Their argument is that terror attacks, particularly since 9/11, have become both more frequent and less organized. Instead of big, spectacular events, we’ve seen a string of attacks across the West that were carried out by lone individuals with few resources, little training, and hardly any planning. The attack in New York City this week is a prime example: A 29-year-old man drives a rented truck into a crowded bike path, killing eight people, and then flees with pellet and paintball guns in hand.
According to Amarasingam and Clarke, these sorts of low-level attacks have become so common that people are growing numb to them. As a result, the “once-shocking violence becomes normalized” and citizens stop responding with the panic and outrage that were once their reactions. [...]
Exactly. And I’ll add that this is actually a good thing in some ways. If terrorism is normalized for people, both jihadist and far-right violence, they are less likely, maybe, to support crazy laws that impact their civil liberties and the rights of others. It’s only when you introduce a sudden sense of fear, one that people don’t understand, that they become kind of irrationally protectionist. So in a way normalizing terrorism is good. [...]
I think the victims of terrorism never really forget. The families of those killed and those who are injured will have to deal with the aftermath of any attack for a long time. And I think for some terrorist groups, the mere act of revenge is maybe enough. They know they will never fully defeat a country like the United States, but as long as they show that there is a push back, that they aren’t just taking American foreign policy decisions lying down, then that is enough. They also communicate that internally to members.
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