Suchergebnisse

Two decades after the twin towers collapsed, the identification of global terrorism still remains an open question for everyone. However, since 9/11, the trope of the virus entered the scholarly discourses as well as the sociopolitical debate. This investigation is aimed at moving from the metaphor of terrorism as a virus to the virus-like pathogenic processes that affect terror threats. The proposal is to highlight the fluid identity of a main viral phenomenon of evildoing, according to a strict dialogue with the microbiological domain. New lenses are needed. As the author argues, systemic thinking better suits this subject matter than traditional linear thinking. The author will seek to highlight the development of global terrorism in terms of the biological mechanism of the virus's life (pathogenesis). Finally, it will be assumed that through the subject matter of global threat philosophy can improve the understanding of a dynamic principle of identity suitable to living entities/open systems.

This article seeks to propose a valuable frame for understanding which processes, either cognitive or practical, take part in the making of a terrorist act within the frame of the onlife region. A term recently coined, onlife, refers to the interacting/indistinguishable domain of online and offline world: this is the environment where today's global terrorism/extremism flourishes. This region of complexity and the phenomena that entails can valuably explored through the General System Theory (GST). In the first part of the paper how global terrorism is changing, moving into cyber terrorism, at the light of the GST, according to recent theoretical achievements in the field is described in detail. The second part will explore a case study of onlife terrorism perpetrated in New Zealand, in order to focus the passage from the 'possible' idea of making a massacre to its effective performance, from onlife radicalization to the onlife event (a livestreamed attack filmed by the author) – through a deliberate use of the internet. At this point, the author will be able to come back to the question posed before, sketching some insights that might be valuable for cyber terrorism as well as for GST, especially for what concerns systemic processes within the moral domain.

Some recent events raise new questions concerning the evolution of global terrorism, especially the Boston Marathon's bombing (15th April, 2013) and the Woolwich killing (22nd May, 2013). Differently from Al Qaeda traditional strategy of random attacks causing mass murders, these two episodes seem to belong to so called "lone wolves" category. The aim of this paper is to explore whether this definition really fits to the brutal episodes. The author takes a critical look at recent attempts to reduce both the events to the responsibility of loners: The author will argue that the Tsarnaev brothers and the killers of the innocent soldier in Woolwich update not only the global terrorism dynamics, but also the category of enemy, in the social media age.