Terrorist's Creed


Book Description

Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of empathetic understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence.




Terrorist's Creed


Book Description

Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of empathetic understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence.




Examining Political Violence


Book Description

A collection of works, some previously published as articles in the journal Police Practice and Research, this book provides both conceptual analysis and case studies, exploring historical and sociopolitical contexts of conflicts in order to help readers better understand these themes. The book defines the concepts of terrorism and radicalization, discusses countering terrorism through intelligence gathering, and examines different policing models. The conclusions drawn from these findings may assist in combating terrorism and political violence around the world. This book is a co-publication with the International Police Executive Symposium (IPES).




Psychology of Terrorists


Book Description

The Psychology of Terrorists examines the personality profile of the individual and categorizes the psychology of terrorists into four distinct profiles which are outlined and analyzed in detail. There are many books that cover social psychology and political violence and aggression, but few establish the mind-set of the terrorist as an individual. This includes taking into account personal experiences, and religious or political ideology for the purposes of understanding conceptual and tactical objectives and profiling terrorists to counter terrorist threats. Dr. Raymond Hamden presents a unique look at terrorists as individuals with personal motives as well as those of principle. The book presents an analysis of terrorists without prejudice or bias for any political, religious, nationality, creed, or race. Too many times the world see experts focus on issues that are based on their own predispositions or partialities. Although there is criticism on the reliability of profiling, this research demonstrates validity and reliability. It is vital to understand terrorist motivations and this can only be achieved by "knowing" the terrorists' psychological character, looking at the individual terrorist, taking into account particular experiences, psychological makeup, background, and fundamentalist ideology. The Psychology of Terrorists: Profiling and CounterAction will be a welcomed addition to psychologists, terrorism researchers, criminal profilers, investigators and intelligence professionals, counter- and anti-terrorism experts, as well as military, security, and law enforcement professionals tasked with protecting individuals from the various acts of terrorism, domestically and globally.




Toward a Phenomenology of Terrorism


Book Description

This book examines the socio-psychological dynamics and drivers of terrorism from a humanistic perspective. Most interpret terrorism as meaningless, asocial violence but this book argues that it's not just a case of seeing 'who is killing whom' but that defining and understanding terrorism is configured by historical context and immediate experience. The author argues that these acts of terrorist violence can be interpreted as the external expression of repressed feelings and impulses that have been tabooized by mainstream society. Upon release, these terrorists gain a new 'nomos' which generates a sense of meaning and significance for them. This book draws on psycho-analytical theories of repression, Heideggerian existentialism, Berger’s anthropological concept of culture as ‘nomos’, and Roger Griffin’s analysis of terrorist fanaticism, adding to the understanding terrorism and criminality from a new perspective and beyond the usual literature situated in political science, security/war and peace studies. This book seeks to provide: a definition of terrorism, an account of the psychological theory, an explanation of the nomic dimension of terroristic violence, an exploration of the relevance of the new approach to understanding: Salafi jihadism, Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, the Taliban, White Supremacism, the rise of the Radical Right, and reflections on this for combating terrorism. It appeals to those interested in terrorism, conflict, terrorist radicalization and motivation, international relations, politics and religious politics, and to counter-terrorism agencies.




Pride in prejudice


Book Description

Pride in prejudice offers a concise introduction to extreme right cultures in Britain today, exploring the origins of this complex movement and the numerous groups and activists that make up Britain’s contemporary extreme right. Showcasing the latest research, Pride in prejudice demonstrates that the movement has a long history in Britain. Jackson evaluates successes and failures in policy responses to the extreme right, and identifies the on-going risks posed by lone-actor terrorism. In order to tackle the extreme right, Jackson argues, we must not only make ourselves aware of the changing ways the movement operates, but we must understand how the extreme right legitimises its perspectives in mainstream discourses that can implicitly and explicitly support its racist and extremist views.




Overwhelming Terror


Book Description

This powerful ethnography of a people believed to be the least violent in the world explores how they maintain peaceful relations even under the most dire circumstances. Robert Knox Dentan, the world's foremost scholar of Semai, brings its members vividly to life. His book includes translations of their poetry, dramatized accounts of particular events, and extensive quotations from a wide range of individuals. In a clear, gripping, sometimes novelistic style, Dentan introduces the reader to tortured Nakhoda; beautiful, stubborn Kliy; witty, ironic Grcaangsmother; doomed Rmpent; brutal, alienated Juni; and other memorable Semai. The book opens with the horrific circumstances that the author argues gave rise to Semai peaceability, continues by illuminating their adaptation to those circumstances, and closes by sketching the eventual decline of that adaptation under the pressures of globalization. Unlike many behavioral scientists, Dentan argues that the Semai approach to conflict is a successful Darwinian adaptation. A recurring theme is the importance of psychological "surrender" to maintaining this adaptation. Throughout, the author highlights the mechanisms and costs of peace, underscoring their relevance to everyday life in all societies. Students and scholars of peace studies, conflict resolution, ethnography, and Southeast Asia will find this unique work an invaluable and compelling study. Coda to Chapter 6: "'Surrender,' Peacekeeping, and Internal Colonialism: A Neglected Episode in Malaysian History," by Juli Edo, Anthony Williams-Hunt, and Robert Knox Dentan (PDF)




Expressions of Radicalization


Book Description

This edited collection considers whether it is possible to discern how the level of ideology is affected by radicalization. In other words: what happens in the minds of people before they decide to use political violence as means to attain their goals? Also this book asks: what has to happen in the minds of people in order to preclude them from using political violence as a way of attaining their goals? This volume unites scholars from several disciplines and perspectives from a number of different geographical, social and cultural contexts with the overarching aim to refine our understanding of what ‘radicalization’ actually implies.




Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

Cinematic representations of unconventional warfare have received sporadic attention to date. However, this pattern has now begun to change with the rise of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing importance of jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. This ground-breaking study provides a much-needed examination of global unconventional warfare in 20th-century filmmaking, with case studies from the United States, Britain, Ireland, France, Italy and Israel. Paul B. Rich examines Hollywood's treatment of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in the United States; British post-colonial insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya and British special operations in the Second World War; the Irish conflict before and during the Troubles; French filmmaking and the reluctance to deal with the bitter war in Algeria in the 1950s; Italian neorealism and its impact on films dealing with urban insurgency by Roberto Rossellini, Nanni Loy and Gillo Pontecorvo, and Israel and the upsurge of Palestinian terrorism. Whilst only a small number of films on these conflicts have been able to rise above stereotyping insurgents and terrorists - in some cases due to a pattern of screen orientalism - Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century stresses the positive political gains to be derived from humanizing terrorists and terrorists movements, especially in the context of modern jihadist terrorism. This is essential reading for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in 20th-century military history, politics and international relations, and film studies.




A Fascist Century


Book Description

Ten essays on the nature of fascism by a leading scholar in the field, focusing on how to understand and apply fascist ideology to various movements since the twentieth century, Mussolini's prophesied 'fascist century'. Includes studies of fascism's attempted temporal revolution; Nazism as extended case-study; and fascism's postwar evolution.