The Bondi Beach shootings on 14 December generated saturation television coverage and a stream of newspaper stories. Much of this coverage has been on terrorism, the terrorists and antisemitism, which are all important topics.

Flowers in tribute to the shooting victims

However, there are other relevant perspectives. Here are three that have received little attention and deserve more.

The first neglected perspective concerns terrorism by governments. Official definitions of terrorism usually treat it as political violence by insurgents, rebels and other nonstate groups. Yet if we consider terrorism as political violence that strikes terror in its targets, governments are far greater terrorists in terms of people killed and maimed. So say a range of scholars since the 1980s, who refer to “state terrorism” to distinguish it from the insurgent version. Governments are perpetrators of terrorism in wars, torture, genocide and, ironically, counterterrorism. For example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorised the populations in those countries. Nearly all torture is carried out by governments. Hamas is rightly called a terrorist organisation, but not the Israeli government, which has killed far more civilians and terrorised the Palestinian population.

Drone strikes are regularly used to kill alleged terrorists, but the strikes and continual drone surveillance cause target populations to fear death at any time. The Australian government, through US intelligence bases in Australia, contributes to this form of terrorism.

A second neglected perspective on terrorism concerns communication. Researchers Alex Schmid and Janny de Graaf wrote a pioneering book titled Violence as Communication, published in 1982. They argued that insurgent terrorism can be understood as a form of communication. In this picture, violence — killing and destruction — is not the primary aim of insurgent terrorists. Rather, violence is a means of gaining attention, and the Western media provide the essential link between terrorist actions and their audience, media consumers. The implication of this perspective is that massive media attention is exactly what insurgent terrorists want, and Western media and audiences unwittingly serve their goals.

Governments seldom advertise their own terrorising activities, but violent insurgents often do, even when this is counterproductive to their goals. The message that is conveyed is about violence, not about the goals of the insurgents, as Max Abrahms analysed in a 2006 article titled “Why terrorism does not work.” If attention-seeking killers received less coverage, they might be less attracted to using violence. Western media sometimes use discretion when reporting suicides, because of the risk of copycat behaviour. But there is little such discretion when it comes to nonstate terrorism.

A third neglected perspective concerns civil liberties and social change. It can be argued that when peaceful methods of engagement in social decision-making are stymied, a small minority may decide to use violence to gain attention to their views. Methods of nonviolent action, including protests, strikes, boycotts and blockades, can be understood as ways of challenging dominant power systems, with the goal of participating in genuine dialogue with power-holders. Nonviolence scholar Stellan Vinthagen calls this “dialogue facilitation.” From this perspective, protest is a way of engaging in politics without using physical violence — it is an alternative to terrorism. Ironically, when governments crack down on nonviolent protest, for example by criminalising blockades and banning strikes and rallies, they may be contributing to a turn to violence by a small minority of challengers.

In the dominant responses to the Bondi shootings, these three perspectives have been marginalised. State terrorism is ignored in the saturation coverage of insurgent terrorism, the media attention serves the misguided goals of nonstate terrorists, and government responses that criminalise protest may make future violence more likely. Given that these perspectives were first articulated decades ago, it is reasonable to predict that governments and media will continue to ignore alternatives to their usual approaches.

Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au

Thanks to Julia LeMonde and Elliot Temple for useful comments.