Dimensions
159 x 241 x 25mm
A terrifying vision of how fanaticism and paranoia will be manifested in indiscriminate terrorism.
Walter Laqueur is one of the shrewdest and the most perceptive historians of terrorism today. Drawing on his extensive knowledge and research, he now turns his attention to terrorism today and prophesies how it will develop in the century to come. What he describes makes Camus' Le Justes seem like a picnic.
What exactly are the new elements in terrorism in our post September 11th world? There are now, says Laqueur, entirely new manifestations of fanaticism and paranoia, for which it is hard to see cures. Most observers of contemporary terrorism deal with issues such as ethnic and religious tension, globalisation and anti-globalisation, poverty and exploitation. But these, argues the author, will be less important to the terrorism of the future.
We now see small terrorist groups where psychological factors are of the greatest importance. Suicide bombers, greater access to weapons of mass destruction, terrorist attacks which are indiscriminate in their choice of victims - these are the symptoms of growing fanaticism and a new geopolitic.
Elements such as these make the distinction between left and right meaningless. Terrorism attracts all people who wish to take vengeance on society - from Trotskyites to Neo-Nazis.
