Counterterrorism in the European Union

The Jihadist Terrorism report was interesting to note that the most successful attacks were likely to be lone wolf attacks while the ones to fail would involve group effort. This honestly does make more sense as the lone wolf can become spontaneous and randomly attack people - though with a lower potential body count. It also seems that ISIL is more accessible for people to join its ideology and mission rather than Al-Qaeda with its more complex attack planning, thus more ISIL activities being reported. My question though is what domestic policies were in place that makes some member states more vulnerable or successful than others? The EU most likely will have to address this unequal state of affairs in their agencies they assigned (addressed in the documents preceding this one).

Bringing up Buddhists as perceived to be attacking Sunni Islam made me remember that Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult responsible for the Tokyo subway sarin attack (killed thirteen people and injured more than a thousand), had self-perceived itself to be Japanese Buddhism offshoot. I was a bit confused for the indicators this report used to measure its failed and complete attacks though. Why did the May 24 France attack fail when it injured 13 people via IED (page 36)? The attack did successfully go through, it just didn't kill anyone. The succeeding paragraph also confused me for the same reason. The male IT specialist working for a police intelligence unit is the prime example of what I had meant in a previous post with "ghost skins" for Europe. They needed to address that in their reports for investigation and not just mention the abuse of private and nonprofit sectors' services.

The mental illness distinction seemed to be very important, as according to Bruce Hoffman, it's important to distinguish motive due to terrorism being perceived by the actor as righteous and inherently unselfish compared to other types of criminal acts.

Overall, it seems the general trend for the profile of a terrorist that I can gather from this report is usually male, young in their 20s, and used either blades or IEDs. I was surprised not to see the use of vehicles as much, though I may have conflated past news reports with the EU's situation from 2015 to 2019.

A section that grasps my attention from the Counter-Terrorism Agenda for the EU was the EU's strategy and agenda for border security when protecting its internal and external borders within the Schengen area and new technologies to support such efforts on page 12. It highlights that EU nations must regulate their borders, as lenient border security opens/ exposes possible threats to communities and nations, while referencing the 2015 Paris terrorist attack orchestrated by foreign terrorist fighters from Syria. Taking into account that many refugees/asylum seekers who enter the EU are from Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan and enter through the sea borders(mainly Greece, Italy, and Spain), was the EU's commissions agenda to tighten border security a reflection of the many EU nations' reluctance to house refugees?

I question this because when looking at the European Commission Statistics on migration to Europe and its illegal EU border crossings by nationality for 2019 (https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/promoting-our-european-way-life/statistics-migration-europe_en#illegalbordercrossings) , Syrians and Afghani's made up the majority by 17 and 24 percent. Because of the active war zones and Islamic terrorist presence in counties like Syria and Afghanistan, asylum seekers from those regions have become a negative connotation with an association to terrorism. When looking at the recent October terrorist attacks in France, both terrorists were of refugee status acting in the name of Islam and one was in association with Russian jihadists. Terrorist attacks like these have sparked xenophobic tension and rhetoric towards Muslim migrants and refugees from both EU citizens and politicians, pushing for tight border security.

Today's reading was interesting and relates fully to what I have been posting on for the past couple weeks. What surprised me the most is that some cases of right-wing extremism were deemed as not terrorism. Right-wing extremism is not talked about as often as Islamic terrorism and I believe it is time to take right-wing extremism as seriously. I personally did not know that there were as many attacks by right wings extremists as portrayed by the article. I think even the media plays a role in choosing not to broadcast certain things to the public and maybe if they did it would be just for a couple days and then the story is forgotten. On the other hand, when it is a Radical Islamic terrorist attack the story is on every news channel.

One of the most fascinating (and disturbing) elements of this document is the link between sexual frustration plays in violent radicalization. As @Alex Gintz touched on, the lack of self-awareness and resulting conspiratorial attitudes towards women that stem from male loneliness and sexual frustration are problems that need to be solved at the socio-cultural level rather than the political one.

It's a connection that can be seen outside of terrorism as well. Many of the infamous school shooters in the United States (such as at Sandy Hook and Santa Barbra) were motivated by their unfulfilled desires and sense of victimization.

Just as I've commented on previous documents discussed, the key is finding ways to help these young men avoid the pitfalls of social isolation. Education supporting emotional and sexual health will be vital.

Right wing terrorism is a major issue facing the world today. It is the suppression and rejection of minorities all around the world. I like that the article touches on how it is made up of several subcurrents that all come together to make up right-wing extremism. As a human rights advocate, I would like to stress the importance of our inalienable rights. These are rights that are the exact same for all citizens, no matter their background. No one minority is given less rights, or deserves less attention. We are all created equal, and these types of groups threaten the equality that we have been striving to achieve. These groups use fake theories such as the "Great Replacement" to justify their actions. They genuinely believe that Jews are trying to replace the general population. Being Jewish, this is not only extremely offensive, but extremely inaccurate.

The concept that "right-wing extremist ideology is not uniform but feeds from different sub-currents, united in their rejection of diversity and minority rights" really stood out to me. White supremacy is nothing new- but we traditionally think of groups like the KKK (in the US) or the Nazi party. However, more recently white supremacy has been evolving and gaining momentum. The older white supremacy ideologies have been combining with a mixture of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and the newer alt-right and neonationalist movements. As the line blurs between different right-wing extremist beliefs, I think that the threat of right-wing terrorism will only grow.

Secondly, the problem of online radicalization of terrorists, specifically right-wing extremists, cannot be overstated. Over a third of white supremacist extremists who carried out terrorist attacks from 2011-2019 explicitly stated they were inspired by another similar attacker or showed reverence for their acts. The copycat effect that is perpetuated on the dark web is truly terrifying. This link has some really good graphics to visualize lot of what this Europol document mentions.

The first thought that came to mind after finishing today's document was that I don't think it's surprising that far-right extremism gets a bit of a free pass, for want of a better term. The reasoning for most far right extremism is often less-explicit on the surface and based outside of religion or spirituality, with a pseudo-political core. This would seem to make it easy to bring people under the umbrella of more extremist views through rhetoric alone. One example of this is what I regard as an extremely unhealthy dialogue surrounding male-female relationships. Technically, there's nothing politically dangerous about sexually frustrated men feeling that their lack of success in relationships indicates some form of female inferiority to men. Despite this lack of technical danger, a man, particularly a young one, who is struggling with a sense of belonging and purpose as a result of romantic failure is much more susceptible to falling into an echo-chamber of extreme, resentful, misogynist views. For aspects like this that contribute to the development of far-right extremism, I don't believe there's a political solution.

“The right-wing scene is described as extremely heterogeneous both from a structural and ideological perspective (pg. 5).” At first glance, this may seem somewhat assuring given that there would be no clear message or real structure to the right-wing extremist groups and demonstrate an inability to carry out any violent attacks consolidated by some widely supported or common goal and ideology. However, what’s more concerning from the right-wing terrorism article as opposed to Juhadist terrorism are these public networking events that have been cited in the article that can help make it easier for different groups under right-wing extremism to meet and perhaps coordinate a more unified message that I believe would lead to more attacks. What’s even more concerning is that in the EU, some of these violent attacks by right-wing extremism aren’t classified as terrorism under national legislation. Specifying violent right-wing extremist attacks under national legislation as terrorism in Europe may deter certain right-wing extremist groups from carrying out attacks. If Europe and the rest of the world truly wish to tackle terrorism and pass comprehensive counterterrorism legislation, that should begin with defining terrorism as terrorism despite what groups this may or may not affect.

While there is little to no white-supremacist attacks in China, I appreciated the chapter's focus on the interconnectivity of these extremist groups. It amazes me that Europe's far-right extremist groups use music venues and concerts to network between the groups. While thee groups remain largely are independent to each other, their ability to coordinate a possible large-scale attack is heightened by these networking events. The "Rock against Communism" music genre was noted as a massive unifying event for these groups. I believe events like this, meant to side-step home country bans on specific groups, create a greater security risk for Europe as a whole than any one group could pose.

While wholly outside of my specialty, today's article was still an interesting read. My greatest takeaway from the reading was that the existence of multiple ideological draws to terrorism in Europe are not only threats to the general cosmopolitan population of Europe, but direct threats to each other in their ultimate aims. I wonder if the two "groups" (loosely defined) might try to undermine each other?

Today's article on Right-wing terrorism is disturbing. In comparison to Jihadist terrorism, it seems as if right-wing terrorists can have more interactions with one another. I simply couldn't fathom a Jihadist group in Europe being allowed to do paramilitary training in public spaces without law enforcement getting involved. In addition