Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
The clock struck 10:25 am on August 2, 1980, when a bomb exploded at Bologna’s Central Train Station. The attack plunged the city, known at the time for its left-wing politics and home to one of the oldest universities on the continent, into chaos. One of the deadliest terrorist attacks in...
The suspect in the terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, 27-year-old Stephan B., was driven by anti-Semitism and a radical-right worldview. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June, this was the second deadly radical-right terrorist attack this year to shake...
Radical-right radicalization has quickly moved from being a fringe domestic phenomenon to a mainstream global movement. The radical right, albeit always internationally connected and aligned across individual states, has over the last decade moved to increasingly intertangled structures, not only...
In all likelihood, you have an ambiguous understanding of “terrorism.” The average individual can recognize an event as terrorism but, when asked to define the term, is able to offer only the most general of definitions. The reason for this is that terrorism is undefined or, more accurately,...
Why would right-wing terrorists decide not to claim responsibility for their crimes? In Germany, there has been an ongoing public debate as to whether radical-right terrorists take responsibility for their crimes, particularly after the radical-right terrorist group Nationalsozialistischer...
Without the delivery of integration work at the local level, any effort to counter extremism is effectively built on a shaky foundation with too much sand in the mix. “Communities Defeat Terrorism” was the tagline when I worked as the head of strategy and policy in the office of the UK’s...
Anti-Muslim hate crime, which spikes following terror attacks, is inextricably intertwined with racism. This article has been difficult to write because I was hoping that, in 2019, I would not need to start talking about international terrorism and how it can impact the streets of Britain....
Throughout its development, Prevent has faced severe criticism but has remained protected by the armor of national security. On January 22, Britain’s security minister, Ben Wallace, announced there was to be an independent review of the government’s Prevent strategy. The review was launched...
A case of an IS bride’s newborn child raises questions of citizenship, personhood and agency. You probably haven’t heard of Marshae Jones. Last December, she was arrested after a shooting at a convenience store in Pleasant Grove, a small town in Alabama. Jones, who was pregnant at the time,...
1983 is an alternative history that bears disturbing resemblance to contemporary politics. Popular culture is full of alternative histories. Mackinley Kantor wrote a famous article in Look magazine in 1960 about what would have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Philip Roth’s...
Moscow begrudgingly permits regional power play in exchange for North Caucasian security, but at what point will it clash with its internal security framework? Two months of contentious ethno-politics between Chechnya and Ingushetia, which prompted extended public demonstrations in the Ingush...
