Dr. Gordon Woo

25th October 2017

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF THE

MEDIA AS A TERRORIST WEAPON

Threat

coercion

‘The supreme art

of war is to subdue

the enemy without

fighting.’

Sun Tzu

The Art of War

Terrorists will

use the media

to achieve

their political

goals with less

violence than

would else

be necessary.

Terrorism is the language of being noticed

Unabomber: Ted Kaczinski Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was on the loose for 17 years,

before he had his thoughts published in The New York Times

and The Washington Post in September 1995.

…..This led to his identification by his brother.

At the request of Attorney General Janet Reno and the F.B.I., and with the

concurrence of The New York Times, The Washington Post published the

unaltered 35,000-word manifesto of the Unabomber.

The bomber offered to stop the killing if the text of the manifesto, calling for a

revolution against the industrial and technological underpinnings of society,

was published by one of the two newspapers within three months.

Anders Breivik: right-wing extremist

A 1,500-page "manifesto"

published online, entitled 2083:

A European Declaration of

Independence was written by

Anders Behring Breivik.

Part of the tract details the author's

personal reflections and

experiences during several

preparation phases, leading to

the 22 July 2011 attacks in Oslo.

Aum Shinrikyo: 20 March 1995 Based on the technical and logistical requirements, sarin is the most dangerous

practically deployable chemical agent of terror.

Aum Shinrikyo, an extreme Japanese millennarian sect, had its own scientific

laboratory, which was used to produce sarin for a Tokyo subway attack on

20 March 1995.

The saturation Japanese media coverage

lasted most of the year, and much of the next,

encompassing hundreds of hours of TV time

and thousands of articles.

Terrorism: a thinking man’s game

‘…This is a thinking man’s game.

Especially when one is as poor as the

Popular Front is. It would be silly for us to

even think of waging a regular war.

We will continue our present strategy.

It’s a smart one, you see….’

Dr. George Habash (1970)

Hostage - press conference tactic

In June 1970, PFLP seized control of the

Intercontinental hotel in Amman,

taking all foreign visitors and reporters hostage.

George Habash called a press conference at

the hotel to list the Palestinian demands:

Cease shelling of the Palestinian camps

Release of all Palestinian prisoners in

Jordanian prisons

Removal of the head of the Jordanian army

Massacre at Lod airport : May 1972

On 30 May 1972, three members of the

Japanese Red Army, recruited by the Popular

Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External

Operations, attacked Lod (now Ben Gurion)

airport near Tel Aviv.

26 people were killed and 80 injured.

Two of the attackers were killed, while a third,

Kozo Okamoto, was captured after being

wounded.

Attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics

Eleven Israeli Olympic team

members were taken hostage

and eventually killed, along

with a German police officer.

The attack was carried out by the

Palestinian terrorist group

Black September.

Madrid rail bombing: 11 March 2004

The terrorist attack was a catalyst for change

in the Spanish general election of 14 March.

Barcelona: 17 August 2017

Terrorist van rammed pedestrians on the most famous promenade in

Spain. Many of the victims were tourists. The original plot involved three

gas-laden vehicle bombs targeting the port and the cathedral as well.

Abu Hamza: radical imam who opposed

democracy but exploited freedom of speech

‘Democracy has come to be one of the most vibrant

diseases of our time, infecting everyone involved,

and destroying those who approach it as their

saviour.’ Allah’s Governance on Earth (2001)

Spiral of terrorist attacks amplified by media coverage

Terrorism, especially involving

suicide, creates media publicity,

which in turn encourages the outward

spread of terrorism.

12 October 1984

‘We must try

to find ways

to starve the

terrorist and

the hijacker

of the oxygen

of publicity

on which

they depend.’

UK Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher

The IRA hunger games

Over the course of the years 1980

and 1981, republican prisoners in the

Maze Prison outside of Belfast in

Northern Ireland launched two

hunger strikes for what they regarded

as restoration of their status as

political prisoners.

The hunger strikes were also a

showdown between the republican

ideal of the struggle of the Irish

people and the British Government.

Bobby Sands died on 5 May 1981 after

66 days on hunger strike. There was

global news coverage of his funeral,

the largest in Belfast:100,000 mourned.

Following the path of least resistance

‘The great principle is that,

in producing its effects,

Nature acts always according

to the simplest paths.’

Pierre de Maupertuis, 1746

The simplest path by which a terrorist organization can elevate

its threat profile is via amplified media coverage of its attacks,

engaging in psychological warfare.

The UK media regulator

highlighted concerns over a news

bulletin ITV repeatedly showing a

graphic mobile phone sequence of

one of the murderers with a

machete and blood on his hands.

Horrific video of the murder

of a British soldier

on the streets of London:

22 May 2013

IF IT BLEEDS - IT LEADS.

International name recognition in targeting

Terrorist attacks accordingly focus on targets in places with international

name recognition, especially cities that are political, economic or tourist centres,

New York, DC, London, Paris, Madrid, Mumbai, Oslo, Ottawa, Sydney, Nice, Berlin,

Stockholm, Manchester, Barcelona etc..

Soft targets in rural areas have minimal

security - but also have poor media access.

An important priority of terrorist targeting is international media coverage.

‘Terrorism without its horrified witnesses would

be as pointless as a play without an audience.’

Mark Juergensmeyer,

Terror in the mind of God

Optimal terrorist targeting:

a suicide bomber can only die once

Salman Abedi

22 May 2017

Media coverage increases PTSD

After 9/11, a study of more than

2000 adults found that more time

spent watching TV coverage of

the attacks was associated with

higher rates of Post-Traumatic

Stress Disorder.

A contagion effect is created

where people relive the attacks

when they watch or read stories

about them. This can lead to

to shared feelings of fear

and helplessness.

Half of Jihad

is media

Recruitment via free media advertising

Recruitment is vital for maintaining a continuous supply of

committed terrorist operatives. Terrorism media coverage provides

free front-page media advertising for terrorist organizations.

The most outrageous and

depraved scenes of violence

may be the most viewed.

4 year-old Isa Dare detonated a

car bomb containing four alleged

spies against Daech.

February 2016

Children are the firewood of Daech

CITY OF GHOSTS

Raqqa is being slaughtered silently

Attacking the world’s most popular game

GIA plotted to attack

England players in

Marseille during the

1998 World Cup.

Daech attacked the Stade

de France in a football

match between France and

Germany, November 2015

Learning from newspaper publicity

On Bastille night, 2016,

a 19 ton refrigerated truck

ploughed into the dense crowd on

the Promenade des Anglais in

Nice, killing 86.

The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-

Bouhlel, originally from Tunisia,

had kept on his cell phone

a photo of a car ramming incident

in Nice in December 2015.

‘

Le cerveau, meilleure arme

antiterroriste. Charlie Hebdo, 18 November 2015