Summary

The first session of the new edition of Europa sul Sofà, the Punto Europa series of talks on European Union-related topics, kicked off on Tuesday, 17 March. The session addressed the theme of converging threats and how they are changing the face of security in Europe, with particular emphasis on terrorism and the illegal use of force. The discussion was led by Professor Arije Antinori and Professor Domenico Guzzo.

Prof. Arije ANTINORI

He teaches Criminology in the Degree Programme in Legal, Forensic and Criminological Psychology, and Criminology in the International Degree Programme in Cognitive Forensic Sciences, both at the Department of Psychology of Sapienza University of Rome. He holds a PhD in Criminology Applied to Investigation and Security and a PhD in Communication and Media Studies. He is an EU Senior Expert on terrorism, extremism, radicalisation, high-risk criminal networks, and disinformation.

Prof. Domenico GUZZO

He teaches Political Violence and Terrorism in the Degree Programme in International and Diplomatic Sciences at the University of Bologna. He is coordinator of the Centro Studi Formazione e Documentazione (CIVIDEM) and director of the Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e dell'Età Contemporanea of Forlì-Cesena. His research interests include: the dialectic between policing and revolution, the epistemology of political conflict, political violence, and terrorism.

MODERATED BY

Ada Lucia Pasqualetto and Federica Buttau (Junior Experts, Punto Europa Interdepartmental Centre on European Studies)

Terrorism and the Illegal Use of Force (Guzzo)

The challenge with terrorism is remaining human. Terrorism differs from the excessive illegal use of force in its relationship with the rule of law: while the illegal use of force involves attempts to stretch it beyond its limits, or to create small breaches without outright denying it, terrorism stands in opposition to the law and aims to overturn the balance of force through political violence. Terrorism is typically carried out by non-state actors seeking to maximize the ratio between means and ends — that is, to "do a lot with little" — and therefore develops "from below."

During the Cold War, two major forms of terrorism emerged: secular ideological terrorism, exemplified by the Red Brigades operating in urban settings, and, on the other hand, forms of mass-casualty or irredentist terrorism.

In the post-bipolar period, an important form is jihadist terrorism, exemplified by the Bataclan attack (2015). The illegal use of force, by contrast, is often carried out by states or organized entities, and thus occurs at a higher level. Europe represents a particular case, having adopted, after the Second World War, an integration experiment that limited the illegal use of force on the continent; nonetheless, emblematic cases remain, such as that of Abu Omar, abducted by a CIA cell as part of the post-9/11 global war on terror and transferred to Egypt, where he was tortured despite ultimately being found innocent.

Converging Threats: The Interconnection of Terrorism, Organized Crime, Cyberattacks, and Disinformation (Antinori)

Today's security challenges unfold in a profoundly changed and accelerated world: whereas the earlier concept of militancy centered on lone actors, we are now witnessing a metamorphosis and a horizontalization of terrorism and threat, with the online dimension playing an increasingly central role. Access to the internet has increased criminal capacity in terms of propaganda and recruitment, through the representation of terror via hyper-violent content, digital material, and streaming, combining social isolation with cyber-social interconnection. Interconnection provides tools, but also creates dangerous networks exploited by a range of actors. Furthermore, the malicious use of AI is spreading in criminal and terrorist contexts through synthetic identities, AI-based botnets, propaganda, and disinformation. Hybrid threats and emotional warfare are emerging, alongside the normalization of toxic, violent, and extreme language and the manipulation of information. AI makes it possible to produce emotionally engaging narratives within a context of disinformation chaos, where the winning weapon is doubt.

Similarities and Differences: European Subversion and Terrorism vs. Today's Converging Threats (Guzzo)

Comparing Cold War terrorism with its contemporary counterpart reveals both similarities and differences linked to the acceleration and speed of underlying processes. In the 1960s and 1970s, crime reporting, organized crime, and political terrorism coexisted as cumulative threats that were not always connected or convergent, within a broad criminogenic process; in Italy, this included far-right ("black") and far-left ("red") terrorism, alongside mafia-related and international terrorism. Today, thanks to digital technology, the speed and perceived urgency of these phenomena have changed: convergence was difficult in the analog world, whereas today, amid ego construction, globalization, and the erosion of borders, anti-system impulses collide and merge. The main differences concern acceleration and digitalization, together with the demise of the secular, monolithic, and universalist ideologies of the twentieth century. Cold War ideologies looked to the future, in a scientistic and positivist era, and justified terrorism in the name of a higher good; today's ideologies lack this element and are situated within a structural crisis and a context of sustainable survival. In addition, the temporal projection has also changed: today's outlook is oriented toward the past, with threats driven by a nostalgic dimension that seeks to recover a lost — and in some cases merely imagined — sense of wellbeing. Moreover, a complex web of acronyms and labels can be observed, linking and spreading alongside phenomena such as incel culture and extreme violence — tied to pre-modern worldviews and the subjugation of women — as well as radicalization dynamics among second-generation French and Belgian communities.

Indirect Effects of Counter-Terrorism Policies (Antinori)

The New Security Agenda, put forward by the European Commission and DG HOME, has placed prevention at the center of counter-terrorism policy, with the aim of avoiding the targeting of specific communities as being "responsible for" terrorism. This choice, however, risks fostering the concept of self-radicalization: the European Union could find itself in a situation similar to the one that followed 9/11, when prevention and terrorism went hand in hand. It is nonetheless essential to focus primarily on prevention: choosing to intervene directly against the so-called "push and pull factors" of radicalization would in fact mean skipping the so-called "time zero," losing all contact, for example, with younger generations. Ongoing geopolitical conflicts, however, act as accelerators and reinforce a dichotomous, simplistic type of narrative that is thoroughly detrimental to prevention efforts. This risk must be countered with information that is itself informed and up to date: in an atomized context built on social networks, the danger is that of contributing — even indirectly or unknowingly — to disinformation. Useful work in this regard is provided by the monthly reports of the European Observatory on Online Hate.

Immigration, Prisons, and Radicalization (Guzzo)

A certain type of narrative, based on a direct link between immigration — particularly irregular immigration — and the occurrence of terrorist acts, has been entirely disproven by empirical evidence: no correlation exists between the two phenomena. Nor do prisons, despite their criminalizing tradition, appear to be an effective site of individual radicalization. On the contrary, the issue that must be taken into account is the high proportion of self-radicalized individuals among those born and raised within the European Union, sometimes several generations removed from migration: this phenomenon has led to the creation of, at times, ghettoizing tiers of citizenship, in which the migratory element does indeed become significant. Part of this population, in fact, no longer felt a genuine sense of citizenship and ended up creating and drawing on fictitious constructs useful to their own path toward radicalization: the territorial experience of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, in this sense, accelerated such processes through its proletarianizing character.

Western Political Narratives and Global Jihadism (Antinori)

The simplistic narratives promoted by Western political elites have fueled a kind of hall-of-mirrors effect at the expense of the actors being labeled. From a certain point of view, this representation was functional, as it enabled the territorial destruction of Daesh; at the same time, however, it failed to erase the so-called "Islamic state of mind" — that is, the formation and spread of an extremely complex culture within a condensed space-time. These simplified interpretations, moreover, have reached more or less immersive online platforms and have reached individuals directly, bringing to the surface dangerous concepts that had seemed by now outdated, and normalizing a language that has made it considerably harder to understand the phenomenon of Islamist terrorist mobilization. The latter, in fact, has drawn — and continues to draw — on managerial structures with rigorous economic administration, and cannot be reduced to a simple link with immigration on the European continent.

Edited by Laura Casadio and Niccolò Martucci