The Politics of Fear

SOYMB reads in The Independent that Britain is facing an increased threat of nuclear attacks by al-Qa'ida terrorists, according to three counter-terrorism reviews .

There was the threat from a radiological "dirty bomb". The report suggested that bomb makers that have been active in Afghanistan could already have the ability to produce a "dirty bomb" using information available over the internet.Terrorists could transport an improvised nuclear device on the Thames and detonate it in the heart of London. Other areas thought to be vulnerable included Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Belfast. A counter-terrorism report said security around stockpiles of decommissioned material was "variable and sometimes inadequate leaving materials vulnerable and to theft".

Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the inevitability of catastrophic terrorist attack. A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion.

The Guardian reports that since the attacks on the United States in September 2001, there have been more than a thousand references in British national newspapers, working out at almost one every single day, to the phrase "dirty bomb". There have been articles about how such a device can use ordinary explosives to spread lethal radiation; about how London would be evacuated in the event of such a detonation; about the Home Secretary David Blunkett's statement on terrorism in November 2002 that specifically raised the possibility of a dirty bomb being planted in Britain; and about the arrests of several groups of people, the latest only last month, for allegedly plotting exactly that.

Yet the BBC2 three-part documentary series The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear takes a different view of the weapon's potential.

"I don't think it would kill anybody," says Dr Theodore Rockwell, an authority on radiation, in an interview for the series. "You'll have trouble finding a serious report that would claim otherwise." The American department of energy, Rockwell continues, has simulated a dirty bomb explosion, "and they calculated that the most exposed individual would get a fairly high dose of radiation, not life-threatening." And even this minor threat is open to question. The test assumed that no one fled the explosion for one year.

Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, the series argues, "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media." The series' explanation for this is even bolder: "In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."

The Power of Nightmares argues Al-Qaida is not an organised international network. It does not have members or a leader. It does not have sleeper-cells. It does not have an overall strategy. In fact, it barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

The press has become accustomed to publishing scare stories and not retracting them; politicians became accustomed to responding to supposed threats rather than questioning them; the public became accustomed to the idea that some sort of apocalypse might be just around the corner. Bill Durodie, director of the international centre for security analysis at King's College London, says "Insecurity is the key driving concept of our times.Politicians have packaged themselves as risk managers. There is also a demand from below for protection." The real reason for this insecurity, he argues, is the decay of the 20th century's political belief systems and social structures: people have been left "disconnected" and "fearful".

SOYMB can only say that capitalism is a society of fear .