Abstract
The medium, Marshall McLuhan observed, is the message. By this McLuhan understood the media as “new languages with new and unique powers of expression.”1 Ironically, Al-Qaeda and its home-grown offshoots in the UK and elsewhere appear to have appreciated McLuhan’s insight in a way that Western governments and their media have not.
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Notes
Marshall McLuhan, “Why have the Effects of Media Been Overlooked?,” in G.E. Stearn (ed.), McLuhan Hot and Cool (London: Penguin, 1968), p. 138.
Before the attacks, the prevailing stereotype, reflected in both official and media commentary, presented British based Islamist militants, with their predilection for kaftans, beards, and colourful rhetoric, as ersatz revolutionaries indulging their exhibitionist fantasies at the taxpayers’ expense. Interestingly, this caricature recalls the way the liberal establishment dismissed the German Fascist threat. In 1940, for example, the Fabian socialist, H.G. Wells, considered Hitler a “screaming little defective in Berlin,” presenting no threat to Europe. Indeed, Wells observed the Nazis “jerry-built discipline... wilting under the creeping realization that Blitzkrieg is spent.” Writing later in 1941, after the German blitzkrieg had occupied France and the Low Countries, overrun the Mediterranean, and the Soviet Union as far as Stalingrad, George Orwell maintained that, for Wells and the progressive intelligentsia more generally, Hitler represented, “an absurdity, a ghost from the past, a creature doomed to disappear almost immediately.” As Orwell presciently continued, this Panglossian faith “in the equation of science with commonsense does not really hold good.” Much of what Wells and his ilk imagined and worked for was physically present in Nazi Germany. But it was “all in the service of ideas appropriate to the Stone Age.” It was impossible for the progressive mind, in Orwell’s view, to accept this state of affairs. Therefore, “the war-lords and witch-doctors must fail, the commonsense World State, as seen by a nineteenth-century Liberal whose heart does not leap at the sound of bugles, must triumph.” George Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State,” Essays, chapter 12 (London: Penguin, 2000).
Peter R. Neumann and M.L.R. Smith, “Missing the Plot? Intelligence and Discourse Failure,” Orbis (Winter 2005), pp. 96–98.
M.L.R. Smith, “Guerrillas in the Mist: Reassessing Strategy and Low Intensity Warfare,” Review of International Studies, 29 (2003), pp. 29–34.
President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (Washington DC: Office of the Press Secretary), 20 September 2001.
See Jörg Freidrichs and Raphael Muturi, “Anything New Under the Sun? The Political Struggle Behind the Legal Debate on International Terrorism,” From Government to Governance: 2003 Hague Joint Conference on Contemporary Issues of Law (The Hague: Asser/Cambridge University press, 2004), pp. 463–471.
See Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989), pp. 229–246.
Natasha Hamilton-Hart, “Terrorism in Southeast Asia: Expert Analysis, Myopia and Fantasy, Pacific Review, 18(3) (2005), pp. 303–325.
For a survey of this area see Karin Von Hippel, “The Roots of Terrorism: Probing the Myths,” in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Super Terrorism: Policy Responses (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 225–239
Neil J. Smelser and Faith Mitchell (eds), Terrorism: Perspectives from the Behavioral and Social Sciences(Washington DC: National Academies Press, 2002), pp. 18–36
Dilip Hiro, War without End: The Rise of Islamist Terrorism and the Global Response (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 409.
Ken Booth, “The Human Faces of Terror: Reflections in a Cracked Looking Glass,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 1(1) (2008), pp. 65–79.
Richard Jackson et al., “Introduction,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1) (2008), pp. 1–3.
Rama Mani, “The Root Causes of Terrorism and Conflict Prevention,” in Jane Boulden and Thomas G. Weiss (eds), Terrorism and the UN: Before and After September 11 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), pp. 219–243
Susanne Karstadt, “Terrorism and ‘New Wars’,” in Bülent Gökay and R.B.J. Walker (eds), 11 September: War, Terror and Judgement (London: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 140
Thomas G. Weiss, Margaret E. Crahern and John Goering, “Whither Human Rights, Unilateralism, and US Foreign Policy,” in Thomas G. Weiss, Margaret E. Crahern and John Goering (eds), Wars on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 231–241
Tom H. Hastings, Nonviolent Response to Terrorism (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 160
Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, “Public Opinion Among Muslims and the West,” in Pippa Norris, Montague Kern and Marion Just (eds), Framing Terrorism: The News Media, the Government and Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 206.
Said, who identified the ideology of Orientalism (1975), was of course of a Palestinian, but Christian, background. See Edward Said, Out of Place a Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), p. 20.
Tarak Barkawi, “On the Pedagogy of’ small Wars’,” International Affairs, 80(1) (2004), p. 228.
Mohammad Yunus, “Commonwealth Lecture 2003: Halving Poverty by 2015,” The Commonwealth Yearbook (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2004), p. 58
Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu (eds), The War in Iraq and Its Consequences: Thoughts of Nobel Laureates and Eminent Scholars (Singapore: World Scientific, 2004), p. 31.
See in this context, John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (London: Granta, 2002)
Manfred Steger, Globalism: The New Market Ideology (Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2002).
Ken Booth, “The Human Faces of Terror,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 1(1) (April 2008), p. 75.
See Greg Bankoff, “Regions of Risk: Western Discourse on Terrorism and the Significance of Political Islam,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 26 (2003), pp. 413–428
Seng Tan, “An Enemy of Their Making: US Security Discourse on the September 11 Terror Problematique,” in Kumar Ramakrishnan and See Seng Tan (eds), After Bali: The Threat of Terrorism (Singapore: IDSS/World Scientific Publishing, 2003), pp. 281–304
John Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 231
Meaghan Morris, “White Panic or Mad Max and the Sublime,” in Chen Kuan-Hsing (ed.), Trajectories: Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 246.
David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 68.
Azza Karram, “Islamisms, Globalisation, Religion and Power,” in Ronaldo Munck and Purnaka de Silva (eds), Postmodern Insurgencies: Political Violence, Identity Formation and Peacemaking in Comparative Perspective (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 217.
See Richard Jackson, Writing the War on Terror: Language, Politics and Counterterrorism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Michael Moore, Dude, Where’s My Country? (New York: Warner Books, 2003), p. 101.
Anthony Burke, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War Against the Other (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 212.
Anthony Burke, “Against the New Internationalism,” Ethics & International Affairs, 19(2) (Summer 2005), pp. 73–89.
See David L. Altheide, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press, 2006).
See Frank Furedi, The Politics of Fear (London: Continuum, 2005).
Sarah Oates, “Selling Fear? The Framing of the Terrorist Threat in Elections,” Security, Terrorism in the UK, briefing paper 05/01 (London: Chatham House, July 2005), p. 9.
Bill Durodié, “Terrorism and Community Resilience — A UK Perspective,” Security, Terrorism in the UK, briefing paper 05/01 (London: Chatham House, July 2005), p. 4.
Frank Gregory and Paul Wilkinson, “Riding Pillion for Tackling Terrorism Is a High Risk Policy,” Security, Terrorism in the UK, briefing paper 05/01 (London: Chatham House, July 2005), p. 3.
Ali Tariq, Rough Music Blair, Bombs and Baghdad (London: Verso, 2005), p. 53.
Ken Booth, “The Human Faces of Terror,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1) (April 2008), p. 76.
Anthony Burke, “The End of Terrorism Studies,” Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1(1) (April 2008), p. 44.
Leo Strauss, “Social Science and Humanism,” The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss (Selected and introduced by Thomas. L. Pangle) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989), p. 10.
“Declaration of War Against Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” in Yonah Alexander and Michael S. Swetnam (eds), Usama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda: Profile of a Terrorist Network (Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers, 2001), Appendix 1, A, p. 19.
See Elie Kedouri, Afghani and Aduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Frank Cass, 1966)
Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)
Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahabi Islam: From Revival to Reform to Global Jihad (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004).
See William E. Shepherd, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pp. xxxix–xl.
Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (New York: Mother Mosque Foundation, 1979), pp. 81
See Erich Ludendorf, The Nation at War [Der Totale Krieg], trans. A.S. Rappoport (London: Hutchinson, 1936).
Ayman Muhammad Rabi al Zawahiri, quoted in Nimrod Raphaeli, Radical Islamist Profiles, 3: Ayman Muhammad Rabi al Zawahiri: The Making of an Arch Terrorist (Berlin: Middle East Media Research Institute), 11 March 2003, p. 10.
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© 2014 David Martin Jones and M. L. R. Smith
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Jones, D.M., Smith, M.L.R. (2014). The Commentariat and Discourse Failure: Language and Atrocity in Cool Britannia. In: Sacred Violence. Rethinking Political Violence series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328069_4
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