Page 190 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 169

PRESSURE-GROUP POLITICS
a statement to Western governments and populations, but also to like-minded
Islamic fundamentalists the world over – look how easy it is to strike at the
heart of US power. As TV viewers all over the world watched in horror,
hijacked aircraft were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center
in New York, a universally recognised symbol of American and global
capitalism, and also into the Pentagon, the symbolic centre of America’s
military power. A fourth plane, it is believed, was intended to strike at the
White House, the Capitol building, or some other symbol of American
democracy, but crashed or was shot down before it could reach its target.
Shocking events in themselves and damaging as they were to the American
and global economies, these attacks, like other acts of terrorism before them,
were intended to be read primarily as political statements, communicated to
a global audience through the medium of live, rolling TV news to which, by
September 2001, virtually every country on the planet had access. September
11 staged Baudrillard’s Theatre of Cruelty in a truly global arena. In doing
so, al-Quaida was implementing on a qualitatively new level a communicative
strategy long employed by insurgents and oppositionists throughout the
world. After 9/11, and the huge global impact which 24-hour news and
internet coverage gave it, al-Quaida and its associated organisations carried
out a succession of similar atrocities in Bali, Madrid, Istanbul, Mumbai,
London and elsewhere. In some cases the targets of these attacks were linked
to a particular country’s perceived complicity in the alleged crimes of America
or Israel (the London Underground bombings of July 7 2005, for example,
were attributed by their perpetrators to the Labour government’s partici-
pation with America in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq). In others, such
as the July 2006 train bombings in Mumbai, India, they were rooted in
domestic insurgencies and sectarian conflicts predating September 11. In all
cases, however, the bombs were carefully planned acts of political com-
munication, designed to exploit the opportunities made possible by new
information and communication technologies.
A further stage in the evolution of terrorist political communication came
when Islamic fundamentalist groups such as al-Quaida in Iraq adopted the
practice of filming the gruesome execution of their hostages, by beheading or
shooting. Footage of the killings was then posted on the internet. Daniel Pearl
in Pakistan, Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan in Iraq, and many Iraqis
deemed ‘collaborators’ or informers by the insurgents received this treatment.
Terrorist activity of this kind will tend to shock and outrage the com-
munity against which it is directed, generating a public response which may
suit the organisation’s objectives in so far as it radicalises and polarises public
opinion. The many IRA bomb attacks against civilians in Britain were
intended to generate public support for British military and political with-
drawal from Northern Ireland, a strategy which was not without success.
Terrorist activity may also be consciously designed to provoke repressive
counter-measures by the state, enabling the organisation and the community

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