Beyond 9/11: developing the concept of cumulative extremism via politics, policies and publicity in the war against Islamic terrorism

This thesis develops the concept of “cumulative extremism” to inform political and academic debates on apportioning responsibility for post-9/11 Islamic terrorism. Since 2006 cumulative extremism has been used to refer to how one form of extremism feeds off and magnifies other forms. The original concept is expanded via interdisciplinary analyses of post-9/11 US counterterrorism policies and the discourse framing social and media responses to those policies, which this thesis argues become performative themselves in influencing the numbers and extent of perceived terror threats. An examination of US political rhetoric, counterterrorism policy-making, and popular media coverage of terrorist incidents indicates how Western state behaviour on counterterrorism is often at odds with international law, human rights, and moral norms. Since 9/11 the US and supporting Western states have been drawn into an open-ended conflict against Islamic terrorism where the question of what might constitute a resolution has become impossible to answer. As well as suspending a previously held moral authority, the resort by the US to policies of so-called enhanced interrogation and targeted assassination programs designed to counter post-9/11 trends in Islamic terrorism risks other dangerous impacts, notably the “blowback” of radicalisation to extremist positions, seeding further terrorist recruitment. Also at issue is the resignation of society to a state of eternal vigilance at the expense of community and personal freedoms. A more complex view of cumulative extremism facilitates increased recognition of how US political rhetoric plays into narratives of terrorism. This thesis proposes that perceptions of insecurity from post-9/11 Islamic terrorism should be reassessed so as to reduce or prevent radicalisation and increase efficiency in addressing terrorism. Case studies assist analyses of debates on how international law and our understandings of what constitutes moral state behaviour adapt to a changing security environment. Through engaging with questions on wilful abnegations of morality, this thesis draws together interdisciplinary research to become part of a global narrative that seeks to represent our human rights and security positions in the 21st century. The distinctive contribution of this thesis is its development of the concept of cumulative extremism to account for wider cultural, social and political factors as shaping the nature and outcomes of extremist interactions