近代以来国家恐怖主义的特点及构成要素

国家恐怖主义是由政府实施的恐怖主义,法西斯主义则是国家恐怖主义发展到登峰造极的产物.国家恐怖主义具有制度化、公开性和社会化的特点,并具有独裁政治,庞大的镇压机器,镇压性的特务机关,非人道的人身迫害,非战争状态下对大量人口的集体收监、屠杀或迫使其流亡,针对社会知名人士的暴力行为等构成要素.     

Teaching terrorism,saving the state? Education and geopolitical imaginations of terrorism in 12 violently challenged states

The role of education in political socialisation and the importance of terrorism discourses in promoting (or silencing) certain interests have long been acknowledged. This study combines both themes by asking: How do school textbooks, sanctioned by states that are violently challenged by internal opposition, discuss the issue of terrorism? I draw on, and contribute to, four distinct, yet related streams of research: critical geopolitics, critical terrorism studies, geographies of education, and young people's geographies. Simultaneously, while most work on the topic focuses on individual cases (typically of Western countries), I conduct the first comparative analysis of twelve countries from different world regions: China, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Contrary to recent claims, considerable heterogeneity persists regarding geopolitical imaginations of terrorism, while US-coined discourses are only infrequently adapted. However, there is still recognisable functionalist convergence as the states under analysis utilise their control of the education system in their internal struggles, mainly by portraying their opponents as evil, by ascribing a positive identity to themselves, and by calling for support by their citizens (including restrictions of human rights and democracy).     

A climate terrorism assemblage? Exploring the politics of climate change-terrorism-radicalisation relations

Despite a series of claims from Bernie Sanders (2015), Barack Obama (2015), and others arguing that climate change, radicalisation, and terrorism are connected by complex causal relationships, there is very little academic examination of the politics of these claims. Building on DeLanda’s (2006) account of assemblages and social complexity, this paper conceptualises climate change-terrorism-radicalisation relationships as a ‘climate terrorism assemblage’. A ‘climate terrorism assemblage’ is a complex, emergent ‘whole’ formed from a heterogeneous range of interacting geopolitical components (e.g. climatic factors, migration, think tanks and academic publications, and a discourse of ‘climate security’). Specifically, a climate terrorism assemblage is characterised by ‘strategic territorialisations’: context-specific, multi-scalar points at which political claims of causal links between climate change, terrorism, and radicalisation are crystallised. Strategic territorialisations are produced in two, interrelated contexts. First, using the case study of the Syrian Conflict, a climate terrorism assemblage reveals an intricate, contested politics of ‘drawing lines’ which link climate change, terrorism, and radicalisation. Secondly, the paper argues that, at the points at which causal links are constructed between climate change, terrorism and radicalisation, a climate terrorism assemblage territorialises around intersectional subject formations, in particular a young masculine subject vulnerable to potential radicalisation and terrorism. Overall, the paper concludes that a climate terrorism assemblage provides a productive analytic frame to investigate the contested power relations of climate change-radicalisation-terrorism connections.     

Behind the Cold War: rethinking the left,the state and civil society in Italy (1940s-1970s)

This article stresses the longue durée features of the Italian political system. It examines the role of two historical factors: (1) the existence of some peculiar (and quite 'sophisticated') state financial institutions; (2) the influence of certain long-enduring social traits (regional differences, family values, the Catholic Church, political religion) on the relationship between state and citizens. It discusses the specificities of the Italian political system (with its historical Fascist heritage and the biggest Communist Party in Europe) and the reaction of the political elite (especially on the left) to international developments in the 1940s and the 1970s, since these years (of the economic 'miracle' and the origins of Italy's political 'landslide') offer the best comparison of Italy with other European countries. These two periods also enable us to examine the Communist Party's (PCI) crucial contribution in the two worst times of national crisis: the post-war years and the years of terrorism. The first part of the article examines the heritage of Fascism and how Italy's new political elite exploited it to strengthen the country's political and economic position after the war. The second explores how behind the Cold War the mass parties helped the country to expand in the international market by controlling social conflict. The third draws some conclusions about the 'success' of the 1940s and the heavy legacies that contemporary Italy has inherited from the 1970s.     

On the horns of the terrorist dilemma: syrian christians' response to israeli “Terrorism”

This article examines how the prevailing understanding of “terrorism” and contemporary Israeli military operations against the Palestinians provides different religious groups in Syria with a common ground on which to base their claim to share in the national identity. State‐sponsored nationalism is not the only source for establishing a unified community. Syrian Christians use their political protest against the Israeli operations to reinforce their attempts to reconstruct national history, based on biblical references, with the aim of claiming that their religious history is part of national history. This transformation from religious to secular identity reduces the risks against Christians being set apart from the rest of the population and, hence, serves to insure their position in society as well as maintaining their own group identity.     

Preemption contested: Suspect spaces and preventability in the July 7 inquest

The London Coroner's Inquest into the deaths of July 7 2005 unequivocally rejected the notion that the security services could and should have been able to identify the 7/7 perpetrators as potential future terrorists before July 2005. These findings contest powerful post-9/11 security logics of preemption and anticipation that hold that security intervention is logical and desirable in the face of unknown and unspecified threats. This paper analyses the spatio-temporal work conducted in and through the Coroner's Inquest, with a specific focus on its preventability evidence. The Inquest provides a rich archive in which the potentialities for intervention and preemption, and concomitant questions of suspect spaces, are engaged, debated, accepted and rejected. This paper argues that the Inquest rendered ‘7/7’ from a fast a familiar framing as anticipated catastrophe, into a ‘matter of concern’ in the sense discussed by Bruno Latour. The paper considers the ambiguous nature of the Inquest, and the way in which it both opened space for public debate and alternative conceptions of futurity; and closed down such space by accepting and normalising notions of networked threat.     

Terror or Terrorism? The “Islamic State” Between State and Nonstate Violence

As a non‐state actor that claims its own territory, the “Islamic State” utilizes a spectrum of very different kinds of coercion and violence. Considering the group's aspirations to govern the territories controlled by it, any clear distinction between uses of force and coercion that states typically claim as their legitimate right, and implement terrorist non‐state violence, tends to blur right before our analytically‐focused eyes. This contribution discusses how the group challenges the distinction between “terror from above” and “terrorism from below” as well as the meaning of the dual character of Daesh's belief system between the ideological and the religious for Daesh's repertoire of violence.     

Historicizing the present: Brussels attacks and heritagization of spontaneous memorials

This research article traces the process of transition from spontaneous to ‘official’ memorialisation of the 2016 Brussels terrorist attack by questioning which factors trigger the heritagization process of spontaneous memorials and their contents. With a view to critically assess the significance of heritage values in relation to terrorism, this article scrutinises how these values are grasped, narrated and articulated by the local authorities, government and archival institutions in the preservation, conservation and heritagization of spontaneous memorials. There is an emphasis on the two facets of heritagization: how meanings attached to a memorial and its objects are created and expressed by the community of bereavement, and how the transformation of places, practices, objects into diverse forms of ‘heritage’ evolves. This article brings a new perspective on the heritagization of spontaneous memorials, seen as important in determining how a traumatic event such is a terrorist attack will settle in the collective memory on the long term, by becoming historicized.     

Actors and structures in the selection of knowledge: A case in the history of Swedish higher education

In the early modern period (16–18th centuries), churches and state administrations alike strove to eradicate Evil. Neither they nor society at large accepted a conceptual differentiation between crime and sin.

The two worst kinds of Evil early modern societies could imagine were organized arson and witchcraft. Although both of them were delusions, they nevertheless promoted state building. Networks of itinerant street beggars were supposed to have been paid by foreign powers to set fire in towns and villages. These vagrant arsonists can be regarded as the terrorists of the early modern period. Witches were persons who had allegedly made a compact with the devil. They were thought to randomly use maleficent magic to harm individuals as well as whole regions.

When law enforcement agencies and suspicious peasants or townspeople tried to identify persons who might be arsonist terrorists or witches they used the category ‘Evil’. Anyone who ignored the behavioral standards of society ever so slightly could be suspected of being utterly evil. The concept of Evil linked petty, commonplace immorality and the worst crimes imaginable to each other and to the mindless hatred of demons. This pre-modern concept of the banality of Evil was called into question by the legal reforms of the 17th century. It was finally rejected by the enlightenment that negated the imagined continuum of Evil.

Witches and arsonist terrorists shared a number of characteristics. They were both said to form conspiracies that mirrored everyday society like an evil twin. The crimes they perpetrated lacked any purpose or reason, they were motivated by sheer malice. The worst forms of Evil had certain qualities of an epidemic: Witchcraft and terrorism were supposed to be always on the rise. The evil people were victimizers as well as victims. The imagery of Evil even implied that the evildoers resembled those they were supposed to have harmed.

The fear of terrorist vagrants and witches as well as other conspiracy theories can be traced back to the Black Death. The plague of the 14th century not only sparked anti-Semitism. It lend force and credibility to the idea of an irrationally destructive, ever-growing secret organization as the epitome of Evil.     

Urban atmospheres of terror

This essay advances an affective agenda in urban geopolitics that studies the everyday felt experience of urban terrorism. It takes as examples the relations between the spatial politics and affective atmospheres of Place de la République (Paris) and Place de la Bourse/Beursplein (Brussels) in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016. Intersecting feminist geopolitics and non-representational geographies, the essay bridges geographical studies of experience and affective atmospheres with experiential accounts in urban geopolitics. It argues for a renewed conceptual engagement and scholarly focus on the affective dimensions of urban geopolitics and security, that highlights the contested and unequal topographies of everyday experience in the aftermath of terrorism in urban Europe.