Do We Know Terrorism When We See It? (U.G. Essay)

Thomas Felix Creighton

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PEACE STUDIES - YEAR TWO - UNDERGRADUATE (BA)

International Terrorism Assignment: Essay

PE0711D

This document is an essay with the set title: Identify and evaluate the major shortcomings in Laqueur’s statement on terrorism that ‘we know it when we see it’


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Identify and evaluate the major shortcomings in Laqueur’s statement on terrorism that

‘We know it when we see it’

This essay will examine how individuals, groups and societies evaluate ‘terrorism’ in order to

consider if Laqueur (2009:1) was accurate to insist that “most of those who have studied terrorism

and are reasonably free from bias will agree much of the time in their judgment of an action”. There

are several subsequent questions to ask such as: who should we define as ‘we’? This could include

individuals, groups or societies. A second question is; what do we actually ‘know’ about ‘it’ -

terrorism? This essay section will examine the theories of social constructionists and touch on both

psychological and sociological theories, as well as sketching the evolution of ‘terrorism’ over time.

The third section addresses the ‘when’; terrorism can be easy to identify in retrospect but rarely

contemporarily. Fourthly, do we actually ‘see’ terrorism? To watch explosions on television or

Youtube must surely be a different experience to seeing the attacks firsthand, so does this merely

give us the illusion of ‘seeing terrorism’? Is this in any way useful? Finally; with over one hundred

definitions of terrorism, is it true that ‘terrorists’ are simply ‘freedom fighters’ by another name?

Whose freedom was being fought for on 9/11 and 7/7?

We might hope that on issues of major contention we make our decisions through rational

consideration of empirical evidence. However, researchers at Stanford University questioned this in

an experiment to assess the role of individual bias when assessing factual information. When their

subjects were presented with mixed or inconclusive evidence on an emotive issue - does the death

penalty act as a deterrent to murder? - the experimenters found a marked tendency for people to

notice and/or recall material that strengthened their pre-existing opinions and to ignore or question

evidence contrary to their views. (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979:1): “Thus, the result of exposing

contending factions in a social dispute to an identical body of relevant empirical evidence may be

not a narrowing of disagreement but rather an increase in polarization”. This has since been

confirmed in subsequent studies which have found that we may overestimate the value and/or

volume of information that confirms our biases because it is “more easily noticed, more easily

brought to mind, and more easily retrieved from memory” (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 2005:590).

This is relevant to the study of terrorism since, if empirical evidence can lead to polarization, non-

empirical evidence seems even less likely to lead to a consensus: Silke (2002) has criticized how little

new writings on terrorism actually comprise of new research compared to literature on comparable

subjects, such as criminology. He observed an excessive “reliance on open-source documents...

researchers were not producing substantively new data or knowledge”. Schmid & Jongman (1988)

had also found this to be the case many years previously. Difficulties of conducting first-hand

research in this area are obvious, yet many writers do not even study ‘terrorists’ own public

statements, instead relying on government sources or media reports (Silke, 2002). The former has an

inevitable bias, whilst the latter has issues examined below. So, not only do individuals frequently

fail to make rational judgements based on evidence, but in the case of terrorism, the ‘evidence’ itself

can often be deeply flawed.

A better known psychological experiment conducted at Stanford was the prison experiments which

demonstrated how quickly individuals could identify with a group - prisoners or guards - and de-

humanize the opposing group (Zimbardo, 2003). The phenomenon of ‘groupthink’ has also been

illustrated through study of the Bay of Pigs affair, explaining how “bright, shrewd men like John F.


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Kennedy and his advisers... [were] taken in by the CIA’s stupid, patchwork plan” (Janis, 1972:iii). In

both these instances, unusually homogenous groups were under pressure to make swift decisions

and once they had agreed among themselves, proved remarkably resistant as a group to ideas

emanating from outside the group. Indeed “Bobby Kennedy (US Attorney General at the time)

described how he had become a self-appointed “mind guard” to the group, threatening outsiders

holding opposing opinions and accusing them of disloyalty to the President” (West, 2004:119). A far-

reaching review of the decision making processes ultimately led to better, more hard-headed

decision making during the subsequent Cuban missile crisis (Janis, 1972). So, whilst individuals can

suffer confirmation bias, groups of individuals may suffer similar difficulties to an even greater

extreme. Indeed, this has been highlighted by Horgan (2003) as a distinct problem within terrorist

organisations, which are closed groups by necessity. This might conceivably be a danger for those

tasked with countering a terrorist threat.

Given that societies are constructed of groups of individuals, can society at large suffer from

‘groupthink’? One symptom of the latter is to “develop stereotyped images that de-humanize out-

groups” (Janis, 1972:6). This is something that societies are certainly not immune to; indeed, it is

very common in conflict situations (Somasundaram, 2009). Maiese (2003:1) stated that in conflicts,

“the actions of distrusted parties are seen as threatening, even when their actions are ambiguous...

when an adversary makes some conciliatory actions, this conduct is likely to go unnoticed, or to be

discounted as deceptive” so, once a negative stereotype has been established by either group, a

proccess of ‘selective perception’ takes place which is difficult to alter. Perhaps this is one reason

why “governments and security services are extremely quick to try to label their enemies as

terrorists” (Silke, 2003:34). “Like many of the most durable prejudices, the stereotype of the

terrorist as a psychopathic monster has survived a lot of academic attempts to dilute it” (Townshed,

2002:20). However, does labelling a group as ‘terrorists’ represent the beginning or the end of this

de-humanizing process?

Societies choose who to call ‘terrorisms’, who usually describe themselves by a variety of other

terms (Whittaker, 2007). The demarcation between ‘we’ and ‘they’ is an important one; terrorists

who target civilians, seeking to install fear in others, set themselves apart from society by their

actions. Often they will already come from an ethnic or religious ‘out-group’ such as in the

Israeli/Palestinian conflict or in Northern Ireland: Sometimes, however, their personal backgrounds

are entirely comparable to their targets such as the Baader-Meinhof gang or Red Army Faction and

the Weather Underground (Silke, 2002). Gunaratna (2009), stated that members of a ‘terrorist

organisation’ generally see their close knit group as being quite separate from society, in a fashion

not dissimilar to religious cults. Equally similar to members of a cult, ‘terrorists’ tend to believe

profoundly in a ‘higher truth’ that others seem frustratingly unable or unwilling to see (Whittaker,

2007). There have been ‘pure terror cults’ such as Aum Shinrikyo, the Symbionese Liberation Army,

and the Jewish group Gush Emunim, which were determined on mass destruction, not for the sake

of temporal political goals but for the sake of their somewhat unusual religious beliefs (Townshed,

2002): However, such groups have been the overall exception with other better known ‘religious

terrorists’ such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda basing the majority of their demands strictly in

the temporal realm (Richardson, 2007).

The societal concept that is, perhaps, closest to ‘groupthink’ and ‘selective bias’ may be ‘cultural

relativism’. The essential claim is that there are no universal values or beliefs in politics, rather


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societies construct unique ideologies that work for their own unique circumstances (Tomlinson,

2002). This was primarily designed as a counter to the ascendancy of human rights, with the claim

that traditional ‘Asian values’ rendered democracy inappropriate to the region (Rothkopf, 1997);

such a view has become less popular, with Amartya Sen (2001:248) claiming such “dubious history

does nothing to vindicate dubious politics”. Yet the most widely quoted adage on terrorism is ‘one

man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ which stresses that “where you stand depends on

where you sit” (Martin, 2003:9). It has been further claimed that many such violent movements

represent a ‘groundswell’ of anger and resentment against global inequalities, and that ‘terrorists’

often have substantial understanding, if not support, from oppressed peoples (Rogers, 2010).

However, terrorism can also exist with very little popular support (Aust, 1987). Both Laqueur (2001)

and Whittaker (2007) observe that terrorism is primarily found within democratic states, where

there is less reason but far more opportunity to commit terror offenses. This observation is heavily

dependent on perceiving sub-state terrorism as distinct and different from state oppression.

The majority of what we ‘know’ about the wider world is a result of second-hand knowledge

received through the press (Lippmann, 1949). The issues of how individuals evaluate facts has been

highlighted above, as was the reliance on media reports: we select second-hand information which

has already been through a selection process. “No one elects journalists to their public role and yet

they make decisions on behalf of society as to who gets to speak, when they speak, and how the

messenger or message is framed” (Cooke, 2003:89). Schaefer (2003) suggested that the reporting of

terror attacks were mainly influenced by the nature of the events themselves, although the

subsequent political discourse was influenced by local cultures. Cooke (2003) observing longer

running conflicts, argued that reporters can sometimes reflect the public’s pre-existing distaste for

certain groups; journalists are as susceptible to ‘selective biases’ as anyone else and if these remain

unchecked, may re-enforce the society’s prejudices. The media prioritise stories and elements within

stories according to how closely the readers will feel connected to them; hence the Western media

focuses mainly on terror attacks against Western targets (Schaefer, 2003). This may explain why

there is a commonly perceived connection between Islam and the tactic of suicide bombing, despite

the fact that there have been more suicide bombings committed by Hindus in the past twenty years

than by members of all other religious groups put together (Silke, 2003). There is also a danger that

by simply ‘reporting the facts’ journalists may focus on the most violent aspects of a conflict, over-

exposing the more polemic actors and underplaying peaceful movements that may have far more

substantial support (Lynch & McGoldrick, 2005).

None of us are ‘culture neutral’; this is central to ‘social constructionism’ which stress the

importance of the society into which we were born in determining our opinions, values and ideas.

These theories are normally advanced by psychologists claiming that “as a culture or society we

construct our own versions of reality between us” (Burr, 2003:6): it is further claimed that the

language(s) people speak can help shape their thoughts and ideas. So, if the English language did not

have the word ‘terrorist’, would we need to invent it to describe certain actions or would we

describe these actions in other terms? When we refer to ‘bombings’, ‘shootings’ and ‘killings’, these

terms are easily understood and easily defined. So why do we attempt to link - potentially unrelated

- activities and encompass them within the term ‘terrorism’? Whittaker (2007:9) argued that the

difference is; “the terrorist is essentially an altruist: he believes that he is serving a “good” cause...

The criminal, by comparison, serves no cause at all, just his own personal aggrandizement”.


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The concept of groups committing what A.P Schmid termed “the peacetime equivalent of war

crimes” (Siegel, 2009:328) in a ‘good’ cause has sometimes led to the assumption that terrorists

must be ‘crazy fanatics’: However, “most academic studies point to the view that terrorists are

generally remarkable for their sheer ordinariness” (Townshed, 2002:20). This fact may remain

somewhat unpopular outside a small group of experts since “the despair in recognising that terrorist

psychology is just like that of everyone else is the realisation that in the wrong circumstances most

people could either come to support a terrorist group or possibly even consider joining one” (Silke,

2003:51). Most people regard ‘terrorists’ in a different way to criminals, who might even have

committed the same physical acts, and most academics do not study ‘terrorists’ in the same way as

criminals (Silke, 2002). This would seem to support the social constructionists claim that the use of

language can be “a form of action” (Burr, 2003:8). Yet this only truly applies if one accepts the claim

that ‘terrorism’ is a constructed reality and not a description of reality. Many ‘terrorists’ - including

Osama Bin Laden and Shamil Basayev - claim to be ‘freedom fighters’ but they are fighting for

“political freedom rather than conceding to others the right of freedom from fear, or freedom from

random violence” (Richardson, 2007:9); this is an abstract concept in conflict with a tangable reality:

Galtung’s (1971) concept of ‘structual violence’ may be an important one, but so is the right to life,

and a world of other freedoms (Naussbaum & Sen, 1993). “The world that we have to deal with

politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined”

(Lippmann, 1949:29); this may be true for the majority, but ‘terrorists’ live a life almost entirely

dedicated to a political ideology and a political group, only in some cases supplemented by religion

(Townshed, 2002).

Three ways of thinking about ideology are as “false consciousness... knowledge deployed in the

service of power... [or] ‘lived experience’” (Burr, 2003:84&85): The first, a Marxist perspective,

stresses the unifying power of an ideology for an otherwise diverse group of individuals. The second

stresses the link between ideology and its tangible results, whilst the final definition focuses on how

ideology is initially constructed. Those ‘terrorists’ that have been interviewed have often described

the unifying emotional bond shared among those who are part of an outlawed organisation; this

camaraderie is often aggrandized by including non-members who sympathise with their ideology

(Horgan, 2003). Additionally, ‘terrorists’ are often motivated by outrage at the existing power

structures; certainly the leadership, if not the ‘foot soldiers’, tend to have an extensive critique of

their societies (Laqueur, 2001). Many only become interested in the ideology after they or someone

close to them is directly affected by existing power structures (Richardson, 2007): Something

‘terrorists’ chosen ideologues generally lack is a detailed and viable alternative to the status quo -

Marx gave very little description of his utopia, and the same is true of Sayyid Qutb. The goal of a

‘return’ to an Islamic Caliphate is as essentially ambiguous as ‘workers of the world unite’. This

stands in contrast to the successful Civil Rights movement in the US - Martin Luther King’s speech

gives a very tangible vision of a future society, though it was very far removed from American society

at the time (Hodgson, 1998).

In the modern day, terrorism is a pejorative term but in the nineteenth century there were

anarchists who openly described themselves as ‘terrorists’ (Laqueur, 2001). Even in the mid

twentieth century Irgun stated openly that terrorism was an essential tactic to achieve an

independent state of Israel; the British Army was initially reluctant to describe them as ‘terrorists’ in

case it implied British soldiers were frightened of them. (Townshed, 2002). Over time, however,

those who commit violent crimes for political causes have distanced themselves from the term


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(Martin, 2003) and political authorities have become quicker to label their opponents ‘terrorists’

(Silke, 2003). This may be because the nature of terrorism has changed from being quite limited in

its targets, to an increasingly random use of violence normally directed against civilians (Rapoport,

2002). This is, perhaps, a result of the emergence of the bureaucratic state whereupon “the death of

a single individual, even a monarch, did not necessarily produce the policy change they sought”

(Whittaker, 2007:18). Instead, groups now target the civilian population, sometimes claiming that all

who pay taxes are legitimate targets as it is this money that finances the ‘oppressors’ (Richardson,

2007). In 1907, a Russian anarchist asked rhetorically “would it make any difference which bourgeois

one throws the bomb at?” (Townshend, 2002:60). This has a certain similarity towards Osama Bin

Laden’s claim that all kafir [non-believers] are legitimate targets - but Al-Qaeda has been consistent

in carrying out such a philosophy, whereas the Russian Anarchists showed in reality considerable

restraint (Laqueur, 2001).

“One of the tragic ironies of non-state terrorism is that outrages are committed to gain attention

and/or a hearing. Yet the very fact that such a language of blood is used tends to preclude a

dialogue” (Schmid & Jongman, 1988:23). Whilst all forms of violent conflict are in some sense

political (Clausewitz, 2008), terrorism has a tendency to be more political still in its character; “war is

ultimately coercive, terrorism is impressive” (Townshed, 2002:15). Religiously motivated terrorism

might be an exception to this, however, Al-Qaeda has a long list of political aims including: the

removal of ‘crusader forces’ from Arab lands, regime change within the Arab world - to Islamic

government not popular rule - and the diminution of the state of Israel, if not its complete

destruction (Rogers, 2010). In any political struggle, the mass media is of increasing importance and

‘terrorists’ often have strong propaganda campaigns that can sometimes compensate for

weaknesses in other areas (Wilkinson, 1997). A starting point for most ‘terrorists’ is to reject the

label entirely (Whittaker, 2007).

According to the editorial policy of the BBC (2011:1), “the word "terrorist" itself can be a barrier

rather than an aid to understanding”. Yet surely the 7/7 bombings - not to mention 9/11 - were

terrorist actions? Al-Qaeda have justified their ‘freedom fighting’ using both political arguments and

a variety of religious and historical texts - which are heavily contended within Islamic scholarship

(Lewis, 2008). Yet “criminals and their victims will seldom agree on the nature of a crime” (Laqueur,

2003:235); so why should we allow such a disagreement to stand in the way of recognising terrorism

as terrorism? One difficulty is that theft, assault and murder can be objectively defined (BBC, 2011).

Among the experts, there is still considerable disagreement over what actually constitutes

‘terrorism’ (Martin, 2003. Silke, 2002. Crenshaw, 1983. Schmid & Jongman, 1988). Society at large,

however, seems far readier to use the term ‘terrorist’; perhaps because one part of the definition of

‘terrorism’ may be the knowing violation of a society’s norms of how disputes, protest and dissent

are governed (Wilkinson, 1997). As such, ‘terrorists’ may only be identified in relation to the society

they seek to coerce.

A common feature of definitions of terrorism is to highlight the intended political effects of the

violence (Schmid & Jongman, 1988). Given that political struggles have a tendency to be context

specific, it should perhaps be quite unsurprising that the nature of political violence has also varied

significantly according to the context (Laqueur, 2001). Rapaport (2002) identified four distinct stages

in the history of terrorism: Anarchist, Anti-Colonial, New Left and Religious. His claim was that these

international trends in motivation determined the essential form of terrorism - though he noted that


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it had very little effect on antiterrorist action. The term ‘antiterrorist’ is used here instead of

‘counter-terrorist’ as the latter term has been used to refer to state, state sponsored and vigilante

terrorism when employed in response to sub-state terror (Crenshaw, 1983). Rapaport only covered

‘rebel terror’ in his writings, which is not particularly unusual in the literature at large (Whittaker,

2007): The greatest forms of ‘terror’ in the twentieth century were state directed. However, there

are differences between the two terrors beyond the state’s claim to a moral monopoly on violence.

Specifically, for states that have employed political violence; “terrorism was no more than one of

several strategies, and usually a subordinate one” (Laqueur, 2001:7). So, sub-state ‘terrorists’ have

tended to be ‘terror simple’, whereas Stalin and Hitler - whilst directing considerable ‘terrors’ against

their own populations - are not best understood by solely examining their ‘terrorist’ credentials.

Separating the two ‘terrors’ is a necessity “if we want to have any analytical clarity” (Richardson,

2007:5). It is difficult to see Al-Qaeda through any other lens than as ‘terrorists’. However,

Hezbollah, by engaging in philanthropic and educational activities as well as engaging in ‘terrorism’,

have emerged as a phenomenon some have described as a ‘state within a state’, and so are

conceivably ‘pseudo-state terrorists’ (International Crisis Group, 2007).

It is common for militaries to study previous wars in order to learn useful lessons for possible future

conflicts. Perhaps this is partially responsible for the common criticism that regular militaries

‘prepare for the previous war’ (Taber, 1970). However, terrorism and antiterrorism have rarely

received the same kind of attention; possibly because terrorism is not specifically a military problem,

a police problem or a political problem, so there is little available institutional memory for policy

successes or failures in this field (Richardson, 2007). This is little disagreement that antiterrorist

policies tend to be unimaginative and inflexible (Laqueur, 1987). Perhaps this is a result of the

tendency to ignore historical lessons? This may be comparable to the extensive - and rapid -

research made by the US Department of the Army into counter-insurgency since the invasion of Iraq.

The USDA (2007) concluded that very few of the most successful counter-insurgency tactics from

history would be acceptable in the modern day, but that there were underlying principles that most

successes had in common and could still be applied today.

Do we ‘see’ terrorism or do we ‘perceive’ it? Whilst the 7/7 bombings may be ‘seen’ by those not

present due to CCTV footage (Brown, 2008), there is surely a world of difference between watching

explosions on television and experiencing a ‘terrorist attack’ for real. We may fear that one day the

terror we see at remove may come too close for comfort but this is only a psychological effect:

Mueller (2006:8) has argued that the likelihood of being killed in a terrorist attack is comparable to

that of “drowning in the bathtub”; and yet vast amounts of money are spent countering a ‘terrorist

threat’ that may be little more perilous than the ‘red threat’ in the nineteen-fifties or ‘Japanese-

American saboteurs’ during the Second World War. One of the main aspects of the - over one

hundred - definitions of ‘terrorism’ examined by Schmid and Jongman (1988) was the secondary

effects of the violence; “kill one to scare a hundred” (Whittaker, 2007:37), and Townshend (2002:15)

stated that terrorism’s “biggest facillitator is collective alarmism”. Yet terrorism sells books,

newspapers and is a popular subject for undergraduates to study - far more so than road safety,

despite the fact that traffic accidents kill far more people in Europe and North America than

terrorism (Richardson, 2007). Just as with the fact that most ‘terrorists’ are not insane, the fact that

terrorism is a very minor danger has not trully entered the popular conciousness. So whilst we might

believe that ‘we know terrorism when we see it’, we might simply be seeing ‘reds under the bed’.


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As this essay has demonstrated, terrorists publically defy the laws and customs of the societies

within which they live, attempting to generate a climate of fear, in order to change their societies. As

such many are clearly recognisable, from Hitler and Stalin to the Weather Underground and the

Baader-Meinhof group: all of them believed that their utopian dreams, often far removed from

reality and sometimes quite incomprehensible to the majority of their own peoples, were more

important than human lives. Over time, sub-state terrorism has become less and less discriminate.

Terrorists attempt to force change through fear and coercion - something that is often recognisable

yet not quantifiable. Herein lies the difficulty; a social science must be based on empirical evidence

yet what can be the primary evidence of fear or the climate of fear? For the field of terrorism, no

such science exists; after four decades of research, experts still remain divided as to what constitutes

terrorism. However, societies do have established norms and moral standards; those who knowingly

and publically flout those standards stand to be condemned by their fellows - especially if they are

demanding that until their particular utopia is realised, others must live in fear of their lives.


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Do We Know Terrorism When We See It? (U.G. Essay)

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