To Talk About Hatred and Bias Crimes is to Get Close to Terror
Take a moment to reflect on the idea that, where we stand and who we are, influences what we assume - Our perspective influences our stereotypes, and we might not even know it.
Perhaps consider that identifying with those like ourselves is comforting and perhaps even crucial to our survival in the past, however, each inclusion also marks an exclusion, and each act towards one of our own risks selfishness or even cruelty towards who seems to be "other".
As mentioned in an earlier post on Reflexivity, attention to perspective seems vital in treatments of hatred, where that hatred erupts in vicious speech or violent acts. Thus, I will urge constant attention to the influence of perspective on beliefs and to the insights afforded by alternative perspectives. Speech and violence motivated by hatred towards others because of their identity are hardly new. Certainly, since ancient times, societies have included speech and violence organised against individuals simply because of their group membership (Marther Minow). Which makes it even more important to find ways to break the cycles of hatred today
People who are demeaned and objectified in society often develop an aversion to their tormentors that is more hateful in its expression than the prejudice they have been subjected to. (Andrew Sullivan) Adding to the perpetual motion of hate or bias crime acts.
Hate or Bias Crime acts harm victims not only physically but at the very core of their identity, causing a heightened sense of vulnerability and terror beyond that normally found in crime victims. The impact of a bias crime reaches beyond the harm done to the immediate victims. There is a more widespread impact on the target community that shares the group characteristics of the victim. Members of the target community do more than sympathize or even empathize with the individual victim. Members of the target community of a biased crime perceive that crime as if it were an attack on themselves directly. Indeed, the impact of biased crimes may spread well beyond the immediate victims and the targeted community to the general population. Such crimes violate not only society’s general concern for the security of its members and their property but also the shared value of equality among its citizens in a multicultural society.
Contra to common belief, hate and bias crimes (criminal manifestations of prejudice) cannot be achieved by purely jailing those in every hateful movement that surfaces, as indicated by prominent counter-terrorist scholars, Dr Louise Richardson and Dr Richard English, acknowledging that any effort to do so, will only perpetuate the problem and create yet more hate in its wake. A multi-faceted response is required to develop procedures of containment and processes of ownership rather than seeking to silence the hate-fueled threats, a response which develops peacebuilding measures and objectives which are primarily underpinned by interstate and inner-state cooperation, ownership, transparency and education is required.
Can we learn to live with hate in our communities? Or rather, can we live with hate far better than we are currently?
This article talks of the necessities needed, if we are to be successful at learning to live with and mitigating the effects of hate.
The article is separated into three main ideas, the first is exploring the role of the Fourth (mainstream press), and the Fifth Estate (non-mainstream press) and the role of the media and the mechanism through which biases flow into policy, a process Professor Cass Sunstein calls the ‘Availability Cascade’ a self-sustaining chain of events vulnerable to manipulation by ‘Availability Entrepreneurs’ which eventually impacts on a state’s political system and the public’s ability to rationalise the threat of bias crime. The second is the role of the state’s public and their interpretation of the threat posed by hate crime, its meaning and society’s fear of the other (minorities, diaspora, immigrants, activists and nationalists for example.) whilst passively disconnected from the realities of their actions and reactions to press and social media. The article aims to identify the public’s fragility regards feelings of fear and anxiety with the aid of Dr Arjun Appaduri’s seminal work on the geography of anger outlined in his essay titled ‘Fear of Small Numbers.’ The third is the Role of the State a section of text that explores what can be learnt from past reactions to bias crimes, the types of criminal agents and what their processes are to require a bias crime skill-set, such as their taught skills (techne) and their on the job skills (metis) as suggested by Dr Michael Kenney from Stanford University's Centre for International Security and Cooperation. (Kenney 2007). The article will also highlight the importance of inter-state and inner-state communication, intelligence and target hardening whilst reflecting on past challenges and successes supported by documents such as ‘CONTEST: the United Kingdom's strategy for countering terrorism’ and the ‘Prevent Strategy’.
The Role of the Fourth and Fifth Estates
The estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society in Christian Europe during the 15th -18th centuries. The first estate comprised almost entirely of the clergy, the second state comprised of nobility and the third realm made up the rest, comprising those members that were neither nobility nor clergy and grouped into two main identities - those from an urban context and those from a rural one. The fourth estate came about much later in the 19th century and represents the news media. The Fifth Estate surfaced in the 1960s as a counter-cultural movement but now represents a socio-cultural movement with viewpoints in contemporary society, and is mostly associated with YouTubers, Influencers, Bloggers, Journalists, and non-mainstream media outlets. All estates represent enormous positions of power and responsibility.
The Fourth and Fifth Estate’s position of power and their pivotal role in contemporary expressions of hate and undeniably a key feature in how society mitigates the risk of biased crime and ultimately how to deal with differences of opinion as factors of everyday life, past, present and in the future. It will be our ability to take a considered ownership of the media’s role, whilst harnessing its advantages and being sensitive to its flaws which will form the foundation of tomorrow’s resilience and adaptability. With that in mind it’s important to acknowledge that despite the trauma inflicted physically and physiologically, hate is above all a means of communication, a highly impactful means of manipulating an agenda.
Hateful agents require a platform from which to express messages of symbolism and narrative, whereas the media needs an audience to survive in a highly competitive and lucrative industry where exclusivity, information and speed are hard journalistic currency. Terror sells newspapers and ensures viewers tune in, a reality summed up by the tactless maxim among journalists, or whoever it is that decides what a story is, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Meaning, of course, that if the subject is in dire trouble then that’s the story they’ll run. (Jensen, 2007) It isn’t until we learn that mass media is a useful tool to be used rather than a source to rely on when forming opinions and assessing risk. A subject examined in Professor Weimann’s Study of the Psychology of Mass-Mediated Terrorism where he suggests that a citizen who relies exclusively on their country’s television network for their understanding of the terrorist threat would have a distorted impression of the situation due to a tendency for locational and victim bias in their coverage and therefore finding that networks made ordinary citizens more fearful about the likelihood of them becoming the victims of terror attacks than evidence would warrant (Weimann, 2008).
To emphasise the precarious nature of media bias and to reiterate the importance of managing expectations concerning the media as an aspect of learning to mitigate biased crime successfully. Dr Cass Sunstein a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School explains the mechanism through which biases flow into policy which he calls the ‘Availability cascade’.
“The Availability Cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events, which may start from media reports of relatively minor events and lead up to public panic and large-scale government action. On some, a media story about a risk catches the attention of a segment of the public, which becomes aroused and worried. This emotional reaction becomes a story in itself, prompting additional coverage in the media, which in turn produces greater concern and involvement. The cycle is sometimes sped along deliberately by “availability entrepreneurs” individuals or organizations who work to ensure a continuous flow of worrying news. The danger is increasingly exaggerated as the media compete for attention-grabbing headlines. Scientists and others who try to dampen the increasing fear and revulsion attract little attention, most of it hostile: anyone who claims that the dander is overstated is suspected of association with cover-up. The issue becomes politically important because it is on everybody’s mind, and the response of the political system is guided by the intensity of public sentiment. The availability cascade has now reset priorities. Other risks, and other ways that resources could be applied for the public good, all have faded into the background”. (Kahneman, 2011)
It is easy to see how Sunstein’s notion of the ‘Availability Cascade’ and the resulting ‘Availability Entrepreneur’ could be applied to a whole host of relatively minor events which have led to overreaction and exaggerated hateful conditions. A current and contentious example could be seen in the Cologne New Year Attacks in 2016, although the ramifications of those incidents are still to be seen and mulled over.
“There has been an explosion in far-right and far-left media. They regularly promote conspiracies and spread anti-muslim rhetoric” (Shekhovtsov and Pomerantsev, 2016)
The mainstream media of course is only part of the consideration concerning the Fourth and Fifth Estates. Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of hate group activity exploiting the global reach to recruit, enhance status and develop identities. A good example of this would be the ‘Far Right’ websites, blogs, forums and other online media, a so-called invasion of cyberspace domains as Gilbert Ramsay explores in his seminal publication ‘Jihadi Culture on the World Wide Web’. However, it’s understandable that these aspects of social media will create, anxiety, fear and amplify hatred but these are domains with an opportunity to also educate, as Ramsay suggests, these are not just a perceived threat to security, an open source of intelligence or a tool for radicalisation internationally but also, if handled correctly a subject of cultural interest in its own right something that blurs the boundaries between political reality, myth, legend and ultimately fantasy (Ramsay, 2013).
“In contrast to terror on the internet a growing number of researchers see the internet more as a resource than a threat. They trawl hate forums and websites drawing together highly detailed accounts of the nuances of ideological and tactical debates in Al Quaeda and similar movements” (Ramsay, 2013)
It is difficult to imagine a life without multimedia just as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to realistically imagine life without conflict of one sort or another. It is therefore imperative that we take ownership of the positive aspects that the media has to offer but also manage, analyse and acknowledge the negative aspects without compromising the nation’s democratic integrity and the rule of law.
“When one says “terrorism” in a democratic society, one also says “media.” For terrorism by its very nature is a psychological weapon which depends upon communicating a threat to a wider society. This, in essence, is why terrorism and the media enjoy a symbiotic relationship”. (Weimann, Paul Wilkinson 2008)
Role of the State’s Public
Professor English like many others in his field, feels that terror is here to stay and in certain respects, has never really gone away, “ One of the depressing lessons from the history of terrorism is it is always likely to be with us”. (English, 2009). With this in mind and when you consider that we have resiliently learnt to adapt and respond to many national threats in the past, in the cold war era for example, we successfully developed mechanisms to respond and live with the threat of an apocalyptic style nuclear war, we have learnt to develop a variety of every day, local responses (officially and culturally) to help ensure our safety against the threat of fire, theft, rape and assault. It is therefore critical that we learn to mitigate the risk and impact of hate and biased crime. We have to develop practices that help to counter the threats of today whilst in preparation for the future potential threats of tomorrow. Threats which according to American political scientist George Friedman in his controversial book ‘The Next 100 Years’ will require a creatively robust, tolerant and culturally confident society in their chosen responses to any politically violent consequences resulting from, as Friedman suggests, the inevitability of a second cold war, the fragmentation of Russian and China’s economies and a significant European demographic change. With low birth rates, the Western nations will begin to compete for migrants and eventually around the year 2050, World War III will break out between the United States and the Turkish and Japanese-led coalitions. (Friedman, 2009)
Although Friedman’s predictions may be at best speculative, there is no doubt that currently and in the future, terror and its unpredictable nature require particular public attention as part of a multi-faceted national response. The role of the public has to go beyond predicable public awareness literature of situational awareness strategies, which help address preparedness, travel security and perspective, strategies that manifest government guidance which hopes to encourage the public to take responsibility for their own security and mindset whilst being vigilant and reporting any suspicious behaviour.
There is a need for positive and proactive literature reassuring the public that the risk is acknowledged and being addressed however it can adversely run the risk of provoking overreaction and often promotes negative feelings of paranoia, insecurity and fear, emotions which develop counterproductive social stereotyping, complications and help feed the notion of “Suspect communities” (Hickman et al., 2012) encouraging segregation and prejudice. This creates a potentially corrosive environment which in turn leads to a heightened likelihood of home-grown radicalism and the prospect of further so-called lone wolf hate crimes.
The first role the public can explore is localised ownership through communication that develops a considered awareness of context and the implications of hate attacks as a whole. Taking an independent position on it and developing a meaningful mode of transparent and productive discourse which starts simply by defining what exactly terror acts are and who are responsible; an obvious initial role but a rewarding one.
A second role would be to acknowledge the way social cohesion is perceived or portrayed internationally and internally across the diverse fabric of communities that make up urban and rural demographics. Asking if there are site-specific issues of moral and cultural stereotyping, and unhelpful perceptions of religion, history and ethnicity that require rebalancing. The third action a state’s public can take is to ensure there are the correct facilities to help prevent people from being drawn into hate acts and ensure that they are given appropriate advice and support and to work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation which we need to address - two final objects indicated in the UK’s Prevent Stagey. The public can play their part in a multi-layered cooperative response to hate actors and the risk of violence as a grassroots conduit, hybrid in nature and conducted in a building fit for purpose; a building that promotes reassurance, transparency and safety. A building of neutrality, devoid of state or religious symbolism but designed to be modular as an architectural catalyst for a network of meaning and support.
The activity of a state’s public has never been so important. It is from the public that the state expresses its resilience and measures its response to hate. The public’s role in responding to biased criminal activity and ultimately learning to live with the long-term threat of terror should not be underestimated by the government, or more importantly, by the public themselves. In other words, society should take ownership of the problem and provide a positive contribution to countering the terrorist’s objectives whilst being mindful of the pitfalls within society of passive involvement, macabre voyeurism and an expectation that the government will take care of things. It is important that society acknowledge that terror activities are a constant concern, understand the meaning of hate and its effects on the individual and the collective consciousness and also temper the understandable emotions of fear, anxiety and suspicion whilst being conscious of the negative conditions persecution and hysteria can produce.
The Role of the State
“By and Large, terrorist conflicts are not won by terrorist groups. Sometimes, however they are lost by states opposing them” (Silke, 2011)
Silke’s quote illustrates nicely the perilous consequences of an ill-informed or exaggerated response to terror by a nation-state which reiterates Richard English’s comment that, “ The most serious danger currently posed by terrorists is probably their capacity to provoke ill-judged, extravagant and counterproductive state responses, rather than their own direct actions themselves”. (English, 2009)
The role of the state concerning terror is undeniably complex and to a certain degree, it is a conditioned political logic to overreact, as Schneider suggests, “Overestimating the threat is better than underestimating it. Doing something about the threat is better than doing nothing. Doing something that is explicitly reactive is better than being proactive. (If you're proactive and you're wrong, you've wasted money. If you're proactive and you're right but no longer in power, whoever is in power is going to get the credit for what you did.) Visible is better than invisible. Creating something new is better than fixing something old”. (Bruce Schneier, 2016).
The State’s response to hate-fueled violence isn’t as black and white as the media may have you believe. The response to biased crime is multi-faceted and continually adapting to new intelligence and lessons learnt in the past. Although the results are slow and the processes overly bureaucratic at times, they are products of political machinery not designed for hastily fabricated responses and when there have been instances of hastily conceived legislation through public and political pressure to react, problems have arisen or circumstances have changed and the legislation has been misinterpreted. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is a good example of counterproductive legislature, giving police the power in designated areas to stop and search an individual without having any reasonable suspicion of them having committed an offence. Alan Travis, the home affairs editor for the Guardian newspaper reports that “between 2006/07 and 2007/08 the number of black people stopped and searched under this power rose by 322 per cent and the number of Asian people by 277 per cent. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that stop-and-searches under S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 were illegal as there were inadequate safeguards against abuse”. (Irr.org.uk, 2016)
Despite the well-publicised mistakes and slow response time, the State plays an immensely important role in the response to terrorism. Military options aside, the government supports a great number of effective, responsive and sophisticated organisations specialising in surveillance, counter-terrorism and diplomacy.
When it comes to learning to live with terror acts as an everyday threat and creating a legitimate response to hate crimes for the foreseeable future, the State’s leaders seem less forthright but sensitive to the consequences of prematurely ‘nailing your colours to the mast.’
However, learning to live with terror is a reality and the role of the Country has to reflect that fact. English, suggests that “Learning to live with terrorism encourages us to focus on strategic and tactical responses to terrorism. In particular, it provides a basis for studying the strategies and tactics of terrorists themselves” (English, 2009) believing in a containment process rather than a ruthless legal one. A containment process far from being a perceived capitulation to the terrorist's agenda, is a strategic opportunity to build on current external efforts and enhance internal and international cooperation, develop surveillance techniques, explore the hardening of targets and provide a solid contextual foundation from which to analyse earlier choices made in history, such as the tactics employed and strategic gains made in earlier bias-motivated violence.
It could be argued then, that the primary role of the State, starts with the public acknowledgement, that Biased Crime is a long-term reality and although it may seem politically precarious to ask the public to learn to live with the long-term possibility of hate-related crime, it will be an important step to tempering the impact and taking ownership of the threat. Audrey Cronin in her book ‘How Terrorism Ends’ offers six scenarios which explain how terrorist conflicts have ended in the past, which was either one or a combination of “decapitation, negotiation, success, failure, repression or reorientation” (Cronin, 2009) but perhaps there’s a seventh to add to the mix, …..Ownership.
Thought
The idea of ownership has surfaced more than expected in the process of writing this article and has left many interesting avenues open for discussion. A natural progression from this process will be the exploration of ownership concerning ‘hate’ itself. Asking, is it feasible to wrestle the perpetrator's primary tool of terror from their grasp? Taking ownership of the terror aspect of the struggle would render the criminals impotent. Perhaps it would be a useful exercise to explore Biased Crimes as a constructive aspect, a positive reaffirmation of liberal democracy and its values. This is a supposition that I hope to explore in the future.
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