Propaganda by the deed: Terrorism and anarchist theory in late nineteenth‐century Europe

Abstract

This essay examines the development of anarchist theory by radical intellectuals such as Peter Kropotkin and Elisee Reclus in response to certain acts of violence in late nineteenth‐century Europe. It argues that propaganda by the deed, as a strategy for political action, became central to the elaboration of anarchist theory and that a philosophical justification of individual, as well as collective, violence developed logically out of it. This becomes especially apparent in the thought of Reclus whose writings, until recently largely neglected, reveal important dimensions of European anarchism and help to clarify how propaganda by the deed fits into the larger framework of anarchist theory. Those anarchists who were frequently ambivalent when confronted with the reality of acts of violence, notably Kropotkin, but also Most and even Goldman, misunderstood the nature of their own conception of such “propaganda.”     

Will Black Lives Matter to the Police? African Americans’ Concerns about Trump’s Presidency

ABSTRACT

Based on a 2017 national survey of 1,000 Black Americans, perceptions regarding the implications of Donald Trump’s election as President on race relations, police-minority relations, and police treatment of Black citizens in the United States were examined. Findings suggest the existence of a “Trump Effect.” With minor variation across demographic groups, the survey respondents expressed overall negative perceptions concerning the effects of President Trump’s election. In particular, they expressed the belief that his presidency shows that the United States is a racist society, will strain police-minority relationships, and will create a climate in which African Americans are more likely to be arrested or subjected to police violence. At issue is not just African Americans’ distrust of President Trump but, importantly, whether his emphasis on “law and order” and dismissal of minority-group concerns attenuates the legitimacy of law enforcement in the eyes of African Americans.     

Bottom-up peacekeeping in southern Kyrgyzstan: how local actors managed to prevent the spread of violence from Osh/Jalal-Abad to Aravan,June 2010

In the aftermath of the June 2010 violence in southern Kyrgyzstan, much scholarly attention has focused on its causes. However, observers have taken little notice of the fact that while such urban areas as Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon were caught up in violence, some towns in southern Kyrgyzstan that were close to the conflict sites and had considerable conflict potential had managed to avoid the violence. Thus, while the question, “What were the causes of the June 2010 violence?” is important, we have few answers to the question, “Why did the conflict break out in some places but not others with similar conflict potential?” Located in the theoretical literature on “the local turn” within peacekeeping studies, this article is based on extensive empirical fieldwork to explore the local and micro-level dimensions of peacekeeping. It seeks to understand why and how local leaders and residents in some places in southern Kyrgyzstan managed to prevent the deadly clashes associated with Osh, Jalal-Abad, and Bazar-Korgon. The main focus of the project is on Aravan, a town with a mixed ethnic population where residents managed to avert interethnic clashes during the June 2010 unrest. The answers to the question of why violence did not occur can yield important lessons for conflict management not only for southern Kyrgyzstan, but also for the entire Central Asian region.     

PRIVATIZING UK TAX LAW ENFORCEMENT?

Tax law enforcement in the UK has long been dominated by public bureaucracies of the 'classic' type. This article reviews some current problems of tax law enforcement in that style, and looks at some possible ways of mitigating those problems. These include a change in penalty schedules and some measure of 're-privatization' of tax law enforcement, harking back to pre-bureaucratic enforcement styles. Six problems likely to be associated with privatization of tax law enforcement are discussed. These are not trivial, but it is argued that they may be somewhat less severe in the case of tax law enforcement than in that of law enforcement in general.     

The Plots that Failed: Intelligence Lessons Learned from Unsuccessful Terrorist Attacks Against the United States

While much of the focus of terrorism research is on successful terrorist attacks, the most significant lessons for terrorism prevention may come from examination of terrorist plots and attacks that do not succeed. This article analyzes 176 terrorist plots against American targets that have been thwarted or otherwise failed during the past 25 years. It considers what kinds of intelligence and security measures are most useful in counterterrorism, and argues that the conventional wisdom about why intelligence fails—because analysts and agencies are unable to “connect the dots”—is wrong. Most plots, especially domestic terrorist plots, are not foiled through imaginative analysis, but through conventional law enforcement efforts and aggressive domestic intelligence collection that reveal to authorities just what the plotters are up to.     

Terrorist Victimization: Prevention,Control, and Recovery

The Muslim Brotherhood poses a unique challenge to efforts to combat Al Qaeda and like-minded groups. It is one of the key sources of Islamist thought and political activism, and plays a significant role in shaping the political and cultural environment in an Islamist direction. At the same time, it opposes Al Qaeda for ideological, organizational, and political reasons and represents one of the major challenges to the salafi-jihadist movement globally. This dual nature of the Muslim Brotherhood has long posed a difficult challenge to efforts to combat violent extremism. Does its non-violent Islamism represent a solution, by capturing Islamists within a relatively moderate organization and stopping their further radicalization (a “firewall”), or is it part of the problem, a “conveyor belt” towards extremism? This article surveys the differences between the two approaches, including their views of an Islamic state, democracy, violence, and takfir, and the significant escalation of those tensions in recent years. It concludes that the MB should be allowed to wage its battles against extremist challengers, but should not be misunderstood as a liberal organization or supported in a short-term convergence of interests.     

Human Rights and Antiterrorism: A Positive Legal Duty to Infringe Freedom From Torture?

In law freedom from torture and ill-treatment is “absolute,” meaning that a state cannot infringe the right for purposes that would seem legitimate such as the protection of national security. However, with the growth in international terrorism, particularly suicide violence, should the freedom remain without limitation? This article considers legitimizing torture by reference to the “positive” legal obligation the right imposes on states to prevent harm to individuals by third parties such as terrorists. Assuming such a legal argument could be made out, it is questioned whether adopting such measures of interrogation would in fact outweigh the negative consequences that would inevitably follow from reversing accepted international standards for the protection of, say, detainees from ill-treatment in state custody.     

When Terrorism as Strategy Fails: Dissident Irish Republicans and the Threat to British Security

The use of terrorism as a strategy for obtaining political goals by non-state actors persists in the international system, despite attempts by states to counter the phenomenon. This article explores the resurgent threat posed to British security by dissident Irish republicans in order to illustrate the limited utility of terrorism as a strategy in the current sociopolitical context. Therefore, it has three objectives: First, it explains how strategic theory can aid in constructing a conceptual framework for explaining the persistence of terrorism, in general, and dissident republican violence, in particular. Second, it examines the dissident threat in light of the general failure of “armed struggle” to achieve republican goals in Irish politics. It is argued here that dissident republicans have confused “means” with “ends” and that this, ultimately, demonstrates the futility of their violence. Finally, the article suggests ways of tackling the dissident republican variant of terrorism.     

What Does the “Terrorist” Label Really Do? Measuring and Explaining the Effects of the “Terrorist” and “Islamist” Categories

Many scholars and practitioners claim that labeling groups or individuals as “terrorists” does not simply describe them but also shapes public attitudes, due to the label's important normative and political charge. Yet is there such a “terrorist label effect”? In view of surprisingly scant evidence, the present article evaluates whether or not the terrorist label—as well as the “Islamist” one—really impacts both the audience's perception of the security environment and its security policy preferences, and if yes, how and why. To do so, the article implements a randomized-controlled vignette experiment where participants (N = 481) first read one out of three press articles, each depicting a street shooting in the exact same way but labeling the author of the violence with a different category (“terrorist”/“shooter”/“Islamist”). Participants were then asked to report on both their perceptions and their policy preferences. This design reveals very strong effects of both the “terrorist” and “Islamist” categories on each dimension. These effects are analyzed through the lenses of social and cognitive psychology, in a way that interrogates the use of the terrorist category in society, the conflation of Islamism with terrorism, and the press and policymakers' lexical choices when reporting on political violence.     

Terrorism Financing with Virtual Currencies: Can Regulatory Technology Solutions Combat This?

ABSTRACT

This article considers the terrorism financing risk associated with the growth of Financial Technology innovations and in particular, focuses on virtual currency products and services. The ease with which cross-border payments by virtual currencies are facilitated, the anonymity surrounding their usage, and their potential to be converted into the fiat financial system, make them ideal for terrorism financing and therefore calls for a coordinated global regulatory response. This article considers the extent of the risk of terrorism financing through virtual currencies in “high risk” States by focusing on countries that have been recently associated with terrorism activities. It assesses the robustness of their financial regulatory and law enforcement regimes in combating terrorism financing and considers the extent to which Regulatory Technology and its global standardization, can mitigate this risk.     

International terrorism,human rights,and World order

Abstract

This article attempts to summarize the efforts that have been made during the 1970s in the search for an appropriate definition of international terrorism, its causes, and the measures to combat it. It evaluates these efforts in the context of the simultaneous interests in human rights. It advances some propositions as to how international terrorism could be seen from the perspectives of both social‐psychological theories of violence and Western legal practices. In conclusion, the relationship between the individual and the state is evaluated in the context of the present world order and its operative political and legal principles. Although this approach may not solve the problem of international terrorism by advancing any neat scheme of control which can be readily applied by anxious governmental law enforcement agencies, nor succeed in articulating a strategy for the respect of human rights by governments and individuals, it will hopefully generate some ideas about how justice can be rediscovered while searching for viable solutions for both international terrorism and human rights.     

Catastrophic New Age Groups and Public Order

This article examines the recent emergence of separatist, countercultural groups observing a disaster-prone view of the future shaped by variations of New Age religion. While these groups have not uniformly adopted violent strategies against outsiders, the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo case should alert authorities to the potential for violent activism that exists in some New Age collectivities during periods when the group is experiencing an episode of stress. Particular attention is given here to the psychodynamic shift which took place in a Montana-based New Age religious movement as its visions of a forthcoming earthly disaster mobilized the membership to prepare for a cataclysmic event. It is likely that law enforcement agencies will encounter more cases of millennial excitement in catastrophic New Age groups in the near-term future as the approach of the year 2000 stimulates the apocalyptic imaginations of these countercultural movements.     

Memory and identity: inter-generational narratives of violence among refugees in Serbia

This article examines the role of the inter-generational memory of the Second World War (WWII) in identity formation and political mobilization. An existing explanation in the ethnic-conflict literature is that strategic political leaders play a crucial role in constructing and mobilizing ethnic identities. However, based on 114 open-ended interviews with individuals born in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, conducted in Serbia during 2008–2011, nearly a third of the respondents make spontaneous references to WWII in their statements, usually drawing parallels between the cycle of violence in the 1990s and that in the 1940s. The question this article asks, then, is why some respondents make references to WWII spontaneously while others do not. It is argued that inter-generational narratives of past cycles of violence also constitute a process of identity formation, in addition to, or apart from, other processes of identity formation. The respondents mention WWII violence in the context of the 1990s events because they “recognize” elements, such as symbols, discourse or patterns of violence, similar to those in the inter-generational narratives and interpret them as warning signs. Hence, individuals who had previously been exposed to inter-generational narratives may be subsequently more susceptible to political mobilization efforts.     

“You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow”: the Freedom Riders of 1961 and the Dilemma of Mobility

This article offers an exploration of what it meant to move under “cramped conditions” for African Americans and their compatriots during an era of often violent racial discrimination and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s in the USA. As the example of the Freedom Rides shows, these conditions included both moments of closure and entrapment determined by the rule of law as well as acts of resistance resulting from a century-long legacy of resistances. Particularly, I try to understand the complex “constellations of mobility” as a fragile entanglement of the politics of movement, representations of movement, and the embodied practices of movement. This paper proposes an approach to mobility that takes both historical forms of mobilities and immobilities seriously. On the one hand, my analysis relates to regulatory power and technologies used by state and non-state actors in order to retain white privilege over issues of mobility during the period preceding and accompanying the Freedom Rides. On the other hand, I argue along the lines of “mobility as resistance” by showing the strategies used to transgress written and unwritten laws and normative standards of the Jim Crow era.     

The ghost of essentialism and the trap of binarism: six theses on the Soviet empire

This article endeavors to open a new critical space for Soviet studies and for nationalities studies more generally. Through analyses of recent trends in Soviet studies, the article dismantles the frequently used opposition between subjective and objective approaches to Soviet empire and suggests instead that truths and categories, whether considered “subjective” or “objective,” are constructed discursively, through legitimizing certain interpretive models over the others. The article also argues against disciplinary avoidance of “what is” questions (e.g. “what is a nation?”) and claims that an excessive concern for (re)producing essentialism should not hinder scholarly inquiry. Several new lines of inquiry for the study of the Soviet empire are suggested and also applicable in nationalities studies more generally: research on the role of symbolic violence in manufacturing consent and research concerning the role of affect in producing linkages between the performative life of a singular human being and the pedagogical discourse of a nation or empire. The article also offers an analysis of the Soviet Union as an empire in becoming and it advocates for postcolonial approaches within Soviet studies. The practical dimensions of Soviet rule are exemplified with data from the Baltic borderlands in the postwar years.     

Forward to the Past? Loyalist Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland Since 1994

This article considers in detail loyalist paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland since the paramilitary cease-fires of 1994. The continuing nature of contemporary loyalist violence is documented with reference to sectarian attacks against members of the “Other”/Catholic community and associated symbols of that community, violence directed at other loyalists, and the potential for future violence given constitutional uncertainty regarding Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom. The article also challenges assumptions within the broader literature of an inability within loyalist paramilitary groups to move beyond violence in the post-cease-fire period with particular reference to their conflict transformation efforts.     

Administrative reform in Malaysia: Recent trends and developments

During the past two decades, the public bureaucracy in Malaysia has undergone substantial reforms. Broadly aimed at excellence in the public service, these recent reforms are in many respects similar to those introduced in other countries under the new paradigm of “managerialism”. This article analyses the present trends of reforms in Malaysia and comments on some concerns and emerging issues. It shows that while these reforms have generally improved the delivery of public services, public administration in Malaysia continues to suffer from such problems as a weak system of accountability, growing incidence of corruption and mismanagement, absence of decentralisation and community participation, and non‐enforcement of rules and regulations.     

Education Policy and Philanthropy—The Changing Landscape of English Educational Governance

This article explores some hitherto neglected but nonetheless important aspects of the changing landscape of education policy and governance in England. It sketches some particular features of the increasingly complex and “congested” terrain of the education state and traces some of the primary discourses that currently inform and drive education policy (and, indeed, social policy more generally) both in relation to governance and substance. The article draws on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC–-funded study (RES–000–22–2682), “Philanthropy and Education Policy.” This research involved three sets of activities; extensive and exhaustive Internet searches around particular (corporate) philanthropies, philanthropists, and philanthropically funded programs; interviews with some key “new” philanthropists and foundations interested and involved in education; and the use of these searches and interviews to construct “policy networks.” Together these constitute a “method” of “network ethnography.”     

Sara Baartman and Andries Stoffels: Violence,Law and the Politics of Spectacle in London and the Eastern Cape, 1809–1836

This article contrasts the well-known display of Sara Baartman, exhibited in London and Paris under the rubric the “Hottentot Venus,” with the 1835–36 visit to Britain for political ends of Andries Stoffels, a Khoekhoe Christian convert who testified before the House of Commons Select Committee on Aborigines (British Settlements). It places both visits in the context of legal reform and violence in the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century. Both visits can be fruitfully re-read as reflecting South African struggles over control of the Khoekhoe body, the rule of colonial law, and emerging ideas of human rights. Baartman was displayed as an iconic body in a legal context in which (mostly white) masters coerced Khoekhoe labourers and claimed the right to control their bodies. Stoffels displayed himself as a Christian convert to eager evangelical audiences, in a context in which legal reform depended on the putative erasure of difference, even as racial tension persisted in significant ways. The article suggests that the history of human rights is closely tied to the history of colonialism. It also, however, argues that members of Baartman's community responded to, and fought, the conditions that led to her display and that Baartman should not be understood in isolation from that community.