Great whites, paedophiles and terrorists: the need for critical thinking in a new age of fear

AbstractKeywords: al-Qaedaassassinationcounter-terrorismmass-casualty terrorismnew terrorismstrategysuicide bombingterrorism Notes 1. For an exposé of the episode as a hoax, see the account in The Guardian (2007 The Guardian. 2007. ‘I can't believe the story went so big. I didn't even get any money out of it’, S. Morris. The Guardian, 9 August 2007 [Google Scholar]). 2. However, in statistical terms, the threat that terrorism poses to the general public in most countries has hitherto been slight. As John Mueller has strikingly pointed out, accident-causing deer have killed as many Americans since 1960 as terrorists (Rachman 2007 Rachman, G. 2007. Fear the deer, not the terrorists. Financial Times, 9 October [Google Scholar]). 3. The term was coined by Lemkin (1944 Lemkin, R. 1944. Axis rule in occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. [Google Scholar]). 4. See the analysis by Freedman (2007 Freedman, L. 2007. Terrorism as a strategy. Government and Opposition, 42(3): 314–339. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 332). 5. During the troubles in Northern Ireland, it was common for politicians in the Republic of Ireland to stress how different and more moral in its actions the IRA of the past had been from the Provisional IRA. To counter this argument, Sinn Féin published The Good Old IRA: Tan War Operations (1985 Sinn, Féin. 1985. The good old IRA: Tan War operations, Dublin: Sinn Féin. [Google Scholar]) that charted atrocities committed by the IRA during the Irish War of Independence so as to underscore the similarity between the two IRAs. 6. See, for example, the comments of Primoratz (2004 Primoratz, I. 2004. “What is terrorism?”. In Terrorism: the philosophical issues, Edited by: Primoratz, I. 15–27. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 25–26). 7. For further discussion of this point, see Guelke (2007 Guelke, A. 2007. The Northern Ireland peace process and the war against terrorism: conflicting conceptions?. Government and Opposition, 42(3): 284–285. [Google Scholar]). 8. This point is underlined by Gearty (2007 Gearty, C. 2007. Dilemmas of terror. Prospect, October: 35 [Google Scholar], p. 35).