The blowback from the propaganda war on terrorism
The politicians and the corporate media of Europe cannot place in the public domain the impact of the terrain of European racism is now having on the motivation of individuals to randomly attack any and all civilians regardless of their race and religion. It is noteworthy that the minority victims of these attacks are not presented in the public domain in equal coverage as the victims of the majority race. In France the official public political discourse points to Islamic radicalisation and not the race of the attacker i.e. Arab even when all evidence points to a much more complex motivational structure such as plain and simple asocial, predatory hate bred by the social order and its failings. “Islamic radicalisation” is then a discursive instrument to mask the failings of the social order and its role in the generation of asocial predators of minority race groups. This mask evades the dire questions of why and how but it also gives space to asocial predators of the majority race as Breivik because what is apparent is that the social order is generating these predators. The war on terrorism in Europe is then giving space and momentum to home grown predatory attacks in spite of the insistence of the state that since 2001 the security apparatus has diminished the operational space in which terrorists could act. The political blowback of this reassurance is the expectation that civilians in public spaces in Europe are in spaces insulated from terror. A faulty expectation that will now feed the move to the far right in European electoral politics as politicians of all persuasions are not willing to debunk this expectation and this refusal will feed racist actions against minorities in European social orders of all types. It is apparent that the war on terrorism has not only provided a stimulus to violent acts by minority males predominantly but it has also granted space to illicit markets within Europe to grow and thrive and these illicit markets are now and will continue to supply the necessary instruments for public attacks on citizens of the EU. These illicit markets will supply and enable violent attacks on citizens regardless of the politics, motivation and mental health of the attacker/s. The other discourse of the war on terrorism that will soon impact Europe is the blowback from the discourse that the dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will deliver Europe from the hands of the terrorist attacks. There is no Iraq and Syria that fills their borders with a social order under the hegemony of a state they are both fragmented with a variety of social orders and a range of actors aspiring to create a hegemonic state under their control with the major impetus being sectarian hegemony over minorities viewed as existential enemies with the feeling being mutual. IS will then wilt and melt into the Sunni population gestating to be re-born free of the caliph and his faction and focused now on acts of terror wherever their resources allow. The contingent of European foreign fighters especially those who were always against the caliph’s state building adventure will then pose a grave problem for Europe and the politicians of Europe will hope that they are fully expended in a sectarian war with Iran and its proxies in Iraq and with Assad and his allies in Syria. If not, then they are heading home to the Balkans and other spaces in the quest for safe operational havens. Political immediacy is a dangerous form of denial yet the politicians and the servile corporate media peddle it as an illicit drug retail operation. The threat will then evolve a new dynamic within the anarchic cauldron of Iraq and Syria which will then merit a new discourse of denial. Finally, two online news reports on the torture and dismemberment including decapitation of hostages on the 2nd floor of the Bataclan, Paris speak of attempts by the French state to suppress evidence of these atrocities. Given the accuracy of these reports it is expected that the IS operatives in Europe will seek to replicate the IS methodology in Europe on a captive audience. Why then seek to suppress this expected action from the IS playbook? Political immediacy which defeats the very narrow political agenda for spin to facilitate political survival. Hamsters on a wheel.