Editor’s Introduction Vol.:(0123456789) Critical Criminology (2019) 27:515–520 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09481-5 1 3 Editor’s Introduction Avi Brisman1,2,3 Published online: 14 November 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 “[T]errorism is one of the major and troublesome issues of our times, an evil which affronts and challenges the very spirit of freedom.” By itself, this assertion might be difficult to attribute to its author or, for that matter, to date. By itself, this claim might seem as apropos at the end of 2019 as in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. Here is a bit more from the same speaker and occasion: [A]s the world shrinks still further with the advances of technology and the growth of travel, it follows that the global village becomes more and more a reality. And with the advance of technology our livelihood is ever more at risk…. We can no longer safely enjoy a degree of isolation and ignore global economic, social and political differences and inequities elsewhere, because they provide causes for which a terrorist is willing to die. We can no longer think in terms of boundaries, but rather in terms of contrasting philosophies. It is a daunting thought that even the most ostensibly inconsequential act of commercial or governmental decision-making can unwittingly draw the attention of terrorists. We must accept that anyone can be a victim, accept the wrong executive position, book with the wrong airline, attend an ill-fated reception, be beside the wrong vacant car or be in the wrong street at the wrong time. [emphasis in the original]. While the content of this longer statement might reveal little as to its origins, the lan- guage employed to make this point about the potential targets of terrorism and the impor- tance of preparedness seems somewhat archaic. After all, we seem to be living more in an age of grandiloquence than one of grand eloquence—although even that observation is somewhat dated in that Haberman (2004), more than 15 years ago, lamented the impover- ishment of the English language and the “absence of memorable words” to accompany the unveiling of the memorial in New York City to commemorate the attacks of September 11, 2001. * Avi Brisman avi.brisman@eku.edu; avi.brisman@newcastle.edu.au 1 School of Justice Studies, College of Justice and Safety, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY, USA 2 School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia 3 Newcastle Law School, Faculty of Business and Law, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10612-019-09481-5&domain=pdf 516 A. Brisman 1 3 To end the suspense: The initial declaration and the ensuing proclamation were made almost 40 years ago, by Sir Colin Woods, an English police officer in the London Metropolitan Police and later the first Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, in a paper delivered to the 43rd Ple- nary Scientific Session of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences, held in Sydney. In what would seem hauntingly prescient, Woods (1979:70) warned that “[p]opulation mobil- ity [would] continue to be an added hazard” that could complicate or frustrate the detection of terrorist infiltration. His solution? “We hope that society will look in the first instance to its principal guardians, policemen and women, for protection from acts of terrorism,” Woods (1979:71) proposed, although he did seem to recognize the “need to be extremely cautious that we are not, in time, unwit- tingly transformed into a paramilitary organization, at least in the eyes of the public.” One wonders how Woods, who died in January of 2001, might have responded to the recent critiques of the militarization of the police (e.g., Linnemann and Medley 2019; Wall 2013). Woods conclusion was that terrorism was “a phenomenon which will not go away,” but he expressed concern that “we… not over-react to terrorism, which would only serve to abet the terrorist by endangering the very democratic conventions that the terrorist wishes to tear down” (1979:74). How prophetic! For terrorism has, indeed, not gone away. How unfortunate! For our reactions and responses to terrorism (those of the United States (US), in particular) have often resulted in more deaths than terrorist acts themselves, and our policies and strategies have continually undermined the very conventions and institutions that serve as a founda- tion for liberal democracy. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that concern about terrorism simply con- tinued, as Woods suggested it should (although “vigilance” and “preparedness” might be better words)—that it transformed into fear and panic after September 11, 2001 (in US), after October 12, 2002 (in Indonesia),1 after March 11, 2004 (in Spain),2 after July 7, 2005 (in England),3 and so on—and that such anxiety and alarm have subsided only by virtue of the passage of time. As Daniel Benjamin, Norman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, mused in an article written on the seventeenth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001 (and updated in April 2019), “[o]f all the unexpected developments of Donald Trump’s presidency, surely one of the more unlikely ones has been the slow but steady ebbing of the nation’s profound, at times almost boundless, fixation on the threat of terrorism.” Benjamin (2018/2019), who served as Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Coun- terterrorism at the US Department of State from 2009 to 2012, expressed surprise at this development because, as he explained, over the 17 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, jihadist extremism—the subject of one of the articles in this issue (Larsen and Jensen 2019)—“has come to dominate America’s threat landscape like nothing else since Soviet Russia did during the Cold War. What’s more, as poll after poll has shown, terrorism has 1 On this date, more than 200 people were killed and a similar number injured in bombings on the island of Bali. 2 On this date, more than 200 people were killed and over 2000 people were injured in train bombings in Madrid. 3 On this date, more than 50 people and roughly 800 people were injured by suicide bombers that attacked the London Underground and a double-decker bus. 517Editor’s Introduction 1 3 been far and away the only foreign policy issue Americans care deeply about and the prism through which their sense of national security is defined.” Benjamin (2018/2019) explained that Trump’s scandals (re)focused public attention on questions of campaign collusion with Russia, trade wars, the dramatic comings-and-goings of White House personnel, such that “today only a small fraction of terrorism stories make the front page of the dailies com- pared to only a few years ago.” This lull in attention to terrorism, Benjamin suggested, raises two questions. Is dimin- ishing concern regarding terrorism a positive development? And, if so, how long is it likely to last? With respect to the first, Benjamin (2018/2019) submitted, the answer is yes: “U.S. pub- lic opinion had become a runaway train on the issue of terrorism, to the detriment of our broader interests.” With respect to the second, Benjamin (2018/2019) reminded readers, “terrorist groups thrive in conflict zones” and the continuing chaos and horror in Yemen— the subject of another article in this issue (Ruggiero 2019)—“is a perfect setting for al- Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to grow its forces.” Moreover, Benjamin (2018/2019) continued, jihadism will remain a potent force in the coming years, if not decades, and he offered several reasons in support of this argument: With few exceptions, especially among the oil monarchies, the Middle East and such Muslim majority countries as Pakistan, remain in poor, sometimes disastrous shape. Economic stagnation is endemic, with job creation a shadow of what it should be. Most people in the region lack real political voice or representative institutions. In the West, especially in Europe, integration of Muslim minority communities is une- ven at best, leaving many frustrated at their limited prospects. These big structural facts aren’t going to change quickly. That said, Benjamin (2018/2019) was quick to caution, it is worth recognizing [that] America is well protected by excellent border controls, capable law enforcement and remarkable intelligence and military capabilities— as the targeting of [the al-Qaeda bombmaker, Ibrahim al-Asiri] underscores. With barely more than 100 people killed in the United States by jihadist operatives since 9/11, the record is a strong one that argues for taking this moment to revise our col- lective thinking about the terrorist threat. That is, the time has come to absorb the notion that jihadist terrorism is a fact of the contemporary world, that can be man- aged but not eradicated and that we have developed excellent though not perfect tools for that task. That understanding… is the precondition for avoiding the kind of overreaction that helped lead us into Iraq and crated near hysteria in 2014 when ISIS appeared on the scene. [emphasis added]. So there we have it. Two commentators, 40 years apart, making more or less the same claims and suggestions: (1) terrorism is a fact of life and “it won’t go away” (although the combatants may change and the ideological reasons for undertaking it may differ); and (2) we should attempt to avoid overreacting and instead adopt more composed and measured responses that take into account the realities of terrorist threats in the contemporary world. The articles in this issue all engage with issues of terrorism or responses thereto. While not a special issue—the articles were not commissioned by me (they were submit- ted through regular channels independently of each other)—I have placed them together because they speak to common concerns and, as such will hopefully attract more readers. Although none of the articles suggests that terrorism has become “a fact of the contem- porary world,” the first three of the articles—those by Haner, Benson and Cullen (2019), 518 A. Brisman 1 3 Larsen and Jensen (2019), and McCulloch, Walklate, Maher, Fitz-Gibbon and McGowan (2019)—endeavor to understand the reasons for—as well as parameters and meanings of— jihadism, terrorism and violence. The second group of three articles—those by Mulinari (2019), Norris (2019) and Kaufman and Niner (2019)—consider how states have attempted to prevent terrorism, as well as the ways in which such mechanisms and strategies have impacted the lives of citizens (most of whom are members of minority groups). The final article—by Ruggiero (2019)—contemplates the situation in Yemen which, as noted above, may prove to be the perfect setting for augmentation and bolstering of al-Qaeda forces. The first article, “Code of the Terrorists: The PKK and the Social Construction of Vio- lence, by Murat Haner, Michael L. Benson and Francis T. Cullen (2019), challenges the construction of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a terrorist organization that uses violence indiscriminately to target and murder innocent civilians. Drawing on interviews conducted with a former longtime member of the PKK, Haner and his co-authors argue that this perspective of the PKK’s use of violence is misleading. Rather than being indis- criminate, the authors contend, violence by the PKK is purposeful, restrained, employed primarily in response to Turkish oppression, and governed by a code the regulates (1) legit- imate and forbidden targets; (2) rules of engagement; (3) treatment of enemy captives and detainees; and (4) conduct in regard to private property and protected places. Recognizing that the PKK is governed by a code has important policy implications, Haner, Benson and Cullen submit. The authors maintain that the prospects of resolving the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds remain dim so long as the PKK is portrayed as a terrorist organiza- tion, and that viewing the PKK as a political organization might help settle the conflict at the negotiating table rather than through violence. In the second article, “Jihadism from a Cultural Perspective,” Jeppe Fuglsang Larsen and Sune Qvotrup Jensen (2019) undertake to synthesize subcultural theory with recent accounts of intersectionality in order to explore jihadism as a collective and cultural response to shared experiences of marginalization and othering. Arguing for the relevance of a subcultural approach to the study of jihadi subculture and illustrating the potential of that approach through an empirical analysis of jihadi rap, Larsen and Jensen demonstrate how the idea of subcultures as a collective reaction to a shared situation can help us com- prehend the mechanisms behind the emergence of jihadi subculture among Muslim popu- lations in the West, especially among young Muslim men. In the third article, “Lone Wolf Terrorism Through a Gendered Lens: Men Turning Vio- lent or Violent Men Behaving Violently,” Jude McCulloch, Sandra Walklate, JaneMaree Maher, Kate Fitz-Gibbon and Jasmine McGowan (2019) critique the criminological litera- ture on lone wolf terrorism for its lack of gendered analysis and apply a gendered lens in order to illuminate the different ways which masculinity and violence against or hostility toward women are located in relation to the violence of lone wolf terrorists. Presenting an Australian case study of a lone wolf terrorist with a documented history of violence against women, McCulloch and her co-authors consider how authorities assessed this history and the impact this had on the approach employed by the police to respond to the threat he presented. The authors conclude by arguing that the implications of failing to treat violence against women as real violence are significant for national security. The fourth, fifth and sixth articles consider not the etiology and meanings of jihadism, terrorism and violence, but the ways in which states have responded to real and perceived terrorist threats, as well as the consequences for individuals affected by such measures. The fourth article, “The Spectrum of Repression: Swedish Muslims’ Experiences of Anti-terrorism Measures,” by Leandro Schclarek Mulinari (2019), examines Swedish Mus- lims’ experiences of being targeted by authorities in an effort to prevent terrorism. Weaving 519Editor’s Introduction 1 3 together various Marxist and political perspectives in order to comprehend how repression occurs within society, Mulinari makes the case for “repressive consent”—a concept that he develops and employs to make sense of situations in which people are influenced to undertake activities against their will. Mulinari focuses on experiences of disproportion- ate security controls and encounters with the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) to reveal painful and habitual consequences for some, but not all, of those who become targets in the War on Terror. In “Explaining the Emergence of Entrapment in Post-9/11 Terrorism Investigations” (2019), the fifth article in this issue, Jesse J. Norris draws on in-depth interviews and docu- mentary research to identify the key factors shaping the widespread emergence of entrap- ment in post-9/11 terrorism sting operations in the US. Norris argues that an interconnected set of discursive justifications and policy shifts, institutional incentives and processes, and cognitive biases explain the post-9/11 proliferation of terrorism prosecutions accompanied by compelling claims of entrapment. Norris proposes that neo-orientalism—the view of Muslims, and particularly Arabs, as inherently violent, irrational and fanatical—may be the ultimate driver that has set into motion and enabled many of these mechanisms, creating a cultural and political economy of convictions in which racialized police misconduct is normalized and rewarded. “Muslim Victimization in the Contemporary US: Clarifying the Racialization Thesis” (2019), the sixth article in this issue, by Sarah Beth Kaufman and Hanna Niner, draws on in-depth, qualitative interviews with Muslim and non-Muslim Americans in 2016 to specify how Muslim “racialization” is shaped by the racial politics of the US. Anti-Muslim bias is not experienced by religious Muslims as a whole, Kaufman and Niner explain, but by people whose bodies are read to be affiliated with the Islamic religion—often errone- ously—because of their perceived racial characteristics. Thus, while self-identified black, white, and Hispanic Muslims with no visible markers of their religion do not experience anti-Muslim harassment, non-Muslim Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs who embody an imag- ined “Muslim look,” must cope with fear and aggression from strangers on a daily basis. According to Kaufman and Niner, racialized religion is mutable in that Muslims and non- Muslims are active in constructing how Islam is read on their bodies in public. Moreo- ver, Kaufman and Niner find that hate crime categorization in the US obscures the role that racism plays in religious victimization. Accordingly, the authors encourage scholars who study anti-Muslim acts to include non-Muslims in their analyses, and to advocate for the re-conceptualization of identity-based hate crime categories. Excavating the corpore- ality of criminal victimization, Kaufman and Niner propose, can illuminate the ways in which biases are experienced in the contemporary US—a stark reminder of the necessity of heading Benjamin’s plea to revise our collective thinking about what constitutes (terror- ist) threats. This issue concludes with the seventh article, “Yemen: Civil War or Transnational Crime” (2019), by Vincenzo Ruggiero. In this piece, Ruggiero (2019) defines “civil war” as “a conflict which erupts within a national territory where a faction aims to violently replace an established authority or secede from it.” With this backdrop, Ruggiero assesses how the features of the conflict in Yemen lend themselves to this definition, beginning with a summary of recent events in the country and region. Focusing on the arms markets and transfers that accompanied and still foster the conflict, Ruggiero contends that Yemen is not just a theater of internal conflict but also of one transnational criminal activity. This discussion, however, is not merely definitional or academic. Ruggiero submits that concep- tualizing the conflict in Yemen as a form of transnational crime demonstrates that the fight- ing is not just between groups and organizations with different ideologies, but by a variety 520 A. Brisman 1 3 of actors pursuing diverse goals. “Different identities and interests are involved in acts of violence,” Ruggiero (2019) concludes, acts that “straddle the divide between the individual and the collective, political ideology and private gain.” On the surface, Ruggiero’s article might seem like an outlier in this issue. But as Rug- giero explains, the US government undertook arms sales (as far back as the late 1960s and carrying forward to the current administration) that were deemed crucial for the stability of the region, the fight against international terrorism, and as a counterbalance to the power of Iran. The long duration of this conflict, Ruggiero proposes, can be explicated, in part, by the existence of a prosperous arms market in which combatants and civilians alike partici- pate. In other words, sometimes it is the disproportionate and misguided response to terror- ism (real or imagined) that causes greater harm than terrorist acts themselves—a unifying theme running through all seven articles in Volume 27, Issue 3. References Benjamin, D. (2018/2019). 17  years after 9/11, Americans don’t care about terrorism anymore. Politico. September 11, 2018 [updated April 19, 2019]. Available at: https ://www.polit ico.eu/artic le/911-terro rism-17-years -after -nobod y-cares -anymo re/. Retrieved November 1, 2019. Haberman, C. (2004). NYC; Reflections on an absence of eloquence. The New York Times. January 16: B1. Available at: https ://www.nytim es.com/2004/01/16/nyreg ion/nyc-refle ction s-on-an-absen ce-of-eloqu ence.html. Retrieved November 11, 2019. Haner, M., Benson, M. L., & Cullen, F. T. (2019). Code of the terrorists: The PKK and the social construc- tion of violence. Critical Criminology: An International Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019- 09449 -5. Kaufman, S. B., & Niner, H. (2019). Muslim victimization in the contemporary US: Clarifying the raciali- zation thesis. Critical Criminology: An International Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-018- 09428 -2. Larsen, J. F., & Jensen, S. Q. (2019). Jihadism from a cultural perspective. Critical Criminology: An Inter- national Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019-09470 -8. Linnemann, T., & Medley, C. (2019). Black sites, “dark sides”: War power, police power, and the violence of the (un)known. Crime Media Culture, 15(2), 341–358. McCulloch, J., Walklate, S., Maher, J., Fitz-Gibbon, K., & McGowan, J. (2019). Lone Wolf terrorism through a gendered lens: Men turning violent or violent men behaving violently? Critical Criminol- ogy: An International Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019-09457 -5. Mulinari, L. S. (2019). The spectrum of repression: Swedish Muslims’ experiences of anti-terrorism meas- ures. Critical Criminology: An International Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019-09462 -8. Norris, J. J. (2019). Explaining the emergence of entrapment in Post-9/11 terrorism investigations. Critical Criminology: An International Journal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019-09438 -8. Ruggiero, V. (2019). Yemen: Civil war or transnational crime. Critical Criminology: An International Jour- nal. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1061 2-019-09472 -6. Wall, T. (2013). Unmanning the police manhunt: Vertical security as pacification. Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, 9(2), 32–56. Woods, C. (1979). Problems of international terrorism. Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences, 12(2–3), 67–74. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. https://www.politico.eu/article/911-terrorism-17-years-after-nobody-cares-anymore/ https://www.politico.eu/article/911-terrorism-17-years-after-nobody-cares-anymore/ https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/16/nyregion/nyc-reflections-on-an-absence-of-eloquence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/16/nyregion/nyc-reflections-on-an-absence-of-eloquence.html https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09449-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09449-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-09428-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-018-09428-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09470-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09457-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09462-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09438-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09472-6 Editor’s Introduction References