Your analysis is surprisingly Americo-centric. The 1970s saw very serious terrorism (far worse than America) in the UK, Germany and Italy, all of which are now very peaceful countries. Did 9/11 also make terrorism un-Italian?
Secondly, your timing is all wrong. The fall in terrorism worldwide long predates the rise of specifically Islamic terrorism.
Thirdly, Islamic terrorism is the intellectual and organisational descendant of secular Arab terrorism and is received in much the same way. The only innovation is the suicide bomber. Yet in the period that you claim terrorism was ‘cool,’ there was no shortage of horrificatrocitiescommittedby) Arabterrorists—often in co-ordination with Western groups, such as the RAF. Do you think those were seen as ‘cool’? Abu Nidal was the bin Laden of his day, and got much the same popular portrayal. In fact, the keffiyeh-clad Arab terrorist as staple villain in action movies hasn’t changed one jot in forty years, just that then he would be a member of PFLP or Fatah, and now al Qaeda.
It is not surprisingly Americo-centric for a post titled “How Islamic terrorists reduced terrorism in the US”. I acknowledged that there was a bigger (numeric) fall in terrorism in the US in the 70s. The fall in the US after 2000, though, is probably as big or bigger when expressed as a percent drop rather than as an absolute drop. Equal efforts at reducing a variable results in drops that are similar by percentage more than by absolute number. (That means the effort to go from 100 cases per year to 10 is more similar to the effort to go from 10 to 1 than to the effort needed to go from 900 to 800.)
There has been no fall in terrorism worldwide; just the opposite. It was at its lowest point in 1971-1975, and is over 10 times as high now (as measured by GTD incidents). For Europe at a whole, it was at its lowest in 1970, then was high from 1976 to 1997. For “(USSR & the Newly Independent States (NIS))”, there was no terrorism until 1989 (imagine that!), then a steady rise until 2010. The fall I pointed out for the US after 2000 also happens in a graph for Western Europe, which I would expect, but not for the world as a whole.
There is a sudden dramatic fall in Central America bottoming out in 1998, to just a few incidents per year. This might be due to a similar thing happening with the drug wars there, or might just be bad data.
Maybe, the total number of incidents rises just because with the spread of the Internet and other communications technologies, it’s easier to get information about terrorists attacks. For example, there definitely were terrorist attacks in USSR before 1989(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorism_in_the_Soviet_Union), but they aren’t mentioned in GTD.
It is not surprisingly Americo-centric for a post titled “How Islamic terrorists reduced terrorism in the US”… The fall I pointed out for the US after 2000 also happens in a graph for Western Europe, which I would expect, but not for the world as a whole.
If you see the same phenomenon all over the developed world, then it is very likely to have roughly the same causes throughout that class of countries. It is parochial in the extreme to explain that phenomenon in one country solely in terms of causes specific to that country, rather than to causes that could have affected all the countries in the relevant class. Otherwise you are essentially arguing for some staggering co-incidence.
For example, if we are asking why did crime fall in New York in the 1990s, and all your explanations are specific to New York, you are missing key factors. Crime fell across America, and across the developed world. Explanations specific to New York can only explain the difference between New York and the rest of America, and explanations specific to America can only explain the difference between the US and the rest of the developed world, and so on.
I think you should have checked the database, which you obviously didn’t, before writing two long replies.
You see the decline after 2000 in the US and in Europe, which are the regions affected by Muslim terrorism (outside of Muslim countries, where this dynamic would not apply). You don’t see it in Japan, Russia, India, China, or in Muslim countries. You don’t see it in the world overall. This is entirely consistent with my hypothesis; your hypothesis that it is coincidence is the one that requires coincidence.
And, yes, when I write a post that says it’s about America, it’s going to be Americo-centric. I live in America. It’s okay for me to talk about America.
Your replies bear little or no resemblance to what I’ve written. I never made a hypothesis of ‘coincidence,’ I never said you shouldn’t talk about America, and overall I have to conclude that either I am writing unclearly, or you are misrepresenting me.
In either case, I am disinclined to continue such a conversation.
I wonder how much of this general pattern then is attributable to the end of the cold war? Both the Germany and Italy examples are due primarily to Marxist groups. And the USSR did support non-Marxist terrorist groups in the West on occasion as well. So the winding down of the Cold War may have meant both a loss in funding and a loss of ideological motivation.
The 1970s saw very serious terrorism (far worse than America) in the UK, Germany and Italy, all of which are now very peaceful countries. Did 9/11 also make terrorism un-Italian?
I don’t think this applies to the German or Italian Examples, but the IRA was largely funded by Irish Americans, and 9/11 made funding a terrorist group seem at lot less like a fun expression of ethnic solidarity.
That may have been a factor in the failure of the IRA splinter groups to get off the ground, but Irish terrorism was already coming to a halt. The IRA called its final ceasefire in July 1997 and signed up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Your analysis is surprisingly Americo-centric. The 1970s saw very serious terrorism (far worse than America) in the UK, Germany and Italy, all of which are now very peaceful countries. Did 9/11 also make terrorism un-Italian?
Secondly, your timing is all wrong. The fall in terrorism worldwide long predates the rise of specifically Islamic terrorism.
Thirdly, Islamic terrorism is the intellectual and organisational descendant of secular Arab terrorism and is received in much the same way. The only innovation is the suicide bomber. Yet in the period that you claim terrorism was ‘cool,’ there was no shortage of horrific atrocities committed by) Arab terrorists—often in co-ordination with Western groups, such as the RAF. Do you think those were seen as ‘cool’? Abu Nidal was the bin Laden of his day, and got much the same popular portrayal. In fact, the keffiyeh-clad Arab terrorist as staple villain in action movies hasn’t changed one jot in forty years, just that then he would be a member of PFLP or Fatah, and now al Qaeda.
It is not surprisingly Americo-centric for a post titled “How Islamic terrorists reduced terrorism in the US”. I acknowledged that there was a bigger (numeric) fall in terrorism in the US in the 70s. The fall in the US after 2000, though, is probably as big or bigger when expressed as a percent drop rather than as an absolute drop. Equal efforts at reducing a variable results in drops that are similar by percentage more than by absolute number. (That means the effort to go from 100 cases per year to 10 is more similar to the effort to go from 10 to 1 than to the effort needed to go from 900 to 800.)
There has been no fall in terrorism worldwide; just the opposite. It was at its lowest point in 1971-1975, and is over 10 times as high now (as measured by GTD incidents). For Europe at a whole, it was at its lowest in 1970, then was high from 1976 to 1997. For “(USSR & the Newly Independent States (NIS))”, there was no terrorism until 1989 (imagine that!), then a steady rise until 2010. The fall I pointed out for the US after 2000 also happens in a graph for Western Europe, which I would expect, but not for the world as a whole.
There is a sudden dramatic fall in Central America bottoming out in 1998, to just a few incidents per year. This might be due to a similar thing happening with the drug wars there, or might just be bad data.
Maybe, the total number of incidents rises just because with the spread of the Internet and other communications technologies, it’s easier to get information about terrorists attacks. For example, there definitely were terrorist attacks in USSR before 1989(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Terrorism_in_the_Soviet_Union), but they aren’t mentioned in GTD.
If you see the same phenomenon all over the developed world, then it is very likely to have roughly the same causes throughout that class of countries. It is parochial in the extreme to explain that phenomenon in one country solely in terms of causes specific to that country, rather than to causes that could have affected all the countries in the relevant class. Otherwise you are essentially arguing for some staggering co-incidence.
For example, if we are asking why did crime fall in New York in the 1990s, and all your explanations are specific to New York, you are missing key factors. Crime fell across America, and across the developed world. Explanations specific to New York can only explain the difference between New York and the rest of America, and explanations specific to America can only explain the difference between the US and the rest of the developed world, and so on.
So yes, you are being Americo-centric.
I think you should have checked the database, which you obviously didn’t, before writing two long replies.
You see the decline after 2000 in the US and in Europe, which are the regions affected by Muslim terrorism (outside of Muslim countries, where this dynamic would not apply). You don’t see it in Japan, Russia, India, China, or in Muslim countries. You don’t see it in the world overall. This is entirely consistent with my hypothesis; your hypothesis that it is coincidence is the one that requires coincidence.
And, yes, when I write a post that says it’s about America, it’s going to be Americo-centric. I live in America. It’s okay for me to talk about America.
Your replies bear little or no resemblance to what I’ve written. I never made a hypothesis of ‘coincidence,’ I never said you shouldn’t talk about America, and overall I have to conclude that either I am writing unclearly, or you are misrepresenting me.
In either case, I am disinclined to continue such a conversation.
I wonder how much of this general pattern then is attributable to the end of the cold war? Both the Germany and Italy examples are due primarily to Marxist groups. And the USSR did support non-Marxist terrorist groups in the West on occasion as well. So the winding down of the Cold War may have meant both a loss in funding and a loss of ideological motivation.
I don’t think this applies to the German or Italian Examples, but the IRA was largely funded by Irish Americans, and 9/11 made funding a terrorist group seem at lot less like a fun expression of ethnic solidarity.
That may have been a factor in the failure of the IRA splinter groups to get off the ground, but Irish terrorism was already coming to a halt. The IRA called its final ceasefire in July 1997 and signed up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
As I understand it, the reduction in terrorism in Ireland was essentially complete by the time of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.