Newsletter Spring 2011

CERB C O N TA I N I N G E X T R E M I S M R E S E A R C H B R I E F I N G

Welcome to the first issue of the CERB newsletter.

CERB, the Containing Extremism Research Briefing, is a resource for people Connect with CERB
wanting to develop their understanding of the various forms of contemporary
political extremism. It is a growing database of summaries of recent research Follow us on Twitter
articles. In a concise and readable way, it presents useful findings from
academic studies of violent or potentially violent extremisms. New summaries Email us at:
are continuously added, and this quarterly newsletter flags up recent additions containingextremism@gmail.com
to the database. (To receive the newsletter, email us at:
CERB homepage:
containingextremism@gmail.com with ‘subscribe’ in the subject field.) http://www.cerb.ws
CERB is of value, we hope, to people professionally engaged in responding
to extremism as a potential threat to security or to democratic process, and to
journalists who report on it, as well as being of interest to academics and students.

In this first issue of the Newsletter, we headline an analysis of terrorist attacks which concludes,
controversially, that the invasion of Iraq has not led to increased attacks on the West. Also highlighted are
two studies of the relationship between terrorism and poverty, which challenge some assumptions about the
nature of the link, and a study which foregrounds the importance of a particular value of ‘respectability’ in
causing people to turn towards the Far Right British National Party.
For more on these and other studies, go to http://www.cerb.ws or follow the links below direct to the full
summaries of the articles in question.

Evidence that the Iraq War has not increased Islamist terror in the West

There are a number of different effects that the war in Iraq may have had on levels of Islamist terrorism in the
West. This paper by Copenhagen-based analyst Martin Harrow distinguishes three possible effects.

Read the rest of this entry »

Poverty and terrorism: a complex relationship

While ‘poverty’ may often be listed as one of the fundamental causes of terrorism, a retrospective study of Hezbollah by
Michigan academic Jennifer Kavanagh shows that that there is no simple connection between the two. She reanalyses data
first collected by the researchers Krueger & Maleckova in 2003, which enabled comparison of Hezbollah militants killed [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

Can welfare policies tackle the roots of terrorism?

Can welfare policies tackle the roots of terrorism?
It is an article of faith amongst many critics of the ‘war on terror’ that social policies which reduce inequalities
and minimise social exclusion are better antidotes to terror than any counter-terrorism strategy. This paper
by two economists from the University of Paderborn in Germany attempts to test that idea. Krieger and
Meierrieks took various [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

BNP support amongst the respectable

Television images of BNP supporters on the streets may lead many people to see it simply as the party
of shaven-headed coarseness, its demotic appeal bringing organisation to violent elements of the feckless
underclass and gaining support from the most backward and dispossessed of the white working class. This
may well be part of the truth, but [...]

Read the rest of this entry »

The Containing Extremism Research Briefing is compiled in the Media School at Bournemouth University, U.K.
If you have any feedback on its contents, other than comments on specific posts, or would like to suggest an
article for summary here, email us at containingextremism@gmail.com.

http://www.cerb.ws CERB