As the War on Drugs the War on Terrorism has Collapsed
From the 2001 attack on New York to the June 2017 attack on London the process of the war on terrorism is now driven by a hybrid of the discourse of the war on drugs. In this hegemonic discourse the political imperatives of the elected and non-elected politicians of the state and the state apparatus has resulted in this application of the discourse of the war on drugs to the war on terrorism as this discourse best serves the interests of the politicians and the state actors but not that of the masses of these north Atlantic states.
It’s now painfully apparent that the discourse of the war on terrorism is an instrument of social control first and an instrument of threat mitigation last. The perceived needs of the politicians and the non-elected politicians ensure this especially the overriding imperative of politicians to win and retain their hold on state power. As is the case with the war on drugs so it is with the war on terrorism geopolitics trumps public safety as the political imperative is paramount especially the old colonial imperialist imperative of foreign solutions to home-grown problems. The power retention imperative of politicians ensured that in the war on terror the Muslim minority is demonised and the neo-Nazi dogs of war are released as the primary instrument of political mobilisation thereby alienating the most important group necessary to the task of engaging with the extremists. This strategic failure is straight out of the playbook of the war on drugs where you allowed marginalised communities to fall under gang hegemony then you declare that you have a gang problem in these marginalised communities which justifies a specific state apparatus that never destroys the hegemony of the gangs but deepens the marginalisation of these communities to the point where the gangs export cells to more profitable communities. Just as the gangs this discourse and its discursive agents are multiplying the power of the extremists not limiting it much less to reduce it. For every attack on civilians the political imperative demands the same response rooted in neo-Nazi imagery and final solutions for it must at all costs mask its organic, systemic failure to protect the innocent simply because it’s not constructed to do so. It’s an instrument to ensure hegemony of an oligarchy and we are all collateral damage.
The life story of the Manchester bomber/mass murderer was at the time the premier instance of this discourse in operation and the price the innocents are paying where the geopolitical imperative of the discourse bred a mass murderer in a land of insurgency where the political imperative inserted itself. Then gave it the space to fester and grow, to move back and forth from the land of insurgency to the UK then to slaughter the innocent in Manchester. But Manchester was eclipsed by London forget the difference in the number of victims. Khuram Butt’s commitment to extremism was publicly revealed in the 2016 documentary “the Jihadis next Door” but the collection of active members and their commitment to extremism of the Choudary group was repeatedly documented in other documentaries televised in public long before the 2016 documentary. In spite of these realities Butt was off the radar of the security apparatus of the UK state. This was a catastrophic systemic failure that outclassed the attacks on Paris and Brussels. What saved the innocents of London was the inability of the attackers to be outfitted to do more harm as the will and intent were simply not lacking. The three attackers outfitted themselves in a manner to ensure death by cops they therefore went into that attack welcoming death potently illustrating their commitment to extremism, the dire need for surveillance of Butt and an intervention to pre-empt the attack. The fact that Khuram Butt did not undertake hijrah to Syria or Iraq should have set off alarm bells given the nature of the group he was an active member of and his belief system which he openly articulated continuously and acted upon. For the failure to undertake hijrah immediately raises the chosen option of what took place in London. But Khuram Butt was not on the surveillance radar for some reason given in spite of reports on Butt’s commitment to extremism which reeks of racist arrogance for Butt is an automaton less than human so what he was not doing when he was investigated then he will not do so in the future. The political fallout expected will be dealt with via a dose of neo-Nazi discourse and its instrumentalities and the political imperative expects that social control will be maintained and heightened. In response the Muslim minority will grow even more bi-polar even schizophrenic or both as the space it finds itself in grows smaller and tighter as western neo-Nazi discourse and Islam rooted in and defined by taqlid squeezes the room smaller and smaller forcing out the air.