risk governance or management. At
best, such a reduc- tion militates against any notion of critical enquiry aimed at contesting or
destabilizing the status quo: of saying the unsayable in Booths (2008: 68) terminology. At worst, it
simply reifies a tired and unstable inside/outside dichotomy that legitimizes the states continued
monopoly on violence. Either way, the continued structuring of the mainstream literature around the above
debates fails to offer any meaningful participatory role for engaged, active scholarship. In sum, although
characterized by considerable diversity, the terrorism studies literature suffers from key analytical and
normative limitations. Analytically, the preference for a narrow essentialist framework not only
neglects the processes of terrorisms construction, it also reduces the space available for discussing
the (il)legitimacy of particular violences. Norma- tively, the preference for producing policy-relevant,
problem-solving research works to detach academic responsibility from any notion of critical enquiry.
These limitations, I argue, open considerable space for the emergence of a critical terrorism studies agenda.

We must be willing to debate underlying assumptions of counter-terrorism

procedural limits on debate turn the academy into a tool of state violence.
Rod Thornton; School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
, Nottingham, UK. Dec 16 2011 Counterterrorism and the neo-liberal university:
providing a check and balance? Critical Studies on Terrorism, 4:3, (p421-429)
(http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17539153.2011.623419#.VakgHflTZ_A)
But universities are not typically ready to deal with extremism. Traditionally, universities
are bastions of free-thinking liberalism, establishments that, in the words of many
universitys statutes, encourage debate and dissent. The governments own
counterterrorism document Prevent recognises this standpoint. It says that universities
promote and facilitate the exchange of opinion and ideas and enable debate as well as
learning (Prevent 2011, p. 71). Radicalism, if not indeed extremism, might be seen as
part and parcel of such exchanges. However, when the term national security starts to
be used by government, then this traditional concept of campuses providing a
comfortable home to debate and dissent comes under threat.
Security is a many-faceted concept when the enemy is terrorism. And it is the nature
of counterterrorism that it must, at least to some degree, involve a holistic approach. If
the enemy is among us, then the spread of counterterrorist actors must be wide:
Counterterrorism is not specific to any one agency or department (Silke 2011, p. 3).
Included here are universities. They are now themselves, as one report puts it, nontraditional security actors (Beider and Briggs 2010, p. 53). But, of course, if universities
do take on such a role then their enemy must include a number of their own students. As
Nina Power puts it, in the new security environment, lecturers are to become informants;
their students the enemy within terrorists (Power 2011, p. 29). Universities have also
to be aware of the fear factor involved in counterterrorism. This leads to one of the
principal mantras of any agency tasked with counterterrorism better safe than sorry.
The shooting by police of the innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, in
the wake of the 7 July London bombings is indicative of where such thinking can lead. In
the climate of fear, terms such as debate and dissent on the campuses of universities
these new security actors can begin to take on other, sinister, meanings and become
euphemisms for the expression of extremist views.

AT: Case Outweighs

The affs discourse of terror that focuses on uncertainty and pre-emptive action
instead of empirical evidence creates a self-fulfilling prophecy
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, p. 3536]//dickies
Joseba Zulaika (2012, 51) suggests that the

epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is characterised by the

perversion of temporality, the logic of taboo, non-hypothetical knowledge, secret information, the passion
for expert ignorance, mystical causation and dual sovereignty . While all these characteristics are indeed present in
contemporary counterterrorist thought and practice, it is not clear that they are all necessarily constitutive of the crisis; some are, to my mind, initially, at
least, consequences of the crisis. I suggest instead that the

epistemological crisis can be identified by four primary

characteristics: (1) the rejection of previous knowledge about terrorism and the embrace of total uncertainty
or anti-knowledge about any aspect of future terrorist threats; (2) the adherence to an extreme precautionary dogmatism
in which the unknown is reflexively governed through preemptive action; (3) the consequent legitimisation
and institutionalisation of imagination and fantasy as a necessary counterterrorist too l; and (4) the acceptance
of a permanent ontological condition of waiting for terror in relation to the next attack (Zulaika and Douglass 1996, 26). To
put it another way, we could say that the epistemological crisis is constituted by a known, an unknown and a moral imperative. The known of the
epistemological crisis is the assertion that, no matter what, there will be more terrorist attacks; we are simply
waiting for the next inevitable terrorist outrage. As many officials and terror experts have expressed it, it is not if but
when the next attack occurs, and no matter what, there will always be terrorism (Zulaika 2012, 59; original emphasis). For
example, officials are prone to argue that even if the Israel-Palestine conflict was settled, or Western forces
withdrew from Iraq, or al Qaeda was defeated, or any number of other possible developments took place, it would not matter
because there would still be terrorism in any case. Zulaika (2012) argues that this kind of projection (or fatalistic attitude)
shares the characteristics of oracular revelation in witchcraft societies , in that it is an unfulfilled
hypothetical that will become real with time the horror will happen no matter what. The unknown is simply that we do not, and
cannot, know exactly who, when, where, why or how the next inevitable attack will occur because the terrorists are shadowy, cunning, adaptive,
innovating, etc. Central

to this particular state of unknowing are the unknown knowns, or, the subjugated knowledge

(Jackson 2012b) which is wilfully ignored or suppressed. As I explain below, it is well known within the defence establishment and
official policymaking circles that military intervention such as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan provokes further terrorism, as does the continuing
existence of the Critical Studies on Terrorism 35 Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 Guantanamo Bay detention
centre, the use of torture and rendition, and the drone killing programme. Nevertheless, as Zulaika (2012, 56; original emphasis) puts it: These are
known facts, yet they are made to be unknown when concrete policies are to be taken. Finally, the

moral imperative is that we simply

have to do everything in our power to prevent the unknown but inevitable coming terrorist attack. This is an
extreme precautionary dogmatism, reflected in Dick Cheneys 1% doctrine (see Zulaika 2012, 6164), which asserts
that doing something is better than doing nothing, and in Francois Ewalds (2002) notion of risk beyond risk. The logic of
this paradigm dictates that uncertainty and lack of knowledge can no longer be regarded as an excuse for
inaction in the face of a potentially catastrophic threat (De Goede 2011, 9). In other words, in a reversal of
empirically-informed preventive decision-making approaches which proceed on the basis of what is known about a certain risk,
such as the risks posed by disease or automobile accidents, the counterterrorist must instead act upon what is unknown as
projected through imagination and fantasy. The important point is that not acting is never an option, even if it means
constructing a self-fulfilling prophesy or causing unnecessary suffering. In the end, it is in the combination and interaction
of these three elements that the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is constituted. I refer to it as a crisis primarily because it produces a
state of deep anxiety and even panic about the future, and because it involves an intense state of tension between the known and the
unknown. Looking at both the field of terrorism studies and the social practices of counterterrorism, there are a great many actions and
attitudes that appear at face value to be nonsensical, irrational, obviously wasteful , or, at the very least,
counterproductive (see Mueller 2006; Mueller and Stewart 2011, 2012; among others, for numerous examples). There are also a great many
actions that are highly destructive, unnecessarily abusive of human rights and which lead to evident selffulfilling prophesies . In this section, I provide a brief overview of a few select examples among many, drawn from different areas of
counterterrorist thought and practice, to illustrate the diverse ways in which the epistemological crisis manifests itself. I argue that the examples described
here are not anomalous or idiosyncratic, but rather illustrative of the internal logic of counterterrorist thought which is constituted by the epistemological
crisis. Within

the epistemic framework of contemporary counterterrorism, they are in fact, perfectly logical,
reasonable, and by now normalised ways of thinking and acting. Importantly, the epistemic crisis is not
confined to official counterterrorism. As a number of studies have demonstrated, within terrorism studies there is a persistent

epistemic crisis about the nature and threat of al Qaeda itself (see Jackson 2015; Hellmich 2011, 2012) especially in
comparison to what is known about other groups such as Hamas, the IRA, ETA, the Italian Red Brigades, and others. Despite being the most researched
and scrutinised group in history, terrorism

experts cannot settle on the necessary knowledge base to agree on whether

it is a hierarchical organisation, a diffused network, a franchise, an ideology, a figment of the Western
imagination or a combination of all of these. We know it exists, but we seemingly cannot know whether it is still a major
threat or not, what really drives it, or how best to respond to it. Despite all the intellectual activity in the field, al Qaeda
remains a known unknown. This academic epistemic crisis is magnified in the world of institutional counterterrorism.

Terrorism threat assessment and journalism relies on government sources

produces threat inflation.
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 117-119] //dickies
A politics of fear rests on the discourse of fear. The politics of fear serves as a conceptual linkage for
power, propaganda, news and popular culture, and an array of intimidating symbols and experiences such as crime
and terrorism. The politics of fear resides not in an immediate threat from an individual leader (e.g., Senator
Joseph McCarthy [Griffith 1987]) but rather in the public discourse that characterizes social life as dangerous,
fearful, and filled with actual or potential victims. This symbolic order invites protection, policing, and
intervention to prevent further victimization. A public discourse of fear invites the politics of fear. It is not fear
per se that is important in social life but rather how fear is defined and realized in everyday social interaction. The role of the
news media is very important in carrying selective news sources messages. News sources are claims makers, and
studies of crime news show that government and police officials dominate how crime is framed (Ericson, Baranek, and Chan 1987,
1989; Surette 1992). Likewise, government and military officials also dominated news reports about terrorism
and fear: But how men and women interpret and respond to their fearthese are more than unconscious, personal reactions to
imagined or even real dangers. They are also choices made under the influence of belief and ideology, in the shadow of elites and
powerful institutions. There is, then, a politics of fear. Since September 11, that politics has followed two distinct tracks: First, state

officials and media pundits have defined and interpreted the objects of Americans fearsIslamic
fundamentalism and terrorismin anti-political or non-political terms, which has raised the level of
popular nervousness; and, second, these same elites have generated a fear of speaking out not only against the
war and US foreign policy but also against a whole range of established institutions. (Robin 2002) Newspapers
as well as television network news relied heavily on administration sources that directed the focus and language of
news Terrorism and the Politics of Fear 117 coverage. This was particularly apparent with those persons interviewed. A study by the
Columbia Journalism Review documented this trend: It exacerbates our tendency to rely on official sources, which is the
easiest, quickest way to get both the he said and the she said, and, thus, balance. According to numbers from the media analyst
Andrew Tyndall, of the 414 stories on Iraq broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS from last September to February, all but
thirty-four originated at the White House, Pentagon, and State Department. So we end up with too much. An
analysis by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) of network news interviewees one week before and one week after Secretary
of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations about Iraqs alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction found that two-

thirds of the guests were from the United States, with 75 percent of these being current or former
government or military officials, while only oneSenator Kennedyexpressed skepticism or opposition to the
impending war with Iraq. Even newsmagazines like Newsweek concurred that the news was being managed: News
management is at the heart of the administrations shake-up of Iraq policy. The National Security Council
recently created four new committees to handle the situation in Iraq. One is devoted entirely to media
coordination stopping the bad news from overwhelming the good. (Newsweek, October 27, 2003) Very
dramatically, journalists cried on camera, wore flag lapels, and often referred to those involved in planning
and fighting the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as we. Moreover, they invoked routinely the claim that the
world is different, that security and safety can no longer be taken for granted , and that many sacrifices
would have to be made (Altheide 2004). Numerous observers raised serious questions about the role that journalism played in
covering the attacks, the wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that followed, and the increased surveillance and control of United States
citizens: The major media fully ignored gangbuster stories reported exhaustively overseas. Among them were: (1). a manifesto that
described the invasion of Iraq and pacification of the Mideast penned in 1998 by a think tank whose board included a raft of current
administration hawks. . . . In a rare case of breaking ranks, one news celeb, NBC correspondent Ashleigh Banfield, took her industry
to task in a speech at Kansas State University April, averring that it had painted a glorious, wonderful picture of war that wasnt
journalism. Quoting Robert McChesney (Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois) If the Soviet Union cited
reasons like this in their invasion of Afghanistan and Pravda reported nothing but what the government said, we 118 Chapter 6
wouldve dismissed it out of hand. Our press hasnt been much better. That sends a lot of Americans maybe not consciously but
intuitively, looking for something our media is not offering. (Grimm 2003, p. 37) The collective identity of victim of

terrorist attacks was promoted by news reports stressing communal suffering as well as opportunities to
participate in helping survivors and in defeating terrorism. More traditional and culturally resonant narratives about
crime, drugs, and evil were transformed into the terror story. Sorrow, suffering, empathy, and pain were merged with fear and
vengeance. National character was played out in scenarios of heroics, sacrifice, suffering, marketing, and
spending. This was the context for constructing the politics of fear .

Be skeptical of their authors government officials dominate news media coverage

this reinscribes the politics of fear and institutionalizes authoritarian control
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 121-131] //dickies
But this is different from the Chandra Levy or O.J. Simpson overreactions. We are a different country from the one that weathered
those stories. We feel more vulnerable to terrorism, and no matter how you cut it, this killer is a terrorist. His purpose, or at least one
of them, is to spread terror. And the media playing right into his hands, as if Sept. 11 never happened. We may be entering a time
when what has been ghetto-ized in Israel and the Middle East breaks its boundaries, says UC Berkeley dean of journalism Orville
Schell, referring to suicide bombers and other acts of terrorism. The unspoken thought is, What if this guy is a Muslim? The media
is feeding this most paranoid fear of all but without acknowledging it. . . . The national climate of fear, energized by this psycho
sniper, demands that the media examine its decisions more critically than ever. What kind of coverage serves the public interest? What
information helps, and more important what harms? (Ryan 2002, p. A23) Terrorism and the Politics of Fear 121 Next, figure 6.2
shows the massive increase in reports that associated fear with terrorism. Fear in headlines and terrorism in news reports greatly
exceeded the increases in fear and crime. Each of the newspapers increased the linkage of fear with terrorism by more than 1,000
percent, with the San Francisco Chronicle exceeding 4,500 percent (having pub- 122 Chapter 6 Figure 6.1. Percentage Increase of
Fear in Headlines and Crime in Reports for Five Newspapers after 9/11/01 Figure 6.2. Percentage Increase of Fear in Headlines
and Terrorism in Reports for Five Newspapers after 9/11/01 lished only two reports of this nature before 9/11) at time 1. Clearly,
terrorism was a relatively new and bold connection for fear. This included a few articles that were critical of the governments use of
fear to exact more social control, but the overwhelming majority demonstrated that terrorism was bonded to the discourse of fear. A

context of crime reporting proved to be consequential for the seemingly easy public acceptance of
governmental proposals to expand surveillance and social control. The resulting measures reflected a
foundational politics of fear that promoted a new public discourse and justification for altering everyday
life and social interaction. While the following discussion is informed by insights of others about social context and change
(Shapiro 1992; Thiele 1993) and various studies about fear and the media (Furedi 1997; Glassner 1999) and especially fear and crime
(Chiricos et al. 1997; Ferraro 1995), my focus is on political action that utilizes widespread audience perceptions about
fear as a feature of crime, violence, deviance, terrorism, and other dimensions of social disorder. The politics of fear is
buffered by news and popular culture stressing fear and threat as features of entertainment that increasingly
are shaping public and private life as mass-mediated experience has become a standard frame of reference for
audiences, claims makers, and individual actors (Best 1995). Similar to propaganda, messages about fear are repetitious and

stereotypical of outside threats and especially suspect and evil others. These messages also resonate
moral panics, with the implication that action must be taken to not only defeat a specific enemy but also
save civilization. Since so much is at stake, it follows that drastic measures must be takenthat compromises
with individual liberty and even perspectives about rights, the limits of law, and ethics must be qualified
and held in abeyance in view of the threat. In addition to propaganda effects, the constant use of fear pervades crises and normal times;
it becomes part of the taken-for-granted word of how things are, and one consequence is that it begins to
influence how we perceive and talk about everyday life, including mundane as well as significant events. Tracking this
discourse shows that fear pervades our popular culture and is influencing how we view events and experience. This is particularly
relevant for the use of victims and victimization, particularly in the context of 9/11. Still another consequence of the emphasis on
fear that foretells the emerging politics of fear is the rise of victimization. Entertaining news emphasizes fear and institutionalizes
victim as an acceptable identity. Other work has shown that fear and victim are informed by perceived membership (Altheide et
al. 2001). While news reports strengthened the connection between terrorism and fear, a critical symbol in the politics of fear is
victim and victimization. Terrorism and the Politics of Fear 123 Figure 6.3 shows the relationship of fear, crime, and victim.
This figure demonstrates that there was a much larger increase in the eighteen months after 9/11 in reports with fear within two
words of victim than there was fear within two words of crime. Most striking for our argument about the expanded focus of
fear and victim beyond crime after 9/11 was the clear increases in fear within two words of victim across the span of
nationally prominent newspapers. USA Today increased reports with fear within two words of victim by 280 percent, while the
Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, often regarded as among the nations most prestigious
newspapers, saw increases of nearly 100 percent. Examining the five newspapers shows that each greatly increased reports with fear
within two words of victim at time 2: Los Angeles Times: 108 percent; New York Times: 89 percent; Washington Post: 91 percent;
San Francisco Chronicle: 33 percent; and USA Today: 280 percent. Moreover, three of the five newspapers published fewer reports
with fear within two words of crime during the eighteen months after 9/11. Indeed, all newspapers had either very little increase
or a decrease in reports of fear within two words of crime at time 2. For example, USA Today showed a 20 percent increase and
the New York Times a 10 percent increase, while the Los Angeles Times (25 percent), the Washington Post (8 percent), and the San
Francisco Chronicle (13 percent) presented less coverage about fear within two words of crime than they did prior to 9/11.
Another way to illustrate the magnitude of change in these newspapers reports about fear within two words of victim compared
to fear and crime is to add the percentage increases in the former and the total change (increases minus decreases) in reports about

fear and crime. The five newspapers cumulative increase from time 1 to time 2 in reports with fear within two words of
victim was 493 124 Chapter 6 Figure 6.3. Percent Changes in Report with Fear within Two Words of Victim and Fear after
9/11 percent, with a cumulative decrease of 16 percent in reports showing fear within two words of crime. This means that fear
and victim became more closely linked at time 2 across these major news media. The world of popular culture and news stressing
crime and victimization promotes the pervasive awareness of victimage that is easily cultivated by officials who respond to terrorist
acts. Victims abound in American life. Victims are but the personal side of crisis; a crisis is where victims reside. A personal crisis may
affect one victim, but more generally crisis refers to social crisis, involving numerous people. All take place in a time of fear.
All of this requires that citizens have information and constant reminders of the pitfalls and hazards of life, whether potential or
realized (Ericson and Haggerty 1997). News reports, talk shows, newsmagazine shows, and a host of police and reality crime dramas
seem to proclaim that everybody is a victim of something even though they may not know it. The notion that life is hard and that
things dont always work out the way wed like seems to be lost on popular-culture audiences who clamor for justice, revenge,
and, of course, redemption, often in the form of monetary rewards. And it is not just in the United States: It is in the USA that
victimhood is most developed as an institution in its own right. . . . Victimhood is one of the central categories of the culture of
abuse. . . . Celebrities vie with one another to confess in graphic detail the painful abuse they suffered as children. The highly
acclaimed BBC interview with Princess Diana symbolized this era of the victim. (Furedi 1997, p. 95) Just as our culture has

become obsessed with fear, it has also become accepting of victim and victimization. My analysis of news
and popular culture indicates that these two terms are linked. We even use the term victim: when we dont have a
victim, as in victimless crime, although reports are far more likely to stress the victim status. And certain domestic violence
presumptive arrest policies define people as crime victims even though they do not perceive themselves as such and refuse to
press charges. We even have indirect victim. Patriotism was connected with an expansive fear of terrorism and
enemies of the United States. The term terrorism was used to encompass an idea as well as a tactic or method. The waging
of the war on terrorism focused on the idea and the method, depending on the context of discussion and
justification. The very broad definition of terrorism served the central authorities purposes while also
justifying action of others (e.g., Israel) in their own conflicts. Figure 6.4 provides another important piece to the
conceptual argument about the politics of fear. These data show that each of the newspapers substantially increased the
number of reports with fear within two Terrorism and the Politics of Fear 125 words of terrorism after 9/11: Los
Angeles Times: 1,467 percent; New York Times: 986 percent; Washington Post: 1,100 percent; San Francisco Chronicle: 1,620
percent; and USA Today: 2,950 percent. Clearly, terrorism was strongly linked to the discourse of fear . DISCUSSION
A brief recap of the argument is that claims makers accounts of the attacks of 9/11 contributed to an expanding use of
fear with victim and victimization that increased much faster than an already established tradition of reports linking
fear and crime. Victim and terrorism did not replace crime but simply expanded the fear and victim connection that has
long been associated with crime. And it is this expansion that is consistent with the politics of fear. The point can be further
illustrated. A closer internal look at variations in the Los Angeles Times indicates that the emphasis on crime decreased when
compared to more attention given to terrorism. Examining other data (not provided here) shows that at time 1 (eighteen months prior
to 9/11), only 1 percent of stories with fear in the headlines had crime and terrorism in the report. This increased to 8 percent at
time 2. Most striking is the headline changes. There was a 1,600 percent increase in reports with terrorism and fear in the
headlines at time 2. 126 Chapter 6 Figure 6.4. Changes (%) in Reports with Fear within Two Words of Terrorism, after 9/11/01
The upshot is that terrorism and victim have been more closely joined with fear at time 2, while time 1 reporting was more
likely to associate fear and victim with crime. Victim continued to grow from crime at time 2, but it was engorged by
fear. While crime and terrorism do coexist and can expand together, terrorism became more strongly associated with
victim. The discourse of fear now includes terrorism as well as victimization and crime. Terrorism and fear have
been joined through victimization. Crime established a solid baseline in its association with fear, and it continues to grow, but it is
terrorism that now occupies the most news space. The primary reason for this, as noted previously in the discussion of news
sources, is that government officials dominate the sources relied on by journalists . When journalists rely

heavily on government and military officials not only to discuss an immediate war or military campaign but
also for information about the security of the country, rationale for more surveillance of citizens, and
comments about related domestic and international issues, then the body politic is symbolically cultivated
to plant more reports and symbols about the politics of fear. This is particularly true during periods of war,
such as the ongoing war with Iraq. Messages that the war on terrorism and the importance of homeland security, including periodic
elevated terror alerts, will not end soon lead journalists to turn to administration news sources for information about the most recent
casualties, operations, and reactions to counterattacks as well as the omnipresent reports about soldiers who have perished and those
who are still in peril. In this sense, news updates from authoritative sources quickly merge with orchestrated
propaganda efforts. Terrorism plays well with audiences accustomed to the discourse of fear as well as
political leadership oriented to social policy geared to protecting those audiences from crime . I am proposing,
then, that the discourse of fear is a key element of social fears involving crime and other dreaded outcomes in the postmodern world.
As rhetoricians have noted, terrorism is easily included within this perspective: Terrorism, then, is first and foremost
discourse. There is a sense in which the terrorist event must be reported by the media in order for it to have
transpired at all. (Zulaika and Douglass 1996, p. 14) The pervasive threat of terrorism is given credibility by events that are
interpreted as part of an unfolding and very uncertain schema for the future: Terrorism discourse singles out and removes
from the larger historical and political context a psychological trait (terror), an organizational structure (the
Terrorism and the Politics of Fear 127 terrorist network), and a category (terrorism) in order to invent an autonomous and
aberrant realm of gratuitous evil that defies any understanding. The ironic dimension of terrorism discourse

derives from its furthering the very thing it abominates. (Zulaika and Douglass 1996, p. 22) Terrorism is more than
a narrative, but its essence is the definition of the situation, one that extends beyond the present into a distal future, gray
but known. The forebodingness of events (e.g., the 9/11 attacks) is cast as a terrible trend inevitability, but the
power comes from the uncertainty of when and where. Like the prospective victims of crime in the future,
citizens will be made terrorist victims in the future. Terrorismand especially the attacks of 9/11enabled
political actors to expand the definition of the situation to all Americans as victims. Moreover, all those
fighting to protect actual and potential victims should be permitted to do their work, unimpeded by any
concerns about civil liberties or adding context and complexity to the simple analysis that was offered: evil people were
attacking good people, and evil had to be destroyed: Victimhood has also been expanded through the concept of the indirect victim.
For example, people who witness a crime or who are simply aware that something untoward has happened to someone they know are
potential indirect victims. . . . With the concept of the indirect victim, the numbers become tremendously augmented. Anyone who

has witnessed something unpleasant or who has heard of such an experience becomes a suitable candidate
for the status of indirect victim. (Furedi 1997, p. 97) Victims are a by-product of fear and the discourse of fear. I
contend that fear and victim are linked through social power, responsibility, and identity. The linkage involves concerns about
safety and perceptions of risk. Thus, President Bush was relying on more than skilled speechwriters in connecting the mafia and
terrorism; he was also relying on audiences acceptance of mythical mafia dons and godfathers depicted in entertainment to grease
the conceptual slide of terrorism as a similar threat. What audiences were presumed to share, then, was the sense that terrorism, like
crime (especially Mafia Crime), was a monstrous black hand that was invisible, omnipresent, and all powerful and that could be
stopped only by a stronger force if ordinary Americans were to survive. I refer specifically to the role and identity of victim, as held
by numerous audiences who expect victims to perform certain activities, speak a certain language, and in general follow a cultural
script of dependence, lacking, and powerlessness while relying on state-sponsored social institutions to save and support them
(Garland 2001). Clearly, the terrorists, like their criminal predecessors, had put us all at risk: 128 Chapter 6 The precondition for the
emergence of the victim identity was the consolidation of the consciousness of risk. In the UK and the USA, the growing fear of crime
and the growing perception of risks have contributed to the sentiment that everyone is a potential victim. However, crime and the fear
of crime are only the most striking manifestations of the kind of insecurity that strengthens the belief that everyone is at risk. (Furedi
1997, p. 100) Recall that the politics of fear refers to decision makers promotion and use of audience beliefs and assumptions about
danger, risk, and fear in order to achieve certain goals. The politics of fear promotes attacking a target (e.g., crime or
terrorism), anticipates further victimization, curtails civil liberties, and stifles dissent as being unresponsive to
citizen needs or even unpatriotic. The Homeland Security Office advised the American people to buy duct tape and plastic
sheeting as a barrier to terrorism. This advisory had little to do with chemical protection and much to do with the politics of
fear. As one observer noted, Since September 11, that politics has followed two distinct tracks: First, state officials and
media pundits have defined and interpreted the objects of Americans fearsIslamic fundamentalism and terrorism
in anti-political or non-political terms, which has raised the level of popular nervousness; and, second, these same

elites have generated a fear of speaking out not only against the war and US foreign policy but also against
a whole range of established institutions. (Robin 2002) This argument has no counterproposal because of the symbolic links
that are made between an event, a threat, and the avowed character and purpose of the terrorists, who, like criminals, are construed as
lacking any reason, moral foundation, or purpose except to kill and terrify. Not likely to be ravaged by childhood diseases or
workplace injuries, postindustrial citizens are prime potential victims, viewing mass-mediated scenarios of crime, mayhem, and
destruction; they have no option but to believe and wait: The most typical mode of terrorism discourse in the United
States has been, indeed, one of Waiting for Terror. . . . That which captivates every mind is something so meaningless that it
may never happen, yet we are forced to compulsively talk about it while awaiting its arrival. In the theater of the absurd, no
significance becomes the only significance. . . . When something does happen, after decades during which the absent horror has been
omnipresent through the theater of waiting, the vent becomes anecdotal evidence to corroborate what has intuited all alongthe bynow permanent catastrophe of autonomous Terror consisting of the waiting for terror. (Zulaika and Douglass 1996, p. 26) Terrorism
and the Politics of Fear 129 There can be no fear without actual victims or potential victims. In the postmodern age, victim is a status
and representation and not merely a person or someone who has suffered as a result of some personal, social, or physical calamity.
Massive and concerted efforts by moral entrepreneurs to have their causes adopted and legitimated as core social issues worthy of
attention have led to the wholesale adaptation and refinement of the use of the problem frame to promote victimization (Best 1995).
Often couching their causes as battles for justice, moral entrepreneurs seek to promote new social definitions of right and wrong
(Johnson 1995; Spector and Kitsuse 1977). As suggested previously with the examples of hoaxes, victims are entertaining, and that is
why they abound. They are evocative, bringing forth tears, joy, and vicarious emotional experience. But victim is more. Victim is now
a status, a position that is open to all people who live in a symbolic environment marked by the discourse of fear. We are all potential
victims, often vying for official recognition and legitimacy. CONCLUSION I suggest that the politics of fear is a dominant motif for
news and popular culture. Moreover, within this framework, news reporting about crime and terrorism are linked with victimization
narratives that make crime, danger, and fear very relevant to everyday life experiences. The social construction of social problems, as
Best (1999) noted, is an ongoing process, building from previous experience. However, the politics of fear as public discourse
represents an emergent feature of the symbolic environment: moral entrepreneurs claims making is easier to market to audiences
anchored in fear and victimization as features of crime and terrorism. The politics of fear can be theoretically useful in understanding
the relevance of mass-mediated fear in contemporary popular culture and political life. This concept is useful for clarifying the closer
ties between entertainment-oriented news and popular culture on the one hand and media-savvy state officials on the other. Consider
an example of a news report about a dispute in Phoenix, Arizona, over regulating low-rider cruising. An attorney for the low-riders
stated, Unfortunately this bill might be considered by some Hispanics as a form of state-sponsored terrorism through vague local
ordinances. (Arizona Republic, April 21, 2004, p. B1) On the one hand, the politics of fear is consistent with entertainmentoriented
news and mass media, particularly its resonance with victim and victimization. On the other hand, the politics of fear helps political

130 Chapter 6 decision makers as news sources and as political actors define social life as dangerous and requiring formal social
control and state intervention. The politics of fear joined crime with victimization through the drug war, interdiction and
surveillance policies, and grand narratives that reflected numerous cultural myths about moral and social disorder. We are in the
midst of an emerging politics of fear that discourages criticism and promotes caution and reliance on careful procedures to not be
hasty, to cover oneself, to not be misunderstood. The politics of fear promotes extensive use of disclaimers, those linguistic
devices that excuse a comment to follow by providing an explanation to not take it the wrong way, usually taking the form of I am
not unpatriotic, but . . . or I support our troops as much as anyone, but . . .. Very few politicians will stand up to the politics of fear
because it is the defining bulwark of legitimacy. Skillful propaganda and the cooperation of the most powerful news media enabled
simple lies to explain complex events. Like entertaining crime reporting, anticipation of wars, attacks, and the constant vigilance to be
on guard is gratifying for most citizens who are seeking protection within the symbolic order of the politics of fear. The skillful use of
heightened terrorist alerts to demand attention to the task at hand is critical in avoiding any detractor. And that is the key point: an
otherwise sensible or cautionary remark that signals that one is aware, rational, and weighing alternatives marks one as a detractor,
someone who is against the United States. The rituals of control are easier to accept as they become more pervasive and
institutionalized. Fear is perceived as crime and terrorism, while police and military forces are symbolically joined as protectors. The

politics of fear with a national or international justification is more symbolically compelling than mere
crime in the streets. Accompanying heightened terror alerts are routine frisks, intrusive surveillance, and
the pervasive voyeuristic camera, scanning the environment for all suspicious activity. The next chapter
discusses how the politics of fear has been extended to control of the Internet.

Terrorist scenarios are based off of speculative fantasy rather than empirical facts
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, p. 4143]//dickies

Another example of the epistemological crisis, and a direct consequence of the epistemic blind within which knowledge
about what terrorists have done previously can no longer be considered a reliable guide to what they might do in the future, is the
prevalence of fantasy thinking in counterterrorist thought and practice (see Jackson 2012a). As a number of scholars
have recently shown (see Zulaika 2012; Heath-Kelly 2012a), fantasy, exaggeration, hyper-caution and even forms of
magical realism are now central themes in counterterrorism and security practice , and bizarre fantasy-imbued
behaviour by security officials seems to occur on an almost daily basis. The case of James Fitzgerald cited above, in which terrorism
books were re-x-rayed, could be viewed as an example of (subconscious) magical realist thinking by counterterrorist officials: it
certainly seems bizarre that books could be thought to hide dangerous materials detectable only by a second
x-ray, unless they had some magical quality. In addition to the banal everyday examples of security officials at airports
searching very elderly passengers and babies diapers when it is obvious they pose no threat, se rious discussions have taken
place within official institutions about the possibility that terrorists could introduce biological weapons into
the water supply through fire hydrants (Cooper 2007) or that they might use hang-gliders to deliver suicide bombs into urban
areas (Clendenning 2012). It has also been seriously suggested that candy machines might be vulnerable to terrorists
(Fahim 2007) wanting to poison unwary American children and 40 R. Jackson Downloaded by [University of California,
Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 that hundreds of American amusement and water parks remain vulnerable to attack by terrorists
(Department of Homeland Security 2009). More recently, the town of Keene, New Hampshire, received national attention when it
was revealed that the police department had applied to purchase a military-style BearCat mine-resistant armoured vehicle. The
application named the pumpkin festival a traditional local event for the past 24 years, in which thousands of people flock
to see numerous displays of jack-o- lanterns, and other festive jollities as a possible target for terrorists (Woolf 2014).

What these and many other cases illustrate is the essential role of imagination and fantasy in
counterterrorism; that is, officials imagining unrealistic or at least exaggerated or realityenhanced possible
terrorist scenarios and then treating them as real threats requiring a material response , or at least serious
consideration, from officials. What I am suggesting is that the prevalence of fantasy and magical thinking in
counterterrorism flows directly from, and is constitutive of, the profound lack of knowledge that officials
and experts claim to have about terrorism and the actual threat it poses . It is not antithetical to, but rather
illustrative of, the epistemological crisis in which terrorism is perceived as fundamentally unknown,
incalculable and unpredictable a Rumsfeldian unknown unknown (see also de Goedes 2011 notion of threat
imaginaries). Once counterterrorism officials believe that they cannot really know with any certainty who,
where, when, how or why terrorists might strike, or what potential danger they may pose (conventional,
nuclear, chemical, biological), then the only option to detect and deal with them is to try and imagine what
they might do which of course, inevitably leads to fantasy in counterterrorist thought and practice. Hollywood
and imaginative counterterrorism It is by now well-known that in October 2001, following the terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington, a three-day summit was held at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative
Technology (ICT), which brought together counterterrorism officials and Hollywood screenwriters , directors and
producers (for an incisive analysis of this meeting, see Frank 2014, 18). The aim of the meeting was to brainstorm about

possible terrorist targets and schemes in America and to offer solutions to those threats (Huck cited in Frank 2014, 1).
Frank argues that this meeting grew directly out of the widespread belief that the 9/11 attacks represented , in
large part, a failure of imagination: According to this line of reasoning, counterterrorism cannot confine itself to the
accumulation of data concerning the goals, strategies, and means of terrorist networks; it also depends on ingenuity in the imagination
of future events. In addition to analyzing facts, it must speculatively work through possibilities, think in the subjunctive. And who else
would be better suited for this task than screenwriters and directors, who have been tirelessly imagining attacks on domestic targets for
several decades? It must have been this thought that prompted Washington to seek the advice of Hollywood, in the hope of being able
to devise plausible ways in which terrorists might launch new attacks against the US. (Frank 2014, 34) In other words,

preventing future terrorist attacks would necessitate putting the creative imagination to work in devising
terrorist scenarios. Later, the 9/11 Commission would reinforce this epistemic reorientation, suggesting: It is therefore crucial to
find a way of routinising, even bureaucratising, the exercise of imagination (cited in Frank 2014, 3). Frank goes on to rightly note
that this episode is a striking example of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism and makes perfect sense within its internal
structure. Moreover, it indicates a reluctance to deal with real or known actors, events, histories, Critical Studies on Terrorism 41
Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 07:59 15 July 2015 subjectivities and conditions of emergence. That is, the

fact that terrorism experts were not consulted instead of film makers exemplifies the first condition of the
epistemological crisis, namely, the rejection of previous knowledge about terrorism. When we cannot know
anything about the real nature of terrorism, except that it is an unknown, unpredictable threat, it makes
sense to turn to the experts in fantasy and imagination for advice.

Their threats are not real but constructed by an irrational fear of the unknown
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism,
p.38]//dickies
In a more recent example, the Australian government changed its terrorism alert level to extreme in September
2014 as the crisis involving Islamic State heated up. According to the Australian authorities, the top level,
extreme, indicates that a terrorist attack is imminent or has occurred (Hurst and Murphy 2014). In announcing
the change, however, Prime Minister Abbott said: I want to stress that this does not mean that a terror attack is
imminent We have no specific intelligence of particular plots. What we do have is intelligence that there are people
with the intent and the capability to mount attacks (Hurst and Murphy 2014). In other words, having no evidence that an

attack is imminent, we must nonetheless raise the threat level to imminent because we do have evidence of
the (universal adversarys) terrorists intent. The known intent of the terrorists is sufficient to act: we need to be
aware that there are people who wish to do us harm So we see an increase particularly in intent I wont go into all of the details
but I think it is important that we raise awareness partly by raising the threat level (Hurst and Murphy 2014). The known intent of the
terrorist is sufficient to overrule the unknown time and location of the attack, creating an imperative to act preemptively to raise the
threat level to imminent. We are now in an ontological limbo of waiting for terror: the attack is imminent and
not imminent at the same time. While it could be argued that these are exaggerated or exceptional instances easily dismissed as
representative of occasional official idiocy, I would argue that in fact, they perfectly illustrate the nature and structure of
the epistemic crisis at the heart of counterterrorist thought. The epistemic crisis lies precisely in the tension
between what is seen to be known for certain (that there are imaginative and capable terrorists who have the intent to
attack us again), what remains uncertain or unknown (who they are exactly, and when, where, why and how they will
attack) and the moral imperative to do something to preempt it.

AT: Pragmatism
Critical terror studies and active engagement with the political process is an
effective way to move beyond critique, finding ways to replace political strategies
of terror with non-violent ones
Jackson 7
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, the core commitments of critical terrorism studies, European
Political Science 2007, pp. 249-250)
In practice, such a standpoint necessarily entails transparency in specifying ones politicalnormative
stance and values, a continuous critical reflexivity regarding the aims, means and outcomes of terrorism
research, particularly as it intersects with state counter-terrorism, and an enduring concern with questions of
politics and ethics. In turn, this has clear implications for research funding, knowledge
production and the ethics of research in suspect communities. It also entails an
enduringly critical stance towards projects of state counter-terrorism, particularly as they affect human and
societal security. CTS recognises that such a stance involves a delicate and creative balance between
avoiding complicity in oppressive state practices through a continual process of critique, while
simultaneously maintaining access to power in order to affect change. From this perspective, CTS is
determined to go beyond critique and deconstruction and actively work to bring about positive social
change in part through an active engagement with the political process and the power holders in society.
In short, based on an acceptance of a fundamental prior responsibility to the other, CTS sees itself as
being engaged in a critical praxis aimed at ending the use of terror by any and all actors and in promoting
the exploration of non-violent forms of conflict transformation. Specifically, this entails a willingness to try
to understand and empathise with the mindsets, world views and subjectivities of non-Western others and
a simultaneous refusal to assume or impute their intentions and values (Barkawi, 2004). CTS scholars
recognise that in relation to the terrorist other, this is a taboo stance within Western scholarship.
Moreover, it is a taboo that has been institutionalised in a legal framework in which withholding
information from the authorities is a crime, in which academics are being asked to report on
their students and in which attempting to understand the subjectivities of terrorist
suspects could be interpreted as glorification of terrorism a crime under UK law.
Nonetheless, CTS scholars view it as both analytically and ethically responsible and remain committed
to defending the intellectual and ethical integrity of such work.

Deconstructing traditional modes of terrorism studies produces practical changes.

Jackson 7
(Richard Jackson, Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Penglais,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales, UK, the core commitments of critical terrorism studies, European
Political Science 2007, pp. 246-247)
Without discounting the contributions of positivist social science, I would argue that
CTS rests firstly upon an understanding of knowledge as a social process constructed through language,
discourse and inter-subjective practices. From this perspective, it is understood that terrorism
knowledge always reflects the socialcultural context within which it emerges, which means among other
things that it tends to be highly gendered and Eurocentric. CTS understands that knowledge is always
intimately connected to power, that knowledge is always for someone and for some purpose and that
regimes of truth function to entrench certain hierarchies of power and exclude alternative, counterhegemonic forms of knowledge and practice. CTS therefore begins with an acceptance of the basic
insecurity of all knowledge and the impossibility of neutral or objective knowledge about terrorism. It also
evinces an acute sensitivity to the ways in which terrorism knowledge can be deployed as a political
technology in the furtherance of hegemonic projects and directs attention to the interests that underlie
knowledge claims. Thus, CTS starts by asking: who is terrorism knowledge for, and what functions does it
serve in supporting their interests? There are at least three practical consequences of this broad

epistemological orientation. First, similar to the field of critical security studies (CSS), CTS begins from an
analysis of the epistemological and ontological claims that make the discipline possible in the first place
(Williams and Krause, 1997); in particular, the false naturalism of traditional theory and the political
content of all terrorism knowledge. More specifically, its research focuses in part on uncovering and
understanding the aims of knowledge production within terrorism studies, the operation of the terrorism
studies epistemic community and more broadly, the social and political construction of terrorism
knowledge. Such analysis can be achieved using deconstructive, narrative, genealogical, ethnographic and
historical analyses, as well as Gramscian and constructivist approaches. The purpose of such research is not
simply descriptive nor is it to establish the correct or real truth of terrorism; rather, its aim is to
destabilise dominant interpretations and demonstrate the inherently contested and political nature of the
discourse to reveal the politics behind seemingly neutral knowledge. A second practical consequence for
CTS research is a continuous and transparent criticalnormative reflexivity in the knowledge-production
process (Shaw, 2003). That is, CTS research acknowledges the impossibility of neutral or objective
terrorism knowledge and evinces an acute awareness of the political uses to which it can be put, as well as
its inbuilt biases and assumptions. It thus attempts to avoid the uncritical use of labels, assumptions and
narratives regarding terrorism in ways that would naturalise them or imply that they were uncontested.
Crucial in this respect is an appreciation of the inherently gendered and Eurocentric character of dominant
knowledge and discourse on terrorism. A third consequence for CTS research is methodological and
disciplinary pluralism; in particular, a willingness to adopt post-positivist and non-IR-based methods and
approaches. In this sense, CTS refuses to privilege materialist, rationalist and positivist approaches to social
science over interpretive and reflectivist approaches (Price and Reus-Smit, 1998: 261). Avoiding an
exclusionary commitment to the narrow logic of traditional social scientific explanation based on linear
notions of cause and effect, CTS accepts that constructivist and poststructuralist approaches that subscribe
to an interpretive logic of understanding can open space for questions and perspectives that are foreclosed
by positivism and rationalism. This stance is more than methodological; it is also political in the sense
that it does not treat one model of social science as if it were the sole bearer of legitimacy (Smith,
2004: 514).

AT: Indicts

AT: Horgan & Boyle

Only critical perspectives on terrorism account for massive levels of state violence.
Ruth Blakeley, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent , Canterbury, UK, 711-2008, The elephant in the room: a response to John Horgan and Michael J. Boyle , Critical Studies on
Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2, 151165, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150802184561
An important aim of scholars associated with the CTS agenda is to foster further studies on state terrorism by
liberal democratic states from the Global North, since this has been a widely used strategy by the US, Britain, and France, among
others, but has received relatively little attention among terrorism scholars within IR, as well as across the
social sciences. Horgan and Boyle have suggested that such calls constitute a reinventing of the wheel,
because they associate those calls with criticisms that CTS scholars have made of how terrorism has been
defined, which, they argue, is simply going over old ground. Furthermore, they point out that many terrorism
scholars do acknowledge that the state is a primary, if not the most important, agent of terror (Horgan and
Boyle 2008, p. 56), and that in this regard, it is not clear how CTS is offering anything novel. My contention here is
firstly, that it is not the definitions of terrorism that are being challenged so much as their applications , and
secondly, that acknowledging that states, including Northern democratic ones, are perpetrators of terror
does not adequately over- come the dearth of research in this area. In this regard, CTS does of original, since it
goes well beyond simply reworking definitions or acknowledging the complicity of liberal democratic
states in state terrorism. It establishes a credible research agenda and begins the analytical work that is
needed. This includes, as I will show below, identifying incidents of Northern state terrorism, situating them within
a taxonomy of all forms of political violence, analysing their origins and purposes, identifying which state actors
are involved, and assessing their impacts, within the context of wider foreign policy objectives. It is the case that to label
acts of repression state terrorism, they need to be consistent with accepted definitions of terrorism, and that if state actions fall
outside of that remit, they should be understood as another form of political violence. This is not to say that there is a consensus on
even the key elements of the definition of terrorism, but that there is a group of themes that do overlap. Nevertheless, I have found
that many acts of violence committed by Northern democracies do fit existing definitions of terrorism , and
that in turn, existing definitions are more than adequate for encompassing acts of terror committed by the
state. One aspect of my own work has been to explore whether the use of torture constitutes a form of state terrorism
and I conclude that in some circumstances it does (Blakeley 2007b). Yet Horgan and Boyle argue that the

underlying point of the CTS critique of current definitions of terrorism appears to be that many other forms
of violence for example, state terrorism fall out of conventional definitions of terrorism (Horgan and Boyle
2008, p. 56). This has not been my experience, and neither has it been my intention to rework definitions of
terrorism, since, as they note, numerous terrorism scholars have explored the many problems associated with defining and
conceptualising terrorism, and have come up with definitions that are adequate. Indeed, as work by Christopher Mitchell, Michael
Stohl, David Carleton, and George Lopez shows, accepted definitions do not in and of themselves preclude actions by states. They
argue that to be labelled terrorism, acts carried out either by the state or by non-state actors must involve
purposive behavior or intention on the part of the terrorist actor; the act or threat of violent harm to a victim(s);
observation of the effects of the act or harm by some ultimate target(s); identification by the target with the victim; some degree of
terror induced in the target(s) through a demonstration effect and the act of identification; altered behavior (compellance) or
abandoned behaviour (deterrence) as a direct result of the terrorist demonstration (Mitchell et al. 1986, p. 5). This definition is
distinguished from other forms of coercion and violence by the intention of the actor and the direction of the
attempt to influence, in the sense that any actor deploying the strategy must have the intention of inducing

extreme fear in some population of observers as the main objective for the strategy to count as true
terrorism (Mitchel l et al. 1986, p. 6). Similarly, as I have previously discussed (Blakeley 2007a), the definition offered by
Wilkinson (1992, pp. 228229), and repeated widely by IR scholars, does not preclude the state as a perpetrator.

Critical terrorism studies focus on state violence can shift the paradigm for counterterrorism policy.
Ruth Blakeley, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent , Canterbury, UK, 711-2008, The elephant in the room: a response to John Horgan and Michael J. Boyle , Critical Studies on
Terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2, 151165, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150802184561
Finally, Horgan and Boyle ask whether there is a different intellectual project at work here, where the goal
is to link the causes of terrorism to the bad behaviour of Western governments, capitalism or social
economic inequalities (Horgan and Boyle 2008, p. 58). They state that if this is the case, the CTS project needs to be
transparent. My own work does not focus on the causes of non-state terrorism, which in the above articulation is set up as a

response to Western practices. I will therefore leave that question for others to address. Nevertheless, I,

and the few other

scholars that have studied state terrorism by liberal democratic states, have always been transparent about
one of the main aims of our work, an explicitly normative one, which is to assess and challenge the use of coercive
practices by liberal democratic states, particularly state terrorism, to achieve their foreign policy objectives
in the Global South, which have included the spread of global capitalism to ensure access to resources and markets. In this regard the
work does look specifically at the relationship between state terrorism and capitalism, and where relevant, pursuant social and
economic inequalities. Specifically, it is concerned with cases where liberal democratic states consider the use of

terror by themselves or by their elite allies in the Global South to be functional to the achievement of their
aims (Blakeley 2006, 2007b, Stokes 2005). Indeed, state terrorism only makes sense when we link it to the wider
foreign policy objectives it is intended to serve. In my own analysis of US interventions in Latin America
during the Cold War, declassified documents indicate that while the US publicly defended such interventions as a
means of containing communism, there was often an underlying material imperative. Officials explicitly pointed
to the economic threats posed to the US when left-wing governments were elected, and frequently stated that interventions to support
repressive regimes would serve US capitalist interests. The coup in Argentina which saw the establishment of a
military dictatorship from 1976 to 1982, for example, unleashed widespread, largely indiscriminate repression, in
what became known as the Dirty War. Just two days after the coup, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had expressed his approval
of the economic benefits that could ensue for the US. William Rogers informed Kissinger that were going to look for a considerable
effort to involve the US particularly in the financial field, and Kissinger replied, Yes, but thats in our interest (Kissinger 1976).

Estimates of the numbers of people that were killed or disappeared under the military dictatorship range
from 9000 to 30,000, many of whom were also tortured in Argentinas secret detention centres (Amnesty
International 2003). The US Embassy in Argentina had itself compiled documentation of nearly 10,000 human
rights violations, most of them disappearances by 1979, which it sent to the State Department for the Departments permanent
records and use (US Embassy, Argentina 1979). Despite this knowledge, military support for the regime was ongoing. There are
many similar examples of US sponsorship of state terrorism in Latin America during the Cold War , where
declassified documents show just how much that support was driven by US efforts to protect and promote US capital (Blakeley
forthcoming). In analysing these links, there is also an emancipatory goal. In the first instance, this goal is to
halt the use of state terrorism by exposing it. The case of the Chilean Diaspora is instructive. Pinochets regime was
gradually undermined in part as a result of efforts by political exiles from Chile, including academics, to raise global awareness
of the atrocities committed by the regime, resulting in its condemnation by other states (Ropp and Sikkink 1999).
This helped bring an end to the regime and to years of repression, in which the Chilean National Commission on Truth and
Reconciliation (CNCTR) found that during and in the years following the coup, 2279 people were killed. Of those, 815 were victims
of execution and death by torture, 957 disappeared following arrest, and the remainder were killed either as a result of war tribunals,
during political protests, alleged escape attempts, or gun battles (CNCTR 1991). Identifying state terrorism and raising

awareness about it is one way that CTS scholars can assist those struggling against repression.
Emancipation also implies that elites be dissuaded from using or sponsoring terrorism. To date, this is the area in
which the least amount of work has been undertaken by those of us studying the issue, but it should be afforded greater attention.

State terrorism is often used or sponsored by liberal democratic states as a response to a perceived threat to
its own interests; in Latin America during the Cold War, the US used and sponsored terrorism as a means to counter the perceived
threat from left-wing insurgent groups (Blakeley 2006, 2007b). As Ken Booth argues: when powerful states use violence [...]
they are not acting in a manner calculated to make violence less likely; if they achieve success in their own
terms, they do so only by proving to others that strategic violence can have political utility. (Booth 2005, p.
273) This undermines their moral legitimacy. One of the challenges for scholars within CTS is therefore to
challenge the perceptions of elites that consider specific groups of people to constitute security threats. This
may help prevent violations of human rights, as well as the undermining of states proclaiming to be liberal
democratic. The starting point is to explore the consequences of state terrorism, not only for victims, but for
perpetrating states. A leading figure in France s counter-insurgency campaign in Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, Jean-Jacques
Massu, years late r admitted that the widespread use of torture, often a tool of state terrorism, served no useful or necessary
intelligence purpose in overcoming terrorism, but had turned most of the Algerian population against the French, pushing them into
the arms of the Front de Libration National (MacMaster 2004, p. 9). One priority for those working on state terrorism

with in CTS must be to critically examine state responses to threats that involve the use or sponsorship of
state terrorism, evaluate its strategic usefulness as well as its impacts on human rights, and then to
challenge elites that deploy such practices.

Critical Terrorism Studies Aff

AT: Impact
Critical terrorism approaches justify atrocities.
Michel and Richards 9 ( Torsten Michel and Anthony Richards, May 19th 2009, False dawns or new
horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 2,
No. 3, December 2009, pp. 404-405, accessed 7/17/15) CH
This background conception as to what it means to engage in critical scholarship is hardly present in CTS
publications so far. This is not to say that CTS scholars must develop an elaborate account of the critique of reason, but what is
unsatisfactory is that thus far it seems that this dimension is not even implicitly assumed . First, CTS
scholarship right now focuses on one core problem that should be subjected to critique the predominance of a specific
orthodox take on terrorism. What is, however, actually critiqued is a social reality that has emerged out of a
specific application of reason (instrumental reason to be precise). An account of this social reality needs to feature in CTS as
Critical scholarship is never particular but is in its conception holistic. The critique is never simply projected against this
or that situation or discourse but always aims for a wider questioning of the prescriptions of reason that
underlie these discursive structures. The second main example where so far only rudimentary reflection can be witnessed
concerns the notions of relativism and truth. As we have seen, CTS commits itself to a historicist notion of truth which
recognizes the contextual and historically contingent nature of our knowledge. Such a position, if not
substantiated, leaves itself open to a relativistic reading that could basically end up in arguing that knowledge
claims essentially cannot be evaluated against a common basis. With respect to the study of terrorism then this could
easily lead to the exoneration and legitimization of specific violent practices by claiming their rootedness in
a specific historical environment that cannot be judged by standards outside itself. Critical Theory in general (and
CTS as well, we presume), however, is eager to avoid such a plunge into relativism which would also threaten the potential for a truly
emancipatory agenda. If this is the case, it seems necessary to elaborate more substantially on the nature of knowledge and the
possibility of truth in such accounts. Again, we find quite an extensive treatment of these matters among Critical Theorists but hardly
anything in CTS publications so far. Admittedly, Toros and Gunning try to circumvent the complete plunge into an epistemological
relativism by maintaining, much in line with Critical Theory in general, a commitment to a minimalist foundationalism which selfcritically allows for the emergence of contextually contingent concepts or evidence: rather than collapsing the ontological
distinction between object and subject, it maintains it, while acknowledging that the two shape each other in a dialectical, neverceasing dynamic (Toros and Gunning 2009, p. 92). Such commitment to an ontological dualism between subject and
object (albeit in a minimalistic fashion), however, creates its own problems. Do these concepts that they admit can only
be delineated within a specific historical and social context refer to real states of affairs in the world ? Is the
Welsh School committed to a form of critical realism that maintains that we can find what has been called intransitive mindindependent objects that vary in their social meaning according to hegemonic epistemological discourses (Wight 2006, p. 12)? If so, is
it committed to a philosophical realism and how would it conceptualize the bridging of the subject-object gap? It can hardly maintain
that human beings can grasp these objects for what they really are, as this would be tantamount to maintaining a standard beyond
historical and social contingencies. But if it, on the other hand, maintains a nominalism that places these concepts at the mercy of
intersubjective, and therefore eventually, mind-dependent processes, how does it escape from relativist commitment ? All these

issues appear to be unresolved and yet they are by no means trivial as they pertain to the conditions of the
possibility of FSCT in general.

Focus on state terror treats the state as a unitary actor hurts chances for changing
worst aspects of state violence.
Jarvis and Lister 13,
(Lee Jarvis is a Senior Lecturer in International Security at the University of East
Anglia and Michael Lister is Reader in Politics at Oxford Brookes University, December 10th 2013, State
Terrorism and Critical Terror Studies,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17539153.2013.877669#.U2AW0fldXDs)
In Murphy and Tamanas (2010: 49) discussion of the Pakistani military, similarly, Gus Martin is approvingly
cited in order to approach state terrorism as: characterized by official government support for policies of
violence, repression and intimidation. Introducing a new collection of interviews on US state terrorism,

Aksan and Balies (2013: 12) more recently argue: we want to emphasise the consistency of purpose
behind US foreign policy. Our argument is that the motivation behind these actions has predominantly
been to spread an economic model conducive to American business interests. As they continue, State
terrorism is not the preserve of particular presidents, or particular political parties, operating under

extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, the personality traits and intentions of individuals can quickly be
sidelined as the realities of US power structures become apparent (ibid). Running through accounts such
as these, we argue, is a fairly narrow approach to the state which reifies a phenomenon more usefully
approached as a dynamic and complex political reality. While this reification might be valuable for
condemning particular violences by positing a direct link between such violences and
consolidated political power the state itself tends to be read rather restrictively: as the executive
decision-makers and their military apparatuses. This is potentially problematic, we argue, for two reasons.
First because the boundaries of the modern state are far more opaque than implied in these discussions.
Political power is not centralised within the modern state, and is instead distributed across an,
increasingly diverse flotilla of organisations and partnerships, many of which enjoy significant levels of
autonomy from elected politicians and legislature, (Flinders, 2006: 223). A second problem is the assumed
linearity between interests and violences that underpins this singular model of the state. By reducing the
state to its political and military elites, and viewing these elites as a traceable origin of decisions and
actions, the state is produced, simply, as an actor with pre-defined interests (on this, see Finlayson and
Martin 2006); a bounded unit that either directly commissions or partakes in terrorist acts. Yet, as
contemporary explorations of governance have illustrated, simplifications such as this obscure the extent to
which the state itself represents an effect rather than an agent of power (although see Skinner 2009). As
Rose and Miller (2010: 274) usefully point out: To the extent that the modern state rules, it does so on
the basis of an elaborate network of relations formed amongst the complex of institutions, organizations
and apparatuses that make it up. There are instances of attempts to examine the
relationships within and outwith the state in terms of state terrorism. Studies of death
squads and collusion, which examine the links between the formal state and informal paramilitaries offer
one example (Sluka, 2000; Jamieson and McEvoy, 2005). More sophisticated examinations of the state of
state terrorism may also be found in the Marxian literature, of which Ruth Blakeleys (2009, 2011) work is
amongst the best known. For Blakeley, state terrorism is crucially related to the imperial projects of

US
foreign policy (which includes, Blakeley argues, state terrorism) serves US and global capital, as well as
the national interest; seeing in other words, the US as agent of capitalism (Blakeley 2009: 67). Blakeleys
analysis therefore falls within the Poulantzasian tradition of Marxist state theory debate, arguing that the
state does not always act in the interests of capital, as the long term securing of capital may sometimes
require acting with the short term interests of subordinate classes (in order, for example, to head off class
antagonism). Blakeleys work is important (and relatively unusual) in that she explicitly discusses parts of
the state in her analysis. Exploring the connection between US foreign policy and state terrorism, for
example, she states, citing Robert Cox, I am referring here not to the whole US government but to those
executive bodies within government which are charged with promoting and protecting the expansion of
capital across state boundaries (Blakeley, 2009: 69. See also Blakeley 2011, 2013). She also notes that
European and other powers since the 16th Century. A key part of her analysis is the assertion that

there exists agency by other social forces, including fractions of the state... albeit with lesser influence
than those segments of the US state involved in the spread of global capitalism (Blakeley 2009: 72).

Ultimately, however, analyses of this sort remains wedded to the idea that there exists such a thing as the
state and that it wields power. There may be dissenting fractions therein, yet the commitment to Marxist
state theory, and the priority of the economic, means, ultimately, that the elements of the state
responsible for the expansion of capital win out in the long run at least. In making this argument, Blakeley
points to the intimate connections between state personnel and those within key capitalist positions;
reflecting on the revolving door that sees members of administrations such as Cheney and Rumsfeld,
acting also as directors and CEOs of private corporations. In her words: Given these linkages between the
US state and US capital, it is likely that their interests will be coterminous, and the distinction between
these two agents will not always be clear (Blakeley 2009: 75). Whilst Blakeleys analysis takes us far
further in unpacking the state than more straightforward invocations of its existence, its Marxist
underpinnings means it remains wedded to a view which sees the state, if not as a unitary actor, then one

She states
clearly that the state is a complex web of connections between numerous entities that have varying
that acts ultimately with a singularity of purpose: the expansion and maintenance of capital.

degrees of autonomy, but that, there may nevertheless be a shared set of overall objectives (Blakeley
2009: 37). In this sense, whilst the more sophisticated analyses of state terrorism such as Blakeleys have
begun to question the unitary nature of the state, they go less far than contemporary developments in state
theory in problematising the states singular agency or interests. Recent governance literatures, for instance,
approach the state as the outcome of a series of complex interrelationships between public and private
actors (for example, Peters and Pierre 2000). Political geographers such as Painter (2006: 754) likewise
critique the reification of the state as a more or less unified entity that can be the subject of actions such as
deciding, ruling, punishing, regulating, intervening and waging war. As Painter argues, much theorising
about the state: has typically posited the state either as an organizational actor in its own right, or as a set of
organizational resources through which other agents (such as classes or elites) act. In both cases the state is
seen as consisting of a more or less coherent matrix of institutions (Painter 2006: 756). This approach to the
state resonates with much contemporary state terrorism literature. One of the dangers of this reification is
that it masks the role of agency within the state apparatuses (Gill, 2010). In other words, it is important to
approach the state not as coherent, but rather as a site of contestation possessing only symbolic and
imagined unity. In order to do so, Painter argues, we should focus on the prosaic practices of the state
which reveal the heterogeneous, constructed, porous, uneven, processual and relational character of state
practices and behaviours (Painter 2006: 745; also Bulkeley and Schroeder 2012). Bob Jessops recent work
on the state points similarly to the importance of opening up the black box of the state. In his formulation:

The state is an ensemble of power centres and capacities that offer unequal chances to different forces
within and outside the state and that cannot, qua institutional ensemble, exercise power. This implies that it
is not the state, as such, that exercises power. Instead, its powers (plural) are activated by changing sets of
politicians and state officials located in specific parts of the state in specific conjunctures If an overall
strategic line is discernible in the exercise of these powers, it is due to strategic coordination enabled
through the selectivity of the state system and the role of parallel power networks that cross-cut and unify
its formal structures. Yet, such unity is improbable because the state is shot through with contradictions and
class struggles and its political agents must always take account of (potential) mobilization by a wide range
of forces beyond the state, engaged in struggles to transform it, determine its policies, or simply resist it
from afar (Jessop 2010: 44-45). In this view, the state is a strategically selective terrain, which exercises
power, to the extent that it does, through coordination of specific political actors. Read thus, the state is a
set of institutions which can be mobilised for certain ends/goals: it is something that is activated by agents depending on the balance of social relations within and outwith - rather than a possessor of power itself. Its
unit is, therefore, improbable because: The state does not have an essence. The state is not a universal nor
in itself an autonomous source of power. The state is nothing else but the effect, the profile, the mobile
shape of a perpetual stratification In short, the state has no heart in the sense that it has no interior
(Foucault 2010: 44). Problematisating the unitary state and its implication in violences, in this way,
involves examination of, the heterogeneity of authorities that have sought to govern conduct, the
heterogeneity of strategies, devices, ends sought, the conflicts between them (Rose 1999: 21). As
Lemke (2007: 46) argues, this would mean reframing analysis from the what and the why of
national interests in debate on state terrorism, to a series of how questions (see also Doty 1993).
How, for example, does the state ever come to act as a coherent political force? How does the state
(re)produce itself as an imagined unity in confronting its opponents? And, how do a range of plural
institutions and processes function as the state in the commission of violences readable as terrorist? Work
of this nature, we argue, would open up a new range of research questions including, but not limited to: Is
there opposition within the state to the use of state terror? If, as Stohl (2008) suggests,
dehumanisation is a key precursor to state terror, how is this achieved? What kind of knowledge regime
support state terror, and how are violences justified or camouflaged? If carried out clandestinely, how do
elements of the state attempt to veil violences? How do those states engaged in state terrorism manage
internal or international criticism, and which elements of the state take responsibility for this? Do any of
these relations resemble conventional state activities in other, less violent, forms of governance? And, to

what extent is state terrorism made possible through conventional state practices? Many of these questions
could be captured by refocusing attention upon how state terrorism becomes possible, viable and
practiced. In this, we echo Dotys (1993) claims about the importance of how questions. Thus we might
consider not just how state terrorism can come to pass, but, also in so doing, how the relevant subjects,
objects and interpretive dispositions were socially constructed such that certain practices were made
possible (Doty, 1993: 298). These subjects, objects and interpretive dispositions include, in the context of
state terrorism, conceptions of the national interest, the othering of enemies as terrorist, conceptions of the
states role and scope, discursive logics for the legitimation or denial of state violences, and so forth. This
suggests that examination of state terrorism might not only work with a richer, more complex conception of
the state. But, in addition, that it might also seek to move beyond the state and explore the role of state
terrorism in the (re)production of individual and collective subjects (1993: 317). Relatedly, Bulkeley and
Schroeder (2012), (in a different debate), argue that rather than focussing on who did what, there is a
need to examine how courses of actions, subjects and objects, become constituted as such. In their words:
This in turn, demands attention to the discourses/rationalities and technologies of governing, and the ways
in which projects (selectively) align and assemble diverse entities to achieve their aims, either directly or
by ensuring the self-government of relevant actors (Bulkeley and Schroeder, 2012: 751) Rose states this
more clearly still when he suggests that a governmentality approach focuses not on what happened and
why but on, what authorities of various sorts wanted to happen, in relation to problems defined how, in
pursuit of what objectives, through what strategies and techniques (Rose 1999: 20). Making this a little
more concrete, Painter (2006; see also Murray Li 2007) argues that research on the state might usefully
engage with a range of different research strategies/foci. One of these would be to examine in much
greater detail, the inner machinations of the state: producing ethnographies and histories of the internal
workings of state institutions, to disclose the mundane, but frequently hidden, everyday world of state
officials, bureaucratic procedures, meetings, committees, report writing, decision making, procrastination

working state terrorism through conceptual

paradigms that examine other forms of governing practices offers the potential to de-exceptionalise state
terrorism, and to see it less as an aberration from normal state practices, and instead to conceptualise it as
something connected to far more more regular and routine state functions and practices. There is scope, in
other words, for further reflection on the balances of social and political forces, and their institutional and
bureaucratic frameworks, which lead the state to engage in acts of violence aimed at instrumentalising
victims and instilling fear in a wider population. Doing so, we suggest would push debate beyond
definitional exercises which are subsequently measured against specific instances in order to ascertain
whether state terrorism has occurred (see Claridge, 1996).
and filing (Painter, 2006, 770) In addressing this latter point,

Terror studies arent intrinsically linked to the state

John Horgan & Michael J. Boyle (2008) A case against Critical Terrorism
Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 59-60,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701848225
One of the tensions within CTS concerns the issue of policy relevance. At the most basic level, there are
some sweeping generalizations made by CTS scholars, often with little evidence. For example, Jackson
(2007c) describes the core terrorism scholars (without explicitly saying who he is referring to) as
intimately connected institutionally, financially, politically, and ideologically with a state hegemonic
project (p. 245). Without giving any details of who these core scholars are, where they are, what they do,
and exactly who funds them, his arguments are tantamount to conjecture at best. We do not deny that governments fund
terrorism research and terrorism researchers, and that this can influence the direction (and even the findings) of the research. But we are suspicious of overgeneralizations of this count on two grounds: (1) accepting government funding or information does not
necessarily obviate ones independent scholarly judgment in a particular project; and (2) having policy
relevance is not always a sin. On the first point, we are in agreement with some CTS scholars. Gunning provides a sensitive analysis of this problem, and calls
on CTS advocates to come to terms with how they can engage policy-makers without losing their critical distance. He recognizes that CTS can (and should) aim to be policy-

CTS
aims to whisper into the ear of the prince, but it is just a different prince. Gunning (2007a) also argues that
research should be assessed on its own merits, for just because a piece of research comes from RAND
does not invalidate it; conversely, a critical study is not inherently good (p. 240). We agree entirely with
relevant, but perhaps to a different audience, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society than just governments and security services. In other words,

this. Not all sponsored or contract research is made to toe a party line, and much of the work coming out
of official government agencies or affiliated government agencies has little agenda and can be analytically
useful. The task of the scholar is to retain ones sense of critical judgment and integrity, and we believe that there is no prima facie reason to assume that this cannot be done in
sponsored research projects. What matters here are the details of the research what is the purpose of the work, how will it be done, how might the work be used in policy and

The scholar must also be mindful of the

responsibility they bear for shaping a governments response to the problem of terrorism. Nothing not the
source of the funding, purpose of the research or prior empirical or theoretical commitment obviates the
need of the scholar to consider his or her own conscience carefully when engaging in work with any
external actor. But simply engaging with governments on discrete projects does not make one an
embedded expert nor does it imply sanction to their actions.
for these questions the scholar must be self-critical and insistent on their intellectual autonomy.

Terror studies dont preclude state terror oversimplification by CTS scholars

John Horgan & Michael J. Boyle (2008) A case against Critical Terrorism
Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 55-56,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701848225
One of our immediate responses to current work on CTS is that in some important respects it reinvents the wheel, giving theoretical significance to well-worn observations or

Jackson (2007c) and others cite the failure to develop an accepted

definition of terrorism as a serious limitation of terrorism studies to date (p. 244). This is seen within CTS
as emblematic of the intellectual poverty within so-called orthodox terrorism studies, and it serves as the
starting point of most CTS critiques. But the lack of an accepted definition of terrorism is due to a much
larger set of issues. Any attempt to impose a single consensus definition on something that one can
understand as a tactic, strategy, concept, social or political phenomena would be an over-simplification of a
complex phenomenon. There are so many conflicting definitions of terrorism precisely because terrorism
scholars have realized that judgements about what is and is not terrorism are inherently contested. Scholars are
assuming innovations when they do not exist. For example,

unlikely to ever uncover an accepted definition of terrorism because of the deep differences of opinion over the acceptability, justifiability and legitimacy of both the methods and
causes associated with those who conduct terrorist acts. In other words, there is no single definition because terrorism scholars are well aware that it is an ineluctably normative

. It is not possible to compress a concept and phenomenon so diverse and

conceptually provocative as terrorism into the neat definition that CTS advocates imply would be necessary
for terrorism studies to be validated. The absence of a clear, accepted definition is far from essential for conceptual development, and contrary to what
concept, subject to value judgements

CTS advocates think, the ongoing lack of definition may be a valid indicator of that very development. The underlying point of the CTS critique of current definitions of terrorism
appears to be that many other forms of violence for example, state terrorism fall out of conventional definitions of terrorism. Importing these conceptual categories or empirical

But many respected scholars of terrorism acknowledge that the

state is a primary, if not the most important, agent of terror. Here is Wilkinson (2001, p. 41), writing on
state terror: if we are to gain an adequate understanding of the broader historical and international trends we
need to recognize throughout history it is regimes and states, with their overwhelming propensity of
coercive power, which have shown the greatest propensity for terror on a mass scale, both as an instrument
of internal repression and control, and as a weapon of aggression and subjugation. One can argue about
what cases are considered a form of state terrorism, and that certain cases have been systematically underrepresented in data sets, but to suggest that CTS has produced an innovative contribution by shedding light
on the problem of state terrorism is an overstatement.
examples into the study of terrorism is seen as part of the CTS project.

AT: Alternative
Alternative is utopian we cant emancipate ourselves out the problem of terrorism.
Michel and Richards 9 ( Torsten Michel and Anthony Richards, May 19th 2009, False dawns or new
horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 2,
No. 3, December 2009, pp. 406-407, accessed 7/17/15) CH
The following will raise some concerns as to how the role of emancipation is conceptualized in current examples of Frankfurt Schoolinspired approaches to CTS. To begin with, in addition to the critique of positivism which is inherent in various critical projects within
and outside the field of International Relations, CTS clearly articulates that one of its main aims and certainly its main
normative aim is to provide a space for emancipatory rationality (Blakeley 2007, p. 234; also Jackson 2007, pp. 249
250). Emancipation is directed at all those groups and individuals, mainly located in the global South, that suffer
from the so far rigid and hegemonic discourse that characterises terrorism research . The close intertwinement
with state interests has, in their view, a purely instrumental dimension that aims at reifying and cementing the dominance of Western
political and institutional structures on a global and regional scale (Blakeley 2007, p. 231). From these initial observations certain
problematic issues follow for the conception of emancipation so far exhibited in CTS. To begin with, on a more practical level, CTS
makes the premature and optimistic assumption not only that universalising a specific set of values (i.e.
Western) is a good thing but that every community will ultimately, when it comes to its senses, pursue a path

of emancipation which will lead to a universalistic conception of a just society and a harmonization of
norms and values (McDonald 2009, p. 121). The assumption is made that everybody wants to be emancipated
or that if they do not want to they should want to. One is left with the impression that, rather than reflecting the
heterogeneity of human existence, CTS represents an elite body of thought derived in the West that is underpinned by
the utopian aspiration that everybody wants to, or should want to, to live by a specific set of values which are seen as
universally valid as they are derived from an allegedly universal application of reason. And so, rather than being liberating or
emancipatory, for the vast bulk of the global population, CTS risks being narrow and itself engaged in a hegemonic
project. In order to realise emancipation in this sense it is therefore necessary, presumably, to universalise a specific set of values
through a continuous application of self-reflexive emancipatory reason. How emancipatory, however, is it to quash all other
forms of ideology and governance that do not conform to our own? It is argued that the politics of emancipation aims
to transcend oppressive social divisions. What about those cultures (and indeed peoples securities) that revolve around social
divisions? Here again we encounter a strange lack of self-reflexivity in FSCT-inspired approaches to terrorism. Although scholars
engaged in promoting this normative agenda stress the need for a continuous critical engagement, it remains unclear from where
their own normative agenda comes and what exactly makes it legitimate. A simple statement of conviction along the lines
of we aim to free people from oppression is certainly not enough to legitimise desired practices . Empirically,
it may be abhorrent to us to see that the role of women in many environments apparently renders them insecure from a CTS
perspective, but what if this is a cultural imperative? Are we also to attempt to address the insecurity of lower caste tribes and groups
in relation to higher castes? Do women in developing countries and members of lower castes feel insecure or is

that a state of mind that has been bestowed upon them by relativist observers who deem that they must be
insecure according to the latters own conceptions as to what must define security? As Ayoob argues, such a
definition of emancipation refuses to acknowledge that a society or group can be emancipated without
being secure and vice versa. . . . Such semantic acrobatics tend to impose a model of contemporary Western
polities . . . that are far removed from Third World realities (Ayoob 1997, pp. 126127)

Responding to terrorism cant be reduced to discursive choices. Problematizing

conventional approaches isnt sufficient.
Michel and Richards 9 ( Torsten Michel and Anthony Richards, May 19th 2009, False dawns or new
horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 2,
No. 3, December 2009, pp. 409-410, accessed 7/17/15) CH
One example as to where CTS tends to overstate the case for its novelty relates to the perpetual problem of
defining terrorism. Ruth Blakeley maintains that one of the main problems with orthodox terrorism studies is that in its
conceptions the terrorist label is used as a political tool to de-legitimize certain groups, rather than as an analytical category
(Blakeley 2007, p. 230). This politicization of the term terrorism leads to a specific narrative, she argues, in which the Northern
democratic states are continuously portrayed as victims under constant threat from extremist non-state actors mostly originating in the
global South. Therefore, Blakeley suggests that critically oriented scholars need to reclaim the term terrorism
and use it as an analytical tool, rather than political tool in the service of the elite power (p. 233). The critical
edge in this new take on terrorism studies should thereby bring deliverance from the dominant discourse in which terrorism studies
serves as a legitimizing tool for oppressive actions conducted by hegemonic states. There are, however, some flaws in this
argument. Firstly, Blakeley seems to suggest a bifurcation between a political use embedded in a specific set of structures that

empower few, silence many and blame specific non-state actors, and an analytical view that would allow a fairer approach to the
analysis of terrorism. She says for instance: This means that rather than taking a literal approach to the study of terrorism and then
seek instances of the phenomenon to try and determine causes and remedies (p. 230), we end up with utilizing the terrorism label to
further specific state-centric interests and shape security discourses in an advantageous way for the powerful. An analytical rather than
political use, she argues, promises a more even one might even say neutral basis from which all instances that fit into a
reasonable definition of terrorism can be equally addressed (p. 229). Apart from the obvious question of whether and how such an

analytical use based on a reasonable definition is achievable, it will certainly not fit well into a critical
approach, even when broadly conceptualized. This is because Critical Theory has generally understood itself
as a counter-movement to the abstract systematizations of German idealism in its various forms and has
objected most strongly against a practical (political, social) and theoretical (abstract analytical) split of
human existence. Intuitively, then, Blakeleys call for an analytical use of the term terrorism seems hard to combine with the
overall critical outlook that CTS is proposing. Apart from these potential compatibility problems , Blakeley contradicts herself
in her pursuit of this analytical use. Only one paragraph after proposing the necessity for critical scholars to reclaim terrorism
and use it as an analytical tool within a Critical Theory oriented approach, she states that such an endeavour should be
pursued with the specific, normative aim of offering suggestions for the emancipation of people in the
South from the oppressive practices of Northern powers (p. 234). Emancipating oppressed people in the
South, as laudable as it sounds, is of course a political aim in itself. If CTS takes this as a central concern, however, and the
emphasis on emancipation in almost all instances of T. Michel and A. Richards scholarship in this young field suggests it does, then
we encounter here a politicization of the terrorism label yet again, this time projected against the global
hegemonic North, but nevertheless political. So, we are left somewhat puzzled as to how reclaiming terrorism analytically
and thereby overcoming its political abuse can be meaningfully combined with a clear and overt political agenda exhibited in CTS
scholarship itself. It seems fair to suggest that given the way that terrorism is used in various language-games
in the international arena, a political use is unavoidable in one form or another (Jackson 2007, p. 247). But why

then veil this political proclivity in a scholarly jargon that suggests a de-politicization and analytical revival
of the term terrorism? On the definition itself, terrorism is surely a method that has been used by a wide variety of actors.
There is nothing new in Jacksons (2007, p. 248) proclamation that we need an actor-free definition of terrorism. Such definitions have
been put forward by so-called orthodox terrorism scholars for many years (Schmid and Longman 1998). Of course, the terrorism
perpetrated by states should not be excluded from any definition (nor should terrorism carried out by any actor) but this is not a new or
contemporary revelation. A perpetrator based definition is indeed not only unhelpful but it is also misses the key

point that terrorism is first and foremost a method and as such no perpetrator is excluded, be they states,
social movements, guerrilla groups, terrorist groups and so on. As Weinberg rightly observed the notion of one mans
terrorist is another mans freedom fighter is confusing the goal with the activity (Weinberg 2005, p. 2). An actor-free definition
that strives for neutrality might look something like the following: terrorism is a particular method of force
or violence and/or the threat of force or violence that has been carried out by a wide range of actors (both
state and non-state), that often targets civilians, is usually for a political purpose and is usually designed to
have a psychological impact beyond the immediate victims. Such a definition is not the product of some
new-found momentum towards bringing the state back into terrorism studies but reflects what has always
been the case (at least in modern times): that terrorism is a method that has been used by a variety of actors.

Alternative relies on false consciousness model we cant re-think our way out of
the war on terror.
David Jones and MLR Smith, 2009, Jones is an associate professor in the Political Sciences at the
University of Queensland in Australia, Smith is a professor of Strategic Theory at Kings College in
London, Studies in Conflicts and Terrorism, Terrorology and Methodology
Dixit and Stumps proposed de-naturalization of the state, therefore, fails any adequate standard of
hypothesis testing. Put simply, you cannot de-naturalize the one thing you might object to in the
current political system, but leave all other practices and social ar- rangements, including the
constitutive positions you occupy, naturalized as if you existed in Olympian detachment. As we pointed
out in our review, at best this position is intellectually incoherent, and at worst hypocritical. We
exemplified this point in our initial review with reference to Ken Booths contra- dictory assertion that
critical theorists must recognize that they inhabit a world constituted by powerful ideological systems, yet
must themselves stand outside those systems.11 Such schemes repeat the Marxian fallacy of false
consciousness, asserting that everyone, apart from the critically initiated, has their understanding
distorted by the ideology in dom- inance. Critical theory apparently endows its disciples with the unique
capacity to stand outside these systems of dominance and see through the othering processes of the state.

Meanwhile, those trapped in the quotidian reality of the state have no access to this higher insight.
Booths article in Critical Studies on Terrorism shows where this style of thinking leads: to the
conviction that the followers of critical theory alone can transcend the mundane and the political.

AT: K Prior
They have no criteria for making epistemological and ontological choices about
terrorism.
Michel and Richards 9 ( Torsten Michel and Anthony Richards, May 19th 2009, False dawns or new
horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 2,
No. 3, December 2009, pp. 407-408, accessed 7/17/15) CH
Smith suggests that emancipation seems to be particularly helpful in thinking about September 11 because it forces us to think
through the reasons for those undertaking the attacks as well as the complex question of how to respond (Smith 2005, p. 43). A clear
link is made between 9/11, emancipation and human insecurity (which entails the lack of the provision of food, shelter, education,
health care etc.) (Smith 2005, p. 54). While anyone could reasonably argue that there is a link between economic
underdevelopment and human insecurity, to take this further and suggest a link between human insecurity and
terrorism is certainly more contentious. The literature on this issue has failed to establish such a link (and indeed, in general,
argues against it) (Schmid 2004, pp. 6566; also Krueger and Maleckova 2003). Terrorism has not, in the main, been the
weapon of those in poverty (for example) but of those who aim to fulfil particular political and religious
ideologies. Smith therefore makes something of a quantum leap: the apparent degree of support from those in less

developed countries who suffer from human insecurity is suddenly and speculatively propelled as a
possible cause of terrorism (Smith 2005, pp. 5455). While the lack of empirical research in terrorism studies
has rightly been criticised, critical security studies and CTS are arguably even more culpable in this regard
when such claims are made based upon little empirical evidence. On a more abstract level it also seems unclear what
the commitment to emancipation in CTS actually signifies. The term is used without any substantial clarification as to its conceptual
and practical content. This seems especially troubling as Critical Theory itself is characterised by a variety of

conceptualisations regarding not only the content of emancipation but also the differing views as to the
possibility of achieving and pursuing in a practical way an emancipatory agenda. In CTS such reflections,
however, seem not to be of any particular concern. Rather, the emancipatory potential of human reflection
and action is silently assumed to be not only possible but realisable. This is connected to an underlying commitment
to a specific form of rationality (Rengger 1998, pp. 8283) that allows for deducing the problem-laden structure of contemporary
academic discourse in the area of terrorism studies and a subsequent prescription for a normative-practical agenda in which the
emancipation of mainly the global Downloaded by [University of California, Berkeley] at 08:23 15 July 2015 408 T. Michel and A.
Richards South takes a prime spot. Even a quick glance over the main contributions to Critical Theory over the last decades will
reveal, however, that both the actual content of emancipation as well as the potential for its realisation are hotly debated. The range of
propositions we can find in this respect span from an engaged withdrawal in Adorno and Horkheimer, through to the pragmatist
infused communicative action within existing liberal institutionalist structures in Habermas, to the emphasis on recognition as a
precondition for healthy citizenship in Axel Honneth (Chambers 2004, pp. 220239).2 Each of these (and to be clear these are only
three specific, through prominent, examples of Critical scholarship) presents a completely distinct representation of the content, aim
and potential for the pursuit of emancipation. CTS scholars, for better or worse, cannot simply take emancipation out of these
contestations and either claim a deceptive transparency of meaning manifested in liberating people from all kinds of violence or
retreat into an anti-foundationalist stand in which the concrete content of emancipation cannot and need not be determined in the
beginning. With respect to the first option the questions of the supremacy of their critical ontology as well as the
authority of their epistemology remain unresolved, and with respect to the second option, the question arises as to how
an emancipatory agenda can be argued for and pursued without any preconception of its substance thus,
how do the selfappointed emancipators know that they are in fact emancipating? It turns out that a normative

aim (in this case liberating or emancipating or simply helping the oppressed of the world) is not a viable
ground on which scholarship or action for that matter can be based. As we can learn from the large trajectory of
Critical Theory, such a commitment comes with its shortcomings and flaws and any possibility of following
Marxs dictum to change the world must first and foremost start with a self-reflective and critical stand
towards ones own theoretical and practical commitments. A simple desire to better the world and to unmask
the abuse of power (as implicitly portrayed in current instances of terrorism scholarship) is not just an external exercise
of speaking truth to power but relies in its very possibility on a constant commitment to internal critique and a continuous
perpetuation of the hermeneutics of suspicion, all of which right now seem dangerously absent in CTS scholarship. In this respect,
we can recall Nick Renggers recent citation of T. S. Elliot: The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the
wrong reason (Rengger 2008, p. 961; originally in Eliot 1938, p. 44.1)

Critical terrorist studies derives is from ought we cant just redefine our way to
emancipation.
Michel and Richards 9 ( Torsten Michel and Anthony Richards, May 19th 2009, False dawns or new
horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism Vol. 2,
No. 3, December 2009, pp. 410-411, accessed 7/17/15) CH
Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) is not a completely new theoretical and conceptual way of approaching problems or issues in
international politics, but rather it draws heavily from the wider body of critical thought in the field of International Relations. This
relationship, however, also implies an onus upon CTS scholars to take on board some of the problems within critical scholarship if
they are serious about their theoretical and practical aims. Particularly important in relation to this point seems the almost

complete absence of any meaningful and substantial engagement with the epistemological implications of
Critical Theory and its close but again partly problematic relation to the normative-ethical agenda of
emancipation. In order to present a coherent and conceptually sound argument, CTS scholars need a much closer treatment of these
issues than is currently the case. This is not only due to the need for theoretical and conceptual rigour, but also, as has been argued
above, it is related to the demands of Critical Theory itself which stipulates an inextricable link between social and political
philosophy and the practical tasks for the application of any critique of reason. on Terrorism 411 Furthermore, it also seems necessary
to develop the notion of emancipation beyond the mere aim of liberating people from different kinds of violence, be it physical or
structural. The last thing CTS needs is a political agenda that drives its research. Emancipation as a practical task of Critical

Theory is a perpetual endeavour necessitated by the inevitable fusion of instrumental and emancipatory
reason; any stipulation that this process of a self-reflective critique by and of reason can come to an end
through realising a specific political and/or social setting is not only nave, but also would entail a crude
and almost banal understanding of Critical Theory itself something that CTS surely intends to avoid. In the same vein,
it seems necessary to elaborate more clearly on the value of the scholarly output of CTS studies. It is one thing to criticise the ongoing
practice of epistemological and methodological reification in pursuit of a hegemonic agenda, but quite another to present a valid
alternative that answers the conceptual and theoretical shortcomings of such an approach. The question of truth in its widest meaning
arises since the spectre of historicism opens the door to the charge of relativism. To be sure, historicist conceptions of knowledge do
not necessarily lead to a relativistic position, but the challenge of how to avoid falling into relativism needs to be addressed and stated
clearly. Critical Theory itself addresses this problematique and provides an answer to this challenge (which itself entails certain
problems that need to be discussed) and so must CTS if its scholarly validity and rigour is to be taken seriously. A further

challenge for CTS is to convince that it has something significantly new to offer terrorism studies. It is not
a revelation to discover that states have been responsible for committing the worst acts of terror or indeed
that democratic states are culpable when it comes to sponsoring terrorism. We are all engaged in trying to
understand the phenomenon of terrorism and its causes. But, (admittedly) like much of terrorism studies in general, CTS
scholarship is empirically flawed and, like the broader critical project, draws on a number of assumed
relationships. Two of these assumed relationships are: between the state and individual insecurity, and
between that individual insecurity and motivation for terrorism. The question then logically follows (if these
relationships do exist): what part of individual insecurity is attributable to the state and what part of individual insecurity motivates
terrorism, and therefore, most importantly, is there an overlap between the two? In other words to what extent is the state culpable for
any of the individual insecurity that is causally linked to the occurrence of terrorism? Not only are the answers to these questions
difficult to validate but so are the assumptions that lie beneath them. In what context are these questions being posed in the first place?
Is it really to underpin a rigorous understanding as to why terrorism occurs or is it actually to provide a convenient explanation for
terrorism that serves the wider critical project? Finally, it is important to emphasise that CTS perspectives should
certainly be part of any curriculum on the subject of terrorism. It is also therefore a little unfortunate that

some of its proponents have adopted an adversarial approach towards what has been called traditional
terrorism studies that somehow critical theorists have seen the light while the orthodox researchers
have for a long time been walking along a skewed and discredited path. This does a great disservice to some of the
eminent scholars in the field who have contributed so much to the study of terrorism. We therefore suggest that while CTS should
certainly be part of terrorism studies, the field should remain as just that terrorism studies. It would a shame if a separate Critical
Terrorism Studies field emerged as a manifestation of a separate camps mentality, at the expense of a more integrated and fruitful
debate within terrorism studies as a whole

Critical terror studies make assumptions just as generalizing and counterproductive as conventional
counter-terrorism.
David Jones and MLR Smith, 2009, Jones is an associate professor in the Political Sciences at the
University of Queensland in Australia, Smith is a professor of Strategic Theory at Kings College in
London, Studies in Conflicts and Terrorism, Terrorology and Methodology
We argued in our original review that it was not our intention to defend what may be termed orthodox or
traditional terrorism studies. As analysts, we have, for the better part of two decades, and long before
critical terror studies was conceived, expressed reservations about the ruling assumptions of what passes for
terrorism studies.1 For this reason we are entirely receptive to the view that traditional terrorist
studies privilege the state and depict it as struggling against a protean and destructive phenomenon

termed terrorism. Such approaches are evident in the literature and do limit methodological rigor, as
Dixit and Stump maintain. We also agree with their claim that researchers should be more transparent about
how they situate themselves in the field and understand the key terms they deploy. At the same time, in
our review, we nevertheless questioned the manner in which contributors to Critical Studies on
Terrorism assumed, rather than showed, that state bias existed in the conventional literature. In this,
critical theory unconsciously mirrors the practice of traditional analysts who assume that
terrorism constitutes an existential threat to the state without empirically demonstrating this to be
the case. By contrast, Dixit and Stumps survey of syllabi in U.S. universities gives some empirical support
to their claim concerning state bias. Dixit and Stump, in other words, make the intellectual effort to
demonstrate their hypothesis, which the editors and contributors to the first edition of Critical Studies on
Terrorism conspicuously did not. It would have been interesting, however, if Dixit and Stump had
extended their survey of syllabi and degree programs to British and Australian universities. Here they
would have discovered a significant corrective to state bias. A brief review of courses offered on terrorism
and international relations in British universities and among the so-called Australian Great Eight
institutions reveals a systematic predilection for courses that adopt, or incorporate, critical
approaches to the study of terrorism along with a more general propensity to promote critical
security studies. Our survey of tertiary institutions in the United Kingdom with established reputations for
political and international studies found that out of 42 universities sampled 37 (88 percent) indicated clear
evidence of critical and poststructuralist approaches within teaching syllabi and course programs, and/or
represent the teaching and research orientation of members of the faculty cohort.2

Critical terror studies over-generalizes and fails to recognize the historicity of its
arguments
Leonard Weinberg & William Eubank (2008) Problems with the critical studies approach to the
study of terrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:2, 188-189,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150802184595
Bearing this thought in mind, let us consider the negative reaction of critical studies advocates to the contemporary study of terrorism. First, we agree with Horgan and Boyles

there is substantial overlap between their criticisms and the complaints of those long engaged in
terrorism studies (see above) (Horgan and Boyle 2008, pp. 34). The critical studies advocates claims to be
bringing a new perspective may be somewhat over-stated. Beyond the restatement of the old criticism,
Richard Jackson identifies four new and distinctive flaws in orthodox terrorism studies (Jackson 2007, pp.
244246). First, there is the lack of historicity. Those studying contemporary terrorist violence, particularly
after 9/11, have little sense of the historical context from which terrorist activity appeared. Second, much of
orthodox terrorism research is state-centric. Since the field itself initially emerged from national security
studies and work on counter-insurgency problems, orthodox terrorism research has unreflectively adopted
state perspectives on the phenomenon. As a result, little attention has been paid to campaigns of state
terrorism, for example. Also, since governments were more likely to be challenged by revolutionary groups
on the Left, at least during the last third of the 20th century when the field emerged, conventional terrorism
studies have tended to ignore the role of terrorist groups on the Right because they are or were defenders of
the state. Third, and obviously related to the state-centric outlook, the orthodox terrorism researchers are
commonly part of the terrorism industry. They are either employed by the state or at least receive
financial support from it and often belong to organisations like the RAND Corporation that have longstanding contractual ties to government agencies. Fourth, Jackson, Jeroen Gunning, and other advocates of
the critical perspective, assert that conventional work on terrorism reflects a problem-solving perspective,
one which takes the status quo as a given. By seeking to solve problems, the orthodox practitioners fail to
consider the extent to which the status quo, the existing distribution of wealth, power, and status, is itself an
important cause of terrorist violence. There is as a consequence a bias against groups seeking to modify the
status quo groups on the Left in particular. The new critics also restate an older contention about the quality of the evidence or data used by
observation that

orthodox investigators. The complaint is that much of these data are out of date and based moreover on second-hand newspaper accounts. As a result, the findings based on these
sources are of questionable value. Is the conventional study of terrorism as a-historical as its new critics make it out to be? If we date the renewed interest in the study of terrorism
to the 1960s, the years during which terrorist violence appeared in Latin America, the Middle East and the advanced industrialised democracies of Western Europe, North America,
and Japan, did its observers have little regard or understanding of the historical record? This does not appear to be the case. The worldwide outbreak of terrorist violence in the late
1960s was followed by a number of articles and books whose authors stressed the fact that terrorism was by no means a new phenomenon. Walter Laqueur, Albert Parry, and David
Rapoport, among others, went on to trace the intellectual and historical manifestations of terrorist violence from the ancient Greek practice of tyrannicide, to the religiously
motivated Zealots and Assassins, forward through the reign of terror during the French Revolution to the late nineteenth century anarchists, Russian revolutionaries and Irish,
Balkan, and Indian nationalists. Laqueur especially went out of his way to emphasise the view that terrorism was hardly new and, for the public, nothing much to worry about

The critical studies advocates may use the term a-historical in connection
with the orthodox study of terrorism following 9/11. If this is the claim, there certainly may be some truth
(Laqueur 1977, 1978, Parry 1976, Rapoport 1984).

in it because al-Qaeda and its network in fact, may be unprecedented. Some might argue that in terms of its
virtually global spread, the use of the Internet, and the number of people killed, al-Qaeda and al-Qaedainspired groups are unique and the history of earlier terrorism experiences may be of little relevance.
However, if we focus on al-Qaeda and the emergence of Islamic radicalism prior to 9/11, the critical studies
claim of a-historicism still does not hold. Giles Kepel, John Esposito, and other analysts have produced a substantial body of work on the philosophical
and historical roots of al-Qaeda and its followers (Kepel 2002, 2004, Esposito 1983). It may be argued, al-Qaeda aside, that conventional studies of terrorist groups are decontextualised. Conventional analysts study terrorist groups with little consideration for the broader social and political contexts from which they arose. This may be true in some
instances, but it is certainly not the case in others. For instance, it is rare to find studies of the Irish Republican Army, the Italian Red Brigades, Basque Homeland and Liberty
(ETA), and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), that do not include accounts of the historical contexts from which these groups emerged. For the most part, conventional

For instance, in
studying terrorist financing how terrorists finance their operations the researcher naturally tries to
specify what is generally the case. To accomplish this task, the analyst naturally sacrifices some of the trees
in order to see the woods. How can it be otherwise? We suspect the de-contextualisation criticism taps
underlying epistemological differences between critical theorists and more conventional social scientists
over the possibilities of generalisation in political inquiry.
terrorism studies become de-contextualised when they become both topical and comparative, that is, when they seek to identify general patterns.

Jacksons indicts are wrong - Orthodox terror studies are already self-critical
John Horgan & Michael J. Boyle (2008) A case against Critical Terrorism
Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 52-53,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701848225

Jackson (2007c) calls for the development of an explicitly CTS on the basis of what he argues preceded it, dubbed Orthodox Terrorism
Studies. The latter, he suggests, is characterized by: (1) its poor methods and theories, (2) its state centricity, (3) its problem- solving

Jackson argues that the major defining

characteristic of CTS, on the other hand, should be a skeptical attitude towards accepted terrorism
knowledge. An implicit presumption from this is that terrorism scholars have laboured for all of these
years without being aware that their area of study has an implicit bias, as well as definitional and
methodological problems. In fact, terrorism scholars are not only well aware of these problems, but also
have provided their own searching critiques of the field at various points during the last few decades (e.g.
Silke 1996, Crenshaw 1998, Gordon 1999, Horgan 2005, esp. ch. 2, Understanding Terrorism). Some of
those scholars most associated with the critique of empiricism implied in Orthodox Terrorism Studies
have also engaged in deeply critical examinations of the nature of sources, methods, and data in the study
of terrorism. For example, Jackson (2007a) regularly cites the handbook produced by Schmid and Jongman (1988) to support his claims
orientation, and (4) its institutional and intellectual links to state security projects.

that theoretical progress has been limited. But this fact was well recognized by the authors; indeed, in the introduction of the second edition
they point out that they have not revised their chapter on theories of terrorism from the first edition, because the failure to address persistent
conceptual and data problems has undermined progress in the field. The point of their handbook was to sharpen and make more
comprehensive the result of research on terrorism, not to glide over its methodological and definitional failings (Schmid and Jongman 1988, p.
xiv). Similarly, Silkes (2004) volume on the state of the field of terrorism research performed a similar function, highlighting the shortcomings

A non-reflective community of scholars does n ot

produce such scathing indictments of its own work. One might counter that the problem is in fact that
scholars of terrorism are not sufficiently self-critical in the theoretically informed way that CTS aims to be.
of the field, in particular the lack of rigorous primary data collection.

And of course, there are certainly instances of scholars working in terrorism studies who appear to be unaware or less than critical of their

But it is not the case that the

critiques offered by CTS on this point are novel; critics have attacked scholarship on terrorism for its bias
and silences long before critical theory was imported into its study, and further some of the most trenchant
criticisms of terrorism studies come without the language and assumptions of critical theory (George 1991,
Mueller 2006, respectively).3
theoretical foundations or who do not frame their criticisms in theoretically informed language.

Perm
Failure to engage changes in actual terorrism policy marginalize critique.
Jeronen GUNNING Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence @
Aberystwyth 7 babies and bathwaters: reflecting on the pitfalls of critical terrorism studies European
Political Science p. 237-238
A second equally important, but often overlooked, reason concerns the disparate nature of existing critical
research. Much critical research if critical is understood, with Cox, as not tak[ing] institutions and
social power relations for granted but call[ing] them into question (Cox, 1981: 129) is already being
carried out by anthropologists, social movement theorists, area studies specialists, peace studies theorists,
and psychologists, among others (see, e.g., della Porta, 1992; Silke, 2003; Heiberg et al, 2007). Yet,
whether because of a suspicion of the agenda of traditional terrorism studies, unease with the term
terrorism itself, or simply disciplinary fragmentation, much of this research is published outside the field
of terrorism studies, thus preventing cross-fertilisation. Research by Avishag Gordon for example, found
that between 1988 and 2001 nearly 80 per cent of articles on terrorism were published outside the core
terrorism studies journals (Gordon, 2004: 109). These statistics can only be taken as indicative since they
are dependent on how one defines what constitutes core terrorism studies journals and whether one
includes articles that do not use the term terrorism at all. Nevertheless, it is clear that much is published
on the phenomenon of terrorism outside terrorism studies and that many of those who publish elsewhere
do not wish to be identified with terrorism studies. A critically constituted field may facilitate muchneeded cross-fertilisation and provide a space within which scholars of cognate or marginalised
perspectives can converge. However, this introduces a fundamental tension. To be critical in the first sense,
a critical field must explicitly challenge state-centric, problem-solving perspectives and call into question
existing definitions, assumptions, and power structures. To be critical in the second sense, it must attempt to
be inclusive, to enable the convergence of not only explicitly critical perspectives but also the more
rigorous traditional, problem-solving perspectives of both cognate and terrorism studies. Much of
interest has been written by, for instance, those traditional conflict resolution scholars who have moved
beyond a narrow military understanding of security and placed violence in its wider social context (see
also Toros, 2006). Similarly, traditional scholars within terrorism studies have produced significant research
that challenges accepted knowledge and that we ignore at our peril (see also Gunning, 2007a; Jackson,
2007). Research from outside terrorism studies, however strong in other aspects, is often marred by a lack
of familiarity with core insights from the traditional terrorism studies literature (see also Merari in Silke,
2004: 18891). Conversely, traditional terrorism scholars would benefit greatly from exposure to cognate
or critical perspectives. Further complicating this dynamic is that the term critical is itself highly
contested. Post-structuralists and Critical Theorists have a very different understanding of what constitutes
critical, or indeed of what the chief aims of a critical field ought to be. Debates rage, for instance, over
whether a critical field should attempt to be policy-relevant or whether it should focus solely on
powerknowledge issues.

Moderating counter-terrorism is worth potential cooptation their alternative fails

to translate new approaches to terrorism into practice.
Jeronen GUNNING Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence @
Aberystwyth 7 babies and bathwaters: reflecting on the pitfalls of critical terrorism studies European
Political Science p. 240-241 [Acronyms Clarified]
If emancipation is central to the critical project, CTS cannot remain policy-irrelevant without belying its
emancipatory commitment. It has to move beyond critique and deconstruction to reconstruction and policyrelevance (Booth, 2004b; Williams and Krause, 1997). The challenge of CTS [critical terrorism studies] is
to engage policy-makers as well as terrorists and their communities and work towards the
realisation of new paradigms, new practices, and the transformation of political structures. That, after all,
is the original meaning of the notion of immanent critique. Striving to be policy relevant does not mean
that one has to accept the validity of the term terrorism or stop investigating the political interests behind

it. Nor does it mean that all research must have policy-relevance or that one has to limit ones research to
what is relevant for the state, since the critical turn implies a move beyond statecentric perspectives. Endusers could, and should, include both state and nonstate actors, as long as the goal is to combat both
political terror and political structures encouraging terror. However, engaging policy-makers raises the
issue of co-optation. One of the fears of critical scholars is that by engaging with policy-makers, either they
or their research become co-opted. A more intractable problem is the one highlighted by Rengger that the
demand that theory must have a praxial dimension itself runs the risk of collapsing critical theory back into
traditional theory by making it dependent on instrumental conceptions of rationality (Rengger, 2001: 107).
A related problem is that by becoming embedded in the existing power structures, one risks reproducing
existing knowledge structures or inadvertently contributing to counter-terrorism policy that uncritically
strengthens the status quo. Such dilemmas have to be confronted and debated; non-engagement is not an
option. Engagement is facilitated by the fact that, as counter-terrorism projects flounder, advisors to policymakers are increasingly eager for advice, even when it is critical. The problem is thus not access per se,
but the level of access and how advice is acted upon. Whenever I have addressed foreign affairs personnel,
the response to my research has been positive. However, according to those present, the advice they
produce seldom influences official policy, as other more pressing concerns affect actual policymaking.
Because of this distance between critical academics and policy-makers, the advice becomes too diluted. For
obvious reasons, embedded terrorism scholars and traditional thinktanks have enjoyed a much closer
relationship with policy-makers, allowing them both more institutionalised and more direct access. This is
partly structural, since critical studies are inherently critical of existing power structures. Critical scholars
have also at times unnecessarily burned bridges by issuing blanket condemnations of all things statist. It is
important that critical scholars do not indulge in the demonising of all state actors, in the same way they
argue against the blanket demonising of terrorists. This also extends to think-tanks with close links to
power: just because a piece of research comes from RAND does not invalidate it; conversely, a critical
study is not inherently good. Just as Halliday critiqued those who privileged voices from the South as
somehow more authentic, critical scholars must guard against either privileging terrorist voices or
uncritically critiquing state or staterelated actors (Halliday, 1996: 21113).

Binary treatment of critical and conventional terrorism studies undermines policy

change.
John Horgan & Michael J. Boyle (2008) A case against Critical Terrorism
Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 60-61,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701848225
Jackson and his colleagues argue the case for critical terrorism studies depends in the first instance on a credible and compelling critique of the current state of orthodoterrorism

Limited, narrowly selective literature reviews, based in part on research

surveys conducted in the 1980s, do not constitute valid grounds on which to develop assertions about the
scope and focus of research in this field in 2007. In some instances, we believe that the case for CTS has
been built on an aggressive reading of the most easily identifiable limitations of the progress of terrorism
research, and has downplayed the difficulties associated with research (specifically, the natural limits of the
data). The core set of concerns have already been articulated by the very people CTS advocates identify with the orthodoxy, thus undermining the claim that CTS is
studies (Jackson 2007c, p. 226). We are not yet convinced.

fundamentally different. It might be difficult for some proponents of CTS to accept, but perhaps we are not so different after all. This raises the question of why we need an
explicitly CTS approach at all. It is manifestly clear from the papers produced under the CTS banner so far that this is an intellectual project, designed to reclaim terrorism from
orthodox terrorism scholar- ship and to insist on a different interpretation of its context and causes. But in calling for the establishment of an explicitly critical terrorism studies,
the onus of responsibility is on its advocates to make a clear case for not only how this is justified, and with appropriate, transparent, and clearly articulated evidence, but also to
demonstrate how the concerns implicitly claimed to be characteristic of CTS, are sufficient to distinguish it from what it says is the orthodoxy, which presumably is bereft of such

We do not believe this case has been fully made in work published so far. Instead, we believe that
some CTS advocates have rather ironically created a false dualism, between them and us which
overlooks the similarities between both camps. One particularly strand of critical theory represented in
International Relations by the work of Rob Walker is focused on breaking down false dualisms, like
inside/outside, identity/difference, time/space, among others (Walker 1993, also Rengger and ThirkellWhite 2007, p. 10). This raises an unsettling question. Will the creation of CTS as a mirror image of
terrorism studies in its critique of the field just replicate another unhelpful dualism? Is this not at odds
with the point of critical theory, that is, to embrace open dialogue and to envisage a community (in this
case, of scholars) that does not exclude alternative views? Jackson and others recognize this problem, and are concerned about the:
concerns.

potentially fraught intellectual struggle and there are many dangers along the way, not least that CTS will fail to engage with Orthodox Terrorism Studies scholars and security

officials and instead evolve into an exclusionary and marginalized, ghettoised subfield. It will be the responsibility of both critical and orthodox terrorism scholars to ensure
that this does not occur, but that through rigorous and respectful dialogue the broader field is invigorated and revitalized. (Jackson 2007b, p. 227) On this point, we agree. But we
have to ask the fundamental question: why create the dualism in the first place, by fostering a camp of scholars with strong prior theoretical or ideological commitments if it leads

To avoid this outcome, CTS advocates will need to engage

seriously and fairly with the rest of us in their research. But to do this they will need to offer a respectful
but critical reading of current research on terrorism. We will do our best to promote the same respectful
dialogue, and we hope that this critical reading of the current CTS work is taken in that light.
scholars with the same goals to not engage seriously with one another?

We shouldnt discard problem-solving approaches to terrorism.

John Horgan & Michael J. Boyle (2008) A case against Critical Terrorism
Studies, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 52-53,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539150701848225

Another critique of terrorism studies derives from the general critique of the influence of problem-solving
theory in terrorism studies (Gunning 2007b). The argument here, and deriving from Cox, is that terrorism
studies tends to take the world as it is, rather than challenging its foundations of social and political order,
and forsakes efforts to find ways of applying scholarly knowledge to relieving the burdens of those
oppressed by unjust social and political structures (Cox 1981, p. 129). In other words, the charge is that the study of
terrorism has a predominant status quo bias, which leads it to focus on how to solve problems for those in power, at the expense of
emancipation. The mode of thinking of terrorism studies is thus dominated by instrumental rationality, to the detriment of reflective

We believe this is overstating the case. Like much of political science, the
study of terrorism has been influenced by the logic of problem-solving theory and includes a strong dose
of instrumental rationality. But to imply that all those working within an empirical tradition of research in
terrorism studies do not challenge the status quo, or suggest uncomfortable truths to those in power, is
misleading. Many of the serious scholars who work in this field are sympathetic to the normative goals that
CTS scholars espouse, and are unafraid to speak truth to power when needed. For example, many terrorism
scholars do not hesitate to tell governments bluntly that unpopular certain foreign policy choices (such as
the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza) generate terrorism, and that
addressing pervasive economic and social inequalities is an essential part of counter-terrorism.4 In fact, in a
approaches and interdisciplinary research.

2004 Open Letter to the American People, over 700 security studies scholars in the USA and elsewhere signed their names to a case which
included the following: We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the
Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the
terms of public debate on foreign and national security policy-an emphasis on speculation instead of facts. (Security Scholars for a Sensible
5
Foreign Policy (2004) The list included such well-known terrorism experts as Jessica Stern, David Rapoport (Co-editor of Terrorism and
Political Violence), and Mia Bloom. If terrorism scholars, including these, were solely interested in telling comforting lies to those in power, they
would shy away from these uncomfortable facts and would certainly not publicly identify themselves with such an openly critical stance.

Finding particular policies for actualizing emancipation is the only way

institutionalize critical perspectives on terrorism.
Heath-Kelly 10 (Charlotte Heath-Kelly, PhD in International Politics, Leverhulme Trust

Early Career Fellowship at the University of Warwick, Critical Terrorism Studies, Critical
Theory and the Naturalistic Fallacy, June 2010, Security Dialogue Volume 41 No 3 p.242244)
What, then, is the CTS position on how to operationalize emancipation? Several propositions concerning
the emancipatory project of Critical Terrorism Studies are made within the edited volume that constitutes
its most recent and comprehensive statement of purpose (Jackson, Breen-Smyth & Gunning, 2009a). Matt
McDonald (2009: 112113) argues that possibilities for emancipatory change through advances in
nonrepressive deliberation are especially relevant to the contexts of terrorism and counter-terrorism,
allowing marginalized voices to be empowered and heard, and the material conditions of their
marginalization redressed. A more specified proposition concerning the CTS project of emancipation is
that offered in the concluding chapter of the volume, such that emancipatory intent is understood as a
normative commitment to both ending the use of terrorist tactics (whether by state or non-state actors), and
to addressing the conditions that can be seen to impel actors to resort to terrorist tactics (Jackson, BreenSmyth & Gunning, 2009b: 224). Toros & Gunning (2009: 101) detail the requirements that emancipatory
commitment would place upon the CTS scholar. They posit a rejection of violence (as ends and means are
fused in Critical Theory, thereby rendering emancipatory terrorism a contradiction in terms), yet where
terrorism has been embarked upon to further emancipatory goals such as freedom from oppression, scholars

must recognize this intent when seeking immanent possibilities for transformation. This injunction applies
equally to states involved in using terrorism; scholars must not reject such institutions on the basis of their
involvement in such activities, but instead cultivate alliances with those who are working towards
transformation from within. These proposals follow a commendable passage that details the struggle of
CTS proponents to initially identify those with whom to ally and those to amplify within attempts at
transformation; for example: Who are the oppressed and marginalized that Critical theory must be
partisan to (Wyn Jones, 1999)? Is it those killed and scarred by terrorist violence, those maimed and
tortured by counterterrorism, those who resort to violence because they believe they have no feasible
alternative, or those who, on the contrary, continue to shun terrorist violence despite oppression and
tyranny? (Toros & Gunning, 2009: 100) While the authors later find solution and solace in a generalized
formula of emancipation (such that emancipation is simultaneously for all people, and from all forms of
violence terrorist, counter-terrorist and structural), much can be learned from the quoted paragraph. Is it
not strange that emancipatory commitments cannot detail what it is that they specifically oppose or favour?
Wyn Jones (1999: 7677) admonishes Adorno and Horkheimer for only offering generalized exhortations
concerning emancipation, empowerment, freedom, and happiness, and asserts that Critical Theorists must
instead delineate concrete utopias but based upon potentialities located through immanent critique, not
upon abstract values and blueprints (as this would traverse their epistemological arguments against
traditional theory). In response, CTS scholars who follow the work of Wyn Jones do offer (tentative)
concrete suggestions of what emancipatory commitment would look like. For example, in the case of the
IsraelPalestine situation, it is suggested that a commitment to ending political violence in a particular
context may encourage critical scholars to support the track-three peace initiatives by Israeli and
Palestinian technocrats and academics without a real power base (Toros & Gunning, 2009: 102). Such a
concrete suggestion is then tempered with scepticism and concern regarding the utility of supporting actors
without a solid power-base, however referring back to aforementioned concerns with specific normative
commitments behind emancipation the reasoning behind such suggestions for actualizable practice refers
back to generalized emancipatory norms. This creates a feedback loop or a circular justification whereby,
in order to clarify the content of norms, real-world examples are given yet the reasons for the selection of
such examples refer back to the generalized exhortations admonished by Wyn Jones and do not clarify the
normative content.

K Aff

Surveillance Links
Mass surveillance and the security-industrial complex weave together a politics of
fear and destruction counter-terrorism.
Jackson 15 [Richard Jackson is professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of
Otago, New Zealand. He is the author and editor of eight books on terrorism, political violence and conflict resolution, and more than
50 journal articles and book chapters, 2015, The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, P. 4748]//dickies
Apart from the trillions of dollars and millions of people in the security-industrial complex who are currently
invested in preventing the coming terror (see Zulaika 2012, 51; Baker-Beall and Robinson 2014), the first and most obvious
consequences of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism are all the fantasy-infused security practices and
postures discussed earlier, as well as the extensive programmes of security theatre enacted at airports and elsewhere, the

institutionalisation of the state of exception, and socially disciplinary practices such as mass surveillance,
control orders, counter-radicalisation programmes, resilience initiatives and the like. Zulaika (2009, 18) argues
that contemporary counterterrorism represents a form of thinking that resembles the mental world of medieval witchcraft and
inquisitorial nonsense. Considering some of the magical realist thinking inherent in contemporary counter-radicalisation programmes
(see also Heath- Kelly 2012a), including the official expression of notions of pre-crime, the concept of risky citizens, efforts to
control words and images considered to be capable of infection, and more, such an assessment is entirely apposite. Another obvious
and related consequence of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is the institutionalisation and sedimentation of
a politics of fear (see Jackson 2013, 2007). In an atmosphere of permanently waiting for terror and moral panic, threat levels
are raised and lowered by officials, often on the basis of fantastical projection rather than hard evidence , and
public fear is manipulated for electoral gain and the promotion of non-terrorism-related political projects . In
the process, the interplay of knowledge and ignorance transforms a public fear of terrorism into a general and permanent epistemic
fear (Zulaika and Douglass 1996), one which can be easily manipulated for political gain. From this perspective, the

epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is functional to political elites who can manipulate uncertainty
and the underlying logic of the crisis for direct political and material gain . A third predictable consequence
of the epistemological crisis in terms of risk management and preemption are the well-documented and highly destructive
counterterrorist practices of preemptive war, the use of drones to kill terrorist suspects, torture and
rendition, control orders and mass surveillance. For example, given that we cannot know for certain who the terrorist is,
only that they certainly exist and are plotting mass destruction, and that we cannot take the risk that inaction will allow them to
complete their mission, it makes perfect sense to include as many people as possible on any terrorist watch list. It is now known that in
the United States, More than one million names are included on secret lists of suspected terrorists maintained
by the Obama administration. While people on the list are likely to be subject to enhanced surveillance, not surprisingly in
the context of the epistemological crisis, almost half of the people on a key government list dont have known ties
to any specific terrorist organisation (Lee 2014; emphasis added). Given the way that uncertainty and the unknown
nevertheless create an imperative to act preemptively, it is perhaps surprising that many more people are not on the secret list. Of
course, the reason for this is likely to be that virtually everyone is under surveillance anyway, as the Edward Snowden revelations
demonstrate. A fourth consequence of the epistemological crisis is the many false positives (Heath-Kelly 2012a)
produced by the moral imperative to act, even if it turns out to be wrong. Here we can note the hundreds of

thousands of people killed in the invasion of Iraq aimed at preempting the worlds most dangerous
regimes [from] threaten[ing] us with the worlds most destructive weapons, as George Bush famously argued. Similarly,
thousands of others have been rendered, detained, imprisoned, tortured, assassinated in drone strikes , or like
Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death in domestic counterterrorist operations. In each case, the moral imperative
to act preemptively overwhelmed any caution which might have been engendered by uncertainty or lack of
knowledge. Official calculations under the conditions of the epistemological crisis state that it is better to act than not act, even if it
turns out to be wrong and leaves innocent people dead or injured. Similar logic applies to the greatly enhanced security measures
across society, mass surveillance, de-radicalisation programmes, control orders, and the like, as well as efforts to curtail opposition and
dissent in all forms, in case it proves to be the work of terrorists. Knowing that there are terrorists in our midst, but not knowing who
they are or what they are planning, we are bound to watch everyone, detain anyone, secure everything, preempt attacks and prevent
terrorist intentions from emerging in the first place. Another consequence of the epistemological crisis is that the symptoms or the
signs of future threat, as Martin (2014) puts it rather than the deeper roots or causes of terrorism become the
primary focus of action.6 That is, preventing the inevitable coming attacks becomes the main objective of

counterterrorism, rather than the prevention of the circumstances and conditions that lead to terrorism in the
first instance (Frank 2014, 333). This is both a consequence and cause of the taboo which prevents direct
knowledge of terrorist subjectivity. It is also the result of rendering previous knowledge about terrorist
behaviour obsolete, the fatalism of accepting that terrorism will occur whatever actions are taken, and the processes of knowledge
subjugation about the kind of policies and circumstances which give rise to terrorism in the first place. In any case, counterterrorism

efforts have become fixated on the anticipation of imagined future plots, rather than focused on the current actual threat and its causes
(Mueller 2006). Finally, the epistemological crisis precludes the possibility of the rational evaluation or costbenefit analysis and assessment, of counterterrorist policies (Mueller and Stewart 2011), and acts to pacify dissent and
opposition to state security programmes. Instead, in a context bound by anti-knowledge and the unknown, speculation,
imagination and counter-factual, unprovable knowledge becomes a substitute form of assessment, and the (non)victims of terrorist
attacks that never occurred (but could have) are counted as evidence of success: Fighting terror is like fighting car accidents: one can
count the casualties but not those whose lives were spared by prevention. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Israelis go about their lives
without knowing that they are unhurt because their murderers met their fate before they got the chance to carry out their diabolical
missions. This silent multitude is the testament to the policys success. (Luft 2003, 3)

Surveillance policies drive the politics of fear and institutionalize the need for
protection against an unknown other.
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p.21] //dickies
Surveillance represents one of the most intrusive changes in our everyday life and can be traced to the politics of fear. For
example, surveillance was initially promoted to protect us from crime, particularly during the drug war of the
past three decades (Kappeler et al. 1999; Marx 1988; Staples 2000). A key aspect of surveillance is that it focuses on the
body as an object rather than as a subject, with feelings, emotions, rights, and, in short, humanity. We can count
bodies, photograph them, frisk bodies, peak inside them with drug tests as well as various scanners , and
capture DNA information that contains the truth. News media reports about crime and terrorism (chapter 4) stressed
the need for surveillance and more cooperation between federal agencies. The war on terrorism promoted massive
federal, state, and local surveillance policies, all of which were guided by the USA Patriot Act, which
legitimated a wide range of technological intrusions on American citizens and the detaining of citizens and foreign
nationals for extended periods of time without allowing them access to an attorney. These developments are examined in later
chapters, but the important point for now is that surveillance becomes institutionalized and promotes, often subtly, the
notion that all of us are under attack and need protection. For example, in 2004, students in a course I taught at Arizona
State University wrote that one of their biggest fears was identity theft! Not coincidentally, of course, the previous six months had
seen thousands of reports in the news media and popular culture, including several movies, that examined identity theft.

The narrative of imminent terrorist threat normalizes governmental control and

mass surveillance.
Altheide 6 [David L. Altheide, Emeritus Regents' Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University,
where he taught for 37 years. His work has focused on the role of mass media and information technology in social control. Dr.
Altheide received the Cooley Award three times, given to the outstanding book in symbolic interaction, from the Society for the Study
of Symbolic Interaction, 2006, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear, Altamira Press, p. 16-19] //dickies
The politics of fear results when social control is perceived to have broken down and/or a higher level of
control is called for by a situation or events, such as a terrorist attack. But the politics of fear can key off other
events as well. During the Cold War in the twentieth century, the United States was involved in numerous terrorist activities, but there
were very few against us. Yet the politics of fear was rampant. As a child, I learned to get under my desk at school whenever we heard
an air-raid siren. This was to protect us from a nuclear attack from the Russians and the communists, but the

real political purpose was to indoctrinate young children as well as our parents that we were threatened by a
major enemy and that we had to rely on the U.S. government to protect us, even if the actions seemed reckless at the
time. We were being taught a story about our lives, others, and trusting our leaders . 16 Chapter 2 Like most official
stories, it was partly true, partly invention, and partly omission. The nuclear nightmare narrative was fueled by an interior
ideological dramaa dangerous inventionthat perpetrated mass fear in public forums, schools, churches, and civic
groups. Its rhetoric touched every person and every institution in America, and, when combined with the domestic persuasory
campaigns of the USIA, it demonstrated the power of fear and heightened anxiety in gaining acceptance for the basic political
message. As Parry-Giles puts it, the narrative repetition of the Cold War message from 1945 to 1960 helped
normalize the Cold War ideology that resonates in the U.S. collective memory of that battle. (Goodall 2004, p.
18) Actions like the infamous McCarthy hearings on un-American activities in 1950 became a witch hunt against scores of Americans.
Then, as during the enactments of the USA Patriot Act in 2002, individual civil liberties were suspended ,
spying was encouraged, and numerous lives were disrupted. Individuals were forced to testify and name names of
communist sympathizers and collaborators. The chapters to follow devote some attention to new forms of social control (see chapter
7). While a specific crisis might erupt suddenly, the politics of fear emerges gradually when there is a cumulative

public definition of a crisis that will challenge political leadership, sovereignty, national identity, or
ideology. Thus, not all international crises result in the politics of fear. Natural disasters can be a crisis but
not one that evokes the politics of fear. For example, the devastating loss of life of more than 200,000 in India, Sri Lanka,

and Indonesia from a massive tsunami in December 2004 shocked the world into mobilizing for aid; countries seemed
to want to outbid each other for offering money and relief. One survey estimated that nearly half of U.S. families had made private
contributions to go along with several hundred million dollars in aid. This crisis did not generate fear, or negative action,
which is usually violent and destructive. Rather, it marked a time of human suffering and called on people to
empathize with millions of homeless people. The critical point is how an event is defined. It is the way in which
this definition is shaped and engineered that also requires some attention. Thus, not all wars evoke the politics of fear,
although most are justified in terms of the basic framework noted previously (e.g., challenge to political leadership, sovereignty,
national identity, or ideology). The basic process of defining the situation and justifying the politics of fear
involves propaganda, or the manipulation of information for a specific purpose. Several of the following chapters
examine how propaganda has contributed to the politics of fear. Propaganda is very significant because the politics of
fear is set in motion by appealing to audiences emotions and stereotypes. Stated differently, part of the problem is
that audiences are systematically misinformed about events and policies, yet the ways in which information
The Social Reality of Fear 17 is presentedoften by credible newspeople and respected leadersmisleads audiences.
The problem, then, is partly what audiences think they know about the relevant policy or events. For example, after the 9/11 attacks,
several neighbors told me that many people in Muslim nations hated the United States because of our freedom and quality of life.
They had been told this by a number of news commentators and government spokespersons. There was no understanding of how our
foreign policy and that of several western European nationsmay have contributed to perceived injustices for more than fifty years.
A blue-collar worker I know recently told me that his niece came home from Europe when Muslims began exploding car bombs in
France or Spain or somewhere. Those guys think that if they die theyll see Allah or someone. Theyre crazy. He added that there are
24,000 terrorists in the United States waiting for instruction. It is what this man knows that enables slick leaders to
gain leverage over his perception, values, votes, and tax dollars for various policies. Citizen beliefs often are
constructed and then manipulated by those who seek to benefit. Fear does not just happen; it is socially constructed and
managed by political actors to promote their own goals. The goal of such manipulators might be money, but more often
than not it is political power and symbolic dominance: getting ones view of the world accepted opens the door to many other
programs and activities to implement this view. This is where ideology comes to play a large part in the manipulation of fear. A key

aspect of all ideology is the promotion of a mythology, a set of ideas or stories that explains things,
organizes our view of the world, and puts people, places, and events in convenient categories (Davis 1986;
Kappeler et al. 1999). One of the most important myths that has been promoted by politicians is that of good
versus evil, with your side being good and the other side being evil. A documentary by the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The Power of Nightmares, captured many of the key points about this myth for U.S. foreign and
domestic policies, as well as the perspective of a small but very influential group of Islamists (Curtis 2004). This documentary argues
that two absolutist perspectivesthe Islamists and neoconservative Americanscontributed to the modern
politics of fear. Both saw the importance of creating myths about good and evil. Both believed that individualism was
the root of many social problems. Their only difference was that their side was good and the other evil. Ironically, they

needed each other, especially in later years, and they played off their common views about evil, even
though this meant that they would hate and fight each other. Both views were supported by intellectuals:
Sayyed Qutb, originally in Egypt, developed some of the rationale for a radical Islamic stance, while Leo Strauss, a philosopher in the
United States, set 18 Chapter 2 forth a rationale that would be used by followers to promote an imperial order against the evil
opposition.

State/Reformism Key
We should engage policy institutions to change the counter-terrorism paradigm.
Jackson 9 (Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, PhD
from the University of Canterbury, Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a Defence and a Way
Forward, p.8-9, 12-15-2009,
If a critically-informed research praxis is distinguished by its explicit commitment to human
emancipation, an important component of CTS research is to try to influence policy; not being
concerned with policy relevance is not an option for scholars committed to human emancipation
(Gunning, 2007b; Toros and Gunning, 2009). However, this does not mean that one should limit oneself to
being relevant to state elites. Critical scholars should engage both policy-makers and policy-takers, if
their primary commitment is to humanity rather than the state. Engaging policy-takers furthermore,
serves to lessen the risk of co-option by the status quo, particularly if those thus engaged include
members of communities labelled suspect by the state, those designated terrorists , and so on. However,
to be effective, and to work towards realising the potential for immanent change within the status
quo, critical scholars must simultaneously strive to engage those who are embedded in the state,
members of the counter-terrorist forces, the political elite, and so on. This is an area where critical
scholars have arguably been weak in the past. I would argue that a commitment to emancipation in
turn implies, among other things: a commitment to praxis as organic intellectuals to help bring about
concrete utopias out of the fissures and contradictions of existing structures (see Herring, 2008; Toros
and Gunning, 2009); a continuous process of immanent critique of existing power structures and
practices in society; the moral and intellectual questioning of the instrumental rationality paradigm
of political violence, whether it be terrorist or counter-terrorist violence, state or non-state violence (see
Burke, 2008); the prioritising of human security over national security and working towards
minimising all forms of physical, structural, and cultural violence (Toros and Gunning, 2009); and the
serious scholarly and practical exploration of non-violence, conflict transformation, and reconciliation as
practical alternatives to terrorist and counter-terrorist violence. From this perspective, I believe that CTS is
at heart an anti-hegemonic project, a kind of outsider theorising which seeks to go beyond problemsolving within the status quo and instead to help engage through critical theory with the problem of the
status quo (Booth, 2007). Of course, the adoption of an anti-hegemonic, critical standpoint requires a
certain amount of intellectual and moral courage because it invariably engenders vigorous opposition from
interests vested in the status quo as a number of CTS scholars, including ourselves, have experienced (see
Breen Smyth, 2009; Herring, 2008). CTS scholars must therefore adopt a prior commitment to refusing to
give in to intimidation, abandoning research that is controversial, or to self-censorship. In the current
political environment engendered by the war on terrorism, CTS scholars must be prepared to say the
unsayable, whether it is to governments, the wider society, particular communities, or terrorists; in a
very real sense, we must accept that blasphemy is our business (Booth, 2008: 68).