Revenge on their mind.
It would seem that ISIS has every intent to continue carrying out revenge based attacks across Europe and perhaps here in the U.S as well. These revenge based attacks are rooted in the cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad as depicted in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo as well as the American Freedom Defense Initiative.
As indicated in this article from the Daily Mail, it would appear that ISIS has plans to carry out attacks during the Christmas time frame. We have already seen several revenge based attacks in Europe in the past few months from several individuals that seem to have been “self-radicalized”. 'The worry is that, according to people who know him, [Shishani] is planning to avenge the Prophet Mohammad cartoons in places like Germany, UK, France and all around Christmas time” (Daily Mail, 2020)
We have been writing about revenge based terrorism and attacks for sometime now and this trend seems to be increasing. In a report just released from the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP, 2020) it is indicated that while there are many factors associated with terrorism, grievance is growing. While I continue to research and write on this topic, it is my opinion that “self-radicalized” individuals are more easily influenced by revenge and therefore more likely to use that as a major motivator. When I think about this topic, I can’t help but see this as the “Fifth Wave of Terrorism” which is a continuation of Rapoport’s Four Waves Theory. There will always be elements of religion, anti-government and anarchy behind terrorism, but the emerging trend in revenge as a main motivator is intriguing and should be explored further.
There are a plethora of questions that arise with this topic, but one we have to address is “can we prevent these attacks and what would that look like”? My answer is yes, to a certain degree we can prevent these attack from happening, not all, but yes I believe we can. There is an Eco-system in which these events occur and within that Eco-system lives behavior based data-points with warning signs, red flags and other attack precursors that, when connected and linked, can help us identify these emerging threats. I am not saying it is easy, in fact it can be very complex, but we do have to make a more focused effort to try and prevent these attacks from happening. Think about this, after nearly every terror attack, mass shooting or act of targeted violence we are able to go back and investigate the Who, What, When, Where , Why and How aspects of each event. While these after action reports provide valuable information, we tend to look at these questions in the “Past Tense” which is fine if we want to continue responding to attacks. If we want to prevent these attacks, we have to change our perspective, we can’t prevent if we have a “past tense” perspective. Once we start answering these questions more effectively in the “Present Tense” and start connecting all the dots, will we start to make a difference!
We have developed a detailed and comprehensive outline of this Eco-System that addresses many of the areas of concern, for more information, please reach out!