Contemporary extremist violence: Interview with Prof. Marco Lombardi

3 August 2015

Contemporary extremist violence: Interview with Prof. Marco Lombardi

Questions by Dr. Maria Chr. Alvanou

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Pemptousia has the honour to interview Professor Marco Lombardi, responsible for ITSTIME (Italian Team for Security, Terroristic Issues & Managing Emergencies), a research center of the Department of Sociology of the Catholic University of Sacred Heart-Milan focused on security issues with a multidisciplinary approach, from different perspectives. Prof. Lombardi is Associated Professor at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart, where he teaches Crisis Management and Risk Communication, Mass Communication Theory and Sociology. He is member of the scientific board of the International Doctorate of Criminology and the Masters in Urban Security and in Relational Context of Emergency. He co-ordinates the activities of the Research Group Environment, Territory and Security of the Department of Sociology and his research topics are mainly focused on crisis management, strictly related with terroristic issues. He co-operates with different institutional agencies involved on security and he is also the director of the High School of Civil Protection of the Government of Regione Lombardia. Prof. Lombardi, an internationally renowned expert, is sharing his views with the readers of Pemptousia, answering questions about the escalating extremist violence, with special reference to IS and the cultural conflict inside Europe.

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Q: IS has been making headlines, with attacks and beheadings that are shocking. It recruits even from western soil, it has converts in its ranks and it challenges international security. How is the organization a product of our times and how can it be countered?

IS is a post-modern, global, pervasive and delocalized movement able to understand the new world much better than “its enemy”. The paradox of the Caliphate is that is answering to uncertainty of people proposing a new different vision of the world. Despite the Western are focused on a “restoration” of the past status quo. The result is that IS fascination sounds great for younger disillusioned of the old western society and trapped by the Caliphate’s proposal. In this perspective jihadism is challenging us and defeating it requests both a military effort as a new cultural proposal.

Q: What appear to be the similarities and differences in the communication strategies of IS compared to Al Qaeda? Do you identify any possible weaknesses that can make counter strategies more effective?

From the very beginning, the Islamic State drew international attention because of its communication skills, especially after the proclamation of a Caliphate on 29th June 2014. The Western interest in Islamists communication has been characterized by an astonishment which for several reasons was not at all justified:

– Historical reasons: jihadists, Al-Qaeda in particular, have always used communication as a major instrument in their struggle, making the most of new media technologies. From the beginning, special units focused on creating and spreading media products have became part of Al-Qaeda’s structure. The group has recruited individuals with specific skills to evolve from rough images shot on the field by “embedded jihadists” to videos rich in special effects, chroma key, crawls, fade-outs and other key progress made in the world of new technologies, till the advent of Social Media.

– Specific reasons: it is enough to observe the crafty choice of the flexible Islamic State’s name: ISI, when its origins were especially Iraqi (Islamic State of Iraq), ISIL or ISIS when it spread to Syria and the Levant, thus absorbing the mythological and symbolical references to the Sham 2 (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Sham or Levant), and ultimately IS, simply and most efficiently Islamic State, when with the supranational proclamation of the Caliphate any geographical reference became pointless. The name has not just a media interest for its geopolitical connotation. It is also interesting because it reveals an explicit project: the islamists aim at founding a “State”. From its very beginning, IS showed an aspiration to create institutions and to establish the basis of a State among other states. Among other jihadist groups close to Al-Qaeda, its structure envisaging the creation of provinces is unprecedented.

Western astonishment in front of the crafty and strategic IS communication procedures are therefore a sign of the incapacity of analysts to examine the jihadi phenomenon.

Caliphate communication offered material that communication experts approached as if they were cinema or media critics. They simplified this material in small essays, summarizing length and typologies of the videos or messages, their cuts, setting and much more. This is useful if eventually it leads to an efficient strategy to contrast IS’ communication. If this is not the case, we are then facing an empty intellectual exercise.

Compared with AQ, the real innovation introduced by IS is the fact that for the very first time we are facing a competent use of media, not just some vague technological skill, in the framework of a much more complex political and military scheme aiming at consolidating radical and Jihadi Islam on a specific geographical territory.

IS is simply pursuing its objective through a skillful and linear strategy, where fighting, mass murder, communication, economy and politics all converge in the project of building an Islamic State. In short, IS’s very DNA leads this project: a terrorist group calling itself State – organized as a State and controlling a territory where it collects taxes, offers services, envisages to coin money, approves a budget – also exercises a “legitimate” power of violence and communicates through a variety of media, thus diversifying its messages. The group shows that a State is taking form also through a shared political theory which already embodies some of the elements of a State.

It is a complex project which opposes traditional Al-Qaeda to IS. The conflict between the two groups is evident especially on Islamic forums supporting one side or the other: the assertion of an ideological hegemony of the IS Caliphate on any other form of Islamic State or government is crucial. In this context, a key factor is always running a campaign to attract in a sort of franchising other AQ organizations and to bring them to pledge allegiance to Al-Baghdadi.

Q: Religious extremism: Talking about this topic today automatically turns for many people the discussion to the topic of fundamentalist islamist organizations. Yet, there is for example the phenomenon of abortion clinic shootings in the States, carried out mainly by fanatical Christians or cultic mass suicide. Are there any differences between extremists of different religions?

My personal point of view: no differences, any fanatical acting as a terrorist is the same and there are no religions justifying this way of acting.

Q: Italy, like many other European countries, has undergone social changes and the presence of immigrants from different cultural backgrounds has challenged its traditional form. It was the country that judicially disputed the presence of Christian symbols in places like schools, resulting in a landmark ECHR decision on that. What can a country do in order to avoid conflict, but also safeguard its historical culture? Is it possible-in the end- to preserve this historical traditional culture?

Provide security to people is a duty for any state as to preserve its historical heritage (both artifacts and culture). It is not respect to remove symbols of your heritage, including religious symbols, because they are part of the common identity of people. Europeans are only cowards in doing that, justified with the word “respect” for other culture. Dialogue starts by accepting differences among culture not hiding cultural symbols. This “easy way” is the one that makes EU unable to manage the new cross cultured world in which any single culture must have its dignity recognized. Let me say that this attitude is the one that makes dialogue so difficult with the Muslims, usually provided of a deep sense of (collective) identity that needs as counter part of the relation actors as well proud of their identity. We have to remember that a good communication needs a symmetric form of communication. Westerns always forget that you do not use your values to get knowledge of a phenomenon but you use your values when you have to judge the same phenomenon and to give strategic priorities.

Q: Dehumanization is a mechanism allowing the mistreatment, even annihilation of others, degrading them and depriving them of their human value. It is extensively used as a tool in the rhetoric of extremist- secular or religious- groups, movements, parties against their “enemies”. The Catholic Church has a traditionally strong role in many countries (including Italy). Can the Catholic Church resume a positive role in “rehumanization” by using its own rhetoric to counter animosity trends inside the society? How strong can a religious rhetoric of peace be? Are there any successful examples?

Dehumanization is a well known process to degrade the enemy and make it more vulnerable. The increased dramatization and frequency of IS media production in the past months moved toward this direction. This model of communication, centered on “beheadings”, is directed towards a “double radicalization” process: on one hand it pursues new followers and fighters. The grisly death of the Jordanian pilot is a response to those who bombed IS villages. The Western outrage is not shared everywhere. The video promotes a form of radicalization we are growing accustomed to and is directed towards recruiting. On the other hand, the video sparks the outrage of a European audience and ignites a violent reaction towards an enemy identified as an “animal” (a frequent term used by the media) but characterized by its Islamic ideology. The result is a second form of radicalization affecting a part of the Western and European world, compelled to react.

The main task of this strategy is for promoting new form of radicalization, also at pushing the conflict fostered by Western reactions to IS messages. IS is trying to trigger an indirect effect searching for a reaction from Caliphate foes, the European citizens: IS wants to start a violent conflict between “Islam” and the “West” through terrorist attacks and also through shocking Western citizens. IS aims at establishing itself as a State and at the same time at upsetting with its violence Western society fostering every possible form of conflict based on ethnical and religious radicalism.

IS uses a communication strategy aimed at triggering emotions: for that reason we are facing two dangerous IS traps.

On that side the Catholic Church, but any church, is challenged to provide positive visions of the future operationalized via positive counter-narratives of different possibilities. The key point is “continue to talk”, exactly the opposite IS is aiming for, radicalizing any relational process to a “military” conflict.

Q: Europe and “the West” (from a geographical, but more importantly from a cultural point of view) have long declared secularity and free speech as basic principals. In addition, legal orientation is towards abolishing laws against blasphemy. Do you think that the Charlie Hebdo attack has challenged this?

Despite the dialogue among cultures must be always open, it’s clear that “tuning” it’s something to look for. For example you all remember the terrible death of the Jordanian pilot captured on December 24 2014: the sequence of this death is dramatically broken by a 22-minute video in which the Jordan pilot Muad al-Kasaesbeh is burned alive, inside a cage. After that we had also the declarations of traditionally influential imams. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, said the killers themselves deserved to be “killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated.” (February 4th 2015). All the Western appreciated the answer as an “attack” against IS but the request to kill and crucify does not sounds tuned with a western judicial approach! In that perspective cultures clash. The same for freedom of expression, a core value for any western democracy challenged by Charlie Hebdo attack. Even if I do not recognize myself in CH communication it cannot justify such a reaction demonstrating a different cultural approach to problems not going to any solution.

Q: Even the EU Commission has stressed how Internet has become a weapon in the hands of extremists and terrorists. While there is a lot of talk about on line radicalization to violence, what is the dynamic of on line deradicalization programs? What can be the role of Internet in the fight against violence? Do you acknowledge any boundaries, practical or other?

In past years, especially after the 9/11 attacks and attacks in Europe, scholars focused on analyzing international terrorism’s new features. Research on the radicalization process – or how individuals adopt deviant behaviors linked to radical or extremist ideologies– is more recent. This process ultimately strengthens when these individuals are recruited by extremist organizations which resort to violence to reach social and political objectives and tend to destabilize the society in which they are operating. Although radicalism cannot be used as a synonym of “terrorism”, the attraction exerted on individuals by radical ideologies is the first crucial step towards violent extremism. Nowadays, the phenomena affecting the Mediterranean region are deeply connected to the development of the radicalization process and the threats linked to it. They are actually boosting this radicalization process. The support comes from cells often radicalized online. Before being active in combat, these individuals provide logistics for the transfer of future fighters.

As we know, these tools were widely used much before IS massively exploited them. They are in fact the deeply pervasive instruments used by a digital generation – constantly connected – and by those young men and women who have been recruited.

Again: IS did not innovate. It made Social Media part of a complex scheme, an element of a wider media strategy developed with utmost expertise. It used them to tell a story: Social Media became virtual rooms open to the world where fighters tell their stories from the battlefield. In doing so, and by recently avoiding to post gruesome images that could run into the inattentive providers censorship, IS granted more time online to these stories from the battlefield. They are captivating and they focus on single individuals, thus boosting viral imitating behaviors that are crucial in the recruiting process. In the framework of a media conflict and a hybrid warfare, the response to IS should develop specific contrasting strategies where actors and media instruments mix together and where communication becomes the real and virtual battlefield. We should also find an accurate response to general problems, i.e the web ungovernability and the lack of regulations able to define the scope of action and shared norms; we should think about Western media responsibility now that IS is using Western media platforms to spread its information; we should tackle the issue of a more open cultural approach – empathetic and analytical – to reduce our vulnerability and to adapt our response to IS attack capability.

We should avoid what has already happened in the past: IS cannot affect with its media strategy our information system, our political and public agendas. Beside these specific goals, because of the existence of IS “conflict strategy”, we should pursue an actual and not just a communicative coordination with Muslims distancing themselves from radicals.

Q: All these years- and not only as part of your academic career- you have traveled extensively and came in touch with people from very different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, as Head of ITSTIME you have scholarly dealt with security threats all over the world. Do you find any common steps in the life path to extremism? Are there common denominators that can give us an explanation to the question why some people instead of others resort to extremism?

All over the world, in any time terrorism always have some similarities in its roots: it takes advantage of the vulnerabilities of what it calls “enemies”. IS is so powerful because the “kuffar” looks weak in addressing the cultural, political and economic reason that are behind the Caliphate’s claims. It is not without reason that IS exploded during the greatest crisis addressing the Global World, asking for a new way of thinking and for a new model of governance.

Thank you!