Domestic Extremism and the Case of the Toronto 18

Jeremy Kowalski

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781349949595
• eBook ISBN: 9781349949601
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines domestic extremism and what is popularly referred to as radicalization. The fear of domestic extremism has been used to dismantle democracy and erect national security states throughout North America, Western Europe, and beyond. Yet, despite the enormous costs citizens have paid in the name of security, society has become less secure and less safe. In many respects, this situation has resulted from the misapprehension of the conditions that make the emergence of this threat probable. Kowalski focuses on the macro social relations and structures that make radicalization probable. As demonstrated through an analysis of the so-called Toronto 18—an extremist group arrested in June of 2006 for activities that contravened the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)—macro social relations and structures served a significant role in creating the conditions through which the process of radicalization became probable. If a comprehensive understanding of the processes of radicalization are to be reached and effective counter-terrorism policies developed, then the consideration this book provides of greater macro social relations and structures that make the emergence of extremist subjectivities probable is needed.

© The Author(s) 2016

Jeremy KowalskiDomestic Extremism and the Case of the Toronto 1810.1057/978-1-349-94960-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Islamic, Islamist, Islamitic: From Conceptual Violence to a Conceptual Break

Jeremy Kowalski¹

(1)

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

End Abstract

Since the tragic spectacle of 11 September 2001, attempting to neutralize the threat of terrorism has become one of the primary preoccupations of North American and Western European nation-states. Various states have deployed a variety of strategies to reorder space at multiple scales both discursively and materially in order to produce an expansive field of disciplinarity in which and through which the placing, identification, and categorization of bodies by the state as either benign and subordinate or threatening and subversive have been made possible. For example, this multiscalar reordering of space to align with the war of terror finds expression in and is evinced through the following:

• The instrumental and ambiguous “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” bifurcated worldview promulgated by President George W. Bush on 20 September 2001 to a Joint Session of Congress at which time the geographical imagination of the “war on terror” was officially inaugurated and operationalized.
• The current war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq.
• The expansion of the war of terror into Pakistan, Yemen, and North Africa vis-à-vis US drone strikes and/or special forces operations.
• The development of a transnational prison archipelago and its attendant transportation network, whose geography is punctuated by Abu Ghraib (Iraq), Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), ¹ Bagram Prison (Afghanistan), shifting black sites (unofficial and secret prisons and torture facilities), e.g. the “Salt Pit” in Afghanistan, ² the island of Diego Garcia, ³ and the complex flight paths of “ghost planes” circumnavigating the globe. ⁴
• The militarization and citadelification of the urban environment in an attempt to mitigate risk and vulnerability. ⁵
• The incremental increase in the securitization of borders ⁶ and airports ⁷ as sites not only of surveillance, interpolation, and interdiction but as sites of degradation, humiliation, and indignity, as demonstrated by passengers at airports standing in supine repose as an image of their naked body is scrutinized by airport security personnel.
• The furtive and systematic eradication of any meaningful distinction between the public and private domains and the consequent elimination of the privacy and anonymity of citizenry throughout the globe through the development of signals intelligence programs and networks that gather and store virtually all communications that rely upon advanced communications infrastructure, e.g. the “Five Eyes” signals intelligence network comprised of the following partners: Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, and the USA.

As Elias Canetti states, “there is nothing man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.” ⁸ However, under the auspices of the threat of terrorism, the power of the state to discipline bodies that move in and through particular spaces and inscribe them with specific identities and subjectivities has produced devastating results.

The power of the state to discipline and inscribe bodies is demonstrated through the litany of abuses experienced by those who have been placed in what Paddy Hillyard terms a “suspect community.” ⁹ These abuses encompass a variety of state security actions and practices that include but are not limited to: targeted harassment and screening; extrajuridical detention, illegal transfer, false imprisonment, and torture; and the targeted killing of innocent individuals suspected of being militants. Some examples of these aforementioned abuses are illustrated through the following:

• The thousands of South Asian and Southwest Asian men arrested, detained, and incarcerated for months in the New York City area following 11 September 2001without charge or access to legal counsel. ¹⁰
• The hundreds of (innocent) individuals being held and tortured in Guantanamo Bay; the degradation, dehumanization, and torture of detainees, including children, in Afghanistan (Bagram and Kandahar) and Iraq (Abu Ghraib). ¹¹
• The many documented and undocumented individuals who have been forcibly disappeared under the auspices of the “Extraordinary Rendition” program, such as the Canadian citizens Maher Arar (2002) and Ahmad About El Maati (2001), the Italian citizen Abu Omar (2003), and the German citizen Khaled el-Masri (2003).
• The five men (Hassan Almeri, Adil Charkaoui, Mohamed Harkat, Mahmoud Jaballah, and Mohammad Mahjoub) imprisoned for years in Canada under the controversial “Security Certificate” legislation contained within the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
• The murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician working in London in July 2005, who, after an investigation, was found to be on his way to work. ¹²
• The arrest of Rizwaan Sabir—a graduate student who was arrested at the University of Nottingham in May 2008 under suspicion of being a terrorist for downloading a copy of the al-Qaeda training manual from the US Department of Justice website. Incidentally, Rizwaan Sabir was released after spending six days in detention after it became clear to the law enforcement services involved that the material was being used for legitimate research for his master’s thesis on radical Islamic groups. ¹³

Certainly, the implications of the examples provided are manifold and include racial profiling and other forms of state racism, human rights violations, the suspension of habeas corpus and other national and international laws, the use of reverse onus to be exonerated of guilt, the use of state-sanctioned violence under odious circumstances, and the erosion of academic freedom. However, the examples of abuses and the implications cited above should not be understood as simply isolated incidents and/or unfortunate circumstances arising from specific North American and Western European counter-terrorism policies and practices. Instead, these individual abuses and their related implications cumulatively form a constellation of crisis points that brings into focus the materialization of what Henry Giroux codifies as a “culture of cruelty.” ¹⁴ According to Giroux, “the culture of cruelty that emerges in this context speaks not merely to the death of public values or to a society that is politically adrift but more importantly to the demise of democracy itself.” ¹⁵ Indeed, a question that becomes of paramount importance as a result of the appearance of these crisis points is: how is it possible for a culture of cruelty to emerge where the bodies of the innocent become sites of state discipline and inscription? Although the answer to this question is very complex, this chapter offers an examination of one element of the answer: the conceptual confusion and imprecision that appear to pervade the dominant representation of the contemporary phenomenon of domestic extremism of the al-Qaeda-inspired type that has emerged in a North American and/or a Western European context.

Given the ubiquitous presence of the subject of terrorism over the last decade in scholarly analysis, security and public policy discussions, and corporate media coverage and commentary, a point of departure into an examination of the conceptual confusion and imprecision redolent of domestic extremism of the al-Qaeda-inspired type must proceed with an analysis of the efficacy of particular typologies of terrorism as a mode of categorization and description.

Dispersing the Conceptual Fog: The Problematics of Categorizing and Representing the “New” Terrorism

As Alex Schmid and Albert Jongman observe in their seminal text on the subject of political terrorism, “in the literature one finds a multitude of fundamenta divisionis, or principles of distinction.” ¹⁶ Some examples of the typologies of terrorism Schmid and Jongman outline and describe include: actor-based, victim-based, motivation-based, demand-based, and political-orientation-based. These typologies can then be further subdivided into different categories. For example, the sub-types under the political-orientation-based typology can include, as advanced varyingly by Brian Crozier and Davidson Smith: “ethnic, religious, or nationalist groups,” “anarchist groups,” “Marxist-Leninist groups,” “state and state-sponsored,” “ideological,” and so on. ¹⁷ Indeed, several of these sub-types of terrorism as well as others are utilized to varying degrees by a variety of security and law enforcement apparatuses to assist them in framing, profiling, and ultimately countering the threats posed by these different actors. Furthermore, several scholars have begun to move beyond political, cultural, and social categories of terrorist analyses and are considering the potential psychological factors (psychopathology, personality traits, individual and group behavior, etc.) associated with the social actors involved with this phenomenon. ¹⁸

Certainly, the development of typologies of terrorism is important as categorizing helps to enable an analysis of the commonalities, differences, connectivities, and relationships within and between various forms of terrorism. Moreover, typologies are important because, as Matthew Waxman states, “categorization influences the way we think about terrorism in terms of strategy, law, and institutions.” ¹⁹ Given the importance of terrorism typologies not only for supporting academic analysis but for informing the policies and practices of various state apparatuses and institutions, the conceptual precision of typological categories is paramount. Conversely, conceptual imprecision can lead to scholarship that not only perpetuates inaccuracies regarding particular phenomena but can support and/or inform misguided state policies and practices resulting in the flagrant abuses referenced above. Therefore, it is imperative that the typological categorizations that suffuse the interconnected corpus of formal, practical, and popular discourse on the subject of terrorism be subjected to nuance and refinement so that the homogeneous and presumptive character of terrorism typologies does not obfuscate the empirical reality of particular phenomena:

The most common terrorism typology includes ‘nationalist,’ ‘ideological,’ ‘religious fanatical,’ ‘single issue,’ and ‘state-sponsored,’ other varieties of terror encompass the ‘psychotic,’ ‘criminal,’ ‘endemic,’ ‘authorized,’ ‘vigilante,’ and ‘revolutionary.’ The objection that terrorism may be a fake category is in fact mentioned and then quickly dismissed in the literature. That wars, killings, and violence of various kinds are endemic to the human condition is obvious; the real issue concerns the wisdom of describing all (or many) such events as the work of ‘terrorism.’ Does this concept better clarify the facts, or is it, as with so many other historical constructs, a hypostatized creation of learned and lay people alike that is a certain path to self-deception? ²⁰

As Zulaika and Douglas assert, “myopia and self-deception are the almost certain ou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Islamic, Islamist, Islamitic: From Conceptual Violence to a Conceptual Break
• 2. Displacement and Condensation: The Internalization of the Clash and the Construction of the Homo Terrorismus
• 3. Through a Looking Glass Darkly: The Symmetry of Competing Discursive Formations
• 4. A Condition of Transgression: The Transnational Sphere of Influence
• 5. A Condition of Transgression: The State Sphere of Influence
• 6. A Condition of Transgression: The Group Sphere of Influence
• Backmatter