Terrorism's cause and cure: the rhetorical regime of democracy in the US and UK

Abstract

Political actors and commentators in the global ‘West’ have often used two key rhetorical approaches to explain terrorism. On the one hand, they ascribe attacks to terrorists' violent hatred and resentment of democracy. On the other hand, they assert that democracy is the essential panacea for terrorism. These two approaches are linked through a process of discursive ‘articulation’ that inhibits public debate and disagreement. Specifically, the ideological power and unassailable goodness of ‘democracy’ become the simultaneous, self-evident cause of and cure for terrorism. Using five major terrorist events from 1993 to 2005, the article illustrates how political leaders and news outlets advanced a ‘rhetorical regime’ that suppressed oppositional discourse and rationalised innately anti-democratic policies. One result of this rhetorical regime is the hegemonic maintenance of power through new representations of global terrorism.

Keywords:

• terrorism
• democracy
• rhetorical regime
• binaries
• articulation
• ideographs

Introduction

In the immediate aftermath of violent explosions that killed hundreds of people at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998, US President Bill Clinton offered his public interpretation of the attacks:

The bombs that kill innocent Americans are aimed not only at them, but at the very spirit of our country and the spirit of freedom. For terrorists are the enemies of everything we believe in and fight for: peace and democracy, tolerance and security. As long as we continue to believe in those values and continue to fight for them, their enemies will not prevail. (Clinton 1998)

Such rhetorical positioning helped to establish a binary interpretation of the events, as Clinton tied democracy to the incontrovertible notions of peace, tolerance, and security while pitting it against a common enemy of terrorism. In this way, Clinton presented democracy as a plausible cause of and cure for the attacks. He was certainly not the first to position democracy and terrorism in direct opposition, but by doing so to explain an attack he offered a trial balloon, a test to see if this particular a priori rationalisation would resonate among an anxious news media and general public. It worked all too well: both the binary and the necessity to ‘fight’ for one side were adopted by other officials and journalists in following days. In fact, in subsequent years the power of this type of association and its implied recourse have come to serve as organising frames employed by other world leaders and journalists in response to a number of attacks. In 2004, six years after the embassy attacks and more than two years after 9/11, US President George W. Bush used similar rhetoric on the anniversary of the Iraq war:

The rise of democratic institutions in Afghanistan and Iraq is a great step toward a goal of lasting importance to the world. We've set out to encourage reform and democracy in the greater Middle East as the alternatives to fanaticism, resentment and terror. We've set out to break the cycle of bitterness and radicalism that has brought stagnation to a vital region and destruction to cities in America and Europe, and around the world. (Bush 2004a)

One year later and across the Atlantic Ocean, remarkably consonant discourses appeared in the wake of the London bombings on 7 July 2005. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in response to that attack, ‘This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world. And we the democracies of the world, must come together to defeat it and eradicate it’ (Blair 2005a).

We argue that contemporary global discourses about terrorism and democracy such as these were employed with significant regularity following attacks in the US and Europe. Political actors and news media outlets in multiple nations have continued to connect these ideas, both in terms of rationalising why countries were attacked and in setting out a public course of action to confront such threats. Although such notions of democracy as either a cause of or cure for terrorism have become commonplace, we argue that the connection between democracy and terrorism is neither natural nor beneficial in our collective understanding of either one. Rather, this linkage should be seen as strategic political communication, an attempt to represent these matters in binary forms that directly influence domestic and foreign policy by making some ideas seem so natural they become resistant to critical analysis – moving, in essence, beyond reproach.

The representation of ideas through discourse is recognised as a central element in the social production of knowledge and meaning (Hall 1997). In our analysis, the terms ‘terrorism’ or ‘democracy’ are expressed in a number of what Foucault (1972) has labelled ‘discursive formations’: collections of statements that follow similar styles, strategies, and political patterns in order to represent characteristic ways of thinking about issues. Within these particular formations are certain points of intersection that attempt to define our understanding of terrorism and democracy in relation to one another. We refer to these points as articulations, by which we mean attempts partially to fix a meaning between two floating signifiers through rhetorical practices (DeLuca 1999, Laclau and Mouffe 2001). It is this articulation of terrorism with democracy that we highlight in this manuscript, specifically as it has occurred in US and UK news coverage of prominent terrorist events over more than a decade. We recognise, of course, that news media are only one part of larger discursive formations. But because news content reaches both broadly and deeply into modern culture, it is a vital location for the construction, circulation, and circumscription of meaning about terrorist events. As such, ‘news’ is a principal field in which these articulations can be either reinforced or contested. The culturally shared meanings of both terrorism and democracy are obviously not fixed, and indeed, we find important distinctions in the treatment of this particular articulation in both countries – but such distinctions nonetheless fall within identifiable broader patterns.

In this research we examined two types of news sources (print and broadcast) in both the US and UK immediately following five major attacks: the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York, the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States, the attacks of 11 March 2004 in Spain, and the attacks of 7 July 2005 in London. We selected the Cable News Network (CNN) and The New York Times as leading sources in US media, and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and The Times (London) from the UK. All four news organisations have global audiences and roughly similar formats, but each addresses different publics from unique social, political, and national standpoints. We focused on coverage containing statements from political actors and media figures who linked terrorism to democracy, including those who intentionally employed this rhetoric and others who may have unwittingly contributed to the discourse. Consciously or not, all of them helped perpetuate a specific rhetorical regime that described democracy as both the cause of and cure for terrorism. This cause/cure regime, tentative at first, emerged as a fundamental representation of terrorism and its meanings, not only in targeted countries but throughout the formal political discourses of international diplomacy. Once established, it became a broad, self-evident expression of common sense and served to both justify and obscure a host of domestic and international political objectives.

Theoretical framework: articulation, binaries, and ideographs

Underlying our approach are three key assumptions regarding the discursive intersection of the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘democracy’. First, the rhetorical power of each term increases the likelihood that any link between them may drive public attitudes and behaviour with disproportionate effect, opening the door to a range of political and social effects that would otherwise be more difficult to produce. Put simply, these are deeply resonant ideas. Second, any such linkage is likely to suppress some valuable alternative perspectives by diminishing complex news and public assessments as well as critical analysis. Why think expansively when such potent ideas are on the discursive playing field? Third, a link between democracy and terrorism – as ideas – illuminates how political power represents itself to the public, binding the visceral affect of violence and death with the sweeping mythologies of national unity and democratic solidarity. The political and social consequences emerging from the broader discourses of both of these ideas are such that we are compelled to interrogate the terrorism/democracy construct as an expression of ideology, manifested in specific moments by a wide range of actors who participated, consciously or not, in its dissemination. To do so, we draw on three theoretical approaches in cultural and rhetorical analysis that are useful in identifying and mapping such expressions: articulation theory, binarism, and ideographs. We suggest that, when applied together, these approaches can provide crucial insight into otherwise opaque discursive practices.

Articulation theory describes dynamics by which political actors can – under certain conditions and in limited timeframes – bring together discrete discursive artefacts to construct particular meanings. The theory has evolved over recent decades, but we follow Hall's (1996) view of articulation as a way to understand the emergence of ideological constructs from cultural practices and, in light of this, their contingent and mutable nature. Building from the theoretical foundations of Gramscian hegemony and Laclau and Mouffe's (1985) emphasis on culture as a discursive field, Hall contends that there is no necessary, inherent connection between concepts that are bound together in dominant discourses (Slack 1996). As such, hegemony is not asserted simply by the expression of a specific worldview, but also in the linkage of concepts that can effectively (even if temporarily) reshape the political landscape. We argue that the rhetorical link between terrorism and democracy represents a complex, evolving, non-random articulation that was evident in post-attack discourses and was intended to calibrate public perceptions of reality to general and specific political agendas. After a somewhat tentative beginning, this move – the patterned repetition of the seemingly self-evident relationship between terrorism and democracy – became prevalent in news texts during these periods. Such an outcome necessarily focused social and political perceptions by articulating two powerful abstractions in an affectively charged binary discourse.

The binary is a fundamental construct in human psychology and political communication that shapes social interaction by setting implicit or explicit social boundaries, compelling linguistic and cognitive comparisons between elements, and, most importantly, proscribing unacceptable concepts such as ideas, actions, persons, and cultures (for example, Burke 1969, Lewis 2005, Russell 2006, Said 1993, Saussure 1960, and Spurr 1993). Within a given discursive field, binaries may be one of the most recognisable and direct forms of articulation. Consider, for example, President George W. Bush's (2001) assertion, ‘You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror’. But as expressions in language, binaries are also infinitely varied and subtle. Not all binaries are established with the same intentionality, nor do they play out in necessarily predictable patterns. We consider them to be constructions within a discursive field that are simultaneously constituted in and vulnerable to the transformation (and slippage) of signs. To navigate this shifting terrain, we turn to an established model for mapping binary discourses described in Coe et al. (2004). In that study, the authors charted the deeply resonant good versus evil framing deployed by the Bush administration – which was then echoed and amplified by news media – in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks. Three key dimensions of a binary discourse emerged from their analysis. First, a central organising object was established, an event or a concept that resonated with the target audience. Next, a binary was propagated in two phases: an establishment phase, in which political actors initiated or increased the use of the binary, and a sustaining phase, in which the binary was circulated and maintained. Finally, the binary discourse was supported by multiple binary constructions that could be adapted, revised, and reengineered to meet the shifting demands of an active discursive field.

Our analysis here draws upon each of these dimensions, but from slightly different analytical perspectives. We argue that the central organising object of the terror versus democracy binary is the postcolonial discourse of Othering that has been all too familiar in global politics. As such, our investigation focuses on a discourse within a discourse, a linguistic articulation that is a subordinate but important indicator of a broader and infinitely more complex discursive field. We follow this articulation in stages, first as a comparatively provisional construction, then as a fully established binary, and finally as a fracturing, though persistent, structure in the discourse. We also extend the conceptualisation of multiple binary constructions in two ways. First, we suggest below that the elements of the binary – terror and democracy – can themselves be viewed as ideographs, that is, complex discursive constructs that help illuminate ideological practices. Second, we posit that the articulation of these ideographs is expressed in the relatively complex binary of cause and cure. Before beginning our exploration of the cause/cure binary, let us note the role of ideographs.

In communication theory, ideographs are symbolic linguistic terms that may encompass a number of meanings and may be combined to achieve a given rhetorical effect. In McGee's (1980) influential interpretation, an ideograph:

is an ordinary-language term found in political discourse. It is a high-order abstraction representing a collective commitment to a particular but equivocal and ill-defined normative goal. It warrants the use of power, excuses behaviour and belief which might otherwise be perceived as eccentric or antisocial, and guides behaviour and belief into channels easily recognised by a community as acceptable and laudable. (p. 183)

Significantly, such terms are conceived by McGee to be both explicitly political and functionally extant. That is, they influence political consciousness (they are not mere figments of an observer's imagination) and, for both those who deploy them and those who encounter them, they constitute authentic political realities. The colloquial application of the ideograph inevitably disguises its complexity. For example, a principal danger of the terrorism ideograph is that terrorism comes to be seen as a decontextualised and omnipresent threat, which hinders both critical analysis and practical responses. Democracy is also compromised by its simplistic and monolithic representation as an ideograph, despite its almost exclusively positive framing. For our purposes, it is important to note that McGee (1980) identifies two dimensions as essential to ideographic analysis. The first, the ‘diachronic’, accounts for the historical development of a given usage, the places and times in which a specific cluster of terms is used. Second, the ‘synchronic’ dimension is how an ideograph confronts, contradicts or otherwise interacts with other ideographs. Together, these two dimensions generate a representation of how ideologies may be expressed through ideographic discourse. Our investigation shows how ideographs may be used in complex articulations, in this case a nuanced binary evolving through multiple stages within international news media discourses.

We should note here that we are not attempting to identify the myriad ways in which terrorism and democracy are defined in discourse by political or media actors. For example, terrorism is a hotly contested and ideologically loaded term lacking a unified definition (Weimann and Winn 1994). As Norris et al. (2003) point out, the same group may be regarded variously as terrorists, guerrillas, freedom fighters, or liberation movements depending on different subjective points of view. Defining democracy is at least as difficult given its varied history over two millennia, though it is commonly linked with other positive synchronic terms and ideographs like freedom, elections, or human rights. Individually, then, each term is iconic and efficacious, encompassing a range of meanings, usages and affective dimensions, and each is a continually negotiated symbol in its own right, manipulated, refracted and reformed to serve a particular set of goals in a given context. When joined together, another level of constraints and affordances becomes available to the political actors who deploy them. ¹ It is these complex and unfixed meanings that make ideographs particularly well-suited for use in binary pairings – linguistic formulations in which the contrasting of terms is presented as self-evidently appropriate and not requiring elaboration. Who, one might ask, could doubt that terrorism and democracy stand in direct opposition to one another?

It is with this perspective that we locate our central interest in how democracy and terrorism have been employed in tandem in news discourses, through binary articulations and synchronic associations, to produce what we call ‘rhetorical regimes’. This term intentionally alludes to Foucault and Gordon's (1980) notion of regimes of truth, which highlighted the ways that ‘a truth’ in knowledge (emphasising the singular) was socially constructed and cannot be absolute. Instead, notions of truth are created and sustained by the discursive formations of a given period or context. Foucault did not mean by this that regimes of truth are purely relative in their consequences. Whatever is perceived as true in the absence of absolute certainty still has very real power in application; and this power is a central point of his work on, for example, the apparatuses of discipline and punishment (Foucault 1977) which define ‘established truths’ about criminality and behaviour, and regulate our social conduct. In using the phrase ‘rhetorical regime’, we depart slightly from his suggestions about the role of the subject being primarily produced in the discourse. While we agree with the associated logic that no single actor or group of actors can solitarily ‘create’ discourse, there are disproportionate producers of power whose societal platforms allow them to impact, rupture, or inspire foundational perspectives of the discourse. In modern Western societies, political actors and leading news organisations often exert such influence. When their words and images become foundational in discussing and understanding certain societal and political matters, it is difficult for others to dissent or offer compelling alternative formulations. To be clear, politicians, journalists and pundits must operate within the limits of the episteme and regimes of truth of that time; but it is also the case that they have unmatched opportunities to establish rhetorical regimes. Our interest is in how this process unfolded in the construction of democracy as a cause of and cure for terrorism.

Terms of analysis

In this research we focused on five terrorist events that represented major attacks carried out by Muslim extremists against the United States and its allies: the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York, the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States, the attacks on 11 March 2004 in Spain, and the attacks of 7 July 2005 in London. Beginning with the first World Trade Centre attacks in 1993, these incidents have been central to the narrative of global terrorism predominant in Western countries. Other noteworthy incidents occurred within the same timeframe, for example the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and the nightclub bombing in Bali in 2002. But the five we address represent explicit attacks on non-military targets of US and European states. According to these criteria, these incidents returned the greatest number of results in Nexis as illustrated by a search in multiple publications. Thereby, they would likely have the strongest collective impact on the overall discourse. Further, these events situate the attacks of 11 September 2001 as a pivotal incident in the maturation of global terrorism, inasmuch as it is linked rhetorically and chronologically to each of the others. Significantly, these events were all broadly (though not equally) represented in global news media, each producing a distinctive narrative frame and its own set of powerful and disturbing visuals.

The incidents we analysed were covered in media around the world, particularly the post-2000 events. We focused on four news organisations in this study – The Times (London), The New York Times, The BBC, ² and CNN – for specific reasons. First, each is an iconic entity with a storied history, an influential voice, and tremendous reach (all of which have been greatly enhanced by the development of sophisticated websites over the last 10 to 15 years). Moreover, each represents a prominent national news organisation in the political sphere of influence in which four of the five attacks occurred (the US and UK). As such, all four organisations do not merely convey information but also contribute significantly to the construction of media narratives that broadly influence dominant political realities in Western countries. Through these organisations, political actors attempted – and to a great degree succeeded – in driving public support for substantive political agendas regarding terrorism. More subtly, the news professionals, political commentators, and occasional public voices ³ who produced these texts contributed a great deal to the establishment of a rhetorical regime by virtue of their definitions, meanings, and linkages, through which the majority of readers and viewers experienced these attacks.

To develop a corpus for analysis, we employed the Nexis database to identify documents in which the terms ‘terror’ and ‘democracy’ appeared in the same news content, within a 30‐day window starting the day of each incident. This sampling strategy did not seek to identify the universe of news media discourse on the terms nor the statistical significance of this articulation at any given time (which could be better assessed through more randomised samples). While the frequency of this articulation is relevant to its presumed power, we do not conceive that it is the only measure. Repetition, in other words, is not the only indicator of rhetorical influence. In the present study, we gathered a substantial corpus of the texts ⁴ where this articulation was present in order to conduct a critical reading across broad, yet focused, fields of discourse. All of the texts were read by two of the authors in a recursive process designed to identify and clarify patterns of strategic language. ⁵ This purposive sample generated a large number of texts which we then examined for instances where the two terms were used in close association. This enabled us to see key moments in the development of the relationship between these terms over a given period of time. After removing duplicate or irrelevant stories from the original 3317 collected, we evaluated roughly 850 remaining stories on the basis of political context, depth of conceptual linkage between the terms, and strategic nature of the linkage. It was within this corpus that we were able to discern similarities and differences in usage as they evolved in the different sources.

Establishing the regime: democracy as a cause of and cure for terrorism

The rhetorical regime linking terrorism and democracy was established in three distinct moves. First, political actors and news media articulated democracy and terrorism together. ⁶ Second, democracy was defined via association with a host of other positive terms. ⁷ And third, a particular set of binary relationships were established between terrorism and democracy. Each of these moves occurred in noteworthy ways.

We begin by illustrating that starting with their coverage of 11 September, despite differences across national and economic contexts, all four news sources showed an increasing articulation of terrorism and democracy overall (Figure 1). Within this general trend, certain differences among organisations stand out. For example, the US outlets maintained an active discourse connecting these terms across the entire timeframe of this study (particularly in relation to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but started a relative decline by 2005. By contrast, the two UK sources primarily formed (or repeated) this articulation following 11 September and then again when London was attacked in 2005. By the later attacks, UK sources appeared to give greater attention to dissenting voices and concerns about the articulation than many of their US counterparts. Figure 1 shows the relative frequency of articles in each country that linked democracy with terrorism in the month after each of the five attacks. It should be noted that these numbers do not reflect the total news coverage of each event, which was observably disproportionate due to the differing values placed by news organisations on each of the incidents themselves. Rather, they reflect the evolution of the specific terrorism/democracy binary articulation over time. News value was undoubtedly a factor contributing to the efficacy of this articulation in different contexts, since more significant events can propel such an articulation – especially when it was employed as a primary interpretive frame. However, it is our thesis that this articulation greatly increased following 9/11 because of its rhetorical utility and embedded assumptions, rather than simply as a result of heavier news coverage in the latter three events. The key point of this figure is not the total numbers or the quantitative differences between countries, but rather the relative levels of articulation that appear across time and context. This articulation is the first, crucial move in constructing a rhetorical regime.

Figure 1. Stories linking democracy and terrorism in US and UK news sources.

Following the initial World Trade Centre attack in 1993 and the US Embassy bombings in 1998, we saw the second of the three moves: the association of democracy with a host of other positive terms. The democracy ideograph's meaning is anchored in the unassailably positive territory created by the clustering of these floating signifiers. This process that is by no means limited only to our sampled time frames but is thoroughly evident within them. Different countries highlighted different associations, based on localised political contexts. For example, these associations included ideas of freedom, peace, and market reform in such countries as Russia and El Salvador. In Spain, Haiti, and Northern Ireland, democracy was repeatedly represented as being co-constitutive with peace and a cure for violence. In a telling example, New York Times writer A. M. Rosenthal (1993) defined democracy in India as economic decency, secularism, and pluralism, as well as ‘the only practical way for Hindus and Muslims to live together instead of killing each other off’ (p. A27). Echoing President Clinton's statement after the embassy attacks, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1998) extended the positive values linked to democracy:

Our memory is long and our reach is far, and we will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for – which is freedom and democracy, and the fight against poverty and disease and terrorism.

By establishing the unassailable goodness of democracy in associative ways, it became possible to pre-empt broader discussions about terrorists' motives. Any attack became an irrational objection to the cluster of incontrovertible blessings of freedom, peace, and health, instantly invalidating alternative explanations. That is, since we ‘know’ what the problem is (irrational hatred), we can simply acknowledge it and move on to ‘fixing’ it. This construction of the democracy ideograph was the second move in the rhetorical regime.

The third move – the emphasis on a particular type of binary relationship between terrorism and democracy – offered the gravest implications. This seemingly mortal conflict compelled specific types of responses, such as the need to protect the sanctity of democracy by invoking international alliances and, later in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, taking military action toward this end. President Clinton illustrated the efficacy of such articulations: ‘Americans are targets of terrorism, in part, because we have unique leadership responsibilities in the world, because we act to advance peace and democracy, and because we stand united against terrorism’ (Clinton 1998). Such rhetoric was commonly echoed by commentators, experts, and other political actors in all four media sources. In 1993 and 1998, as Figure 1 suggests, this articulation did not generate the far-reaching reverberations that later appeared in discourses after 11 September. But it is clear that the first stages of this rhetorical regime were being established in editorials and ‘expert’ commentaries at that time. On 24 August 1994, for example, CNN hosted a discussion between Rachel Ehrenfeld from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and Cynthia Tucker, an editorialist for the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. Tucker explained Osama Bin Laden's motive as a fundamental opposition to Western-style democracy and proclaimed the embassy attacks were an example of an ‘old-fashion jihad’. This rationale was a self-evident justification for the US to take military action. Ehrenfeld, the presumed expert, not only failed to point out Tucker's misuse of the term jihad but advanced the same conclusion:

[T]his is part of the jihad, the holy war, as Cynthia had mentioned before, and it is geared towards what the United States is really standing for. It's democracy, it's freedom, and it's advance and modernisation. And these people are […] dead set against anything which is not Muslim. We are infidels, and infidels have to be killed. This is what jihad is all about. (Ehrenfeld and Tucker 1998)

Such assertions embody the binary articulation and also advance dangerous conceptions about Muslims and Others against which Said (1979, 1997) has regularly cautioned.

These contributions to the discourse establish terrorism's cause in such a way as to suggest that reasonable responses (the cure) do not need to focus on whether or how to retaliate, but rather when and against which targets. Manichean visions always demand action to defend the good – in this case the state and its values, particularly democracy – and to rid the world of danger and evil. In the case of 11 September that ‘defence’ was manifested in wars against two sovereign nations. In order to effect these military operations, leaders in the US and UK exerted considerable influence to assemble and sustain a ‘coalition of the willing’ that would confer international legitimacy. Shortly after the attacks, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was among the first high-level US figures to speak out:

What is essential [in responding] is that the countries of the world who believe in democracy and human rights stand together. And the statements that have come out, I think, from other world leaders [showing solidarity] are very important. We all have to stand together. (Albright 2001)

Hours later President Bush famously addressed the world and stated:

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country, were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. This will require our country to unite in steadfast determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack. (Bush 2001)

Mr. Blair also emphasised a need at this time for democracies to join in the coming fight. Illustrating the media appeal of this rhetoric, on 13 September The Times ran an article titled ‘Blair seeks united democratic response’, in which it described the Prime Minister's many activities the previous day in response to the attacks. Of the many things he said that day, certain statements were clearly constructed as strategic ‘sound bites’ and these were, in turn, presented to the public by The Times and other organisations. These included both the simplified motives behind the attacks and the urgent need for alliances supporting retaliation. According to The Times:

Blair said that the nature of the terrorist attack required ‘a fanaticism and wickedness that is beyond our normal contemplation.’ The common cause of all democracies was now to ‘identify this machinery of terror and to dismantle it as swiftly as possible.’ […] Mr. Blair said, however: ‘This was not an attack on America alone, this was an attack on the free and democratic world everywhere and this is a responsibility that the free and democratic world has got to shoulder, together with America. (The Times 2001a)

In this post-11 September discourse, we found hundreds of such instances, indicative of an immediate and sustained emphasis on the terrorism versus democracy binary. More than in the 1993 and 1998 attacks, here the two ideographs were more directly bent toward a point of intersection. Although the articulation was not new, it immediately emerged in these texts as a robust and patently obvious claim. As such – and alongside other articulations – this altered the trajectory of the broader discourse, redrawing the field of ‘common sense’ such that certain responses (e.g., military strikes) would seem more appropriate than others (e.g., intensified diplomacy). The metaphor of democracy as a unified, international fortress under attack became a naturalised symbol in the context of a war on terror. New York city Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, one of the more credible and voluble icons of the 11 September discourse, fully embraced the bright lines of the strategic binary:

On one side is democracy, the rule of law and respect for human life. On the other is tyranny, arbitrary executions and mass murder. We are right and they are wrong. It's as simple as that. And by that I mean that America and its allies are right about democracy, about religious, political and economic freedom, and the terrorists are wrong. (Giuliani 2001)

With such full-throated reinforcement from such (temporarily yet powerfully) influential political figures – and with the support of an echoing press – a rhetorical regime was firmly established and maintained in the context of these attacks. Over time this basic articulation weathered a number of consequent and potentially disrupting events, including expansive and expensive wars, scandals of torture and rendition, historic reversals of civil liberties, and subsequent attacks of political violence. But we know, from Gramsci through Hall and others, that ideology inhabits a realm of constant change and must adapt to remain effective. We now turn to the later attacks in Madrid and London to show how this articulation grew in sophistication by forming four primary, interrelated strands that, collectively, helped sustain the rhetorical regime.

Four variations on a theme

According to the model described in Coe et al. (2004), once a binary is established, it can be sustained by adapting to the dynamics of a discursive field. Over time, the terrorism versus democracy binary grew increasingly complex, eventually developing into four principal variations, distinguishable according to their emphasis on democracy as a cause of or a cure for terrorism. We identified two central ‘cause’ variations in the media and two ‘cure’ variations. The first of the ‘cause’ variations was the foundational idea we have presented so far: certain targets were attacked because they are democracy. The subsequent ‘cure’ would be solidarity among the world's democracies, an all-for-one ethic that would align the goals of many nations in the interest of safety. The second cause, related to the first, was that the absence of democracy also leads to terrorism. ⁸ The obvious cure for such an absence is the establishment of democracy in ‘trouble spots’ in order to defeat terrorism. ⁹ These variations were intricately cross-linked, inasmuch as causes and cures may reinforce or even generate one another (for example, if the ‘cure’ of establishing a democracy leads to new insurgent groups, it establishes a further cause for terrorism). The essential conclusion is this: the clear evolution of the articulation shows how the basic causes (democracy or a lack of democracy) gave rise to increasingly complex cures (global alliances and military intervention). Below, we offer several examples of how these ideas constituted a rhetorical regime within actual media discourses.

Cause 1: the presence of democracy causes terrorism

The first variation emerged during the 1993 World Trade Centre and 1998 embassy attacks, and suggested that democracy itself – and its ideographic cluster of values, including liberty, freedom, peace, and modernity – was posited as a primary cause of terrorism. This link situated democracy (as a proxy for the state) on the side of virtue, in a binary relationship with the evil of terrorism. This is the fundamental relationship that drove the articulation process in all the periods we studied; each variation began here. In the 11 September discourse, it became dominant and, as we would expect in a binary construction, began to point toward an ‘obvious’ cure: if the terrorists hate democracy, democracies must band together. In much of the early discourse, this simple anti-democratic feeling was used as a relatively blunt instrument. But it also became the basis for further variations of the terrorism versus democracy articulation. For example, in the UK (but across the political aisle from Blair), we saw the basic argument laid out by Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith:

[We are] the guardians of a set of values that are underpinned by […] democracy and the rule of law. It was those values that were attacked with such callousness and brutal ferocity and contempt for human life in the United States on Tuesday. (The Times 2001b)

Significantly, Smith also planted the seed of the cure in his call for broad democratic alliances:

That is why we come together, united in this House in our determination not just to extend our heartfelt sympathy to the United States but also to defend civilised values against those who seek to bring them down by violence […] Together [both parties] must ensure that the perpetrators are hunted down and brought to justice […] I would like to assure the Prime Minister that he will have our total backing in maintaining his position of unflinching support for the United States in its search for the perpetrators and subsequent actions.

In the most basic cause we can see the move toward a specific cure: alliance, unity, solidarity. It is not by happenstance, we argue, that this seemingly obvious cure best suits the political needs of a government in crisis – or the political actors who seek to build public support for their agendas.

Cause 2: the absence of democracy causes terrorism

The other way democracy was linked to the cause of terrorism had to do with its absence. This logic contends that countries without democracy are more likely to produce terrorists because of a lack of political infrastructure, freedoms, equality, and so on. In 2001, this second cause was neatly captured in a comment by US Senator John McCain:

I think there's a fundamental problem in the East and that is where you have a terrible economy, terrible economic conditions and social conditions, and a total lack of any of the institutions of democracy, any kind of freedoms. That's the fertile breeding ground for this kind of activity and these kinds of organisations. (McCain 2001)

As with Smith's comments above, this causal explanation immediately implies a curative agenda. This idea was present throughout much of the Cold War, but it was only after the events of 11 September that its corollary conclusion of overtly installing democracy through force became doctrine (Mamdani 2004). McCain's statement continued:

I believe we must do everything in our power to bring these nations economically, culturally, and every other way, up into the 21st – well, into the 19th and then the 20th and then the 21st century. Because without […] economic growth and in furthering and fostering of democratic institutions, you're going to have a fertile breeding ground for these kinds of organisations. And I'm not sure you're ever going to eradicate them.

The first cause pointed toward a reactive cure intended to bridge a crisis of authority: terrorists hate democracy, so democracies must stand together. This second cause points toward a proactive cure that enables an interventionist posture: a lack of democracy causes terrorism, so we must implant democracy to fight it. This helps explain the political position of McCain (who would become the Republican Party's 2008 presidential candidate) and other interventionist actors who repeatedly linked the discourses of terrorism to the ongoing Iraq war.

We lay out these cause/cure linkages to demonstrate how powerful this rhetorical regime can be. To state it plainly: in the context of a violent attack, by invoking either the presence or the absence of democracy, the rhetorical regime allows political actors to capitalise on a moment of democratic solidarity, even in pursuit of policies that strain traditional democratic values, both on a pragmatic level (e.g., deliberation, rational–critical debate, and fostering an informed public) and on an ideological level (e.g., the right to self-determination, privacy protections, and human rights). As time passed, political, social and military dynamics evolved, in turn requiring further adaptation of the binaries. In the later attacks on Madrid and London, we saw the ‘alliance’ and ‘intervention’ cures growing more emphatic and echoing more widely. As we note below, these binary articulations – despite showing signs of fracturing around the issues of Iraq and civil liberties – were successful in keeping the discourse within the borders of the established rhetorical regime.

Cure 1: democratic alliances

By 2004, the comparatively straightforward binary discourses of the 11 September attacks were more complex and entrenched. Bush and Blair had worked actively to recruit ‘an alliance of democracies’ that would grant legitimacy to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Subsequently, many world leaders not only adopted the binary articulation but eagerly embraced it. The BBC Monitoring service in particular provided a platform for these declarations from state news agencies and other foreign media. During the 11 September period, officials from Turkey, Israel, Dominica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and the Republics of Slovenia, Albania, Croatia and Estonia, all echoed the binary rhetoric and the basic premise that democracy was under attack. Immediately after the Madrid train bombings, many of the same countries appeared again with similar messages, particularly those in Eastern Europe seeking entry into NATO or the European Union. The call for democratic solidarity in the face of terrorism had become something of a protocol in international diplomacy. Angela Merkel, then opposition leader in the Bundestag (later becoming German chancellor), responded to the Madrid attacks in an interview:

[It] becomes clear: this attack has changed the security situation all over Europe and, therefore, also in Germany. Europe must stand together now. No democracy should allow itself to be blackmailed by terrorists. Terrorists must not be able to promote a system of ‘divide and rule’ in Europe. (Merkel 2004)

But against the backdrop of the increasingly unpopular Iraq war and the dramatic Spanish election, the Madrid attacks put additional strain on this variation of the binary. Even in the face of the election – an authentic democratic response to political violence and military interventionism – the rhetorical regime exerted significant definitional pressure on the decision of a valid electorate. Spain's oppositional frontrunner Jose Luis Rodriguez had campaigned for his party on a promise to withdraw from Iraq, and some diplomatic statements of condolence warned against fracturing the alliance of democracies and, thus, giving in to terror. An example from a report by the Polish news agency PAP cited the Polish president Kwasniewski who asserted that the:

unity and solidarity of democratic states was crucial in fighting terrorism. Any demonstration of weakness in view of terrorist attacks undermines the foundations of democracy, nations' security and world peace. (Kwasniewski 2004)

In the UK and US, the same concern appeared. The Times reporter Bronwen Maddox wrote that ‘Al-Qaeda has brought down its first democratic government, it seems’ (Maddox 2004) and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called the new Spanish government's decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq ‘the most dangerous moment we've faced since 9/11’ (Friedman 2004, p. 33A). In other words, the outcome of Spain's democratic process itself was brought into question because it posed a symbolic threat to the ostensibly democratic efforts in Iraq. This is a further indication that the rhetorical regime itself may have been oriented more toward the contours of a political agenda (i.e., military alliances in Iraq and Afghanistan) than the actual practice of democracy (i.e., the Spanish election). It matters whether this was intentional or not, but once the regime is in place it matters less each day as the discourse takes on a life of its own.

Cure 2: democratic interventions

Not surprisingly, much of the Madrid discourse was framed in the context of the Iraq War. On the first anniversary of the war, only nine days after the train bombings, Bush spoke at a presidential campaign rally and reiterated the case for fighting terror through military intervention:

Because we acted, an example of democracy is rising at the very heart of the Middle East. Because we acted, the world is more free and America is more secure… . We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq. We're on the offensive. We will defeat them there so we do not have to face them in our own cities. (Bush 2004b)

A Times editorial echoed the confident assessment of this cure variation, explicitly linking the Iraq War, the Madrid bombings, democratic alliances, and democratic intervention:

If al-Qaeda has adopted [Iraq] as a cause, so must, in a different manner, the democracies. No greater damage could be inflicted on the extremists than if Iraq emerges, inevitably imperfectly, as an example of pluralism and prosperity to the wider Middle East. Getting out of Iraq is not a means of combating terrorism. Staying in Iraq and making the transition there work is the only credible policy. (The Times 2004)

Unfortunately, the supposedly obvious logic of the terrorism versus democracy binary was challenged again in 2005 when a handful of British citizens staged bomb attacks on the London Underground and a London city bus. In the years since 11 September 2001, an adjacent discourse around the erosion of civil liberties (in the US, the UK, and elsewhere) had encroached upon the terrorism versus democracy binary. This was amplified when, shortly after the bombings, a British police officer shot and killed a suspected ‘terrorist’ who proved to be innocent. After the London attacks, Blair had to shift the boundaries of the articulation, negotiating a position against an enemy within his own democracy: the regime was suddenly on home soil. Arguing for more state power to combat domestic terrorism, he followed the established patterns, simply adding a local dimension:

[We must] take on the militants at home and overseas […] It is a global struggle. And it is a battle of ideas and hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it. This is the battle that must be won. (Blair 2005b)

Here again was the binary articulation of the global battle (the cause) that demands democratic alliances (cure). But despite Blair's persistence, the local origin of the London bombings challenged the elegant simplicity of the binary, which implied that functioning democratic systems could prevent terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, Blair chafed against legal (democratic) restrictions on police power and perhaps betrayed the boundary line beyond which democracy becomes an inconvenience. The partial disruption of the articulation by international critics raising concerns over civil liberties and human rights was not insignificant. While we do not have the opportunity here to trace its development between 2001 and 2005, we wish to make the point that these critics raised questions about the ‘cure potential’ of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Importantly, they did this by challenging the equation that had allowed democracy and its virtues to stand in for the state, which was increasingly seen as being capable of violating democratic principles.

Despite this discord, political leaders still advanced democratic interventionism as a necessary step in protecting the world against terrorism. Bush and his surrogates continued to assert that Iraq was the literal and metaphorical battlefront:

I vowed [after September 11] that we would stay on the offence against these people. We owe it to the American people and other freedom-loving countries to bring these killers to justice. And that's what they are. They're terrorists and they're killers. And they will kill innocent people trying to get us to withdraw from the world, so they can impose their dark vision on the world. That's what they're trying to do. And the comments today by Mr. Zawahiri absolutely reinforce what I've just told you. We will stay the course. We will complete the job in Iraq. And the job is this. We will help the Iraqis develop a democracy. (Bush 2005)

As we have illustrated, each of the variations in this articulated binary has important and independent functions for different contexts, while simultaneously sustaining shared assumptions about why terrorism happens and how it can be fought. We do not suggest that the discussion of both of these issues (the why and the how) is unimportant, nor do we suggest they should not be carefully debated in political and public spheres. In fact, we are arguing the opposite: their importance is precisely why the radical simplification of the terms ‘terror’ and ‘democracy’ is so dangerous, both individually and in relation to one another. As long as they are conceptualised as a binary they will continue to be treated primarily from a cause/cure frame of reference that may do very little to either reduce terrorism or aid countries in establishing representative systems of governance.

Discussion: comparative regimes

We have argued that a particular rhetorical regime was established through the articulation of two key ideographs – terrorism and democracy – into a binary relationship. This articulation became the basis for the ‘common sense’ interpretation through which modern terrorist events are today often conceptualised. The power of this regime is not controlled ultimately by any specific set of actors, but rather it is perpetuated by many, including voices of dissent and criticism. We based this investigation on three key assumptions. First, the rhetorical power of both terms increased the likelihood that any link between them could drive public attitudes and behaviour in a manner that enabled a range of political and social effects neither term could produce independently. Second, this articulation constrained the range of dissenting perspectives around central organising narratives in the discourse, influencing the latitude of debate and simplifying the conceptual complexity of both terrorism and democracy. Third, this articulation illuminated how political power represented itself to the public, binding the potent affect of violence and death with the sweeping mythologies of national unity and democratic solidarity.

Such representations can be seen as particular manifestations of the binary logic inherent in imperialistic discourses. The tendency of such logic in Western thought has generally been ‘to see the world in terms of binary oppositions that establish a relation of dominance’ (Ashcroft et al. 2000). Said (1979, 1997) also has cautioned against such simplifications in his detailed arguments against Orientalism. In Orientalist discourse, Islam is positioned in direct opposition to the West in a way that makes ‘enormous generalisations’ and historically presents both symbols (Islam and the West) as imprecise and ideologically loaded labels:

Such representations of Islam have regularly testified to a penchant for dividing the world into pro- and anti-American (or pro- and anti-Communist), an unwillingness to report political processes, an imposition of patterns and values that are ethnocentric or irrelevant or both, pure misinformation, repetition, an avoidance of detail, an absence of genuine perspective. All of this can be traced, not to Islam, but to aspects of society in the West and to the media which this idea of ‘Islam’ reflects and serves. (Said 1997, p. 44)

For Said, it is the mass circulation of messages through media that constitute a sustaining core for what he calls ‘communities of interpretation’. Mass media are the primary cultural apparatuses delivering Islam to the majority of Americans and Europeans (as well as many other populations) and they have maintained their sustaining core by relying on historically problematic images, ideas, and feelings about Islam. He argues that these representations create an overall context that benefits and reflects powerful interests in each place but historically falls short in improving understanding and awareness. Representations in news media are especially problematic in this respect since the news media are often considered objective purveyors of information about people and events in distant places. Thus, the characterisations of Islam (or democracy or terrorism) in the news constitute an important element of the discourse for critical analysis.

There are two key differences between Said's idea and that of the rhetorical regime we have presented here. First, the labels of binary opposition we have shown appear to document a shift from Islam to terrorism and from the West to democracy. The idea of a unified Islam inherently pitted against an ambiguous West (as reflected within the ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis) is somewhat less explicit in contemporary discourse (though by no means absent from it). This is partly due to the many concerted public efforts to separate the majority of Muslims from the actions of a few terrorists or extremists. However, the inherent problem of perceiving a binary world engaged in a global clash still persists. It is more difficult these days to talk explicitly about the ‘problems’ of Islam or the universal superiority of ‘the West’ without eliciting criticism and rebuttal. But the notion that democracy is in a global battle with terrorism can fulfil a similar function while eliding the criticism. This revised narrative, still an epic clash, recasts the problems of Orientalism in a new melodrama that supports hegemony on less obviously contestable terms. Most specifically, it removes the explicit religious and racial demonisations present in discourse about Islam and recasts them in discourse about terrorism. The assumptions remain but the terminology has changed effectively to side-step some of the obviously more contentious racial and religious undertones of the old narrative. Such is how hegemony – of Western powers, by political actors, through mass media – perpetuates itself.

Second, where Said was focused on the cumulative effect of various representations in a range of media over a long history, we are more interested in illustrating the actual power of elites to react to and capitalise on the volatile political moment initiated by a major terror attack. In those moments, the press, the public, and political leaders rush together in mutually reaffirming discourses of symbolic patriotism (Brewer et al. 2003, Hutcheson et al. 2004). The rhetorical regime we describe here was advanced at those very junctures where members of the public were urgently looking to their leaders for reassurance. When images of smoke and debris sweep through the media, political elites must move quickly to craft potential responses to the question hanging in the air: ‘How did this happen?’ It is at that precise moment, when the social contract may be most imperilled, that well-trained rhetorical first-responders must move quickly to shore up support and focus public anger toward a shared adversary, well-removed from the state. We acknowledge that the best government responses include community outreach strategies designed to blunt racial backlash in the wake of such events. But at the level of national and international discourse, the binaries dominate and any frank and rational assessment of a security crisis is deferred. Most troublingly – as we saw quite vividly in the democratic interventionist ‘cure’ language – the rhetoric is designed not merely to reassure and comfort an anxious public. Time and again, the rhetorical regime puts the flag in front of the wreckage and calls on citizens to offer allegiance and sacrifice rights to aid the state in its epic battle between good and evil.

With these distinctions clarified, we reach similar conclusions as Said: the production of knowledge regulates discourse because the entire system that constitutes and legitimises notions of Others (Muslims or terrorists) positively encourages more of itself. However, the rhetorical regime we have described should not be seen as a universal tendency in defining either terrorism or democracy. The media discourses we investigated intentionally speak for and to particular audiences in the US and Europe. They do not reflect the various other iterations and conceptualisations of either term in other countries or regions, or even within their own borders. However, they are primarily culturally bound. One needs only to look at how such discourses have impacted the perceived legitimacy of democracy in the Middle East, even among self-declared democrats in the region. Since 11 September and subsequent wars, the connotations and representations of ‘democracy’ have become complicit with perceived US imperialism and an inherent incompatibility with many of the forces in the region. Thus, ‘democrats’ in the Middle East now face an exceedingly difficult task of promoting participatory governance and deliberative institutions without associating too closely with the term ‘democracy’. This situation provides another interesting opportunity to investigate the cultural centrality of either democracy or terrorism. We would offer that it is possible, and even desirable, to investigate other rhetorical regimes operating in the broader Middle East in order to identify the conceptual foundations and competing discourses which work to form contemporary understandings of these terms for so many people. Such an effort would undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of the international relations and policies that remain so tightly woven into both terrorism and democracy.

At the time of writing, this rhetorical regime is still very much in place. Following the horrific terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, then US President-elect, Barack Obama, despite profound foreign policy differences with his predecessor, fluently spoke the language of the regime:

These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them. The United States must stand with India and all nations and people who are committed to destroying terrorist networks, and defeating their hate-filled ideology. (Associated Press 2008)

Even before the attackers' identities were known, the cause – an attack on democracy – was instantly identifiable, as was the obvious cure – a democratic alliance to destroy terrorists. As long as political discourse continues to rely on these powerful binary articulations, the rhetorical regime we have addressed here will still be shaping reality when the next attack occurs.

Notes

1. Indeed, it can be argued that neither terrorism nor democracy is entirely definable. Norris et al.’s (2003) parsimonious definition of terrorism identifies the phenomenon based on techniques, targets, and goals as follows: ‘Terrorism is […] the systematic use of coercive intimidation against civilians for political goals’ (p. 6). They include an additional consideration for the actors who can be classified based on their affiliation with either a non-state group or a nation-state. Though this explanation seems simple enough, it belies the complications involved in the application of a label that necessarily requires conscious political choices ‘regarding the limits to established state authority and the rights of popular movements that challenge state authority’ (Asad 2007). In other words, any application of the term ‘terrorism’ can lead to inherent disagreements between opposing groups because its subjective boundaries establish when the use of violence is considered legitimate or not.

2. For the BBC, we limited the search to only the ‘European’ and ‘North/South American’ reports. We were mainly interested in the discourses of these primary regions and thus excluded other BBC collections, such as the widely inclusive ‘BBC International’ (which produced 13, 257 stories for 9/11 alone with many repeats) or the ‘BBC Top News Stories’, which returned almost no hits for the periods searched. Other selection issues of note were that the database carried no Sunday edition of The Times (London), and CNN included website stories in their transcripts. Issues such as these illustrate the shortcomings in trying to make comparative assessments across the total numbers of sources, which we largely avoid.

3. By public voices, we are referring to those letters to editors, call-in listeners, or other members of the public whose voices were represented in the selected media.

4. By ‘texts’, we are referring to printed articles and broadcast transcripts from the four news sources which were used in the analysis.

5. A traditional content analysis could also offer illuminating insights into this linguistic practice, but we believe that the critical framework in this study provides important latitude in identifying subtle patterns and meanings in the language. Since this was not a traditional content analysis, no inter-coder reliabilities were calculated; however, quantification could be a useful next step in assessing the relative frequency of the connection of terrorism to other prominent discursive themes.

6. This is not to say this is a particularly new linkage of terms. Indeed, democracy has long been credited with the power to provide alternatives to violence by opening the political process to debate and deliberation, such as in Ireland. However, in the area of international terrorism, such possibilities are often precluded if the attackers are not part of the state system in which a democratic system might function. Therefore, the linkage of democracy to international terrorism is about something slightly different in this context.

7. On occasion, the term ‘terrorism’ was also defined by its association with other negative terms, such as intolerance, hatred, and fanaticism. However, it was more common (and perhaps more powerful) to define terrorism using the language of democracy (as anti-freedom, anti-liberty, anti-peace) than it was to define democracy using the antonyms of associations to terrorism (tolerance, love, or indifference).

8. Again, the basic idea that a lack of democracy leads to terrorism is not an original one (see note 6 above).

9. This is also not a new concept. For example, see Mamdani (2004) for an excellent description of the evolution from a ‘proxy-war’ period in US policy under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to one of ‘high-intensity direct warfare’ under George W. Bush in the 2000s. These periods shared ‘the conviction that democracy must spread through American power’ (p. 211). Mamdani's account, however, does not focus on the language of democracy to which we are referring in this paper.