Peter Neumann is in my library (The Strategy of Terrorism, Radicalized, Bluster) and I have briefly referred to his words in earlier posts (Radicalisation and On how to be completely wrong…). I’ve mostly found him to be right, though. Hope he’s wrong about the future, though.
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Domestic terrorism has been and will continue to be a bigger threat than imported terrorism. So, this is hardly news. The federal government wanted to issue a report stating just that and the Republicans (surprise, surprise) threw a hissy fit. Jihadism is one of our fear centers and must be maintained as a severe threat so that we will allow all of the totalitarian “improvements” that have been made in our government (Patriot Act, etc.).
I think the professor is more right than wrong in this. It is an axiom of problem solving that you need to know what the problem is before you can actually solve it. But when the problem runs into a political ideology, it gets all fouled up. Right now the government and much of our society is run by fear mongers, people who exaggerate the treat of anything (Jihadism, climate change, pollution (Save the Planet!), doesn’t matter) to first get attention and then action. Since all of these exaggerations are actually lies (some bigger, others smaller) is it any wonder that people are losing trust in “facts” in the public sphere?