Tuesday, April 23, 2013 

Boston: new and old media equally awful.

There are occasions when a distinct minority within society temporarily lose all sense of perspective.  One such moment in this country was the death of Princess Diana, which rather than undermining the royal family when their slow response to the news was criticised seems if anything to have entrenched the institution further into public life.  Another was on the third night of the riots of August 2011, and I have to admit to being at least somewhat drawn in on that occasion, although I was hardly among those calling for the army to be brought in and for the police to start fragging the underclass, as supposedly more rational commentators were.

Thursday and Friday last week were without a doubt another example, even if it was less about ordinary people and instead those in the media and others who spend far too long on social media.  It can't be said that such a outbreak of crass stupidity and silliness hasn't been coming for a while; over here we had the media coverage of the Raoul Moat saga, while in the US, where the media has long had form in covering getaways and the aftermath of incidents of mass violence in the worst way possible, the more recent search for Christopher Dorner flagged up what was likely to happen next.

This said, it's still difficult to wrap your head around just how daft things ended up being. Last week was without a doubt an appalling one for the mainstream media, who on numerous occasions got the facts completely and utterly wrong.  It won't do however to lambast the "old" media while giving the "new" something approaching a pass, as the Graun does in its editorial and others effectively have.  Old and new have become inextricably linked; they feed off each other, which makes those who criticise one and praise the other or write off the old so short-sighted.

The most obvious example of imagining the internet and the supposed wisdom of crowds can solve almost everything was the thread on Reddit (although there were others elsewhere too) dedicated to finding the bombers by going meticulously through all the available pictures and video they could get hold of.  Once details began to emerge of how at least one of the bombers was wearing a hat and carrying a backpack, every person who could be found fitting the description was picked out.  In spite of this, and although they were considered, neither of the Tsarnaev brothers were felt likely to be the perpetrators.  Those that were picked out though were understandably terrified, especially when they were found on social networks, even if this also quickly meant they were disregarded as possibly responsible.  For all the claims that this makes such efforts "self-correcting", the damage either has or quite easily could have already been done.  The relatives of Sunil Tripathi, who in spite or rather because he had been missing for a month was at one point named as a suspect, had to take down the page dedicated to looking for him as it was being bombarded by comments.

This is far from the first time that "internet detectives" have mobilised efforts to find people or name those alleged to be responsible for certain actions, with Anonymous having recently targeted an innocent in the Amanda Todd case, but it is almost certainly the most notable incidence where it seems to have hampered the actual police investigation.  There isn't as yet a full account of why the images of the Tsarnaevs were released when they were and so we should wait before passing full judgement, yet there are plenty of suggestions that they were issued in part because of all the speculation.  This could have quite easily destroyed any chance of the two being taken into custody without the carnage that followed, although again it's just as possible that it did, alerting them to the fact the net was closing in; Dzhokhar was still using Twitter right up until it seems he fled.

Once the pair were being pursued, just how badly things could have gone became clear. We know all too well in this country what can happen when terrorists are deemed to be on the run and the police have been briefed that they could strike imminently; in Boston there was the added impetus that one of their own had been killed. If anything, it's a miracle more weren't injured or killed when so many armed police were maruading the streets with their fingers on the trigger. That it seems Dzhokhar spent most of the time the city was on lock down in the boat he was found in only underlines how differently things could have gone.

The media as a whole for their part didn't have a clue what was going on, although that certainly didn't stop them from suggesting they did. Apart from the odd moment where the BBC were all but making fun of the continuing lockdown and the Graun took to mocking Lindsey Graham, the lack of any insight whatsoever was what we've come to expect from live coverage for the sake of it.

Not that there's been a lot of it since either. In spite of the lengthy profiles on the pair written up on the basis of internet accounts and short interviews with friends and relatives, we don't have the slightest indication as yet why they did what they did. The elder brother clearly had an interest in the more extreme brand of Islam, but that doesn't begin to explain what motivated him to bomb those he previously only hadn't understood. As for Dzhokhar, no one seems to have a bad word to say about him, and rather than being the austere kind or openly religious, he's reported to have been a stoner.

The answer, ultimately, to why it is that America reacts differently to gun massacres than it does to attacks such as the one in Boston is that it's become inured to gun violence. It no longer shocks. It takes something on the level of Newtown when young children were the main victims to really shake people. It also allows everyone to look outside for answers and for something to blame rather than looking closer to home.  The response from old and new media alike since last Monday has done everything to encourage that, nor is it likely to get any better in spite of the merited criticism levelled at both.

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4/23/2013 08:33:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 16, 2013 

Thoughts on Boston.

When it comes to terrorism, it's often difficult to get attacks such as yesterday's horrific events at the Boston marathon into perspective.  Indiscriminate attacks designed to cause fear, panic and even some to lash out at others, all in furtherance of a political aim, are always going to dominate media attention, especially when in narrow terms yesterday's bombing was the first such successful terror attack in the US since 9/11.  You have to say narrow terms as, by any measure, the numerous mass shootings that have occurred since that terrible day, while not necessarily in pursuit of a political aim (although the Fort Hood shootings and the massacre at a Sikh temple have both had such motives ascribed to them) are just as much attacks on whole communities as the Boston attack was.  They have the same end results: bereaved families, the struggle to recover from serious injuries, the mental health problems that follow for some of those caught up who were otherwise not physically harmed and ultimately the battle to both understand why and whether there is any wider meaning to be drawn from something that can initially seem meaningless.

With some exceptions, and perhaps because the number of deaths so far is 3, which is still 3 too many but seems close to miraculous given the number of people in the area and the way the bombs were constructed, the response so far has been measured.  The decision not to describe the attack as terrorism immediately was undoubtedly the right one, and the reluctance to do so even today also feels right.  Fundamentally, regardless of who or whom planted the bombs, the act remains a criminal rather than a political one.  As for who could have carried it out, it realistically could have been anyone: while it doesn't seem to fit the usual jihadi modus operandi of suicide or car bombings, the Madrid attacks were carried out using planted bombs, and it should be remembered that the recent push from ideologues has been for individuals to launch attacks on their own.  Relatively unsophisticated devices such as those used yesterday could well have been constructed by someone with no formal training relying on information gathered from the internet.

Similarly, the perpetrators could just as easily be far-right extremists, the attack coming on both Patriots' Day and Tax Day, close to the anniversaries of both the end of the Waco siege and the Oklahoma City bombing.  Indeed, Timothy McVeigh carried out his attack on the old date of Patriots' Day.  It could also be the work of someone with a similar ideology to Eric Rudolph, most infamous for the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.  Other suspects, although less likely, could be a far left/anarchist groupscule, or a lone agitator, the most notorious American example being the Unabomber.  Wild claims on Twitter that it could be connected to the on-going tension with North Korea seem extraordinarily wide of the mark, not least when the North has never carried out any attacks against a country other than the South.

Understandable as it for there to be concern about the London marathon due to the proximity of the events, there isn't the slightest evidence that yesterday's bombing was anything other than an isolated incident.  Not only have there never previously been terrorist attacks carried out by the same perpetrators in different Western countries separated by such distance within such a short space of time, security is always going to be inevitably ratcheted up, thereby discouraging any group when the chances of being discovered are increased. Whoever planned the attack, despite having so far failed to claim responsibility, knew full well that cameras would be focused on the finish line, guaranteeing that the explosion and the moments after the blast would be recorded for maximum effect.  If they intend to repeat their success, then it's unlikely that anywhere less well covered will be chosen, thereby increasing the chances they will quickly be discovered.  Indeed, it would perhaps be more surprising if the person who planted the bombs hasn't been captured on film at some point, especially as the area had previously been swept for devices twice in the past 24 hours, necessitating the devices being left within hours of the race beginning.

This all said, the best way to respond such attacks has always been with empathy, sympathy and stoicism.  Life goes on, and always will do, which makes such references to "9/11 spirit" so thoroughly lacking in rigour, as were the ones after 7/7 which remarked on how Londoners carried on using the Tube as though nothing had happened.  Surprisingly, people have to carry on making a living, which is all the more reason to help those who have been directly affected rather than comment on how everyone manages to keep on going as though it were something remarkable.  It also ought to bring into focus how some live with the real threat of such violence on a daily basis, as others have said.  That we are either indirectly or even directly funding some of those carrying out acts we would describe as terrorism were they to hit our own cities might shock those who have been so outraged by a terrible but also inevitable (such is the history of terrorism) event.

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4/16/2013 08:10:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, December 06, 2012 

"Possessing a copy of a terrorist publication is a serious offence."

As we've learned this year, taking trolling too far can net you a prison sentence.  Indeed, even expressing your strong personal views on a controversial subject can result in a 240 hour community order, while those who actually did call for you to be killed aren't so much as arrested.

Less well known is that you can be jailed for even longer simply for having a magazine in your possession.  Last year a German national was jailed for 16 months after he was found with a digital copy of Inspire magazine, the English language house journal of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.  Today Ruksana Begum was jailed for a year for having two separate issues of the magazine.

Inspire is notable for that one reason: it's in English, something that the wider media picked up on.  As Thomas Hegghamer pointed out at the time, this in itself wasn't an innovation, as previous jihadi publications had been translated into English, while newsletters had previously been produced in the 90s.  More to the point, most radicalisation isn't so much linked to the written word as it is to videos, which are now often the starting point for those who find themselves attracted to Islamic extremism.  English translations of the feature-length releases from jihadi groups have been around for years.

Nor is the actual content of Inspire anything special.  Wikipedia has a run down of the all the issues released so far, and most of the articles are either by notable leaders of the assorted franchises, doing the usual jihadi wittering unlikely to have an appeal beyond the already convinced, or actively plagiarised from elsewhere.  What it does have that seems to have worried the authorities is the odd do-it-yourself piece, such as the "build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom" article in the first issue, and the "It is of your freedom to ignite a firebomb" in the latest one.  Even then these articles for the most part are highly unlikely to be of use to anyone set on becoming a lone wolf jihadi, such is the usual quality and accuracy of the advice, and it's not as though there aren't dozens of similar documents available online or even from Amazon.  Only rarely has possession of these resulted in prosecutions and convictions.

While it's unclear what the German man and his friend were intending to do on their visit to this country, no such ulterior motives have been found in the cases of Begum and Mohammed Abu Hasnath, who was also sentenced to 14 months for possession of Inspire.  Begum's explanation to the court as to why she had two issues on her mobile phone's SD card, that she wanted to attempt to understand what had motivated her brothers to plot to blow up the Stock Exchange, was accepted by the judge, while the worst Hasnath got up to was some grafitti.

It's true that Inspire can certainly be said to fall under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, in that it contains information of a kind likely to be useful to those involved in acts of terrorism.  The same could be said though of a whole myriad of novels and non-fiction works, let alone old army manuals.  Such information is only ever dangerous if those in possession of it have the resources, ingenuity and motivation to use it.  Begum and Hasnath did not, yet they were sentenced to terms of imprisonment that were out of all proportion to the offence.  Amazing as it might seem, you can still find yourself behind bars in 2012 in the United Kingdom for owning a work of literature, however disreputable.

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12/06/2012 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 

"Give them the respect they deserve."

There really doesn't seem to be any great need to make lengthy comment on the trial of Anders Breivik. One of the great myths that crime writers and films have promoted is that serial killers are interesting, when the reality is that the vast majority of them are not. They tend to lead boring lives and have banal thoughts precisely because if they didn't they'd be caught much sooner: look at Dennis Nilsen, one of the most dull of his breed, who may well have escaped justice if he hadn't run out of places to store the bodies of his victims. There is the odd exception, like a Ted Bundy (and he's more intriguing than interesting), but they are very few and far between.

In these stakes Breivik could well be the dismal of them all. Anyone who writes a 1,800 page "manifesto" (if you can call an unreadable document largely made up of newspaper articles and blog posts quoted verbatim, as researched on Wikipedia a manifesto) as a justification for mass murder is instantly trying far too hard. At least the Unabomber had something vaguely original to say, even if it was nonsensical; with Breivik it's just the views of dozens of other like-minded individuals reproduced parrot fashion. Yes, we quickly realised that you're not much of a fan of multiculturalism, and that you blame cultural Marxists for its spread. What we're really interested in is why you decided you had to act, when all those other blowhards just continue to fulminate online at the how the West is committing cultural suicide.

An answer to which we simply aren't going to get. What we will get, as the week has so far shown, are those other traits associated with serial killers: sick-inducing narcissism, as when he claimed his actions were "the most sophisticated and spectacular political attack committed in Europe since the second world war"; the most pathetic self-pity, as when he cried upon viewing his own propaganda; and impenetrable delusions, like his insistence that his ridiculous Knights Templar organisation exists, and that it tried to "distance oneself sufficiently from national socialism because it was quite blood-stained". Just ever so slightly rich when his manifesto imagined a Europe-wide civil war where those he considered to be truly traitorous would be executed.

As much as the trial was supposedly meant to provide some sort of explanation to the Norwegian people, all Breivik has done so far is repeat his deeply unimpressive thoughts as released on the day. Writing last year, Simon Baron-Cohen stated that even if Breivik was a psychopath, that didn't begin to provide a reason for how his lack of affective empathy had led him to launch his lone act of terrorism. If the true point of the hearing is to establish whether Breivik is mentally ill or not, then there seems little reason for allowing him to turn the trial into a platform for spreading his own personal ideology when that can be achieved just as well behind closed doors. Indeed, the only reason for allowing him to attempt to justify his actions when other defendants would swiftly be silenced for being in contempt of court is that only the most maladjusted could possibly find anything admirable in his meanderings. Unfortunately, those are often the quiet, boring individuals that we still know so relatively little about.

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4/18/2012 05:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 

The past scratching of backs.

The one major thing that has to be kept in mind about today's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Abu Hamza and five others, including Babar Ahmad, can be deported to the US is that, in part, this is about previous governments on both sides of the Atlantic scratching each others backs. Our fanatical, hook-handed friend had become tabloid shorthand for how, despite everything, the government was failing to keep the public safe. It didn't matter if Hamza's actual links to terrorism were relatively minor, or his supposed powers of indoctrination were much exaggerated, he was the symbol of what was soon to be known as Londonistan. When Hamza was first detained under the 2003 Extradition Act in May 2004, it looked as though he was going to escape charges here, the Crown Prosecution Service having twice decided evidence against him was insufficient. It was only a couple of months later that finally they decided there was enough to proceed with a trial.

In any case, the charges of soliciting to murder and inciting racial hatred were not going to result in a sentence that would keep Hamza off the streets long enough to appease the papers that were demanding his deportation. The Americans stepping into the breach was therefore incredibly helpful. It also followed the pattern of the time, where the authorities massively preferred just getting rid of extremist clerics, such as the on-going attempts to deport Abu Qatada, as well the declaration that Omar Bakri Muhammad's presence was not conducive to the public good, rather than going through the frightful process of proving that they had actually committed criminal offences.

Whether Babar Ahmad was directly involved in the discussions around the extradition of Hamza or not we don't know. While it's clear that we ourselves were interested in him, as it takes quite a lot for MI5 to install a bug in your house, it also rather puts charges in doubt when the arresting officers are accused of brutality, allegations that the Met paid out over but which the officers themselves were subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing over, the jury uninformed of the damages. In any event, the CPS again decided there was insufficient evidence against Ahmad, and the US once again came to the rescue. While the charges against Hamza are fairly detailed, they're flimsy at best against Ahmad, especially on whether or not any offence was committed in the US at all; Azzam.com was hosted in the US, but this was when law over jurisdiction on the internet was still developing, while the other charge of Ahmad having a disc in his possession with the movement times of the US fifth fleet through the Strait of Hormuz is laughably thin.

There's also a double standard an inch thick running through the indictment over Azzam.com. It's all well and good for the likes of Evan Kohlmann to describe it as one of the most important jihadist propaganda sites, and crucial for the building of consciousness over the insurgencies in Chechnya and Bosnia, which it was, but it's also the case that without it there now wouldn't be as many of these private security companies and experts like Kohlmann to pontificate on how dangerous those running them are or were. Ahmad doesn't deny that he himself fought in Bosnia, and was supportive of the other insurgencies going on prior to 9/11; the real issue should be whether what he was doing was a crime in this country at the time. The CPS decided there wasn't enough to put before a jury.

All this said, the ECHR was never going to block extraditions to the US, barring all five of those challenging being subject to the same treatment as say, Bradley Manning was. However ghastly the super-max prisons are, and the ECHR in its ruling seems more inclined to believe the authorities than the critics, there wasn't much chance the conditions were going to amount to inhuman or degrading treatment. The ECHR have though quite rightly adjourned their decision on Haroon Rashid Aswat until they've had further assurances on the treatment those with mental health problems receive, as Aswat is currently being held at Broadmoor. Much as you can't begrudge Ahmad going down every avenue, Hamza on the other hook won't be held at a super max as they can't deal with the fact he's an amputee, which rather brings the ECHR into disrepute. Lawyers: the ECHR needs as much help as it can get at the moment, so please don't do the work of the tabloids and Tory backbenchers for them. Thanks in advance.

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4/10/2012 05:07:00 pm | | | links to this post

Friday, September 30, 2011 

Glenn Greenwald on the extrajudicial execution of Anwar al-Awlaki.


What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

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9/30/2011 06:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 03, 2011 

The depressing adventures of Melanie Phillips, pt 95.

As Sunny is learning the hard way, getting into a fight with Melanie Phillips might be many things, but funny or enlightening it is certainly not. The best way to understand just where she comes without going through her entire oeuvre is almost certainly to read Jackie Ashley's wonderful interview with her shortly after the publication of her book Londonistan, an interview Ashley had not even written up before Phillips was emailing Alan Rusbridger complaining about how she was about to be misrepresented and "the possible inflammatory consequences" if she was. Remarkably similar to how anyone suggesting that she has "blood on her hands" will have blood on theirs if anything happens to her.

The first and most important thing to note is that Phillips doesn't do irony, doesn't do humour, doesn't do understatement. As Ashley writes, while other columnists, especially on the tabloids don't always believe what they say and then feel they have to keep going rather than back down (Richard Littlejohn, git though he is, probably falls into this category), Phillips really, and I mean really believes every single word she puts down. Her way of responding to criticism, of any sort, but especially that which suggests she's going over-the-top, is to scream and scream about being smeared, about debate being shut down and about how totalitarians of both stripes used to describe dissidents as paranoid, delusional, or worse locked them up under the pretence of madness.

What makes this all the more surprising is that she personally has no compunction about using highly similar terminology to describe both those she opposes and the world as she sees it. Hence her first response to those pointing out she was among those quoted in Anders Breivik's manifesto was titled "a wider pathology". Her latest piece on Sunny accuses him of a "weird obsession". As Aaronovitch Watch details, to her Western society has not just become morally decayed, it has lost its mind and with it the will to survive. Her latest book is called "The World Turned Upside Down", and again, it's a title without the slightest hint of irony.

The fact is that Phillips is in a bind. She could almost certainly be more of an influence or aspire to a slightly more salubrious location than the Daily Mail, having apparently been kicked off the Spectator's website for having a cavalier approach to facts, if she toned down her rhetoric slightly. Despite the leftist, dhimmi BBC being kind enough to keep hosting her on Question Time (where she mostly does indeed manage to come across as reasonable, meaning she can do it if she wants to) and the Moral Maze, the very reason why she found herself among those being quoted by Breivik at length is that regardless of the very real concerns she has raised, she does it in such a way that it means she can only be fully embraced by the hard right in America and the similar outliers we have in Europe. Yet because she so deeply believes every word she types, her blood and soul poured into it regardless of the topic, she is denied a position that could so easily be hers. This only leads her further down the same, relatively friendless path.

Despite insisting to Ashley that she does constantly ask herself whether she's wrong, the apparent lack of self-doubt combined with the absence of any humour is what makes her writing so chilling, so apocalyptic, and also so dead. Arguing with her then is all but pointless; responding to it with mockery or parody though certainly isn't. I can then only sign off with this from the latest Private Eye:

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8/03/2011 10:07:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, August 01, 2011 

One rule for them...

Melanie Phillips has written another piece (this might be the only time I ever use a istyosty link) in response to her being included in Anders Breivik's 1,500 page manifesto. It's the usual Phillips attack as defence strategy, and also as usual exaggerates criticism into something much worse, with Sunny Hundal's "singling" her out among other notable writers a "smear".

Sunny himself deals well with most of it, such as how she argues we don't how know far Breivik's political views motivated his massacre, only somewhat undermined by how he uploaded the manifesto just before he went out to commit his atrocity, but there are a couple of parts which are worth a further degree of examination:

But in Breivik’s 1,500-page diatribe, I was mentioned precisely twice. The first time was a quote from an article in this newspaper about family breakdown.

The second was another article about the revelation by a former civil servant that the previous Labour government had kept the public in the dark about a covert policy of mass immigration.

What Phillips omits to mention is that Breivik later refers back to this second piece in the supposedly "hypothetical" part of the manifesto detailing what Knights Templar warriors should do to avoid detection and who they should target. Breivik describes the Mail's reporting and Phillips' article on Neather's comment piece in the Evening Standard as

add[ing] to the documentation which proves that a relatively large multiculturalist network on all levels of European politics: political activists, journalists, politicians, NGO leaders - locally, nationally and on EU level have a deliberate plan to destroy European cohesion, identity, our culture by implementing multiculturalist doctrines and allowing mass Muslim immigration (page 806).

He goes on to conclude:

The common factor between all variations of multiculturalists is that they all believe they are doing the right thing, so they all have good intentions, at least according to themselves. But this can also be said about Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. They were all idealists in their own twisted way. Regardless of their twisted intentions they are all mass murderers and must be treated as such.

It doesn't matter that there was of course no plot or plan to impose multiculturalism or use immigration as a weapon against the right, as Neather himself later said, criticising the Mail and the likes of Phillips for claiming this was the proof of Labour's nefarious intentions; it was however just the sort of "evidence" Breivik was looking for to confirm his prejudices. This puts his use of Phillips' arguments clearly above the dozens of other writers he liberally quoted from or mentioned, not necessarily always with approval. This is still not causation, obviously: Phillips was no more responsible for Breivik's actions than anyone else; it's not however anything approaching a smear to point this out.

As with any number of Phillips articles, she then concludes by contradicting much of what she's just wrote:

The claim that ‘blood is on my hands’ can so easily translate into someone seeking my own blood. Heaven forbid that should happen — but if it did, there would be a direct causal link with those who have whipped up this wicked firestorm.

So, err, even though the link between Breivik's words and his actions hasn't been substantiated, if someone was to now kill Phillips there would be a "direct casual link" between the murderer and those suggesting she ought to at least re-examine some of her writing. It seems then that while there will never be any link between extreme right-wing political thought on Islam and multiculturalism and violence in pursuit of the goals of that movement, anyone who has even so much as criticised Phillips should feel responsible if someone mugs her tomorrow. One rule for them and another for me doesn't even begin to cover it.

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8/01/2011 09:42:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 

Anders Breivik: a fascist?

(This is the reply I've posted to Unity's excellent Breivik and fascism - a lesson from George Orwell. As it's long enough and I'm feeling slightly lazy I'm reposting it here, with a few slight additions and tweaks, as well as links and citations.)

Much as I agree with the vast majority of this, I think the main problem with accurately labelling Breivik is that as yet we haven't come up with a convincing catch-all term for the new far right which on the surface eschews racism but which underneath is just as virulent in its hatred of those with brown skin as the fascists and neo-Nazis we're all familiar with. Scratch beneath Breivik's anti-racist façade and you find the same old tropes, i.e. as in the way he exclusively blames "Muslims" for the crime in Oslo (page 1392 of his "manifesto"), just as the EDL and those associated with it have banged on about "Muslims" being in control of the drug trade in various cities, as if religion has anything whatsoever to do with it.

This is why I think he personally has more in common with Tim McVeigh than any previous European terror group or individual. McVeigh was a fan of the Turner Diaries and a known racist, but he was further radicalised by the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges. Coupled with the then highly en vogue "new world order" conspiracy theories, he decided to strike back against the US federal government.

Breivik instead found his inspiration mainly from the hysterical far-right, convinced that pure Muslim demographics mean that Europe is doomed. He combined this with the utterly bizarre conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt school of Marxist social theorists have somehow managed to influence politicians of both mainstream right and left into imposing state multiculturalism and political correctness onto their people without their consent. Into the mix also came the "anti-jihadist" bloggers and other assorted right-wing figures, both American and European, Pam Geller and Geert Wilders (page 1407) to name but two, all of whom he came to believe were simply not going to achieve anything through democratic politics, so convinced of the control the "cultural Marxists" have over everything. Only he, or rather his almost certainly imaginary group, can start off the war by killing not Muslims, although he includes them in his list of "prioritised targets" (page 921), but instead hitting the multiculturalists themselves. In this he shares the "awakening" belief of many other terrorists before him, that through one spectacular act he can both raise awareness among those of like minds that they can personally do something, and also hopefully provoke the authorities into so overreacting that they make things worse, the same trap the West walked into after 9/11.

While I won't demure from the fact that his dream Europe would be a very old-fashioned totalitarian place, with the media controlled and patriarchy mandated (heh), he also proposes the on the surface completely incongruous idea of "liberal zones" (page 1168), where those who wish to live "Sex and the City" lifestyles can do so, as long as they are cut off "ideologically" from the rest of society to avoid "cultural contamination". Not many fascists would be willing to offer an apparent safe haven from their policies, especially when so many would obviously consider things to be far more pleasant there.

Apart from being a mess of contradictions then, he's a fascist of the very latest school, albeit one who unlike the EDL has fully pseudo-intellectualised his actions and gone from viewing all Muslims as being bent on world domination, even if indirectly, to killing those he believes are enabling them. The wags over at Blood and Treasure suggested, with tongue firmly in cheek, that he could be viewed as the military wing of Melanie Phillips. In my view, he's best compartmentalised as a 21st century European white nationalist, who while others talked decided to act, by murdering the "friends" of his enemies. And with that, we perhaps ought to stop considering the ravings of a lone lunatic, however much insight he might give into current far-right thinking.

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7/27/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, July 25, 2011 

Anders Breivik and "cultural Marxism".

When it comes to terrible, immediately unattributable terrorist attacks like the ones in Oslo on Friday, the best approach would be to take a step back before jumping to conclusions. The impossibility of doing so in the era of 24-hour-news, Twatter and everything else means that criticising those who are (mostly) being asked to do so knowing only what everyone else does, i.e. very little, isn't always entirely productive, even if Charlie Brooker does it very well.

It's certainly rather more justified when those who are in a hole then refuse to stop digging. Strangely, those associated with the Labour Uncut website seem more affected than most. Dan Hodges writes that this tragedy shouldn't be turned into a simple issue of solidarity, even after he admits it was a "targeted attack", while Tom Harris, having first pointed the finger at al-Qaida or its associates as so many others did, compounds the error. The left should not imagine that because this particular terrorist is white and indeed, killed teenage left-wingers, it absolves them from failing to acknowledge or adequately condemn jihadists.

Hodges does have a point however when he raises the comparison of Gabrielle Giffords and Jared Lee Loughner, if not with the implication that "the left" was blaming Sarah Palin and Tea Party before he'd even been charged. It was Giffords herself who said there were potential consequences to Palin putting her location in a gun sight, and it was certainly the case the political rhetoric in the US was raising to ever more ridiculous and potentially dangerous heights, even if the reaction now seems a little overblown. Loughner as it turned out did not have any associations with right-wing Republicans like Palin and Michele Bachmann or their supporters, to name but two: instead, the best explanation so far for his actions is that he was a mentally ill young man with conspiratorial tendencies, who having felt slighted by Giffords in the past decided to target her.

Anders Breivik by contrast couldn't really have been more clear in setting out the justification, such as it is, for his actions. His 1,500 page manifesto, which quotes liberally from dozens of writers, has an entire, supposedly hypothetical section titled "a declaration of pre-emptive war" (page 766 onwards). In it, his group, named hysterically the Knights Templar, which seems to consist of one Anders Breivik, offers a full pardon to the "Western European multiculturalist regimes" as long as they capitulate by 2020 to the Templar's military forces (page 785). Presuming that this pardon is quite unreasonably not accepted, he goes on to explain that all multiculturalists, whether they are "hardcore Marxist, cultural Marxist, suicidal humanist, career cynicist or [...] capitalist globalist" are essentially the same, and that the punishment for such high treason is also the same (page 806), although further on he only mentions execution as the penalty for "category A and B criminals" (page 930), while "category C traitors" can be considered legitimate targets "in larger operations where WMDs are involved". He also elucidates what the prime targets should be for a "Justiciar Knight Commander" (page 921):

Concentrate on massive and compact buildings that are vulnerable to a “single source” blast/assault. We must ensure that a maximum number of category A, B and C traitors are hit with a minimum of civilians. Specified targets fit that profile:

Prioritised targets:
- MA100 political parties - cultural Marxist/multiculturalist political parties. Prioritised targets include HQs or annual meetings of MA100 political parties

Breivik's influences for his personal ideology are writ large throughout. He most admires "Fjordman", the pseudonymous blogger who's written for a number of far-right sites, and cites numerous anti-jihadist blogs, such as Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, Atlas Shrugs and others. Those looking closer to home will quickly see parallels between Breivik's belief in what is essentially a conspiracy between mainstream political parties to institute political correctness, or what he calls "cultural Marxism", leading to mass Muslim immigration and eventually the disintegration of democracy and the triumph of Eurabia, and the world view of groups such as the English Defence League, with which he's alleged to have dealings with, although they've never begun to aspire to his lofty pseudo-intellectual heights. Melanie Phillips, who has long despaired of the "suicide of the West", having found herself being quoted by Breivik has quickly pointed to his scattergun approach. As her blog seems to have collapsed under the weight of the traffic her defence piece brought in, all we can currently go by is her tweet, which says the "atrocity ignites left pathology".

One story which Breivik returns to throughout his manifesto (first appears on page 365) is this comment piece by Andrew Neather, seized on by the likes of the Daily Mail and Telegraph as the "proof" of a plot by Labour to recreate Britain as a fully multicultural society, where the party would forever remain in power backed by the votes of grateful immigrants. The only problem was, as Neather later responded, there was no plot and the minister he wrote the speech for was later removed from her position. Breivik not only quotes from Phillips' comment piece which more than misrepresents Neather (page 368), he uses Neather's supposed revelation as part of his explanation as to why "political activists, journalists, politicians, NGO leaders" should be treated as "traitors" (page 806) and ultimately, executed.

As much as Breivik has appropriated or indeed, admires al-Qaida's approach, as Will McCants and Spencer Ackerman have both noted, it's fairly apparent he has most in common with Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, although even Ted, who wrote a 35,000 word essay detailing his belief system, would have blanched at the excessive detail and personal information Breivik has left in his far longer tome. McVeigh, whom Breivik refers to on a number of occasions (page 950, 967) including once in his diary on the making of the bomb, exclaiming he now understands "why Mr. McVeigh limited his manufacturing to 600kg" (page 1466), was a believer in the now almost passe conspiracy theory of the "new world order" and was so angered by the heavy-handed raids on Ruby Ridge and Waco that he decided to strike back. Breivik doesn't even have a government "atrocity" to fall back on: his simple belief that Europe will be overrun by Muslims down to a mixture of demographics, immigration and "cultural Marxism", as easily debunked as any notion of a Zionist occupied government, was fuelled by paranoid hatred from far-right bloggers and nominally mainstream writers who make a living out of such alarmism.

The Heresiarch delicately considers whether, seeing as such individuals have long denounced non-violent Islamists and even ordinary Muslims for either enabling or tolerating the jihadists, it's possible that they've done the same with Breivik:

To some extent, Melanie Phillips and the others are now getting a taste of their own medicine. They have been far too quick in the past to elide the distinction between Islamist opinions and violence, and also between Muslims in general and Islamists in particular. The spread of hardline Islam is largely a phenomenon within Muslim communities, and poses the greatest problem to other Muslims (female Muslims, gay Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims...). If "Islamophobic" writers are now being tarred with the same brush as the appalling Breivik... well, perhaps it will give them pause for thought.

Well, it might. It will almost certainly temporarily lead to some soul-searching, such as that of Mark Humphrys, who goes through Breivik's writing looking for where their opinions went their separate ways, although he seems erroneously to conclude that Breivik suddenly decided upon violence last year, when it's apparent that his manifesto by his own admission has been years in the writing. At best it could lead a toning down of the rhetoric. On the other hand, it may well embolden some: already the EDL, while denouncing the attack has suggested that it shows what could happen in this country if their petty thuggery and attempts at riling up Muslims aren't given more political attention (surely if their case for a crackdown on Muslim extremists and Sharia law isn't addressed? Ed.)

Far more plausible though, and regardless of how Breivik's ideology was nurtured and encouraged, is that he's a one-off. So much of his manifesto appears to be utter fantasy, such as the sections dedicated to the medals and ribbons of his Knights Templar organisation (page 1075) (members likely to be one, despite his claim as to there being two other cells), not to the mention the sexual proclivities of his friends and relatives (page 1171), or his time as the biggest hip-hopper in west Oslo (page 1388) that it suggests someone, despite the intelligence necessary to produce such a document, that is simply not in full touch with reality. Others would have failed or given up at various stages in the planning process. It was a mixture of pure luck and Norway being unprepared for such an assault that led to his success. While some should be at the least examining their consciences, the rest of us can be fairly secure in knowing that there are most certainly not others waiting to launch further attacks on the "cultural Marxists".

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7/25/2011 09:09:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, June 07, 2011 

Radicalisation and the ideologues.

It's Tuesday, which means it must be time for another government review to publish its findings. Having yesterday demonstrated muddled thinking and a complete unwillingness to confront the real fundamental problem when it comes to the supposed commercialisation and sexualisation of children, so today we have a report on the Prevent strategy of countering radicalisation which demonstrates muddled thinking as well as an apparent determination to potentially make things much worse.

For this we have the prime minister to principally thank. Where Tony Blair once told the country that the rules of the game were changing, and the prospect of 90 days detention without charge followed shortly after, David Cameron back in February in Munich of all places informed the nation that the time had come for a muscular espousal of our values. In what was meant to be a speech on terrorism he decided the time was right to pronounce on both integration and the failure of "state multiculturalism", when even if the issues are hardly mutually exclusive he had not even begun to exercise the proper level of caution before making sweeping statements of fact. His key new point was that no longer would the government tolerate organisations which hold "extremist" points of view being either funded by the state (which they weren't in the first place) or consider them as useful in combating extremism. Why, you wouldn't expect a fascist political party to help in steering followers away from a violent white supremacist grouping. Why should it be the same when it comes to groups with an adherence to Islamism?

Two months in to a consultation exercise then and the findings of the review had already been set out. As well as being heavily influenced by the personal biases of Michael Gove, he of such remainders as Celsius 7/7, along with Policy Exchange, they of such fine reports as the one which was undermined somewhat by the forging of receipts from mosque bookshops, it also draws heavily from the work of the Quilliam Foundation, the counter-extremism think-tank which is err, mainly funded out of the Prevent budget, and has, err, Michael Gove on its non-executive advisory board. Having started out promisingly, the think-tank has since settled on a course of annoying almost every other Muslim organisation it's come into any sort of contact with, and last year singled out a good number of them as being the kind the government should have little or nothing to do with, among them the Muslim Safety Forum, a grouping which has been praised for its work with the police in helping to understand the concerns of the community.

Not that this closeness has stopped Quilliam from today being highly critical of the end result. The criticism is also rather rich, and more than a little self-contradictory: having previously set out in a secret document which Muslim organisations had extremist leanings, it now finds that Prevent's definition of what Islamism is is flawed. To quote from their press release (PDF):

The Prevent strategy’s definition of Islamism as ‘a philosophy which, in the broadest sense, promotes the application of Islamic values to modern government’ shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Islamism and why it is problematic. This current definition downplays the negative aspects of Islamism and ignores the fact that most non-Islamist Muslims also believe in combining Islamic values and modern government. The Prevent strategy’s definition therefore risks smearing ordinary, non-Islamist Muslims as Islamists and thus falsely identifying them as being part of the problem while also implying that Islamism is one of the aspirations of every Muslim.

Yes, smearing ordinary, non-Islamist Muslims as Islamists is something Quilliam would never do, would it? The point however is a sound one, even it comes from those with plenty of baggage. For however much we want to espouse and define ourselves by our values, it's those very values that those at risk of radicalisation and turning to terrorism are either unmoved by or are actively opposed to: the best hope of turning them away from such a path isn't to imply that the entirety of Islamic-influenced political thinking is reactionary and opposed to Western values, especially when much of it isn't, but for such ideology to be recognised as perfectly legitimate. This is exactly why Cameron's analogy of not relying on fascists to be part of the solution to violent white nationalism is so fatuous: those inclined towards Islamism are not going to be suddenly converted to the joys of Western democracy as it stands overnight. Moreover, if we regard the likes of Hizb-ut-Tahrir or the remnants of al-Muhajiroun to be stepping stones towards full on radicalisation in the takfirist jihadist mould, shouldn't we also consider that Islamist groupings opposed to violence but not able to pass the new "extremism" test are viable steps on the road to recovery?

Quilliam is also, notably, critical of the new definition of "extremism" as laid out in the new Prevent strategy, this time for the reason that it isn't tight enough to contain all the awful Islamist groups:

For instance, the definition’s description of extremism as being opposition to ‘democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual tolerance’ is far too open to interpretation. For instance this overlooks that both far-right and Islamist extremists are authoritarians who want more ‘rule of law’ rather than less.

This is besides the fact that governments themselves often have a rather hazy concept of the rule of law and individual liberty. The last one certainly did, whether it was ordering the end of an investigation into corruption or deciding that the threat to the country post-9/11 was so massive that it meant foreign nationals could be detained indefinitely without charge.

It is that threat after all that this entire document is meant to be about thwarting. Just how serious is the threat, though? There hasn't been a major terrorist plot in this country prevented now since the "liquid bombs" ring was broken up, and to tempt fate, there's no sign of one on the horizon. Yes, the threat remains at severe as we are endlessly informed, yet for the most part the last few years have seen the rise of the "lone wolf" attackers, operating alone or with minimal if any contact with the base organisations overseas. Just how these individuals can be prevented from becoming so disillusioned with society that they feel impelled to attack it is almost impossible to prescribe, and this document doesn't really even begin to provide any answers. Yes, some vulnerable individuals have been identified through the Channel programme, along with dozens of others it's reasonable to surmise who had nothing other than temporary interest in the subject of jihadism. Much depends then on the groups the strategy seems intent on all but proscribing at worst and dismissing at best.

This isn't to suggest that all of the changes to the strategy are bad: belatedly it's been decided that it will cover not just Islamist extremism but also what it terms as "Northern Ireland-related terrorism", as well as extreme right-wing ideology, although it massively plays the latter down, something that seems curious when it's the radicals of the English Defence League that currently pose the biggest threat to community cohesion. It's also discarded the previous combination of work on integration along with tackling radicalisation, something that David Cameron could have learned from. So much else though is either counter-productive or worrying: the document applauds the "No Platform" stance of the National Union of Students, something that continues to shut down debate, while urging universities to keep closer tabs on their charges, even if it doesn't say so in as many words. The section on the internet also appears to suggest that the Internet Watch Foundation's role in blocking "extremist" content will be stepped up, as if its completely unaccountable work wasn't already raising more than legitimate concerns.

Counter-terrorism policy is far too important to be left to ideologues, as we saw under the last government. Instead what works has to be prioritised, however much that potentially offends our political sensibilities. For all the nonsense spoken today about "extremist" organisations being funded out of the public purse, the review itself fails to name a single one which was, only saying that groups it would now define as "extremist" had previously picked up public funds. It might well have been some of those small organisations that helped those on the path to outright radicalisation to step back and reconsider; after all, there were no successful attacks over the period it was in operation. We'll have to wait and see if that remains the case in the years to come.

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Thursday, May 05, 2011 

Scum-watch: A sting in the tail.

There's a piece in the Sun today touchingly described as a "sting" on the Yemen-based associate of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula Anwar al-Awlaki. It's a strange sting, not only because there is no evidence whatsoever that Anwar al-Awlaki was involved with it, despite the Sun's claims, but also because it imagines the paper's own readers are stupid enough to confuse the group with Awlaki.

As the Sun's "chief investigative reporter" Simon Hughes explains:

FIRST, we obtained an email address for Awlaki's Yemen-based "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" network hidden in material on an extremist website.

THEN our investigator, posing as a UK-based fanatic named "Q. Khan," sent an email addressed personally to Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki. FINALLY, we received a reply from the terror chief - convinced he was in contact with the leader of a British cell eager to obey his commands.





I too have managed to obtain the email address the Sun used, cunningly hidden as it was on the penultimate page of the latest edition of Inspire magazine, a periodical published by the propaganda wing of AQAP, al-Malahem media. While the magazine does indeed print two articles by Awlaki, along with translations of communiques from other al-Qaida high-ups, the magazine itself claims to be edited by someone called Yahya Ibrahim; others have said the magazine's actual editor is Samir Khan, a former blogger who moved to Yemen a few years back, and who also contributes a comment piece.

Is it then even slightly realistic to imagine that by emailing an address in a jihadi publication you're likely to be straight in touch with someone as senior as al-Awlaki? Hardly. While Awlaki previously managed to maintain a blog, this was shut down shortly after the Fort Hood shootings. More recently, a judge in Yemen has called for him to be captured dead or alive, and Barack Obama has also authorised his targeted killing. As was shown with the death of bin Laden at the weekend, when you're in such a position, having direct contact to the internet or even a phone line is potential suicide. jihadica.com has also been sceptical about the magazine's actual links to AQAP, even though it claims to be produced by their media arm.

It's possible that those the Sun did contact may have asked al-Awlaki as to his response to their "sting", but if they did then they hardly make this clear: they simply signed their message as "your brothers at al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula". Their advice also was hardly specific, apart from how they should conduct their operation, and as they say, they shouldn't really contact them again as it might well result in their plot coming to the attention of the authorities. This isn't to play down the fact that the Sun has at least got in contact with someone connected with the Inspire magazine and that they've suggested what their next step could be in launching an attack: that's still a serious thing. That though isn't a good enough story, or worth clearing the front page for; it had to be al-Awlaki himself, even when it's instantly apparent they almost certainly weren't talking to him.

And just in case you have your doubts, who should pop up at the end of the article than a former acquittance of ours:

Tory MP Patrick Mercer said of our probe: "I have no doubt the Home Office will want to investigate how simple it is to get in touch with Awlaki and his people.

"He is a leading contender to fill the power vacuum left by Osama Bin Laden."


Yes, that would be the same Patrick Mercer who previously contributed to such investigative triumphs in the Sun as the "TERROR TARGET SUGAR" masterpiece, and also told the paper that the Taliban were making "HIV bombs". The ISAF response when asked about these deadly devices was "no reports, no intel, nothing". Sums up the Sun and Mercer's critical faculties fairly well.

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Monday, May 02, 2011 

The American way of death.

(Yep, this is long.)

When they finally came for him, you'd imagine it was exactly as Osama himself would have expected and feared. Two helicopter gunships suddenly swooping in, one of which swiftly crashed, continuing the image of marines as being capable of both great moments of farce and swift acts of terrifying retribution, delivering between 20 and 25 Navy Seals into what proved to a short battle. Without confirmation of how many were in the compound and whether bin Laden had much more defence than a few bodyguards and members of his own family, forty minutes seems about right for what was an operation which would have planned for little overall resistance. Most of that time was probably spent breaching the buildings themselves; if otherwise, those defending bin Laden must have held their own for at least a few minutes against overwhelming odds.

As the news came through last night that Obama was to make an unexpected announcement so late in the evening, my initial thought was it would be to tell the world that the other current thorn in the side of the West, Colonel Gaddafi, had been killed. Certainly, that bin Laden's life was ended in such close proximity to the missile strike in Tripoli that that killed Gaddafi's second-youngest son and some of his grandchildren is no mere coincidence. Instead, it's the ultimate expression of American geopolitical power, something that even Israel with its permissive attitude towards the assassination of those that threaten her can't match: the willingness to kill foreign leaders or terrorists without even the merest nod to international law, or extended justification as to why other means could not have been taken first.

For it's clear that just as the mission on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad was to kill rather than even attempt to capture, so was the strike in Libya designed to cut off the head of the Gaddafi regime. What the US decides to do about bin Laden on their own is up to them and their consciences, and for the rest of us to muse about; killing children, even those with the misfortune to be born into the Gaddafi clan under the dubious terms of a UN resolution which calls for a ceasefire is something quite different. It's worth noting that this came after a new call for just that had come from the Libyan government, immediately rejected by the rebels and the NATO alliance without so much as a glance at the details. For now, small reversals in fortune have once again emboldened the opposition, while that members of Gaddafi's clan have been killed suggests there may well be an intelligence leak from within his inner circle. Stalemate nonetheless still looks the most likely outcome.

Passing judgement both on the operation to kill bin Laden and on the notable, if small-scale celebrations which followed last night in Washington and New York is doubly difficult when sitting across the ocean from where the 9/11 attacks took place. This country may well have faced down the IRA and dealt with the 7/7 bombings, yet we can't properly understand just what feelings the events of that day stirred up and which are still playing out now. As such, as distasteful as it seemed for someone's death to be celebrated in such a way as it was outside the White House, even someone with as much blood on their hands as bin Laden, you can't really condemn it and are instead left to tolerate such a reaction.

Indeed, if there's anyone to blame for the manner in which bin Laden was to be "brought to justice", which we'll come to, then it's the Bush administration. While Obama became president promising to kill the al-Qaida leader, he was pushed into such a position by his predecessors and their policy on "enemy combatants". With Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most senior al-Qaida operative in US custody unlikely to face any sort of trial in the near future, trying to take bin Laden alive should it even have been achievable would have left the US with an unsolvable conundrum as to what to do with him. It seems almost certain that he too would have been left to rot in Guantanamo, indefinitely held with little prospect of judicial proceedings. Virtually no one in the States has criticised Obama for killing rather than attempting to seize bin Laden, with those on the right predictably congratulating the president for "pulling the trigger" rather than bringing him back alive.

Obama, it should be said, has mainly struck exactly the right tone. Getting the balance right between triumphalism, which it would have so easy to slip into, without underplaying just how significant bin Laden's death would be to those with relatives who lost their lives on 9/11 and so many others affected by the wars that followed was going to be difficult. If anything, he managed it better today than last night. While no one can claim with a straight face that this isn't a victory, even if a very belated one, there was still something troubling about how the violent death of one man was presented by Obama as a "testament to the greatness of our country" and how it was a reminder that "America can do whatever we set our mind to". From the outside, it looks like the opposite: that the greatest and most powerful superpower to have ever bestrode the planet took almost ten years to find one man and then blow his brains out looks like weakness, of a hollowness at its very centre.

Similarly, quite how the killing of bin Laden is synonymous with bringing him to justice, as opposed to being an act of vengeance, something which politicians on both sides of the US divide have said has happened, is difficult to see. Even taking into account the difficulties there would have been with trying him had he been captured alive, his death and quick disposal at sea is the sort of operation which leaves behind a bitter taste. Justice following both wars and crimes against humanity has been variable, it must be said, yet it will always be preferable to the bullet to the head. More than this, bin Laden simply didn't deserve to go down in what will be so easily be presented by jihadists as heroic circumstances. Along with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's spiritual leader, bin Laden barely took part in any actual fighting, save for a disastrous battle after the Russians had already left Afghanistan. It was the hundreds, if not thousands of others who were inspired by him who were willing to take part in the "martyrdom operations" that made his brand of takfirist jihadism so virulent and feared. Like with KSM, he wanted to die a shaheed without being prepared to practice what he preached, and he's been given his wish.

This was all part of the bin Laden myth, relentlessly stoked and mined by al-Qaida's exceptional propaganda. His image was honed until he was the equivalent of an Islamist Che Guevara, and those dedicated to the jihadist cause looked to bin Laden not just for guidance but saw him and his messages as being close to unquestionable. This was all the more remarkable for the fact that he had no religious training whatsoever, yet he issued fatwas and took on the title of sheikh regardless. His relative absence which has increased over the last few years dulled nothing of the respect in which he was held, and repeatedly underlined just how much of a second in command al-Zawahiri was, even as he answered questions posed to him on the jihadist forums in official releases from as-Sahab. The only real rival he had was the even more brutal Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, whom was given the "franchise" in the country despite the differences over tactics between the groups.

All the same, and as others have pointed out, al-Qaida's influence has been waning ever since the Islamic State of Iraq's back was broken by the awakening groups in the country, and there have been no major attacks in the West linked to the original base, as opposed to the "franchises" set up in its image for a number of years. This isn't to diminish bin Laden's ultimate success: he knew there was never any possibility that his tiny group on its own could defeat America. His plan was instead to draw a response from the West through attacks like 9/11, which he believed would ultimately result in Muslims across the Middle East rising up against their rulers through their complicity with attacks on the Ummah. He got his first wish, as the continuing war in Afghanistan demonstrates; what didn't happen is any great rallying to the jihadist cause. Rather than fighting for the caliphate, the battles being waged by the Taliban and other Islamic groups are nationalist rather than internationalist. Moreover, the nascent Arab spring and the revolution in Egypt especially have shown as never before that rather than wanting the medieval, fundamentalist vision of society which al-Qaida wishes to impose, the vast majority favour democracy, even if it eventually takes on a distinct Islamist-influenced flavour.

Osama bin Laden's death is then a major setback for al-Qaida, if not for jihadism itself. His ultimate legacy could well be the inspiring of a second generation of even more brutal ideologues, ready to carry on the mantle of spectacular attacks against soft targets. For now, his closest successor is likely to be Anwar al-Awlaki, the spiritual leader of al-Qaida in Yemen, already linked to multiple attacks. The first phase in what will almost certainly be a long conflict against the ideology of takfirist jihadism may now be over, but there are many others already fighting just waiting for the opportunity to carry on what al-Qaida and bin Laden began.

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5/02/2011 08:50:00 pm | | | links to this post

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