Great whites, paedophiles and terrorists: the need for critical thinking in a new age of fear

Abstract

Keywords:

• al-Qaeda
• assassination
• counter-terrorism
• mass-casualty terrorism
• new terrorism
• strategy
• suicide bombing
• terrorism

Notes

1. For an exposé of the episode as a hoax, see the account in The Guardian (2007).

2. However, in statistical terms, the threat that terrorism poses to the general public in most countries has hitherto been slight. As John Mueller has strikingly pointed out, accident-causing deer have killed as many Americans since 1960 as terrorists (Rachman 2007).

3. The term was coined by Lemkin (1944).

4. See the analysis by Freedman (2007, p. 332).

5. During the troubles in Northern Ireland, it was common for politicians in the Republic of Ireland to stress how different and more moral in its actions the IRA of the past had been from the Provisional IRA. To counter this argument, Sinn Féin published The Good Old IRA: Tan War Operations (1985) that charted atrocities committed by the IRA during the Irish War of Independence so as to underscore the similarity between the two IRAs.

6. See, for example, the comments of Primoratz (2004, pp. 25–26).

7. For further discussion of this point, see Guelke (2007).

8. This point is underlined by Gearty (2007, p. 35).