A-Infos (en) France, Union Communiste Libertaire UCL AL #312 - Politics, Statistics: Terrorism does not have the face we think (ca, de, it, fr, pt)[machine translation]

While anti-terrorism laws follow one another in France and more widely in the 
world, an Australian NGO specializing in statistical research on peace has 
published its report on the terrorist phenomenon. Analysis. ---- Terrorism is on 
the decline for the fifth consecutive year in the world. This is the first lesson 
of a study produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, an NGO 
headquartered in AustraliaInstitute[1]. The terrorist attacks claimed the lives 
of 13,826 people in 2019, down more than 15% from 2018. The peak of the 
phenomenon coincides with the period of peak activity of the Islamic State in 
Iraq and the Levant (ISIL , or Daesh) from 2014 to 2016. In 2019, terrorism 
killed nearly 60% less than in 2014.

However, it is under the pretext of this intangible and permanent threat that the 
government multiplies security laws, patrols the military in the streets, and 
provides for the general arming of municipal police.

The study reminds us that the populations most affected by terrorism are by far 
those who live in countries at war. Between 2002 and 2019, 95% of the victims 
were in countries where armed conflict was taking place. Imperialism plays an 
obvious role in the emergence and maintenance of terrorist violence. The two 
countries most affected are Afghanistan and Iraq, both militarily occupied by the 
United States, whose stated objective is "todestroy terrorism" and "torestore 
democracy".

Syria (at 4 th in the world) is meanwhile the playground of foreign powers first 
and foremost there is Russia, Turkey and Iran, but also the United States. In 
Yemen (6 th ) a deadly war, the main actor is the Saudi monarchy, continues with 
the blessing of the US and European arms dealers, including France. More 
generally, it is in countries which are former protectorates or former colonies 
that terrorism is rife.

Massacres in the Sahel
France plays its full part in this gloomy picture: Daesh is gradually shifting 
its activities to the Sahel, where France has been carrying out military 
operations for more than six years, and where it supports corrupt dictators at 
arm's length. Burkina Faso, where the French army has set up a base of its 
special forces, has seen the number of victims linked to terrorism increase by 
nearly five in recent years.

The far-right attacks on the rise
From the Utøya massacre in Norway in 2011 to the Christchurch bombing in New 
Zealand in 2019, far-right attacks are on the rise in the United States and its 
advanced capitalist satellites.

Norwegian Anders Breivik (left): 77 victims in 2011 in Oslo and Utøya. Tunisian 
Mohamed Lahouaiej- Bouhlel (right): 86 victims in 2016 in Nice.
In both cases, an individual fanaticism connected to a political movement: 
ultranationalist for the first, jihadist for the second.
While far-right attacks accounted for only 14% of attacks between 2002 and 2014 
in these states, this proportion skyrocketed to 40% in 2015, and reached 46% in 
2019 . Far-right attacks were even responsible for 82% of deaths there in 2019. 
The only exception: France, the country most affected in Europe by jihadist attacks.

The United States accounts for more than half of the attacks. There are many 
reasons for this: on the breeding ground of racism whose legal foundations were 
only finally abolished in the 1970s, the Trump presidency galvanized far-right 
groups, from the Ku Klux Klan to the most reactionary fringes. of the Republican 
Party. But Europe is also affected, in a context where the extreme right is on 
the rise.

All over the continent, the capitalists do not hesitate to team up with it. 
Bringing up identity, racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic themes 
is, for the wealthy, an admittedly old but still effective means of continuing to 
play the division of the popular classes.

Gangrenous police and army
In this context, the police and the army act as an echo chamber for the zealots 
of the extreme right. They serve as much inspiration (through equipment, virilist 
codes, the use of violence) as they are permeable to fascist ideologies. In Italy 
in 2019, an arsenal of war including even a missile was found among fascists, 
while the government took refuge in embarrassed silence. The German government 
had to resolve to dissolve this year an entire company out of the four that had 
its special anti-terrorist forces (KSK), because it was made up of neo-Nazis.

In France, nearly seven out of ten police officers voted Le Pen in the first 
round of the presidential elections in 2017. The case of Lille is emblematic. 
When in the early 2010s the body of a known anti-fascist activist was recovered 
from the Deule, the police concluded a suicide. It will take years of family 
struggle to obtain an investigation, in favor of which will emerge the figure of 
Claude Hermant, in connection with the suspects.

Former para, passed through the action service of the DGSE, he is a far-right 
activist well known in Lille... and indic. Arms trafficker, he is accused by the 
courts of having sold weapons used in the anti-Semitic Hyper Cacher attack in 2015.

Outlook
If the picture is worrying, it is necessary for the social movement to rise to 
the occasion. With different but complementary angles, the demonstrations which 
have been organized regularly for several months, despite the restrictions 
imposed by the health precautions against Islamophobia, police violence, for 
public freedoms, within the framework of very wide arcs give reasons to believe 
that the balance of power may force the government to back down.

The massive demonstrations of December 2019 had for a time made far-right 
politicians and columnists inaudible. In the period which is opening up and the 
crisis which is looming, it is more urgent than ever for the libertarian 
communists as for our whole social camp to rely on class solidarity.

Brendan (UCL Amiens)

Validate

[1]for Economics and Peace, Global Terrorism Index 2020. Measuring the Impact of 
Terrorism .

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Statistique-Le-terrorisme-n-a-pas-le-visage-que-l-on-croit
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