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Critical Studies on Terrorism
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Introduction: towards a critical
understanding and investigation of
political violence – one adjunct’s
humble contributions to the study of
terrorism
Michael Loadenthala
a Program on Justice and Peace, Georgetown University,
Washington DC, USA
Published online: 29 Oct 2014.
To cite this article: Michael Loadenthal (2014): Introduction: towards a critical understanding and
investigation of political violence – one adjunct’s humble contributions to the study of terrorism,
Critical Studies on Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/17539153.2014.955299
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2014.955299
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SPECIAL SECTION: EMERGENT VOICES IN CTS
Introduction: towards a critical understanding and investigation of
political violence –one adjunct’s humble contributions to the study of
terrorism
Michael Loadenthal*
Program on Justice and Peace, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
(Accepted 12 August 2014)
As I write, volleys of rockets and missiles are being fired to and from the Gaza Strip. In
what the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has termed “Operation Protective Edge,”an asym-
metric ground, air and sea war is unfolding. During the fighting, Palestinian militants, led
by Hamas,
1
have fired more than 2600 rockets into Israeli territory terrorising the
populace, while the IDF has bombarded the Gaza Strip through air strikes, artillery fire
(tank and naval) and ground force incursions. By their own accounting, the Israeli air
force has struck more than 4200 “terrorist targets”in Gaza. The constant shelling, air
strikes, “roof knocks,”exploding buildings and troop movements have terrorised Gaza.
By the twenty-sixth day of combat, the IDF has killed approximately 1800
Palestinians,
2
including an estimated 1500 civilians –more than 80%
3
of all fatalities!
These figures include 350–430 slain children. IDF spokesman Lt Col. Peter Lerner
contests these numbers claiming that nearly 900 of those killed were Palestinian comba-
tants. Even if Lerner is correct, this would mean that, in the best scenario, 50% of those
killed by the IDF were civilians. During the fighting, an additional 9500 Palestinians have
been wounded, including at least 2000 children. Up to 10,000 Palestinian homes have
been destroyed through Israeli aerial attacks and artillery shelling, adding to the estimated
500,000 displaced Gazans. During the month’s fighting, approximately 1500 Palestinians
were arrested by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
During this same period, the Palestinians have killed 64 IDF soldiers and three
civilians. While Palestinian rocketry is aimed at both civilian and military targets, the
nature of the strategy is largely one of harassment through bombardment; the rockets
rarely kill but always bring forth fear and uncertainty. Palestinian rocket attacks and
ground fighting have injured 450 soldiers and 80 civilians,
4
an 85% military-to-civilian
injury rate. Through this asymmetry of lethality, Palestinian lethal violence has been
mostly directed at the military, and despite their portrayal as intrinsically evil, fanatical
and illogical, the Gazan paramilitaries’attacks have only killed three Israeli civilians. In
other words, 95% of Israeli deaths have been from within the military’s ranks, as a result
of combat, yet approximately 80% of Palestinian fatalities have been of civilians.
When constructing definitions and labels, are we not told that the ratio of civilian-to-
combatant deaths is a benchmark determination of what constitutes terrorism? While a
definitional consensus has not been reached, most regard terrorism as involving the killing
*Email: Michael.Loadenthal@gmail.com
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2014.955299
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
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of civilians in mass, for a coercively political purpose, that is fear-generating, and carried
out to be psychologically persuasive, transmitting a threat-based form of communication
to secondary (i.e., non-combatant) audiences. Does IDF activity during Operation
Protective Edge meet this definition? Does that of Hamas? Can states commit acts of
terrorism? Is state violence any more acceptable due to its enshrinement in legality? Can
comparatively marginal non-state actors, such as violent socio-political movements and
paramilitaries, commit acts of violence that are morally defensible, strategic and legal via
international law?
5
If they meet these conditions, can they still be considered terrorist
aggressors? Can such questions even be asked in traditional terrorism studies? Can one
critically interrogate state action and remain academically viable?
These are the types of questions I consistently pose to my students throughout our
discussions of terrorism and political violence. As a presupposition, I argue that violence
is positional and inherently viewed through different lens constructed through perpetrator/
victim, active/passive and powerful/weak paradigms. The recipient of aggression will
inherently understand the coercive force in a manner far different than the perpetrator.
Moreover, labelling is power, and control of discourse is the work of government and
states. These are a few of the underlying premises buttressing my approach to the study
(and teaching) of terrorism.
Teaching terrorism in the “belly of the beast”
In 2010, less than two months after completing my master’s degree at the (rather
conservative) University of St Andrews in Scotland, I landed a job teaching an adjunct
course on terrorism at (the similarly conservative) Georgetown University in Washington,
DC. The department that hired me, the Program on Justice and Peace, wanted someone to
teach a course focused on terrorism from a non-state-centric position; in other words, they
wanted someone to discuss terrorists without learning about them through a riflescope.
From 2011 to 2014, I taught seven courses on terrorism, four at Georgetown. These
courses focused on non-military, critical discussions of political violence and non-state
actors. We studied anti-capitalist rioters critiquing the World Trade Organization,
Christian militants shooting abortion providers, arson-embracing social movements like
the Animal Liberation Front and armed nationalists including the Palestinians, Basques,
Tamils, Kurds and Chechens. Throughout this time, I came across the work of a variety of
“early career”scholars, some of which have been included in this special section.
The emergent critical turn to the study of terrorism, social movements and political
violence has allowed scholars to challenge more orthodox, traditionalist, state-centric
discourses such as those offered by stalwart universities and other knowledge generators.
In my particular university, one need only to look down the roster of terrorism lecturers to
see that the range of perspectives used to interpret political violence was narrow. For
example, if you study terrorism at Georgetown, you will likely fight for a chance to take a
class with Professor Bruce Hoffman. Why? Because he literally wrote the book on the
modern field, has been a leading scholar for three decades and has served in high-level
positions with RAND, FBI, CIA, Coalition Provisional Authority Iraq and so on. Or
maybe it is because he is a scholar-professor at six universities in four countries and the
editor of a prestigious journal. Or maybe it is his fieldwork conducted in Afghanistan,
Colombia, Kashmir, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Palestine, Sri
Lanka and so on. Thus, you can take a class with him –who after visiting my class to
speak I can positively say is an approachable, humble and nice individual –or you can
take one with me.
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And what are my qualifications? What is my pedigree? I am a queer, vegan, Jewish,
anti-authoritarian, political theorist and father of two on my way to my fourth interdisci-
plinary degree. All of my studies have focused on social movements and political
violence. I have 15 years of experience working among, and in solidarity with, horizon-
talist, “radical”social movements. I have travelled a great bit of the world, often doing
fieldwork of my own, but I am admittedly no Bruce Hoffman, not even close. While we
both may have FBI files, mine is not in the HR department. While we both have spent
time in Nablus, we had vastly different purposes.
So myself, former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, former US Secretary of State
Madeline Albright and Bruce all teach about terrorism at the same school and while three-
fourths of us have dealt out lethal state violence, all but Bruce have been called
“terrorists.”While Álvaro earned his title killing people and calling them FARC, and
Madeline earned hers while wielding US power in the Balkans, Iraq and elsewhere, I just
argue for a bit of evenhandedness in labelling violence. This is my academic goal and
what separates me from the others. They are “terrorist stoppers”and I am a “terrorist
understander,”often called a terrorist apologist. This is what makes me the odd man out.
That, and I am the only one who is still a student, without a PhD, and with no formal
employment in the service of Western-styled neoliberalism and empire maintenance.
6
With these pigeonholes in place, my classes keep filling up, which speaks to a desire
among students for a divergent, critical perspective.
Teaching a newly critical method
Acritical study of terrorism requires the use of an intentional methodology that prioritises
transparency, repeatability and the analysis of primary source data, especially that which
documents political violence from non-state perspectives. To teach students to investigate
terrorism scientifically is in itself a radical departure from traditionalist counterterrorism
approaches found in International Relations, Political Science, Criminology and other
realist, defence-centric fields. In order to allow new understandings of violent phenomena
to emerge, a critical methodology can include several features. First, it should begin from
an understanding of violence as positional, subjective and a political formation of power.
Violence can be in the form of structural inequality –such as the denial of citizenship or
autonomy for a people –or violence can be the destruction of property for political
purposes –such as the bombing of a bank or the sabotage of a pipeline. Not all state-
sanctioned violence is ethical, logical, legal and just, and not all non-state violence is
barbarous, insane, illegal and foolish.
Second, a critical method should utilise primary source data produced by non-state
actors. Researchers should seek to locate sources and voices often excluded and silenced
by state rhetoric, such as that found in communiqués, social movement publications,
interviews with radical combatants and digital social media. These voices should be
examined, interrogated, triangulated and evaluated just like those of academia and state.
Finally, a critical method should be based on data; however, it is developed and
focused on specific incidents of violence, groups, cases, and so on. In other words, we
should avoid investigating terrorism by simply recycling and remixing secondary analysis
offered by analysts, governments and the popular press. Critically, studying terrorism
should force us to create our own data sets from newspaper archives, incident histories,
communiqué collections, social media archives, television transcripts and so on. In
conducting our studies, we should avoid trying to craft the Unified Field Theory of
Critical Studies on Terrorism 3
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Terrorism. It does not exist. A framework that explains why a jihadi beheads an aid
worker will provide little insight as to why a neo-Nazi burns a church.
Collecting emergent voices
The papers that make up this volume are the product of a series of classes taught at two
universities, focused broadly on the topic of “terrorism.”Students are asked to critically
consider a relevant topic of their choosing, develop an explicit method to investigate and
see what they discover. Through the use of inventive methodological techniques and an
interrogation of open-source data, these emergent scholars have made important contribu-
tions to understanding terrorism and have helped to engender a nuanced and more
balanced portrayal of political violence in a variety of forms.
These papers, based around a critical reading of terrorist-themed media, explore
important issues of theory, method and analysis. Utilising theorists as diverse as sociol-
ogists Erving Goffman and Jean Baudrillard, linguist Teun Van Dijk, literary critic
Kenneth Burke and critical theorists Giorgio Agamben, Edward Said, Slavoj Žižek,
Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, these scholars help to open new roads of inquiry
and investigation. The collection is split into two broad areas: the exploration of tradi-
tional news media, and the analysis of alternative forms of message transmission such as
film, found in entertainment and social media.
The first two articles deal with framing, and the coverage provided to acts of terrorism
in mainstream print media. Emlyn Crenshaw’s article, “American and foreign terrorists:
An analysis of divergent portrayals in US newspaper coverage,”explores the frames
applied by journalists when discussing domestic terrorism. Utilising Goffman, Crenshaw
explores framing as an unavoidable process when explaining reality, resulting in coverage
that is demonstrably biased. Through computer-assisted corpus linguistics and compara-
tive textual analysis, Crenshaw examines this bias in popular American news publications,
arguing that media frames are tailored to “other”terrorists depending on their nationality.
Following this discussion, Sarah Patrick’s article, “Framing terrorism: Geography-based
media coverage variations of the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid and the 2009
twin suicide car bombings in Baghdad,”demonstrates that journalists’written accounts of
terrorist attacks vary based on the attacks’geographic location. Patrick draws on Said’s
“Occident/Orient”distinction to select two case studies –the 2004 Madrid train bombings
and the 2009 double Baghdad suicide bombings. By employing Claes de Vreese’s
deductive approach to news frame analysis –evaluating headline, lead phrasing, quotation
selection and information preference choices –Patrick argues that media coverage of
attacks targeting Western nations contributes to Islamophobia, exacerbating an “us/them”
mentality.
The second pair of articles focuses on the recipient of media, both civilian
consumers via the Internet and the consumption of coverage by non-state actors
themselves. In Kyla McClure’s article, “When do people pay attention? Violence
and non-violence in political movements and the differential media attention pro-
vided,”the author analyses consumer demand for news related to violent and non-
violent protest. McClure utilises Google’s trend data function to track web users’
search patterns relating to political protests and violence. McClure finds that consu-
mers tend to search for news of protests more frequently as a conflict turns violent,
but that violence does not guarantee a large audience in all cases. In the second article,
“Sticks and stones: The relationship between drone strikes and al-Qaeda’s portrayal of
the United States,”written by Marina Powers, the author demonstrates a correlation
4M. Loadenthal
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between the state’s drone warfare strategy and a shift in al-Qaeda’s public grievances
with the United States. Through a quantitative analysis, the author compares the
frequencies of certain accusations present in al-Qaeda’s pre-versus-post drone strike
propaganda. The article concludes that al-Qaeda’s accusations have become more
specific and objectively negative in the post-drone strike era, which has implications
for the perceived legitimacy of al-Qaeda’s grievances.
The final series of articles focus on less traditional forms of media –Twitter, video
games and super hero films –to further interrogate new approaches to the study of
political violence. First, Rachel Sullivan’s article “Live-tweeting terror: A rhetorical
analysis of @HSMPress_ Twitter updates during the 2013 Nairobi hostage crisis,”
employs Burke’s dramatistic pentad to interpret how Twitter was used to engage the
audience of a terrorist event. This lens emphasises the performative aspect of the text,
situated within Habermas’s theories of the Public Sphere, and Andrew Mack's theories of
asymmetric warfare, in order to argue for its strategic significance as a part of the terrorist
act. Phoebe Wild’s article, “Sam Fisher and the ‘war on terror’: An analysis of Splinter
Cell in a post-9/11 context,”examines video games as a form of media, critically
reflecting the rhetoric conveyed through Tom Clancy’sSplinter Cell. In her analysis,
Wild analyses the game alongside the post-9/11 “war on terror”narrative. Her article
investigates the potential for video games to perpetuate political discourse and cultural
attitudes relating to terrorism, contributing to current literature on how video games are
able to express values, persuade, and are used as a medium for political speech. Finally, in
Jerrod MacFarlane’s“Desperate times and desperate measures: False-representation and
distortion of terrorism in post-9/11 superhero films,”the author adopts a Foucauldian
Discourse Analysis to analyse the presentation of terrorists in post-9/11 superhero films.
The article employs Foucauldian theories alongside those of Van Dijk, Žižek and
Agamben. MacFarlane argues that the contemporary portrayal of terrorism in filmic
superhero narratives is both reductionist and frequently inaccurate. The author presents
these narrative tendencies as potential obstacles to contemporary understanding and
reaction to incidents of actual terrorism for both states and their constituencies.
Finally, to conclude the collection, Annie S. Kennelly’s article, “Terror of the talk: A
new framework for countering terrorism within the institutionalisation of the terrorism
industry,”utilises regression analysis of poll and terrorist attack data to demonstrate that
Americans’fear of terrorism is increased by factors other than terrorist incidents. The
author analyses the effects of the institutionalisation on the terrorism industry and the
securitising speech as possible explanations for the propagation of fear. The article
proposes a new, non-binary framework of study that utilises a wider range of perpetrator
categorisation. Kennelly’s article serves as a bookend to the collection, helping to move
the conversation forward in the development of a critical perspective, drawing our
attention to the important pitfalls of a traditionalist approach saddled with the lens of
securitisation.
Notes
1. Though the conflict is often discussed as being between “Israel”and “Hamas,”a more accurate
description would be to discuss a war between the Israeli army (ground force, air force and
navy) and a collective of Palestinian armed factions, including (but not limited to) Hamas’s
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades, Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’
Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali al Mustafa Brigades, the
Popular Resistance Committee’s Al-Nasser Salaheddin Brigades, the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine’s National Resistance Brigades and various small, marginal groupings.
Critical Studies on Terrorism 5
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In presenting an accurate portrayal of the conflict, it is important to understand not only the
antagonism between these factions and the Israeli state, but also internal rivalries and affilia-
tions within paramilitaries. These complexities make discussions of a national (Palestinian)
strategic consensus difficult and statements such as “Hamas attacked Israel for X reason”overly
simplistic and misleading.
2. The process of tallying causalities is quite difficult with the conflict still ongoing. Furthermore,
coverage frequently speaks to intentional and incidental misrepresentation of civilian/combatant
accounting. For examples of these discussions, one can read “Preliminary, partial examination
of the names of Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge and analysis of the ratio
between terrorist operatives and non-involved civilians killed in error (full version)”published
by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (28 July 2014; http://www.
terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20687)or“In Gaza, dispute over civilian vs combatant deaths”
published by the Associated Press (8 August 2014; http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/
analysis/2014/08/08/In-Gaza-dispute-over-civilian-vs-combatant-deaths.html).
3. On 8 August 2014, the United Nations estimated that civilian causalities make up 73% of all
fatalities. The 80% figure quoted in the article is generated by averaging fatality figures from
popular press (the BBC, Al Jazeera, Ha’aretz, Ynet, Ma’an News Agency, Al Arabiya and The
Washington Post), the IFD, the [Israeli] Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information
Center, the Gaza Health Ministry, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. All data are
based on the information available as of 3 August 2014.
4. These figures were released by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
hosted at the Israeli Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center via their “Operation
Protective Edge –Update No. 21”(5 August 2014; http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/Data/
articles/Art_20697/E_139_14_1709922468.pdf).
5. The right of occupied peoples to resist occupation through “armed struggle”is upheld by a
variety of international legal codes including the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA)
Resolution 33/24 (29 November 1978) which “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of
peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and
foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle.”
Other UNGA resolutions such as 3246 (29 November 1974) “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the
peoples’struggle for liberation form colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by
all available means, including armed struggle …[and] Strongly condemns all Governments
which do not recognise the right to self-determination and independence of peoples under
colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, notably the peoples of Africa and the
Palestinian people.”Additional resolutions supporting the right for occupied people to resist
through armed struggle include: UNGA Res. 2649 (30 November 1970), UNGA Res. 3070 (30
November 1973), UNGA Res. 33/24 (29 November 1978), UNGA Res. 34/44 (23 November
1979), UNGA Res. 35/35 (14 November 1980), UNGA Res. 36/9 (28 October 1981) and
UNGA Res. 37/43 (3 December 1982). Furthermore, the First Additional Protocol to the
Geneva Conventions, article 1(4) of 1977 applies standards of international humanitarian law
to “armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien
occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.”
Unfortunately, as Israel is not a signatory to this Protocol, such frameworks do not legally
“apply.”
6. While one could certainly argue that by teaching at such an elite, President-producing institu-
tion, I am simply recuperating critical dissent into a new generation of inner-Beltway techno-
crats and future spies…such arguments are the place of future, further inquiry.
Notes on contributor
Michael Loadenthal is an Adjunct Professor in the Program on Justice and Peace (Georgetown
University) and the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (George Mason University), where
he is also a doctoral candidate. His work focuses on the study of social movements, political
violence and contemporary statecraft.
6M. Loadenthal
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