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Winning the Battle of Ideas: Propaganda, Ideology, and Terror

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10576100802627738

1521-0731

Kenneth Payne,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

Abstract Propaganda is at the heart of the struggle between Al Qaeda's strain of militant Islamism and the governments of the United States and United Kingdom. In an ideological struggle, propaganda is critical in shaping outcomes. Both Al Qaeda and the U.S. and U.K. governments recognize this, and have devised propaganda strategies to construct and disseminate messages for key audiences. This article considers the key elements in the Al Qaeda propaganda narrative, and the means through which it is disseminated. On the other side, it assesses the U.S. and U.K. governments' response, focusing particularly on the British effort to define and propagate a narrative centered on British values. Notes 1. Tony Blair, speech to the Labour Party National Conference, 16 July 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4689363.stm 2. Gordon Brown, interviewed on the Sunday AM program, BBC Television, 7 January 2007, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/sunday_am/6238645.stmw 3. Gordon Brown, BBC Sunday AM program, 1 July 2007, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/sunday_am/6258416.stm 4. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner (2001), in His Own Words: The Writings of Dr Ayman Zawahiri, translated by Laura Mansfield (Old Tappan, NJ: TLG Publications, 2006), p. 111 5. Osama bin Laden, audiotaped message to the people of Iraq, 11 February 2003, in Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005), p. 180. 6. al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, in Mansfield, p. 225. 7. The letter, initially obtained and published by the Pentagon's Harmony Project, is available at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bin_Laden's_letter_to_Mullah_Mohammed_Omar 8. Ayman al-Zawahiri, "Realities of the Conflict Between Islam and Unbelief," As-Sahab Media, December 2006, Transcript by U.S. Central Command, available at http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/What%20Extremists%20Say/ZawahiriVideoDecember2006.aspx 9. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), p. 102. 10. Richard Crossman, quoted in Scott Macdonald, Propaganda and Information Warfare in the Twenty-First Century (Abingdon: Routledge, 1997), pp. 35–36. 11. Jerome Bruner, "What is a Narrative Fact?" Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 560, The Future of Fact (November 1998), pp. 17–27, at p. 18. 12. Osama bin Laden, first interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded December 1998, in Messages to the World, p. 91. 13. Osama bin Laden, interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded 20 October 2001, in Messages to the World, p. 121. 14. See especially, Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (Delhi: Ishaat-e-Islam Trust Publications, 1981), and for analysis Gilles Keppel, The Roots of Radical Islam (London: Saqi, 2005). Zawahiri wrote that "Sayyid Qutb's call for loyalty to God's oneness and to acknowledge God's sole authority and sovereignty was the spark that ignited the Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The bloody chapters of this revolution continue to unfold day after day." Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner, in Mansfield, p. 48. 15. Olivier Roy, Secularism Confronts Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 63. See also Fred Halliday, for whom Islamism is "a mixture, a hybrid of modernity and anti-modernity," in Halliday, "The Politics of 'Islam': A Second Look," British Journal of Political Science 25(3) (July 1995), pp. 399–417, at p. 416. 16. Osama bin Laden, Declaration of jihad against America, 23 August 1996, in Messages to the World, p. 25. 17. Osama bin Laden, first interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded December 1998, in Messages to the World, at p. 73 and p. 93. 18. See especially, Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 1–30. 19. Pew Global Attitudes Project, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," 22 July 2006, available at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=830 20. Osama bin Laden, first interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded December 1998, in Messages to the World, p. 73. 21. Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American people, 6 October 2002, published online, in Messages to the World, p. 162. 22. Qutb dedicated Milestones to this "vanguard," who would start the task of reviving Islam, "marching through the vast ocean of jihiliyyah [non-belief, including among nominal Muslims] which has encompassed the entire world." Milestones, pp. 16–17. 23. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), see especially pp. 25–32. 24. Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), p. 76. 25. An argument convincingly made in Assaf Moghadam's critique of Robert Pape's book, Dying to Win; see Moghadam, "Suicide Terrorism, Occupation, and the Globalization of Martyrdom: A Critique of Dying to Win," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(8), pp. 707–729. 26. Osama bin Laden, Letter to the American people, 6 October 2002, published online, in Messages to the World, p. 165. 27. Osama bin Laden, interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded 20 October 2001, in Messages to the World, pp. 118–119. 28. Pew Global Attitudes Project, "Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics," 14 July 2005, available at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=814 29. David Kilcullen, "New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict," posting on the blog of the Small Wars Journal, June 2007, available at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/06/new-paradigms-for-21st-century/ 30. Maurice Tugwell, "Terrorism and Propaganda: Problem and Response," Conflict Quarterly VI(2) (1986), pp. 5–15. Bruce Hoffman makes a similar point, writing that terrorist violence "is conceived specifically to attract attention and then, through the publicity it generates to communicate a message. The terrorist must parlay this illumination (e.g., publicity) into a more effective vehicle of elucidation (propaganda)." Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 198. 31. On which, see Bruce Hoffman and Gordon H. McCormick, "Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attack," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27(4) (2004), pp. 243–281, at p. 247. 32. Osama bin Laden, audiotape circulated on the Internet, 14 February 2003, in Messages to the World, p. 194. 33. Osama bin Laden, statement for Al-Jazeera, 26 December 2001, in Messages to the World, p. 155. 34. The secular totalitarian roots of Al Qaeda's ideology are explored in Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (London: W.W. Norton, 2003). 35. On motivations for suicide terrorism, see Assaf Moghadam, "Palestinian Suicide Terrorism in the Second Intifada: Motivations and Organizational Aspects," Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 26(2)_(2003), pp. 65–92. 36. Osama bin Laden, interview with Al-Jazeera, recorded 20 October 2001, in Messages to the World, p. 107. 37. See especially, Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World (London: Abacus, 2005). 38. The data here are taken from Internet World Stat, an commercial data provider and aggregator: available at http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats5.htm 39. Many of the films are archived here online at the Internet Archive, available at www.archive.org 40. On this, see Johnny Ryan, Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the internet: A User Driven Strategy to Recover the Web (Dublin: Institute of European Affairs, 2007), pp. 31–40. 41. See Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and David Kilcullen, "Counter-insurgency Redux," Survival 48(4) (2006), pp. 111–130. 42. Feisal G. Mohamed, "The Globe of Villages: Digital Media and the Rise of Home-Grown Terrorism," Dissent 54(1) (Winter 2007), pp. 61–64, at pp. 62–63. 43. Tony Blair, speech to the Labour Party National Conference, 16 July 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4689363.stm 44. Tony Blair, "A Battle for Global Values," Foreign Affairs (January/February 2007), available at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86106/tony-blair/a-battle-for-global-values.html 45. A transcript is available on the BBC website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4206800.stm 46. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, p. 91. 47. Tony Blair, speech to the Labour Party National Conference, 16 July 2005, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4689363.stm 48. David Welch, "Power of Persuasion," History Today 49(8) (August 1999), pp. 24–26. 49. Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper (London: Granta Books, 1999), pp. 415–416. 50. Edward Bernays, Propaganda (Brooklyn: Ig Publishing, 2005), p. 109. 51. For a lively account of the malign effects of message management in politics, see Peter Oborne, The Rise of Political Lying (London: Free, 2005). 52. Of British Muslims polled by Pew in 2006, 56% thought that Arabs did not carry out the 9/11 attacks. See Pew Global Attitudes Project, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," 22 June 2006, available at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=836 53. George Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, 20 September 2001, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920–8.html 54. In remarks to the press on 16 September 2001, Bush said that "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916–2.html 55. George Bush, remarks to the press, 2 July 2003, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030702–3.html 56. Paul M. A. Linebarger, "The Function of Psychological Warfare," in Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, eds., Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays (London: SAGE, 2006), p. 197. 57. Donald Rumsfeld, remarks at the U.S. Army War College, 27 March 2006, available at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/27/terror/main1442811.shtml 58. Brown, interview on BBC Sunday AM program, 1 July 2007. 59. Gordon Brown, interview with the Observer, 6 January 2008, available at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2236175,00.html 60. The quotes are taken from RICU's "Counter Terrorism Communications Guidance" for government officials, published in part by the Guardian and Times newspapers. See Alan Travis, "Whitehall Draws Up New Rules on Language of Terror," The Guardian, 4 February 2008, with accompanying language table (not online), available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/04/uk.terrorism, and Stephanie Condron, "Terrorism Phrasebook to Put Officials on Guard," The Times, 4 February 2008, available at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3301164.ece 61. Tony Blair, "A Battle for Global Values," Foreign Affairs (January/February 2007), available at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86106/tony-blair/a-battle-for-global-values.html 62. Ibid. 63. Brown said, "And that's why the cultural effort, almost similar to what happened during the Cold War in the nineteen forties, fifties and sixties when we had to mount a propaganda effort, if you like, to explain to people that our values represented the best of commitments to individual dignity, to, to liberty and to, to human life being taken seriously. And I think that's what we are going to have to talk about in the next few years." Gordon Brown, interview on BBC Sunday AM program, 1 July 2007. 64. Brown said, "And so this hearts and minds argument: you know if you look at all the people that have written about their experiences being part of extreme factions and you know there's been a lot of that in the last few months in the media, to see what they're saying. I mean obviously we've got to win that debate." Brown, interview in The Observer, 6 January 2008. 65. Brown, interview on BBC Sunday AM program, 1 July 2007. 66. Brown, "The Future of Britishness," speech to the Fabian Society, 14 January 2006, available at http://fabians.org.uk/events/new-year-conference-06/brown-britishness/speech 67. Brown, interview in The Observer, 6 January 2008. 68. Brown, interview on BBC Sunday AM program, 1 July 2007. 69. Brown, interview in The Observer, 6 January 2008. 70. RICU, "Communications Guidance," extracts published in the Guardian, 4 February 2008. 71. Pew Global Attitudes Project, "The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other," 22 June 2006, available at http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=836 72. Muhammad Abdul Bari, interview with The Telegraph, 10 November 2007, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/10/nbari110.xml 73. See, for example, Andrew Norfolk, "The Home-Grown Cleric who Loathes the British," The Times 7 September 2007; and Channel 4, Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, first broadcast 15 January 2007. 74. See, for example, BBC Panorama: A Question of Leadership, first broadcast 21 August 2005, available at www.bbc.co.uk/panorama (the author was one of the journalists responsible), and Martin Bright's reporting on the MCB in the New Statesman and The Observer. 75. Jonathan Evans, "Address to the Society of Editors," 5 November 2007, available at http://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page562.html 76. Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), p. 140. 77. Ruth Kelly, "Britain: Our Values, Our Responsibilities," speech, 11 October 2006, available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/speeches/corporate/values-responsibilities 78. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), p. 9. 79. Quoted in Michael Howard, Empires, Nations and Wars (Stroud: Spellmount, 2007), p. 137. 80. Department for Children, Schools and Families, press release, 25 January 2007, available at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0012 81. See, for example, Bradford's Nasiha Project; the pilot scheme, available at http://www.nasiha.co.uk/index.php 82. See Ed Husain, The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw Inside and Why I Left (London: Penguin Books, 2007); and Shiraz Maher, BBC Panorama: "How I became a Muslim Extremist," first broadcast 1 October 2007. 83. Brown, interview in The Observer, 6 January 2008. 84. Ed Husain, "The Name of the Beast," The Guardian: Comment is Free, 21 January 2008, available at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ed_husain/2008/01/the_name_of_the_beast.html 85. Memo from William Ehrman, Director General (Defence and Intelligence), Foreign & Commonwealth Office, to David Omand, Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Cabinet Office, 23 April 2004, at para 6. Obtained by The Observer. See Martin Bright, "Revealed: MI6 Plan to Infiltrate Extremists," The Observer, 4 September 2005, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/sep/04/uk.Whitehall 86. See Jacob Kipp, Lester Grau, Karl Prinslow, and Don Smith, "The Human Terrain System: A CORDS for the 21st Century," The Military Review, September–October 2006, available at http://www.army.mil/professionalwriting/volumes/volume4/december_2006/12_06_2_pf.html, and private information. 87. Giles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (London: I.B. Taurus, 2003), p. 376.