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Social media and terrorism
- 1. Social Media and Terrorism Robbie Fordyce robbie.fordyce@gmail.com
- 2. The terrorist is the contemporary outlaw The figure outside of the law Deserving of no protections And yet they are all over Social Media. Why?
- 3. What is the relationship between social media and terrorism? Distribution – Daesh (ISIS), counter-Daesh Ideology – Manifesto killers
- 5. The Common Definition One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter
- 7. US Govt. 2001 definition Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant* targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
- 8. US Govt. 2001 definition Or, What looks, smells and kills like terrorism is terrorism
- 9. United Nations definition The United Nations ability to develop a comprehensive strategy has been constrained by the inability of Member States to agree on an anti-terrorism convention including a definition of terrorism.
- 10. Scholarly definitions Schmid, 2004: many definitions changed after 9/11 definition became racialised
- 11. Scholarly definitions Schmid, provides a perfunctory definition: “Terrorism is a politically motivated tactic involving the threat or use of force or violence in which the pursuit of publicity plays a significant role.”
- 12. SOCIAL MEDIA
- 13. Social Media Timelines Pre 9/11 1970s – BBS 1988 – IRC services 1995 – Geocities 1996 – Adult FriendFinder, ICQ 1997 – SixDegrees 1999 – MSN Messenger 2001 – Wikipedia Post 9/11 2002 – Friendster, 2003 – MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo 2004 – Facebook, Orkut 2005 – YouTube 2006 – Twitter 2007 – Tumblr 2010 – disapora* 2011 – Google+, increase in dating/sexting apps 2014 – Ello
- 14. Pre 2001 Post 2001
- 17. Daesh / ISIS Daesh – middle eastern paramilitary organisation Defintive contemporary image of a terrorist organisation Al Qaeda Al Qaeda in Iraq ‘ISIS’
- 18. Warning: you may find this video disturbing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18lf1kpBgRk
- 19. Daesh – virality social media Acts: Killing civilians and military personnel Destruction of artifacts (iconoclasm) Destroying musical equipment Professionalisation/purpose
- 21. Daesh – musical instruments Visually spectacular Ties into existing rock music genre imagery Semiotically and contextually unclear Shared across all manner of online media
- 23. Daesh – artifacts Emotional Iconoclastic Again, visually spectacular Why?
- 24. Daesh – actions and imagery Daesh’s social media is highly redistributable 1) Lots of images 2) High production values 3) Evocative imagery 4) Newsworthy 5) Distributed across social media in the first place
- 26. Jaysh al-Islām – ‘Revenge’ video
- 28. The ‘Witness’ - Agamben The Witness is the person ‘next to’ the victim The Witness must testify – i.e. Aylan Kurdi, Rezi Berati Daesh uses social media to produce material that is testified to on social media
- 29. IDEOLOGY – THE MANIFESTO KILLERS
- 30. Manifesto A document that calls people into radical political, social, or artistic purposes Pushes for fundamental change in society
- 31. Pre-Social Media Dr. Ted Kaczynski “The Unabomber” Industrial Society and Its Future Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – Columbine High AOL website hosting threats/agendas Hitman for Hire
- 32. Elliot Rodger 22 year old ‘Men’s Rights’ activist My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger 2014 Isla Vista killings
- 33. Dylann Roof 21 year old white supremacist lastrhodesian.com -- also Facebook 2015 Charleston Church Shootings Rhodesia, Apartheid, Nazism
- 34. Anders Breivik 32 year old white supremacist, publicly fascist 2083: A European Declaration of Independence 2011 Oslo & Utøya attacks
- 35. The ‘Hero’ – Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi The Hero is the person who fights for a cause So the Hero also needs to have a cause, but what if one does not exist? The Hero creates a cause in the form of the manifesto, and distributes this online In all cases the Hero must kill for their cause
- 36. SOCIAL MEDIA + TERRORISM
- 37. The ‘hero’ destroys lives and creates manifestos The witness must observe and testify Social media allows for wider attention & distribution locally and globally.
Notas do Editor
- Okay, so I’m going to talk about a number of things today, but just in the interests of not upsetting anyone, some of my talk is going to involve discussions of violence, specifically violence in the Middle east, and some discussion of violence against women and also racism. I won’t show any deaths, but I understand if people wish to leave at any point.
- Here we might understand the contemporary question that we’re looking at today.
- We need a definition of terrorism We need a timeline of social media Then we can look at the issues. For each of these sections, I’m going to bring up one theoretical figure – a sort of philosophical archetype which can be used to understand the situation. Maybe it helps you, maybe it doesn’t.
- The parochial definition is subjective, relative, and postmodern ‘Terrorism’ is a relative position A judgement of action determined by the speaker’s ideology. For this definition, the term terrorist tells us more about the person that uses it than the person who it describes.
- So under this first definition, we can see that terrorism is sometimes understood as just linguistic wordplay Guy Fawkes, well-known for wanting to bomb parliament, is often a celebrated folk hero. Despite the saying remember remember the 5th of November, people tend to forget that he was an ardent monarchist who sought to eliminate democracy and return to a sovereign king.
- The asterisk is in the original document, and defines the term noncombatant to mean anyone not actually engaged in combat at that time. So American military personnel, who are camped in the middle east, but not shooting someone, are considered non-combatants. This definition is about how violence is used against individuals, and it ignores the existing material in the geneva convention. Specifically it defines terrorism as people using violence to achieve political goals However, in the reference to subnational groups, this excludes nation states Nation states cannot, under this definition, commit terrorism. This definition can largely be ignored. The US didn’t really seem to follow it, and started to use the term ‘terrorist regime’ to describe a number of states in the middle east, thus contradicting themselves
- The US govt has held about four different definitions of terrorism at different times. These definitions are generally ones that serve US interests, and are flexible enough that it allows the government to exercise violence against people. Generally implements a double standard
- [Read out] … In other words, there is no agreed upon definition of terrorism within the United Nations. This has been partly due to complications with regards to different states supporting national liberation and resistance movements, for instance Palestine in Israel, Ukraine in Russia, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and so on. Also, there have been questions around whether financing terrorism should be considered an act of terrorism itself.
- Schmid: hundreds of billions of dollars are spent fighting based on the word terrorism. : 109 different definitions of terrorism circulating, 1930s-1980s Terrorism gained an implicit anti-Muslim/anti-Arab component post-9/11 Massive change after World Trade Centre attacks, despite significant ‘home grown’ terrorism up to that point Number of definitions were reduced, but no consensus
- Schmid’s article is basically a 46 page definition What I want to take away from this is the importance of the pursuit of publicity as a key element of terrorism. A key component for many definitions of terrorism is about making people who haven’t been a target for an attack become aware of the acts, and change their behaviour.
- Before 2001, social media was not that much of a thing. There were various services that made use of the internet to communicate socially, but these were generally not about profile building in the same way as current services are. Also, I don’t want to imply that 9/11 caused this change, but rather that there is an interesting shift in politics and technology that occurred around the same time, in both cases driven as much by technological changes as political changes.
- But also Social Media is about staking claims to things – espousing ideology and commitment to principles. It’s not just a space for argumentation, but a space of action, description, and testament. So between 2000 and 2002 we see a big change in the nature of social media. At the same time we also see a big change in the idea of terrorism. The idea, not the definition, but the idea of terrorism is now connotated with the idea of Muslim and Arab peoples There’s a change here which is quite substantial.
- But also Social Media is about staking claims to things – espousing ideology and commitment to principles. It’s not just a space for argumentation, but a space of action, description, and testament. So between 2000 and 2002 we see a big change in the nature of social media. At the same time we also see a big change in the idea of terrorism. The idea, not the definition, but the idea of terrorism is now connotated with the idea of Muslim and Arab peoples There’s a change here which is quite substantial.
- Daesh – middle eastern paramilitary organisation ISIS = Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham ISIL = Islamic State In the Levant Islamic State in Syria and the Levant The primary non-state actor in the Syrian war The primary non-state actor in the Syrian war – essentially seeking statehood. Assad – a horrible despot who tortures civilians, part of a dynasty of horrible dictators. Largely a self-interested despot who is out for himself vs. ISIS, who are far more authoritarian and ideological, wanting to displace Assad, and replace him with an absolutist rule of law. They execute/murder/kill people of all types. They kill Muslims and Christians, Arabic and non-Arabic people. They are probably going to wipe out the Yazidi people. They are notionally muslim and arabic. Their main thing is recruitment. Al Qaeda- “These guys are crazy – we want to distance ourselves from them.”
- Aesthetics, how metal is this?
- Visually spectacular They’re not taking this with a shitty 2 megapixel camera. This is high-res imagery, which has probably been photoshopped afterwards Ties into existing rock music genre imagery Burning instruments is classic Jimmi Hendrix Semiotically and contextually unclear Is this stupid and moronic, or is it intelligent and effective Shared across all manner of online media
- Emotional Attacks modern liberal sentiment about culture. People know that artworks have value. That there is something important in culture. Iconoclastic The destruction of icons is a behaviour common to many religious and political movements over the centuries. This act here is a type of territorial claim – they are emptying out their territory of competing cultural signifiers Again, visually spectacular I want to think about the fact that they have recorded the museum destruction. It is not simply about showing a pile of rubble at the end, it is about watching the act of destruction. You are watching the pot smash. Why? We can have a reason to explain this, but it all seems insufficient. On one hand, why bother? Why such a small statement? But again, these are irreplaceable, historical, magnificent. Extreme care has been given to these objects to keep them safe for millennia. It is tragic, and it shocks people, and that’s part of why people distribute the images, and it’s also part of why Daesh have succeed in in getting as much attention as they have.
- Daesh’s social media is highly redistributable Lots of images No longer is it Osama bin Laden giving a speech declaiming Western usury High production values They’re using glossy CGI & high quality cameras in their releases Evocative imagery They’re destroying things that are valued by many people These are connections to culture or the past Worth mentioning that Western movements did this first. The italian Futurists advocated this The Fascists did this The byzantine destruction of idols, etc Newsworthy Distributed across social media in the first place This isn’t a news team from ABC doing this – this is Daesh itself reporting on its actions, because it knows people will watch and listen, because they’re scared or outraged
- Source: https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/641677031760117760 These aren’t people stuck in a cave somewhere. These are people who are connected to the world. They’re using quant metrics to set goals, and produce annual reports They’re using powerpoint in training sessions.
- Masiir Al Khawarij
- The Witness is the person ‘next to’ the victim The Witness must testify i.e. Aylan Kurdi, Rezi Berati People see these images, and then something compels many of us to recount or describe these events. Daesh uses social media to produce material that is testified to on social media We all become witnesses – both in observing the material, and in redistributing it.
- Manifesto killers are individuals who have conducted mass killings, predominantly within the United States, that have a political ideology at the heart. Because their ideologies are either democratically unacceptable or essentially nonsensical, they write massive manifestos which they then distribute online. It is notable that a large number of manifesto killers who are white and young, and personally document their actions as having racist or patriarchal motives.
- Often calls its subjects into being Addresses people as people to be convinced of the right-ness of the manifesto
- Ted Kaczynski “The Unabomber” Industrial Society and Its Future 35,000 word manifesto about modern society, declaiming the changes being brought about by computers For 17 years – 1978-1995 he sent bombs from a remote cabin in the wilderness to various individuals across the US, killing three people, and injuring a further 23. The bombs were used as blackmail against the Washington post and the New York Times. He claimed he would stop sending bombs if either of the papers published his manifesto. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – Columbine High AOL website hosting threats/agendas early online distribution of manifestos Totally asocial. Their claims were against people of all types, but specifically against people that didn’t recognise their elite personal qualities. Hitman for Hire video manifesto A video for a school project that acted out a school shooting
- 22 year old ‘Men’s Rights’ activist He posted online about a war on women, and how he wanted to subjugate them all. How they were innately inferior beings. My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger 107,000 word manifesto. Distributed online over email and youtube It included extreme racial prejudice, and hatred of women. He hated black people, referring to them as slaves, and talks about his aristocratic ancestors. He repeatedly condemned all women for refusing to sleep with him. He said that society should, quoting: “quarantine all [women] in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off... I would have an enormous tower built just for myself... and gleefully watch them all die."” 2014 Isla Vista killings Killed six people, and injured a further fourteen. He used a knife, a number of guns, and a vehicle to harm and kill people. He committed suicide at the scene.
- 21 year old white supremacist “Feared ‘the blacks’ are taking over” Often frequented different white supremacist websites, and was pro-slavery, pro-hitler, pro-racism, specifically anti-black racism lastrhodesian.com -- website and Facebook Dylann Roof was committed to the idea of Rhodesia, and created a site that idealised it as a perfect utopian period, that we had to return to. He wrote a manifesto, only about 2500 words, which committed to a wide range of racist ideologies Naziism, antebellum american confederacy, apartheid, and so on. It seems that the ideologies that he committed to were less important than the racialised hatred he espoused. 2015 Charleston Church Shootings Earlier this year, he conducted the 2015 Charleston church shootings, killing nine african american church-goers. He attended prayer with them, then gunned them down. He survived, and is in custody. During his questioning, he admitted to wanting to start a race war. I want to also focus on the apartheid, rhodesia, hitler thing. Rhodesia was a failed state. It only succeeded for as long as it did because it was a slave colony supported by outside wealth. It failed, and imploded, but because of this it no longer exists. Apartheid failed. It was kicked in the guts by the African National Congress, as led by Nelson Mandela. Black South African people were given the right to vote, and in doing so, did away with some of the institutional structures of racism. Apartheid no longer exists. The same goes for Nazi Germany. These are all political movements that died, but dreamed of a racist state. I just want to argue here that the fact that they’re no longer around means that it’s possible for people to dream about them as if they were utopias. If they were still around, then the reality of them wouldn’t accommodate for Roof’s racist dream
- 32 year old white supremacist, publicly fascist Now 36 years old. Very active on white supremacist websites. Extensively discussed his hatred for the progressives, and was absolutely venomous against Muslim people. 2083: A European Declaration of Independence His manifesto is extremely long. Over a thousand pages, or roughly 300 thousand words. Copies portions of the Unabomber’s manifesto, but instead of talking about ‘leftists and blacks’, Breivik talks about ‘Cultural Marxists and Muslims’. He self-described as Culturally Christian, but not religious. He sought a return to patriarchy, and was a fan of Jeremy Clarkson, until recently of Top Gear fame. While he is a white supremacist, he is, like only a few others, pro-Israeli, pro-Zionist. As far as I can tell, this is due to his desire for Jewish people to leave Norway and head to Israel. “You cannot defeat Islamization or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/ cultural Marxism.” Breivik was also really in to World of Warcraft, which was apparently a way of making people think he had a dumb hobby. Instead he was writing his manifesto. 2011 Oslo & Utøya attacks In 2011, he shot a large number of people, predominantly young white Norwegian teenagers, who were attending a summer camp on the Island of Utoya. He posed as a police officer to gain access to the island, and then proceed to shoot people, mainly aged between 17-19. Because the island was limited in size, the teenagers couldn’t flee. As a result, he killed nearly 80 people. The reason that he targeted the camp appears to be because it was organised by the Norwegian Labor Party, which he believed was partly responsible for cultural marxism.
- So I want to stress that while Bifo uses the word ‘hero’, he means it in a critical, sarcastic way. At the end of the book on the hero figure, he writes “Why did I write such a horrible book?” The Hero is the person who fights for a cause If this is a common cause – such as the nation, or democracy, or a religion, then we have an easy way of understanding this. So the Hero also needs to have a cause, but what if one does not exist? The Hero needs to create a cause. Sometimes the cause is written down, some times it is ranted on a video, sometimes it is encoded in a game. In all cases, these documents are types of manifesto, which are published online. Sometimes on places like 4Chan, at other times on YouTube, and occasionally in webforums The Hero creates a cause in the form of the manifesto, and distributes this online. These texts are pathological – they are maniacal, paranoid and fear-ridden. Often, they are explicitly racist, and in this, they are drawn from the implicit anti-Arab racism that exists in the social idea of the terrorist. Bifo notes that many of the contemporary hero terrorists – the lone wolves – are often calling for a eugenicist approach to killing off large portions of the population often on the basis of race or sexual identity. He also notes that this approach is often espoused alongside a horrible interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as a commitment to an extremist atheism. And although I don’t like to say it, as an atheist, I believe that his diagnosis is correct. Despite what Richard Dawkins claims, there are extremist atheists.
- The ‘hero’ destroys lives and creates manifestos The witness must observe and testify Social media hasn’t ‘constructed’ the manifesto killer, nor has it constructed the extremist political movement But it has allowed for wider attention + distribution nationally, and globally.