Pandemic and terrorism

Currently, the world’s greatest concerns are centered on the social and economic repercussions of the pandemic, but the attention perspectives are scarcely focused on global developments to the advantage of an attention of individual states towards their respective internal situation: it is an understandable vision but extremely restricted, which overlooks and neglects other international emergencies, whose actors are ready to exploit this inattention to turn it to their own advantage. The issue of global terrorism certainly falls within this series, which seems to develop more in two directions, only apparently opposite. The reference is to Muslim religious terrorism, which, despite the defeats suffered on the ground by the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, has been able to carve out new spaces, which, although reduced for now, promise interesting developments for Islamic radicalism. The second emergency is the development and consolidation of racist terrorism, which develops thanks to the new diffusion of far-right ideas and movements, often too tolerated, but also supported by government apparatuses for functional reasons. The pandemic emergency has caused a worsening of the global economic situation, the first impact of which concerned, at a global level, less attention to human rights: this issue is intimately connected with the fight against terrorism, because precisely the cultural foundations of respect for rights are the first obstacle, both political and practical, to prevent the spread of Islamic terrorism, which has targeted the vast sectors of the Muslim faith, especially present in the West, which are located on the margins of society, suffering from poor social and economic inclusion. The battleground moves from the Middle Eastern territories to that of the web space, where thanks to the competence of recruiters in exploiting social web, proselytism is increased, with the consequence of creating a high recruitment capacity and potential mobilization in every corner of the world . These practices have been particularly successful in South Asia, in the southeast of the Asian continent, in East and South Africa, in the Sahel and in the Lake Chad basin. These are territories located in key areas for international or strategic trade to regulate potential immigration to the richest areas of the globe. For these reasons it is important to combat the phenomenon of the development of the web of the spread of proselytism of radicalism with cultural tools, capable of making people understand the basic errors that are at the basis of the violent message, associated, however, with practical help practices; this second point is more difficult to implement precisely because of the compression of economic development due to the pandemic: this requires a coordinated effort at a supranational level and by the agreement of several states framed in a multilateral perspective; a need also acknowledged by the offices of the United Nations for the fight against terrorism. But the pandemic has also favored the development of a trend that was still growing, that of right-wing extremism, and which has been able to develop issues such as health denialism, connected with the rejection of the health precautionary measures developed by the states, conveying the anger of entire social sectors severely tested by the crisis and without adequate economic support. Right-wing extremism, also based on racial issues, has been supported by state apparatuses in a more or less evident way, as happened in the United States or in European countries, where free-killing laws have favored the denial of civil, political and expression rights. , creating the conditions for a kind of proselytism in Western democracies. Attention must be paid to this type of underhanded terrorism, which often appreciates the Chinese practice of securing employment and well-being in exchange for rights, because it constitutes a cause of danger precisely to the foundations of Western thought. Of course, the main emergency is manifested by the activity of extreme right-wing groups, often flanked in a semi-hidden way by sovereign and nationalist parties and movements, which recognize in these extremisms their electoral reservoir. This type of terrorism has common ground with Islamic radicalism on the ways of using new technologies and exploiting them for one’s own proselytism: an issue that places on the agenda a way of regulating social media, without however encroaching on censorship.