–
Dirk Müller: Eight dead in Manhattan. New York reacts calmly, we just heard that from Georg Schwarte. Tens of thousands celebrate Halloween after the attack. Political scientist Andrew Denison of Transatlantic Networks is now on the phone. Good day!
Andrew Denison: Mr. Müller, good afternoon!
Müller: Mr. Denison, can terror no longer shock Americans?
Denison: Can’t terror anymore shock Americans? It’s a shock. Of course, it dominates the headlines. We all have pity, also because we can imagine going on vacation in New York or something. And then this attack, that’s a blow. On the other hand, you can see from the reaction that Americans probably know that the terrorists only want to put America into paranoia and panic. Instead, as one good New Yorker said, we go on living. That is the approach from after this terrorist attack.
Gun or truck
Müller: Is that almost a kind of defiant reaction?
Denison: Yes. Defiance is a good word for it. If they want to attack us, we will show how we march on anyway. It is important not to lose perspective, dimension. Such an assassination is of course tragic, but it is supposed to happen, I would say, a mentally disturbed person who can also take up arms, whether a gun or a truck, a mentally disturbed person is converted into a weapon because he is either on the Internet already watching the propaganda videos or maybe having relationships through family or friends and social networks, whatever. We have to deal with that. We have to see that in the end these people also need help sometimes, simply because they are mentally disturbed. That’s where I’d start, and not necessarily at the borders.
Müller: Well, although that is always controversial, mentally disturbed – there are these individual perpetrators who will be characterized in this way later, but there are also the political perpetrators, the Islamist perpetrators, about whom we have talked so often in recent years, and at the latest yes, since September 11, 2001, you have to see again, have been at the top of this terror agenda since that date. You have just said, I would like to ask again, Andrew Denison, that you said, of course, the dimension is now not comparable to what happened on September 11th, we now have eight deaths, we had way over then 3,000 dead. But still you say, well, well, it can hit every vacationer, every traveler, even every New Yorker, every local on the street just because someone has problems, to be able to put it that way Not steering the car straight, but consciously having to harm someone there? Is this a new dimension, a new variety that we all have to get used to?
Denison: That cars are used that way, yes. We saw that, you can learn it quickly, even people who are mentally disturbed. And the recruits who make these videos to animate people, like this Uzbek in New York, are ideological and rational. But the people who ultimately choose this path of suicide – I think they are largely mentally disturbed and that is what you have to try to work with by going into the communities and offering therapies there.
Indicators of therapy
Müller: But where do you start? I mean, when we look at America right now, well over 300 million. Are there any indicators that say, well, he ought to get this kind of therapy now?
Denison: Yes, in any case. That applies to both criminals and petty criminals, immigrants, but also locals at the same time, there is a problem, far too many are in prison. We should rather work with therapies. But of course also those who are ready, for ideological reasons, whatever – in Las Vegas we cannot yet clarify exactly why the man shot there like that. Or this assassin who yelled “Allahu Akbar” and “Inch ‘Allah” – that is his motivation. But we often see with these terrorists that ideological conviction comes relatively late. Across the board whether you are driving a truck – unfortunately America also has the problem of having to fight with a large number of firearms. And there you won’t be able to ban them for the time being, but let’s at least work on the margins to keep people away from thinking that their only way to heaven or to salvation is to kill other people.
Misleading enemy images
Müller: So for you this is also a major psychological problem or psychological phenomenon, and you say, Andrew Denison, do a lot more prophylactically beforehand?
Denison: On the one hand. Of course, on the other hand, as we have seen, we have to arm ourselves against fear. We must not think that this is a huge conspiracy by Islamist terrorists where we now have to set the limits and react harshly against it. In any case, in our time, with Trump and everything, we have to beware of enemy images that are misused to distract.
Müller: But has it not been confirmed now? A Uzbek who is supposed to have contacts with the terrorist organization Islamic State, which has lived in the USA for a few years and is now carrying out this attack.
Denison: Whether he decided three years ago or before, on the one hand the prophylactic way is to identify this man on site in the neighborhoods, to get him away. The other way: Of course you have to continue to follow the networks and, above all, to follow those in the social networks, the recruiting people who motivate, the people who make the videos. And at the same time we have to recognize that there is a much bigger problem of another dimension in the Middle East, where the whole territory is threatened with losing its state monopoly, and where terrorists can then build up on the ground until they make it to America. Convincing a weirdo to kill eight people in a truck is a long way from what is happening in Mosul or Raqqa, for example. Or the attacks that happen every day in Kabul. That is a different dimension, and we have to look at these struggles differently from region to region than such selective terrorist attacks in America, where I continue to claim that this is something that you have to fight on the ground in the neighborhoods, and not by closing the border .
A villain’s last refuge
Müller: So, if I have understood you correctly, in your opinion too, Donald Trump can definitely save himself from having to go back to these entry requirements and try again to handle the whole thing even more restrictively?
Denison: I see Donald Trump reacting that way, of course, but we have also developed the defenses against this man a bit. He’s not as popular as he used to be. And if he does it, then we say it is a villain’s last refuge if he tries to exploit and instrumentalize it to enforce his entry ban. On the other hand, if we now want to address entry bans and Trump’s Great Wall: The natural disasters in summer, fire, storm, flood, they have greatly increased the demand for workers from the Hispanic countries, and there is no money for such a wall anyway By the way, America remains a hospitable country in times of terror, in times of racism, in times of a Trump presidency. And we are not ultimately pimped by such an attack or by such a Donald Trump.
Müller: With us in the “Information at noon” today the American political scientist Andrew Denison live. Thank you for finding time for us again!
Denison: Willingly!
Statements by our interlocutors reflect their own views. Deutschlandfunk does not adopt the statements of its interlocutors in interviews and discussions as its own.
–
