‘Cologne Changed Everything’—The Effect of Threatening Events on the Frequency and Distribution of Intergroup Conflict in Germany

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 684-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arun Frey
Keyword(s):  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Daily Rate ◽  
New Year’S Eve

Abstract In this article, I study the role that threatening events play in shaping both the occurrence and the distribution of intergroup conflict. Using the case of anti-refugee attacks in Germany, the study finds that the 2015 New Year’s Eve (NYE) sexual assaults led to a dramatic surge in the daily rate of violence, far surpassing the more short-lived effect of domestic and European terrorist attacks. Importantly, this effect was more pronounced among districts with low prior levels of anti-refugee hostility and far-right support. The NYE event both increased the frequency and changed the distribution of subsequent attacks—mobilizing new, previously peaceful communities to behave aggressively towards local refugee populations. Together, these findings reveal that threatening events not only affect the amount of intergroup conflict, but may also alter the structural conditions under which such conflict emerges in the first place.

The “Rape of Europe”: 2016 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne in hegemonic discourse of Russian media

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-154
Author(s):  
Tatiana Riabova ◽  
Oleg Riabov
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Russian Society ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
The West ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
The Eu

The article deals with the Russian media coverage of sexual assaults against women during the 2016 New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne. The authors examine it in the frame of discourse of “Gayropa” that represents the EU via changes in gender order of the West European societies. The pro-Kremlin media coverage of the “Rape of Europe” contributes to positioning Russia in the world, maintaining power legitimacy in the country, and supporting gender order in Russian society. The media discourse treats it as an evidence of decline of the European civilization.

Social networks could counter lone-actor terrorism

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The West ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
State Group

Subject Lone-actor terrorist motivations. Significance Recent lone-actor terrorist attacks in Orlando, Nice, Munich and elsewhere have made this threat salient for the public and policymakers alike. The number of lone-actor attacks has almost trebled since 1990 -- from a base rate of 5-6 per year, according to recent research. Yet the authorities find these types of attacks difficult to detect and disrupt ahead of time. Impacts Lone-actor attacks are likely to recur in the West while authorities struggle to respond. Islamic State group (ISG)-inspired lone-actor attacks may incentivise far-right lone actors to respond violently and vice-versa. The rise of encrypted messaging services and the dark net will fuel the debate around policing this problem without curbing free speech.

Terrorism and the Decline of Italian Communism: Domestic and International Dimensions

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-116
Author(s):  
Richard Drake
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Communist Revolution ◽  
Extremist Groups ◽  
The Way

This essay looks at two recent Italian books about the evolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Drawing on archival materials, the books trace the conflict between the radicals and the reformers within the PCI's ranks, a conflict that gave way to violent splinter groups that regarded the PCI as too staid and conciliatory. As the far left took a violent turn in Italy in the late 1960s, it paved the way for the spasm of grisly far-left and far-right terrorism in Italy in the 1970s and early 1980s. The books lend weight to the view that the PCI, through its exaltation of Communist revolution and its demonization of the Christian Democratic establishment, facilitated the emergence of extremist groups that perpetrated more than 8,400 terrorist attacks in the latter half of the 1970s.

scholarly journals Islamophobia and Religious Intolerance: Threats to Global Peace and Harmonious Co-Existence

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 257
Author(s):  
Kazeem Oluwaseun Dauda
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
News Daily ◽  
World Peace ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
Global Peace

<p>Recent events show that there are heightened fear, hostilities, prejudices and discriminations associated with religion in virtually every part of the world. It becomes almost impossible to watch news daily without scenes of religious intolerance and violence with dire consequences for societal peace. This paper examines the trends, causes and implications of Islamophobia and religious intolerance for global peace and harmonious co-existence. It relies on content analysis of secondary sources of data. It notes that fear and hatred associated with Islām and persecution of Muslims is the fallout of religious intolerance as reflected in most melee and verbal attacks, anti-Muslim hatred, racism, xenophobia, anti-Sharī'ah policies, high-profile terrorist attacks, and growing trends of far-right or right-wing extremists. It reveals that Islamophobia and religious intolerance have led to proliferation of attacks on Muslims, incessant loss of lives, wanton destruction of property, violation of Muslims’ fundamental rights and freedom, rising fear of insecurity, and distrust between Muslims and non-Muslims. The paper concludes that escalating Islamophobic attacks and religious intolerance globally had constituted a serious threat to world peace and harmonious co-existence. Relevant resolutions in curbing rising trends of Islamophobia and religious intolerance<strong> </strong>are suggested.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Are Unidentified Terrorist Suspects Always Muslims? How Terrorism News Shape News Consumers’ Automatic Activation of Muslims as Perpetrators

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desirée Schmuck ◽  
Jörg Matthes ◽  
Christian von Sikorski ◽  
Nicole Materne ◽  
Ekata Shah
Keyword(s):  
News Coverage ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Stimulus Exposure ◽  
Far Right ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Equal Degree ◽  
Automatic Activation

Two experimental studies investigated how news reports about terrorist attacks committed by unidentified perpetrators influence beliefs about the perpetrators and Muslims in general. In Study 1, a quota-based sample of 354 Germans was exposed to terror news coverage describing either non-Muslim or Muslim victims with no reference to the perpetrators of the attacks. Upon stimulus exposure, participants were asked the likelihood that the perpetrators were either Islamist extremists, far-right extremists, or lone operators. In Study 2, no information about the victims was provided, but the perpetrators were either Muslims or unidentified. In addition, we measured news consumers’ Islamophobic attitudes in both studies. Results from Study 1 revealed that participants attributed perpetrator-unidentified attacks to Islamist perpetrators when the victims were non-Muslims. In contrast, terrorist attacks directed against Muslim victims were more likely to be attributed to far-right extremists. Additionally, Study 2 revealed that news consumers associated perpetrator-unidentified terrorist attacks with Islamist extremists to an equal degree as terrorist attacks that were committed by Muslim perpetrators. Attributing the attack to Islamists was in turn significantly related to Islamophobic attitudes in both studies. Implications of these findings for journalism practice and society at large are discussed.

scholarly journals Collective memory as tool for intergroup conflict: The case of 9/11 commemoration

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 630-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nader H. Hakim ◽  
Glenn Adams
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Reconstructive Memory ◽  
Level Versus ◽  
Cultural Tools

We apply a cultural psychology approach to collective memory of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In particular, we considered whether practices associated with commemoration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks would promote vigilance (prospective affordance hypothesis) and misattribution of responsibility for the original 9/11 attacks (reconstructive memory hypothesis) in an ostensibly unrelated context of intergroup conflict during September 2015. In Study 1, vigilance toward Iran and misattribution of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks to Iranian sources was greater among participants whom we asked about engagement with 9/11 commemoration than among participants whom we asked about engagement with Labor Day observations. Results of Study 2 suggested that patterns of greater vigilance and misattribution as a function of instructions to recall engagement with 9/11 commemoration were more specifically true only of participants who reported actual engagement with hegemonic commemoration practices. From a cultural psychological perspective, 9/11 commemoration is a case of collective memory not merely because it implicates collective-level (versus personal) identities, but instead because it emphasizes mediation of motivation and action via engagement with commemoration practices and other cultural tools.

scholarly journals Counterterrorism legislation and far-right terrorism in Australia and the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 147377952198933
Author(s):  
Jessie Blackbourn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Terrorist Threat ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Control Orders ◽  
Western Democracies

Over the past two decades, since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, a number of countries have enacted new laws tailored specifically to the threat posed by Islamic extremist terrorism. This includes recent legislation that has criminalised behaviour associated with ‘foreign terrorist fighters’, such as the act of travel to, or fighting in, foreign conflicts. This legislative response reflects the enactment of earlier laws, with measures designed for prior iterations of the contemporary Islamic extremist terrorist threat, such as control orders and preventative detention orders, prohibitions on extremist speech and disseminating terrorist propganda and the criminalisation of terrorist training. Yet despite the focus on Islamic extremist terrorism, this is not the only terrorist threat that Western democracies face. The rise of far-right terrorism in recent years has, however, not seen the same recourse to new legislation as has been the case for Islamic extremist terrorism. Using Australia and the United Kingdom as case studies, this article assesses the extent to which counterterrorism legislation has been used to deal with the particular threat posed by far-right terrorism. In doing so, it evaluates the lessons that might be learned from applying counterterrorism legislation designed for one particular terrorist threat to other types of terrorism.

Vertrauensrelevantes Wissen und Diskurssemantik: eine diskurslinguistische Annäherung an das Konzept Vertrauen

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Milena Belosevic
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Manual Annotation ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Media Construction ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
Sociological Studies

Abstract This paper investigates the concept of trust at the discourse level. Based on an epistemological discourse approach (Busse 1987), trust is defined as trust-relevant knowledge, which is usually implicit. The paper focuses on the methodology of the analysis of trust at discourse level in the mass media reporting on refugees by identifying implicit indicators of trust constructions (trust dimensions) and their discourse linguistic operationalization through argumentation patterns. The manual annotation of trust dimensions and a combination of hermeneutic and automatic analysis using Maxqda play a central role for the operationalization of the concept trust for discourse linguistic analysis. The implementation of the method is demonstrated by analyzing the media construction of the loss and the rebuilding of trust towards refugees (the discursive trust dynamics) in the context of the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany in December 2015/January 2016. In contrast to sociological studies, the present analysis does not show an increased mass media construction of distrust in the face of this discursive event and therefore demonstrates that discourse linguistic trust research contributes to the interdisciplinary research on trust and provides valid findings about the collective knowledge about refugees.

Homeland

Bluster ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 135-154
Author(s):  
Peter R. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Terrorism ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Radical Islam ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Laws And Policies ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Right Wing Extremism

This chapter covers Trump's domestic approach towards counterterrorism. It shows that Trump's attitude towards right-wing extremism is one of the most disturbing aspects of his War on Terror. Although substantive changes to domestic counterterrorism laws and policies have been relatively minor, Trump has radically transformed the political environment in which homegrown radicalization and terrorism have played out. Contrary to previous administrations, Trump has actively promoted far-right narratives, making it clear that he considers the enemy to be "radical Islam" rather than terrorism per se. In doing so, the chapter argued that he has empowered the extreme Right and "enabled" a rising number of hate crimes and terrorist attacks, while undermining the trust of Muslim communities. He has deepened divisions, further polarization, and created the fertile ground in which domestic terrorism has been able to thrive.

scholarly journals A lesson from ‘Cologne’ on intersectionality: strengthening feminist arguments against right-wing co-option

2020 ◽  
pp. 146470012092107
Author(s):  
Julia Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Sexual Assaults ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
The Right

Analysing feminist responses to the (mainstream) media coverage of the sexual assaults of New Year’s Eve 2015 in Cologne, this article shows how a theoretical concept that is used to frame feminist arguments can influence the strength of those arguments. German-speaking media extensively reported on the large number of sexual assaults against women that happened during that night in Cologne. The dominant narrative in those media reports dwells on the circumstance that the arrested suspects all had a refugee or migrant background, which assisted right-wing politics in re-creating a racist stereotype about male refugees and migrants being a threat to western women. Feminist responses to that media discourse insisted that rape culture was a cross-cultural phenomenon and that media as well as political analyses of the assaults need to take into account an understanding of intersectionality. Based on a content analysis of twenty-five feminist texts about the events of ‘Cologne’, I argue that the application of the concept of intersectionality created contradictions and argumentative voids within the – otherwise strong – feminist arguments because it conflated sexist and racist dynamics, which were both present in the context of ‘Cologne’ but not always intersecting. I further argue that these contradictions unintentionally aided the right-wing co-option of feminist demands concerning ‘Cologne’ and I suggest that the theoretical concept of femonationalism is better equipped to analyse events like ‘Cologne’.

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