It's Terrorism, Stupid!

April 14th, 2014 - "Heil Hitler", the man shouted when he was done. By then, he had shot to death three people: a 14 year old boy, his grandfather, and an unidentified woman. All three were Jews. All three had been killed at a Jewish community center near Kansas City. The killer, Frazier Glen Miller, is the founder and leader of the "Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" as well as the "White Patriot Party".

There can be no doubt that this deed, which occurred on Sunday, was motivated by antisemitism  and that the perpetrator is a rightwing extremist and a racist. Yet no-one seems to be willing to call this an act of terrorism. Instead, the NYT, The Washington Post and CNN are calling it a "shooting" or a "shooting spree".

Why?

Why does this attack not qualify as an act of terrorism? There are many definitions of terrorism, but most combine two elements: The victims are civilians, and the motif is political and/or ideological. Is that not true in this case? Of course it is.

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of the Boston bombing, which was perpetrated by two brothers of Chechen background and of Muslim faith. In their case, there never was any doubt that they had perpetrated an act of terrorism. When Mohamed Merah killed seven people in Southern France in March 2012, among them soldiers as well as members of the Jewish community, everybody called it terrorism.

To be sure, the Boston attackers had used explosives against people - what other than terrorism could that possibly be? And Merah claimed he was a member of al-Qaida (which could never be substantiated).

But I still don't see why the Kansas City attack would be something entirely different.

I am not talking about judicial terms that may be applicable here. I am talking about journalistic reflexes. Because there is a hidden pattern behind this not calling the attack an act of terrorism. An Islamist who commits an act of violence and is being called a terrorist is being made and interpreted as a part of something larger - a group, a scene, a movement - by this very designation. By the same token, failing to call the Kansas City attack an act of terrorism will let Frazier Glen Miller and his deed appear unconnected to anything larger or broader.

The Boston bombers were not connected to other militant extremists in any meaningful way. They planned their attack by themselves. Of course there is still a connection between what they did and what other Islamist extremists did elsewhere in the world. But that connection is not factual; it is a connection in the sphere of phenomenology.

Is that any different in the case of the Kansas City attack? I believe not.

I believe that Miller's attack is, for example, as connected to the Nazi-Terrorist series of ten murders committed by the NSU in Germany as the Boston Bombing is connected to, say, the Jihadist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Or to put it differently: If we (and not unrightly so) connect militant Islamists with one another because they shout "Allahu Akbar" while they are killing people, we should also see the connection between people shouting "Heil Hitler" while murdering Jews. We talk about the "Global Jihadist Movement" all the time. There also is a global anti-semitic, far-right movement that resorts to violence against civilians.

I am not trying to allocate blame here. I am just concerned that some of us journalists have not been able to insulate themselves fully from the impression that since 9/11 terrorism is an exclusively Islamist phenomenon. Whereas in fact, as we all know, the majority of terrorist attacks world wide are not committed by Islamists.

PS: In the interest of full disclosure, I was inspired by Thomas Hegghammer's tweet when blogging this. Here is how his tweet went: "@Hegghammer Convicted white supremacist massacres Jews, shouts Heil Hitler, but is still not a "terrorist" to CNN and KS police: cnn.it/RhMmZf" 

PPS: Also see http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dangerous-minds/201404/why-isn-t-anyone-calling-terrorism for a similar take. 

PPS: This is a slightly edited version of a German blog post that I published earlier today at DIE ZEIT's website, the paper that I work for. 

Personalized Jihad?

April 25th 2013 - The Boston Attack and what we know about it at this point doesn't exactly turn conventional wisdom of the terrorism research community upside-down: vulnerable young men, a vacuum to fill, a family falling apart, a personal re-invention, ties to a homeland and a region affected by bloody conflict, perhaps a radical friend, perhaps a lot of radical video consumption, perhaps a fatal journey abroad, a bit of Inspire... And yet, there are a few aspects in this case I am still chewing on. To put it another way: Maybe we should call in the psychologists.

It's mainly these points that strike me as possibly significant when trying to draw conclusions from the Boston attack:

1.- While this is obviously not even remotely the first terror attack in which brothers took part, it's still different from most others that I am aware of in that we have reason to believe that Tamerlan was the driving force and that Dhzokhar submitted to his idea. We have a lot of indication of a radicalization of Tamerlan, but as of now very little, if anything at all, that would suggest that Dhzokhar even was a committed Jihadist when he signed up for it. In what sort of capacity, and for which reasons did he take part? They may lie in a sphere to which political scientists, Arabists, journalists or whatever else most of us may be don't necessarily have the best understanding of and access to. What I mean, to put it bluntly: What if this was an attack that meant something different to each of the perpetrators?  I am aware that there are other instances in which one participant exerted undue influence over others. And yet, if we are trying to take it from here and to assess what may be coming next, we should probably bear in mind that apparently even a jihadist terror attack may be something that someone can be drawn into even though his "real" motivation may much rather be that he doesn't want to be the one left behind or the one leaving someone else behind.

2.- There is one other dimension to this attack that I can't get out of my head: This was two excelling sportsmen attacking a sporting event. Why the Marathon? Only because it was the biggest event that fit the schedule? Perhaps. But maybe this is also something that other professions have interesting perspectives on. I personally find it distantly but oddly reminiscent of school shootings: Going back to something you were once part of and maybe experienced humiliation at.

I am no psychologist and I feel bad even trying for a second to think like one. But it is exactly this discomfort that makes me wonder if I have sufficient analytical tools at my disposal to see all important dimensions in this attack.

To elaborate a little: My background, for example, is in Arabic and Islamic Studies and Political Sciences and I work as a journalist. I tend to stress the importance of ideology. For example, I made great efforts trying to explain to people that what may look like illogical and arbitrary targets to "us" are in many cases perfectly reasonable targets from a Jihadist perspective if you are acquainted with their sources and ways of thinking. But the more attacks by "lone wolfs" or self recruited Jihadists we see, the higher the chance is that they might mix personal with ideologically prescribed considerations. Since no-one is leading them (in many cases), no-body gets to "correct" them. So with Jihadism becoming more individual, it also may become more personalized. And that would perhaps mean we have to take into consideration additional or slightly different factors in order to do risk analysis or threat assessment, etc.

This is just a blog post, not an academic paper, not a newspaper editorial, not a conference contribution. Please take it as such. It is just a few thoughts that I have been developing over the past few days. They may be absurd, already proven wrong or considered solved. But then, what's a blog for if not (also) for throwing thoughts at people to see what they have to say.

So, I am curious about your reactions!

Cheers, Y. 

In the Twitterverse (Re: Boston)

April 21st 2013 - I knew why I was feeling so tired when a colleague of mine who is currently in the US asked me by email if I was Boston: „You twitter so intensively and so late at night that I thought you must be on Boylston Street.“ I can only hope I didn't really give anyone the impression via Twitter that I was in Boston when in fact I was in Berlin. (I don't think I did.) But in a way being on Twitter is akin to „being there“ – only that the „there“ is not a physical place but a debate revolving around such a physical place and something that's going on there. On Twitter I can chose whose messages about that particular going-on I want to expose myself to. By doing so, I willfully expose myself to an unfiltered stream of messages – some true, many wrong, most half-half. As long as I bear that in mind, Twitter is a grand medium.

Of course it is also a mind boggling medium. Just think about how people on Friday starting live tweeting Police scanner info, leading to the Boston Police requesting people to refrain from doing so (passed on via Twitter) for fear that the fugitive might learn about police positions via Twitter. More real time experience is hardly possible any other way.

At the same time that episode hints at the potential power of Twitter – in both ways, good and bad. On the one hand you had Bostonians offering shelter and help via Twitter to those effected by Monday's bombing. On the other hand you have preachers of hate constantly disemminating and re-inforcing false, premature, biased and uninformed Pseudo-information – let't not forget, for example,  that for many hours in parts of the Twitterverse first a Saudi and then an Indian student were „the“ culprits. Neither of them ever where suspects. Almost no-one on Twitter who re-tweeted that bullshit apologized. Of course not. Because all they wanted was that people believe it. 

On the other hand, Twitter is just great to stay tuned to real news (as in: provided by proper journalists). Google news can't compete when you want to know what has just been published, anywhere in the world, on the particular issue you are interested in. Plus: you may receive the link via someone you know and trust, so you really want to check that article out because that person thought it important.

For parts of the past week I scanned Twitter and watched CNN in parallel. By comparison, CNN lost. It lost against MY Twitter feed, though. It may have won in comparison to other peoples' feeds. Because there is no single entity called Twitter. YOU are following but ONE of any number of possible debates and streams of messages. But in this regard one very valid question is: If I am really interested in an issue, like the Boston bombing and the ensueing manhunt, why would I wait for a journalist to pick up the news, produce and edit and launch it online, if I can simply and just as well follow the Police Department, the District Attorney, the FBI, etc. myself – and by doing so be the very first to receive their statements? (News outlets have to learn to think of ways of dealing with that. If something was on Twitter a half hour earlier, it it really still breaking news?) 

Twitter though can be unreal at times – ironically, by way of it's built-in hyperrealism. In the case of Boston, one such moment was when Watertown was locked down and resident live tweeted from areas Journalists had no access to any longer -- but maybe even more so when a little later the fugitive's Twitter account became known, and suddenly his words, his thoughts were becoming part of the debate. Plus comments about them. Plus comments about them by people who claimed to have known him. (Of course the checking of such claims is left to you – which is whay Twitter is not a substitute for Journalism.) Twitter is, in a lot ways, best compared to tuning in to a stream of chatter of people you don't know. Like being able to eavesdrop on conversations. It's what people will say, much as in the analog world, withouth thinking too hard: „Have you heard...?“ – what follows may well be wrong, or half right, or even true. You have to able to deal with that, if you want to really use Twitter as a resource. But it can be fruitful. (Plus: Of course, speaking as a Journalist here, even wrong or hateful or willfully misleading Tweets can be interesting, as they also tell stories.)

In any case, here is why I love Twitter despite of all the hectic, the chaos, the unorderliness: I can be part of a global conversation, the limits of which I define. I like to expose myself to chatter as it can lead me towards valid information or avenues of inquiry worth persueing. But at the same time I cherish reasonable discussion and debate, which can also be found on Twitter. In my case, having been on the terrorism beat for over a decade, the latter means that I follow a number of international terrorism experts, many of whom (not all) I know personally from the real world. I want to know what they have to say. Twitter allows me to have a five day on-and-off debate with them without having to call them, one by one. What a resource!

Much of what I have said so far you all probably know and maybe you have experienced it in a similiar way. But I feel the urge to point out that I think it is unfair to discredit Twitter, as some do, for being generally too fast, too loud, too quick, too little cautious. The opposite is also true. There were times during the Boston crisis when the better experts on Twitter (and I could name more, but I want to particularly point out @azelin, @intelwire and @muradbatal) were soooo much better than what TV networks had on offer, that one question needs to be asked: Shouldn't these networks, rather then feel threatened by Twitter (as they seem to be) look at ways of how they could become better by following the right people on Twitter?

There may be little news in this post for many of you. But let me conclude by saying that as a Journalist with access to wire services, I preferred Twitter throughout the past week. Because I follow just the people I need to in order to not miss anything, to be in many many cases even be informed earlier.

Twitter of course is a better resource for gaining information than for sharpening your argument. I personally need times off Twitter to contemplate. But I love Twitter. Even if it is redundant, exhausting, intensive, loud and immediate. I simply find too much valuable info, debate and input in it that I wouldn't get any other way. Plus: Some Tweeps are just great people to hang out with, even digitally. 

Cheers, Y.

PS: This post is an adapted version of a German language blog post I wrote for my blog at @zeitonline, the website of the weekly newspaper I work for, DIE ZEIT.