Case Study III: Terrorist Panic

Debney, Ben M.

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-5569-5_7

Ben M. Debney²

295 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter examines terror panic, the third and final of three case studies exploring historical patterns of moral panic and their relationship to scapegoating. It explores terror panic as a concept according to the analytical criteria nominated in the theoretical section of this study, focusing on the self-interested framing of crisis by those responsible for the panic, before exploring the use of moral panic constructed around terrorist conspiracy theory as the basis for crisis leveraging and scapegoating. The case study concludes by examining the underlying economic and social forces driving the construction of terror panic and whose interests it ultimately served. It summarises the material presented in the case study against the analytical criteria in preparation for comparison against the first and second case studies in the conclusion to the study itself.

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Notes

1.
Feitlowitz, Marguerite, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, Oxford University Press, 2011, 24.
2.
Phythian, Mark, ‘“Batting for Britain”: British Arms Sales in the Thatcher Years,’ Crime, Law and Social Change 26, no. 3, 1996: 271–300; Whitby, David, and Mark Phythian, ‘Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine,’ Crime, Law and Social Change 27, no. 1, 1997: 73–84; Norton-Taylor, Richard, and Rob Evans, ‘Margaret Thatcher’s Lobbying of Saudi Royals Over Arms Deal Revealed,’ The Guardian, 16 July 2015, via https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/16/margaret-thatcher-lobbying-saudi-royals-arms-deal, accessed 27 December 2017; Feinstein, Andrew, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, London: Macmillan, 2011.
3.
Wolin, Sheldon, Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Spectre of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, 40; Winkler, Carol, ‘Parallels in Preemptive War Rhetoric: Reagan on Libya; Bush on Iraq,’ Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 2, 2007: 303–334.
4.
Stampnitzky, Lisa, ‘Can Terrorism Be Defined?’ in Stohl, Michael, Richard Burchill, and Scott Howard Englund, eds., Constructions of Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Research and Policy, University of California Press, 2017, 11–20; Stampnitzky, Lisa, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism,’ Cambridge University Press, 2013, 101–103; Smith, Benjamin K. Smith, Scott Englund, Andrea Figueroa-Caballero, Elena Salcido, and Michael Stohl, ‘Framing Terrorism: The Communicative Constitution of the Terrorist Actor,’ in Stohl, Burchill, Englund, Constructions of Terrorism, ibid., 91–107.
5.
Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, ibid., 102.
6.
Brulin, Remi, ‘Compartmentalization, Contexts of Speech and the Israeli Origins of the American Discourse on “Terrorism”,’ Dialectical Anthropology 39, no. 1, 2015: 112–113. For sub-fascism, see Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, South End Press, 1979.
7.
Quoted in Zalloum, Abdulhay Y., Oil Crusades: America Through Arab Eyes, Pluto Press, 2007, 6.
8.
See Part II for more discussion. Curtis, Adam, dir., The Century of the Self, London: BBC, 2005, event at 36:33.
9.
‘The really massive and significant growth of terrorism since World War II has been that carried out by states.’ Herman, Edward S., The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda, Boston: South End Press, 1982, 83; Herman, Edward S., ‘US Sponsorship of International Terrorism: An Overview,’ Crime and Social Justice 27/28 (1987): 1–31; Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins of the American Discourse on “Terrorism,”’ ibid., 75; Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit., 9.
10.
Palmer, Robert Roswell, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of Terror in the French Revolution, Princeton University Press, 2013, 71–72; Jordan, David P., The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre, University of Chicago Press, 1989; Gough, Hugh, The Terror in the French Revolution, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
11.
Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled, ibid., 72.
12.
Gough, The Terror in the French Revolution, op. cit., 54–57.
13.
‘Many left-leaning revolutions in history went through two stages, moderate followed by radical phase. The radical phase, which rejects the earlier moderate phase, will eo ipso contain a counterrevolutionary dimension. To disassociate themselves from their moderate revolutionary precursors, radical revolutionaries frequently resort to amplification typical of moral panics in that they proclaim their goal to be nothing less than the defence of the revolution itself. To accomplish their goals, radical revolutionaries have been willing to use the kinds of extreme methods that have given rise to the expression “the revolution devours its own children.” Radical phases of revolutions, such as the Jacobin Terror, Great Stalinist Terror, and the Cultural Revolution, all rolled back freedoms, violated rights, and repossessed land and other resources attained in the earlier phases of the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions respectively. In doing so, they channelled moral panics in the pursuit at once of radical and counterrevolutionary goals.’ Schafir and Schairer, ‘The War on Terror as Political Moral Panic,’ in Shafir, Gershon, Everard Meade, and William J. Aceves, eds., Lessons and Legacies of The War on Terror: From Moral Panic to Permanent War, London: Routledge, 2013, 15.
14.
‘Freedom Is a Bourgeois Prejudice,’ Aufheben, What Was the USSR? Towards a Theory of the Deformation of Value Under State Capitalism, Edmonton, Alberta: Thoughtcrime Ink, 2011.
15.
‘A petty bourgeois driven to frenzy by the horrors of capitalism is a social phenomenon which, like anarchism, is characteristic of all capitalist countries.’ V.I. Lenin, “Left-wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Sydney: Resistance Books, 1999.
16.
Knight, Amy W., Who Killed Kirov? The Kremlin’s Greatest Mystery, New York: Hill and Wang, 1999; Lenoe, Matthew Edward, The Kirov Murder and Soviet History, Yale University Press, 2010; Oplinger, The Politics of Demonology, op. cit.
17.
An interesting choice of words considering the eminently bourgeois nature of game hunting. Avrich, Paul, Kronstadt 1921, Princeton University Press, 2014; Getzler, Israel, Kronstadt 1917–1921: The Fate of a Soviet Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2002; Brinton, ‘The Bolsheviks & Workers’ Control,’ op. cit.; Volin, The Unknown Revolution, 1917–1921, Montreal: Black Rose Books Ltd., 1975, ‘Part I: Kronstadt (1921).’
18.
Quoted in Brinton, ‘The Bolsheviks & Workers’ Control,’ op. cit., 371.
19.
Oplinger, Jon, Richard Talbot, and Yasin Aktay, ‘Elite Power and the Manufacture of a Moral Panic: The Case of the Dirty War in Argentina,’ in Moral Panics in the Contemporary World, A&C Black, 2013; Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror, op. cit.; Marchak, Patricia, and William Marchak, God’s Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s, McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP, 1999; Wright, Thomas C., State Terrorism in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006; Burbach, Roger, The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global Justice, London and New York: Zed Books, 2003; Lessa, Francesca, and Vincent Druliolle, eds., The Memory of State Terrorism in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, Springer, 2011; Kornbluh, Peter, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, The New Press, 2013.
20.
Chomsky, Noam, Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World, Haymarket Books, 2015, vii.
21.
Chomsky, ibid.
22.
Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 83.
23.
Burchill, Scott, ‘Radical Islam and the West: The Moral Panic Behind the Threat,’ The Conversation, 16 June 2015, via https://theconversation.com/radical-islam-and-the-west-the-moral-panic-behind-the-threat-43113, accessed 26 June 2018.
24.
Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror, op. cit., 27.
25.
Herman, The Real Terror Network, op, cit., Chapter 4, ‘Contemporary Terrorism: The Role of the Mass Media,’ 139–199; Chomsky and Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, op. cit.; Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman, After the Cataclysm: Post-War Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, Black Rose Books, 1979; Chomsky, Noam, Deterring Democracy, London: Verso, 1991; Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors, op. cit.; Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit.; Herman, Edward S., and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror, Pantheon, 1989; Carey, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, op. cit.
26.
A CEO is ‘one person.’ ‘National security for him is, by implication, the security of Property interests; subversion is anything that threatens those interests. This is why he affiliates with and apologizes for right-wing dictatorships like those of Pinochet and Franco, and the apartheid system of South Africa, which create mass insecurity but protect established property interests.’ Herman and O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry, ibid., 112.
27.
Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 47.
28.
‘Until the early 1980s, the term ‘‘terrorism’’ was virtually absent from the political lexicon of American presidents and was used to refer to a very broad range of acts committed by non-state and state actors alike. It is only with the arrival of Ronald Reagan that the concept of ‘‘terrorism’’ came to occupy a central place in the political lexicon of the White House. In that sense, 1981 can be seen as the birth date of the American presidential discourse on ‘‘terrorism.”’ Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ op. cit., 72; Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit., 1–2.
29.
Naftali, Tim, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism, Basic Books, 2009, 24.
30.
Naftali, Blind Spot, ibid.; Coll, Steve, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin, 2004, 138.
31.
The New York Times, 11 September 1972, quoted in Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ op. cit., 78.
32.
New York Times, 7 September 1972, quoted in Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ ibid., 74.
33.
Security Council Official Records, 10 September 1972, S/PV.1662, United Nations, via http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/PV.1662(OR), accessed 10 November 2017.
34.
We return to this subject in Section IIIa. Hoffman, Bruce, Inside Terrorism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, 73, quoted in Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ op. cit., 74, 76.
35.
Thomas, Gordon, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, Macmillan, 2009, 145.
36.
McAlister, Melani, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and US Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000, University of California Press, 2001, 186.
37.
Democratic Party’s Platform, 12 July 1976, quoted in Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ op. cit., 92.
38.
Republican Party’s Platform, 8 August 1976, quoted in Brulin, ibid., 92.
39.
Jimmy Carter, ‘The State of the Union Address Delivered Before a Joint Session of the Congress, 23 January 1980,’ The American Presidency Project, via http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=33079, accessed 21 September 2017.
40.
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Government Printing Office, 2011; Coll, Steve, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin, 2004; Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated, 2006; Burke, Jason, Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam, IB Tauris, 2004; Griffin, David Ray, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004.
41.
The official version of the 9/11 attacks present issues whose only apparent ultimate means of defence are plausible deniability. This seems to depend on subjective willingness to flatter power by defining plausibility in its favour rather than arguments based in evidence, and ad hominem attacks on heretical expressions of doubt. The fact that expressing doubt as though freedom of conscience matters does generate vicious pack wolf behaviour in reaction is telling in and of itself. Not least of the unresolved issues are how not one, but four, hijacked airliners got around the most sophisticated and lavishly-funded air defence system on the planet, and how fires neither hot nor widespread enough to weaken their metal structure caused both towers to collapse (especially in the South Tower where Flight 175 hit to one side, sending a sizeable chunk of the fuel to burn up outside the building as a fireball and leaving the stairwell on the opposite end passable). Ditto the entire issue of WTC 7 which, for an allegedly flimsy case of ‘conspiracy theorising’—one that, in theory, should have been easily torn to shreds—never made it into the official report at all. The official treatment of building fires has not been aided much in more recent times by high profile disasters like Grenfell Tower in West London. The magic bullet here would appear to be absent.
That said, these concerns are also generally immaterial to the main focus of this study, which is how the political crisis created by 9/11 was framed and exploited. The reaction presents issues of much greater import, and unlike issues relying on plausible deniability, provides tangible evidence disproving the case for war. Suffice it to say that the surprisingly salient criticisms Griffin raises are reflected in the 9/11 Commission Report’s conspicuously selective reading of history (see below). Such are broadly on par with a power structure looking to absolve itself and the President, who was aware of specific threats at least a month in advance, of culpability for failing to maintain adequate air and ground safety. The actually-existing 9/11 conspiracy theory was the one that got the Bush administration off the hook, suppressed historical facts failing to fit the thrust to war, supressed the dynamics of moral panic at play and suppressed the existence of the corporate-state nexus (the ‘deep state’) as a situational factor at all. The 9/11 Commission Report, ibid.; Griffin, David Ray, The New Pearl Harbor, ibid. On Bush’s forewarning of the specific scenario that eventuated on 9/11, see Coll, Ghost Wars, op. cit., 562. For other perspectives, see Dunbar, David, and Brad Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2006. For a rejoinder, see Griffin, David Ray, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, Interlink Books, 2007. For more on the state-corporate nexus see Melman, Seymour, The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline, Touchstone, 1985; Melman, Seymour, ‘From Private to State Capitalism: How the Permanent War Economy Transformed the Institutions of American Capitalism: Remarks Upon receiving the Veblen-Commons Award,’ Journal of Economic Issues 31, no. 2, 1997: 311–332; Lofgren, Mike, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, Penguin, 2016; Wolin, Democracy Inc, op. cit.; Scott, Peter Dale, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, University of California Press, 2007; Scott, Peter Dale, Dallas ‘63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House, New York: Open Road Media, 2015. For more on heretical expressions of doubt, see Project Censored, ‘Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story,’ 29 April 2010, https://projectcensored.org/18-physicist-challenges-official-9-11-story/, accessed 1 October 2018.
42.
Kellner, Doug, ‘The Media in and After 9/11,’ International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), Book Review 123–142.
43.
Cable News Network (CNN), ‘9-11-2001 Live Coverage 8:46.32 A.M E.T—5.00 P.M E.T,’ 2001, via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcpzBDTbniE, accessed 29 October 2017.
44.
CNN, ibid.
45.
CNN, ibid.
46.
‘“He did the best that he could,” said Chantal Guerrero, 17, now a student at the Sarasota military academy. “For me, it was right. If he had left straight away and freaked out that would have been the mindset he would have left for America. If he wanted the country to be calm he needed to stay calm.” The Guardian, ‘September 11: Schoolchildren Remember George Bush’s Reaction,’ 4 September 2011, via http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/04/september-11-schoolchildren-george-bush, accessed 31 October 2017.
47.
CNN, op. cit.
48.
Once it has become well enough established that a coordinated terrorist attack is underway, CNN raises a banner on its screen with large bold text reading ‘AMERICA UNDER ATTACK’ in all-caps in front of the stars and stripes; ‘and so it begins.’ CNN, ibid.; Mueller, John E., Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, London: Simon and Schuster, 2006; Jackson, Richard, Writing the War on Terrorism: Language, Politics and Counter-Terrorism, Manchester University Press, 2005.
49.
I travelled to the US for a conference in mid-2017; several of my Lyft drivers were undergraduate students in their early twenties. After telling them about my research topic, we inevitably began talking about the War on Terror. The young driver who took me to LAX as I was leaving, in particular, said she was too young to understand what was going on, but remembered that ‘everyone was really scared.’ Later I was molested by the TSA on the way through customs. Debney, Ben [Ites One], ‘Fuck the TSA (If You’re Molesting People, the Terrorists Have Already Won),’ via https://soundcloud.com/itesone/fuck-the-tsa-if-youre-molesting-people-the-terrorists-have-already-won, accessed 16 February 2018.
50.
Ryan, Michael, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism: US Newspaper Editorials and Military Action in Afghanistan,’ Gazette 66, no. 5, 2004: 378; Rothe, Dawn, and Stephen L. Muzzatti, ‘Enemies Everywhere: Terrorism, Moral Panic, and US Civil Society,’ Critical Criminology 12, no. 3, 2004: 332.
51.
ABC News Online, ‘Newspaper Front Pages from September 12, 2001,’ 5 September 2011, via http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/september-11-remembered/2011-09-05/september-11-newspaper-front-pages/2870784, accessed 14 October 2017. This page also includes newspaper covers in other languages besides English from Tokyo, Miami (in Spanish), Tel Aviv and Beirut.
52.
Newseum, ‘Wednesday, September 12, 2001,’ via http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/?tfp_display=archive-date&tfp_archive_id=091201, accessed 14 October 2017.
53.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ op. cit.
54.
Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, op. cit.; Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit.; Stohl, Burchill, and Englund, Constructions of Terrorism, op. cit.; Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ op. cit.; See also Reese, Stephen D., and Seth C. Lewis, ‘Framing the War on Terror: The Internalization of Policy in the US Press,’ Journalism 10, no. 6, 2009: 777–797; Steuter, Erin, and Deborah Wills, ‘Discourses of Dehumanization: Enemy Construction and Canadian Media Complicity in the Framing of the War on Terror,’ Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition 2, no. 2, 2009; Giroux, Henry A., ‘War on Terror: The Militarising of Public Space and Culture in the United States,’ Third Text 18, no. 4, 2004: 211–221; Brennen, Bonnie, and Margaret Duffy, ‘“If a Problem Cannot Be Solved, Enlarge It”: An Ideological Critique of the “Other” in Pearl Harbor and September 11 New York Times Coverage,’ Journalism Studies 4, no. 1, 2003: 3–14; Holland, Jack, “Howard’s War on Terror: A Conceivable, Communicable and Coercive Foreign Policy Discourse,’ Australian Journal of Political Science 45, no. 4, 2010: 643–661; Holland, Jack, and Mike Aaronson, ‘Dominance Through Coercion: Strategic Rhetorical Balancing and the Tactics of Justification in Afghanistan and Libya,’ Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 8, no. 1, 2014: 1–20; Holland, Jack, Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses After 9/11, Routledge, 2012; Gleeson, Kathleen, Australia’s’ ‘War on Terror’ Discourse, Routledge, 2016; Poynting, Scott, and David Whyte, eds., Counter-Terrorism and State Political Violence: The ‘War on Terror’ as Terror, Routledge, 2012; Secunda, Eugene, and Terence P. Moran, Selling War to America: from the Spanish American War to the Global War on Terror, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007; Butler, Michael, Selling a ‘Just’ War: Framing, Legitimacy, and US Military Intervention, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; Wolfe, Wojtek Mackiewicz. Winning the War of Words: Selling the War on Terror from Afghanistan to Iraq, ABC-CLIO, 2008.
55.
The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, Houston Chronicle and The Dallas Morning News; Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid., 366–372.
56.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.
57.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.
58.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.
59.
Cockburn, Patrick, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, Verso Books, 2015; Burke, Jason, The New Threat: The Past, Present, and Future of Islamic Militancy, The New Press, 2017; Dyer, Gwynne, Don’t Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today’s Middle East, Random House Canada, 2015; Morgan, George, and Scott Poynting, Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West, Routledge, 2016.
60.
Bonn, Scott A., Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the US War on Iraq, Rutgers University Press, 2010, 54.
61.
Jonathan Institute, International Terrorism: The Soviet Connection, Jerusalem 1979, 11.
62.
Herman, Edward S., and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror, Pantheon, 1989, 104–106; Brulin, ‘Israeli Origins,’ op. cit., 93–94; Kumar, Deepa, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Chicago; Haymarket Books, 2012, 199–123; Paull, Philip, ‘“International Terrorism”: The Propaganda War,’ MA dis., San Francisco State University, 1982, 32–58.
63.
Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, ibid., Chapter 5, ‘Terrorism Fever: The First War on Terrorism and the Politicisation of Expertise,’ 109–138; Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 47–50, 104; Chomsky, Noam, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, South End Press, 1999; Said, Edward W., The Question of Palestine, Vintage, 1979; Said, Edward W., Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, 2012; Finkelstein, Norman G., Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Verso, 2003; Finkelstein, Norman G., Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press, 2008.
64.
Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, ibid., Chapter 5, ‘Terrorism Fever: The First War on Terrorism and the Politicisation of Expertise,’ 109–138; Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 47–50; Kumar, Islamophobia, op. cit., 120.
65.
Paull, ‘“International Terrorism”,’ op. cit., 15.
66.
Brulin, ibid.
67.
Netanyahu, Terrorism, op. cit.
68.
Jonathan Institute, International Terrorism: The Soviet Connection, Jerusalem 1979, 11.
69.
Pipes, Richard, ‘The Roots of the Involvement,’ Jonathan Institute, ibid.
70.
Pipes, ‘The Roots of the Involvement,’ ibid., 14.
71.
Pedahzur, Ami, and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel, Columbia University Press, 2011, 11–15.
72.
Netanyahu, Terrorism, op. cit., ix.
73.
Netanyahu, ibid., ix-3.
74.
Netanyahu, ibid., 8.
75.
Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror, op. cit., 24.
76.
Netanyahu, Terrorism, op. cit., 5; Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, op. cit.
77.
Netanyahu, ibid., 5.
78.
Netanyahu, ibid., 6.
79.
Netanyahu, ibid.
80.
Schultz, George P., ‘The Challenge to the Democracies,’ in Netanyahu, ibid., 16.
81.
Schultz, ‘The Challenge to the Democracies,’ ibid., 20.
82.
Schultz, ibid.
83.
This summary draws elements from the primary material presented in the next stage of the analytical criteria for the First Terror Scare (i.e. Section IIIa), for two main reasons. In the first place, the lines between stages of the analytical criteria are not in every aspect clearly delineated, and in the second, reasons of spacing and pace prelude presenting all the relevant material in this section.
84.
‘The failure of terrorists to incite repressive countermeasures … makes terrorism an impotent means of attaining long term objectives.’ Dowling, R.E., ‘Terrorism and the Media: A Rhetorical Genre,’ Journal of Communication 36, no. 1, 1986: 12–24, quoted in Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid., 364, 374.
85.
Ryan, “Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.
86.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.; see also Reese, Stephen D., and Seth C. Lewis, ‘Framing the War on Terror: The Internalisation of Policy in the US Press,’ Journalism 10, no. 6, 2009: 777–797.
87.
Ryan, ‘Framing the War Against Terrorism,’ ibid.
88.
Bush, George W., ‘Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,’ Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Government Printing Office, 11 September 2001, Book 02, Presidential Documents—1 July–31 December 2001, via https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2001-book2/html/PPP-2001-book2-doc-pg1099.htm, accessed 27 November 2017; Al-Jazeera, ‘Full Transcript of Bin Ladin’s Speech,’ 2 November 2004, via http://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2004/11/200849163336457223.html, accessed 2 December 2017.
89.
Bush, ‘Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,’ ibid.; Rothe and Muzzatti, ‘Enemies Everywhere,’ op. cit., 332–334.
90.
9/11 Commission Report, op. cit., 52.
91.
9/11 Commission Report, ibid.
92.
See Case Study II.
93.
Bush, ‘Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,’ op. cit.
94.
Norton, Ben, ‘Saudi Prince Admits US Told Monarchy to Spread Extremist Wahhabi Islamist Ideology to Combat Communism,’ Bennorton.com, 27 March 2018, via https://bennorton.com/saudi-arabia-us-wahhabism-islamism-communism, accessed 30 October 2018.
95.
Bush, ibid. See also Risen, James, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014, 71–122, ‘Rosetta.’
96.
Bush, ibid.
97.
Bush, ibid.
98.
For more on theological dualisms see Case Study I, Ebner, Julia, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, IB Tauris, 2017; Kumar, Deepa, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012; Waldman, Peter, and Hugh Pope, ‘“Crusade” Reference Reinforces Fears War on Terrorism Is Against Muslims,’ The Wall Street Journal, 21 September 2001, via https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1001020294332922160, accessed 1 December 2017; Cockburn, Alexander, ‘The Tenth Crusade,’ Counterpunch, 7 September 2002, via https://www.counterpunch.org/2002/09/07/the-tenth-crusade/, accessed 1 December 2017.
99.
Rothe and Muzzatti, ‘Enemies Everywhere,’ op. cit., 339–340.
100.
Rothe and Muzzatti, ‘Enemies Everywhere,’ ibid., 340.
101.
Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason, ‘“Tolerance, Freedom, Justice and Peace”?: Britain, Australia and Anti-Muslim Racism Since 11 September 2001,’ Journal of Intercultural Studies 27, no. 4, 2006: 365–391; Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason, ‘The Resistible Rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Racism in the UK and Australia Before 11 September 2001,’ Journal of Sociology, 2007: 43–61; Poynting, S., ‘Islamophobia and Hate Crime,’ in Perry, B., ed., Hate Crimes: Issues and Perspectives. Volume 3: Victims of Hate Crime, Praeger, 2009, 85–106; Morgan and Poynting, Global Islamophobia, op. cit.
102.
Greenwald, Glenn, ‘Refusal to Call Charleston Shootings “Terrorism” Again Shows It’s a Meaningless Propaganda Term,’ The Intercept, 20 June 2015, via https://theintercept.com/2015/06/19/refusal-call-charleston-shootings-terrorism-shows-meaningless-propaganda-term/, accessed 27 December 2017.
103.
Hasan, Mehdi, ‘The Numbers Don’t Lie: White Far-Right Terrorists Pose a Clear Danger to Us All,’ The Intercept, 1 June 2017, via https://theintercept.com/2017/05/31/the-numbers-dont-lie-white-far-right-terrorists-pose-a-clear-danger-to-us-all, accessed 27 December 2017; Sharpe, Tanya Telfair, ‘The Identity Christian Movement: Ideology of Domestic Terrorism,’ Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 4, 2000: 604–623; Blee, Kathleen M., ‘Women and Organized Racial Terrorism in the United States,’ Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 28, no. 5, 2005; Michael, George, The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right, University Press of Kansas, 2010; Ebner, The Rage, op. cit.
104.
Cf. ‘Moral intervention often serves the United States, which charges itself with the primary task and then subsequently asks its allies to set in motion a process of armed containment and/or repression as the first act that prepares the stage for military intervention … often it is dictated unilaterally by the of the current enemy of Empire. These enemies are often called terrorist, a crude conceptual and terminological reduction that is rooted in a police mentality.’ Negri, Antonio, and Michael Hardt, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2000, 37.
105.
Zulaika, Joseba, Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, University of Chicago Press, 2009.
106.
Toaldo, Mattia, The Origins of the US War on Terror: Lebanon, Libya and American Intervention in the Middle East, Routledge, 2012, 57–59.
107.
Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 48.
108.
These comments also contradict the framing of Middle Eastern geopolitics prior to the 1980s in the 9/11 Commission Report alleging the root cause of ‘terrorism’ to be failure of secular states in the Middle East. Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 59.
109.
Toaldo, ibid., 62–63; Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, op. cit., Chapter 2 ‘The Origins of the “Special Relationship,”’ 9–27.
110.
Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, ibid., 10.
111.
Netanyahu, Terrorism: How the West Can Win, op. cit., 7.
112.
Netanyahu, ibid., 11.
113.
Netanyahu, ibid., 12, 16.
114.
Sterling, Claire, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981, 6–7.
115.
Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit., 120.
116.
Curtin, Adam, dir., The Power of Nightmares: Part 1 ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’. Event is at 54.20; Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit., 119–121; Naftali, Blind Spot, op. cit.
117.
Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit.
118.
Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror, op. cit., 122–127; Herman, ibid., 25.
119.
See Case Study II, Section 2b. Cline, Ray, and Yonah Alexander, Terrorism: The Soviet Connection, New York: Crane Russak, 1984, Chapter 4, ‘The PLO Transmission Belt,’ 31–54.
120.
Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 17; Toaldo, Mattia, ‘The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror: Lebanon and Libya as Case Studies,’ New Middle Eastern Studies 2, 2012: 4; Chomsky, Noam, On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures, Haymarket Books, 2015, 106; Kofsky, The War Scare of 1948, op. cit.; Rousseas, Stephen, The Political Economy of Reaganomics: a Critique, Routledge, 2015; Davis, Mike, ‘Reaganomics’ Magical Mystery Tour,’ New Left Review 149, 1985, 45.
121.
Toaldo, ‘The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror,’ ibid., 1.
122.
Toaldo, ibid., 5–6.
123.
Chomsky, Noam, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians, South End Press, 1999, 20–21.
124.
Van Bergen, Jennifer, The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America, Common Courage Press, 2004; Cole, Dave, and James X. Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton; Herman, Susan N., Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2011; Welch, Kyle, ‘The Patriot Act and Crisis Legislation: The Unintended Consequences of Disaster Lawmaking,’ Capital University Law Review 43, 2015: 481.
125.
MacAskill, Ewen, and Julian Borger, ‘Iraq War Was Illegal and Breached UN Charter, Says Annan,’ The Guardian, 16 September 2004, via https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/16/iraq.iraq, accessed 28 December 2017; Rothe and Muzzatti, ‘Enemies Everywhere,’ op. cit., 336.
126.
Bush, George W., ‘Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the United States; Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, September 20, 2001,’ Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Government Printing Office, 20 September 2001, Book 02, Presidential Documents—July 1 to December 31, 2001, via https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PPP-2001-book2/html/PPP-2001-book2-doc-pg1140.htm, accessed 27 November 2017.
127.
Bush, ‘Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the United States,’ ibid.; Coll, Steve, Ghost Wars, op. cit., 75–77; Crooke, Alastair, ‘You Can’t Understand ISIS if You Don’t Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia,’ New Perspectives Quarterly 32, no. 1, 2015: 56–70; Leupp, Gary, ‘On Terrorism, Methodism, Saudi “Wahhabism” and the Censored 9-11 Report,’ Counterpunch, 8 August 2003, via http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/08/on-terrorism-methodism-saudi-quot-wahhabism-quot-and-the-censored-9-11-report, accessed 8 May 2016; ‘Sleeping With the Devil: How U.S. and Saudi Backing of Al Qaeda Led to 9/11,’ Washington’s Blog, 5 September, 2012, http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/sleeping-with-the-devil-how-u-s-and-saudi-backing-of-al-qaeda-led-to-911.html, accessed 8 May 2016; Yousaf Butt, ‘How Saudi Wahhabism Is the Fountainhead of Islamist Terrorism,’ The World Post, 22 March 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-yousaf-butt-/saudi-wahhabism-islam-terrorism_b_6501916.html, accessed 8 May 2016.
128.
Bush, ‘Address,’ ibid.
129.
We return to this topic in more detail in the next section. Johnson, Chalmers, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Macmillan, 2000; Johnson, Chalmers, ‘American Militarism and Blowback: The Costs of Letting the Pentagon Dominate Foreign Policy,’ New Political Science 24, no. 1, 2002: 21–38.
130.
Bush, ‘Address,’ ibid.
131.
Bush, ibid.
132.
Bush, ibid.
133.
Bush, ibid.
134.
Bush, ibid.
135.
According to Rudolf Diels, later first Gestapo chief ‘The burning of the Reichstag was intended to be the signal for a bloody uprising and civil war. Large-scale pillaging in Berlin was planned for as early as four o’clock in the morning on Tuesday. It has been determined that starting today throughout Germany acts of terrorism were to begin against prominent individuals, against private property, against the lives and safety of the peaceful population, and general civil war was to be unleashed.’ For its part, the Reichstag Fire Decree reads, ‘On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defence against Communist state-endangering acts of violence: Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are for the time being nullified. Consequently, curbs on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, of association, and of assembly, surveillance over letters, telegrams and telephone communications, searches of homes and confiscations of as well as restrictions on property, are hereby permissible beyond the limits hitherto established by law.’ Fest, Joachim C., Hitler, New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, 397.
136.
‘The head of the IDF liaison unit in Lebanon, General Shlomo Ilya, ‘said the only weapon against terrorism is terrorism and that Israel has options beyond those already used for “speaking the language the terrorists understand.” The concept is not a novel one. Thus, Gestapo operations in occupied Europe also “were justified in the name of combating ‘terrorism’”, and one of Klaus Barbie’s victims was found murdered with a note pinned to his chest reading “terror against terror.” This latter is the name adopted by an Israeli terrorist group and provided the heading for the cover story in Der Spiegel on the US terror bombing of Libya in April 1986.’ Chomsky, Noam, ‘Terrorism and American Ideology,’ in Said, Edward W., and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, London: Verso, 1988, 104.
137.
‘Seeing no favourable prospects for themselves, they resorted to the gun; they organized underground terroristic groups and made use of the most detestable method of fighting, namely terrorism … This makes it necessary to adopt special and most severe measures against them. To chain them is not enough. We must adopt more determined and radical measures against them. Not political figures, but a gang of murderers and criminals, thieves who tried to rob the state, this is what this gang represents!’ People’s Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., ‘Report of Court Proceedings: The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre, Heard Before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R,’ Moscow 1936, via https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/law/1936/moscow-trials/index.htm, accessed 31 December 2017.
138.
Bush, ‘Address,’ op. cit.
139.
Ser, ‘Data: Hate Crimes Against Muslims Increased After 9/11,’ op. cit.
140.
Poynting and Mason, 2006, op. cit.; Poynting and Mason, 2007, op. cit.; Poynting, 2009, op. cit.; Morgan and Poynting, Global Islamophobia, op. cit.; Welch, Michael, Scapegoats of September 11th: Hate Crimes & State Crimes in the War on Terror, Rutgers University Press, 2006; Oakes, Dan, ‘Australian Soldiers Flew Nazi Swastika Flag from Vehicle in Afghanistan; PM Says Diggers’ Actions “Absolutely Wrong”,’ ABC News, 14 June 2018, via http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-14/photo-shows-nazi-flag-flown-over-australian-army-vehicle/9859618, accessed 14 June 2018.
141.
Hirst, David, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, 2011, Chapter 6, ‘Its Greatest Folly: The Israeli Army Enters the Morass of Lebanon’; Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 70.
142.
Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, op. cit., 188–191; Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 505–517.
143.
Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, op. cit., 196–197; Herman, The Real Terror Network, op. cit., 76–77.
144.
Schumpeter, Joseph, Imperialism and Social Classes: Two Essays, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1955, 71.
145.
Naor, Arye, Government at War: The Government’s Functioning in the Lebanon War [Hebrew], Tel Aviv; 1986, 47, cited in Zertal, Idith, and Akiva Eldar, Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967–2007, Hachette UK, 2009, Chapter 2, ‘Bad Faith.’ Cf. Reuven Rivlin: ‘Rivlin took issue with his idol Menachem Begin’s justification for the 1982 war in Lebanon, which was to “prevent another Treblinka.” He said that such an approach consigns the justification for Israel’s very existence to preventing another Holocaust. He described the approach as “dangerous,” one in which “every threat is existential, and every enemy is Hitler.” He decried the division of the world to either “righteous gentiles or anti-Semitic Nazis,” a separation that transforms any criticism against Israel to an expression of anti-Semitism. Instead, Rivlin offered what he described as “a third way” that combines the Israeli vow of never again, accentuates Jewish solidarity throughout the world and adopts the Jewish value of respecting all men and women, regardless of their religion or race.’ Shalev, Chemi, ‘Rivlin Uses Holocaust Day to Challenge Netanyahu’s Darkness and Despair,’ Haaretz, 25 April 2017, via https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.785389, accessed 12 January 2018.
146.
Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 75.
147.
Toaldo, ibid.
148.
Hirst, Beware of Small States, op. cit., Chapter 6, ‘Its Greatest Folly: The Israeli Army Enters the Morass of Lebanon.’
149.
Hirst, ibid., Chapter 6, ‘Sharon Plots the “How” and “When”’; Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 75.
150.
Pappe, Ilan, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oneworld Publications, 2007. FIX.
151.
Hirst, Beware of Small States, Chapter 6, ‘Morass of Lebanon,’ op. cit.
152.
‘It was an open secret in Beirut, Washington, and elsewhere in the spring of 1982 that Israel would invade, and the only surprise was exactly when.’ Khalidi, Rashid, Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East, Beacon Press, 2009, 146.
153.
Quoted in Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 82.
154.
Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, ibid.
155.
Toaldo, ‘The Reagan Administration and the Origins of the War on Terror,’ ibid., 5–6.
156.
See footnote 123; Toaldo, The Origins of the US War on Terror, op. cit., 64.
157.
Toaldo, ibid., 140.
158.
Lagon, Mark P., The Reagan Doctrine: Sources of American Conduct in the Cold War’s Last Chapter, Praeger, 1994, 2; Grandin, Greg, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism, Metropolitan Books, 2006, 83–99.
159.
See Pt. II.
160.
Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, op. cit., 105–111.
161.
Grandin, ibid., 119.
162.
Grandin, ibid., 121–134.
163.
Grandin, ibid., 115.
164.
‘And it was there that the New Right, now in power, began to instil a culture of loyalty to the cause and incuriosity about the world: “To raise a question was to be a negative thinker,” complained CIA agent Nestor Sanchez of the administration’s fixation on Central America.’ Grandin, Empire’s Workshop, op. cit., 118–119; cf. ‘No one wants to tell the emperor about his new clothes or lack thereof. The non-technical managerial class in Canberra would have assured the minister that all would be well rather than accept any blame for floating the idea that a data-matching system could be used in this indiscriminate and unverified way. It is literally blame aversion; it is not risk aversion’, according to Paul Shetler, who was handpicked by Malcolm Turnbull to head the government’s digital-transformation drive and was former digital-transformation office head. Shetler went on to say, ‘The justifications…are just another example of the culture of “good news”, reporting only good news up through the bureaucracy. That’s how it works in the bureaucracy. Bad news is not welcomed, and when bad news comes, they try to shift the blame.’ Gerard McPhee, ‘Centrelink’s Data-Matching Fiasco: A Very Predictable Disaster,’ Arena Magazine, Issue #146, February 2017, via http://arena.org.au/centrelinks-data-matching-fiasco-by-gerard-mcphee, accessed 21 February 2017.
165.
Grandin, ibid., 125–128. See also Pt. I.
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‘Grandin, ibid., 154–155, 163–175.
167.
For example, Johnson, Blowback, op. cit.; Coll, Ghost Wars, op. cit.; Wright, The Looming Tower, op. cit.
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Burke, ibid., 11; Curtis, Adam, dir., The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear, London: BBC, 2004, Pt. 3, ‘The Shadows in the Cave,’ event starts at 7.22–12.42.
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See Chapter I, Hall et al., Policing the Crisis, op. cit.; see also Simon, Jonathan, Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear, Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Risen, Pay Any Price, op. cit., 76.
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Ranstorp, Magnus, ‘Mapping Terrorism Studies After 9/11,’ in Jackson, Richard, Marie Smyth, and Jeroen Gunning, eds., Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, Routledge, 2009, 23.
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Ben M. Debney

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Debney, B.M. (2020). Case Study III: Terrorist Panic. In: The Oldest Trick in the Book. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5569-5_7

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