October 2020 PERSPECTIVES on TERRORISM Volume 14, Issue 5
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ISSN 2334-3745 Volume XIV, Issue 5 October 2020 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 14, Issue 5 Table of Contents Welcome from the Editors...............................................................................................................................1 Articles Donald Trump: Aggressive Rhetoric and Political Violence ........................................................................2 by Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon Taking Fourth-Generation Warfare to the Skies? An Empirical Exploration of Non-State Actors’ Use of Weaponised Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs – ‘Drones’)....................................................................26 by Håvard Haugstvedt and Jan Otto Jacobsen Is Youth Unemployment Related to Domestic Terrorism? .........................................................................41 by Adesoji Adelaja and Justin George Structural Equation Modeling of Terrorism Perception: New Correlates of Perception Formation.........63 by Niyazi Ekici and Huseyin Akdogan A Comparative Analysis of the Nature and Evolution of the Domestic Jihadist Threat to Australia and Canada (2000-2020) .....................................................................................................................................77 by Shandon Harris-Hogan, Lorne L. Dawson and Amarnath Amarasingam Organizational Capacity and Constituency Dominance: Why Some Militant Groups Wage Sustained Insurgencies................................................................................................................................................103 by Michael Shkolnik The Logic of Violence in Africa’s Extremist Insurgencies ........................................................................117 by Anouar Boukhars Research Notes Fabricated Martyrs: The Warrior-Saint Icons of Far-Right Terrorism .....................................................130 by Ari Ben Am and Gabriel Weimann Resources Counterterrorism Bookshelf: 19 Books on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism ..........................................148 Reviewed by Joshua Sinai Book Review: Aaron Zelin, Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (2020)...........158 Reviewed by Fabio Merone Book Review: Haroro J. Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter, The ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement (2020)..........................................................................................................160 Reviewed by Aaron Zelin Bibliography: Democracy and Terrorism...................................................................................................162 Compiled and Selected by Judith Tinnes Recent Online Resources for the Analysis of Terrorism and Related Subjects..........................................203 Compiled and selected by Berto Jongman ISSN 2334-3745 I October 2020 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 14, Issue 5 Announcements Conference Monitor/Calendar of Events.....................................................................................................234 Compiled by Olivia J. Kearney About Perspectives on Terrorism.................................................................................................................243 ISSN 2334-3745 II October 2020 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 14, Issue 5 Words of Welcome from the Editors Dear Reader, We are pleased to announce the release of Volume XIV, Issue 5 (October 2020) of Perspectives on Terrorism (ISSN 2334-3745). Our independent online journal is an Open Access publication of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), Vienna, and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University’s Campus in The Hague. All past and recent issues are freely available online at URL: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/ perspectives-on-terrorism . Perspectives on Terrorism (PoT) is indexed by JSTOR, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar. Now in its fourteenth year, it has more than 9,100 registered subscribers and many more occasional readers and website visitors in academia, government and civil society. The Articles of its six annual issues are fully peer-reviewed by external referees while its Research Notes and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control. The current issue features seven Articles. The opening article by Brigitte Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon takes a closer look at the relationship between aggressive rhetoric and political violence, based on a study of U.S. President Trump’s Twitter messages and their repercussions in America’s polarized society. The second article by Håvard Haugstvedt and Jan Otto Jacobsen provides a systematic analysis of the use of armed drones by terrorists, based on their study of more than 400 attacks worldwide. The third article by Adesoji Adelaja and Justin George is also quantitative in nature, identifying a positive relationship between high levels of youth unemployment and domestic terrorism. The fourth article by Niyazi Ekici and Huseyin Akdogan, using advanced statistical techniques, looks at the formation of perceptions about terrorism among Turkish students. Next, Shandon Harris-Hogan, Lorne L. Dawson and Amarnath Amarasingam compare the experiences of Australia and Canada with terrorism in the present century and find remarkable parallels. In a sixth article, Michael Shkolnik explores why some militant groups manage to wage sustained insurgencies while other do not, based on regression analyses of 246 militant groups operating between 1970 and 2007. Finally, Anouar Boukhars explores why some extremist groups in Africa target mainly government forces while others show a preference for killing civilians. These articles are followed by a remarkable Research Note from the hands of Ari Ben-Am and Gabriel Weimann. They show how secular far-right extremists have also begun a cult of martyrs and saints, emulating how religious terrorist groups instrumentalize and glorify murderers to stimulate vulnerable individual actors to follow them in order to achieve some ‘holy’ status among ‘true believers’. Our Resources section open with the CT-Bookshelf wherein our Book Reviews Editor Joshua Sinai provides abbreviated reviews of 19 new publications. This is followed by a detailed review of Aaron Zelin’s volumeYour Sons are at Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020) by Fabio Merone, and Aaron Zelin’s review of The ISIS Reader: Milestone Texts of the Islamic State Movement, edited by Haroro J. Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter (Hurst Publishers, 2020).. The section includes an extensive bibliography on Democracy and Terrorism by Information Resources Editor Judith Tinnes, the product of browsing manually more than 200 sources in the field of Terrorism Studies. The reader will also find in this issue the regular overview of new web-based resources on terrorism and related subjects by Associate Editor Berto Jongman as well as a Conference Calendar by Editorial Assistant Olivia Kearney. The articles and other texts of the current issue of Perspectives on Terrorism have been edited by James Forest and Alex Schmid, the journal’s principal editors. Associate Editor Aaron Zelin and John Morrison have supervised peer reviews since the previous issue. Editorial Assistant Jodi Moore handled proof-reading, while the technical online launch of the October 2020 issue of our journal has been in the hands of Associate Editor for IT Christine Boelema Robertus. ISSN 2334-3745 1 October 2020 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 14, Issue 5 Donald Trump: Aggressive Rhetoric and Political Violence by Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon Abstract During Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and presidency political discourse in the United States became more hateful and divisive. Threats and actual violence against groups and individuals singled out and demonized by Trump increased. The targets of his verbal attacks were most of all racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, the news media collectively and individual journalists, and well-known politicians, mostly Democrats. There was a rise in bullying incidents in schools against minority students. Assuming that aggressive rhetoric by influential political leaders affect their supporters’ words and deeds, we examined Trump’s online and offline hate speech, the rhetorical reactions of his followers, and the violent consequences suffered by their declared enemies. We found that contrary to an old children’s rhyme (“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”) Trump’s aggressive, divisive, and dehumanizing language was seconded by his followers and inflicted directly or indirectly psychological and physical harm to Trump’s declared enemies. Keywords: violent speech, leaders, political violence, demagoguery, bullying, media Introduction On September 29, 2019, with his impeachment looming, President Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) retweeted a warning by the Evangelical Pastor Robert Jeffress, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Two days later, U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican of Texas, warned Democrats that their “coup” was “pushing America into a civil war.”[1] On far-right websites Trump supporters suggested drastic and even violent actions against the “enemy” within. Some warned that they may need to exercise their Second Amendment rights—in other words,