On 20 January, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech reflecting on the case of Axel Rudakubana, who had pleaded responsible to the murders of three kids at a celebration in Southport in July 2024. Rudakubana had, it transpired, been referred to the federal government’s counterextremism programme, Stop, on three separate events. However it seems that Rudakubana was not deemed to fulfill the edge for intervention as he didn’t show attachment to any particular political, spiritual or ideological trigger. In essence, regardless of his seeming attachment to, and fascination with violence, he was not deemed a terrorist risk as a result of he didn’t seem motivated by a transparent trigger or grievance. This raises, Starmer (2025) argues, a basic query of how we outline and perceive terrorism: “Once I have a look at the main points of this case. The acute nature of the violence. The meticulous plan to assault younger kids in a spot of pleasure and security. Violence clearly supposed to terrorise. Then I perceive why folks surprise what the phrase ‘terrorism’ means.”
Anybody who has ever studied or learn something about terrorism will doubtless share Starmer’s surprise. This query – what does ‘terrorism’ imply – has divided and confounded tutorial researchers in addition to policymakers and residents for the reason that time period’s emergence (Jackson et al 2011). The explanations for this are a number of and embrace its inherently pejorative connotations (no-one, at this time, describes their very own violences as ‘terrorist’), which make goal or common settlement on its definition near-impossible. The challenges of creating sense of Rudakubana’s violences as ‘terrorism’ might also – as Starmer alluded – be attributable to an outdated, or unhelpfully restrictive, sense of what terrorism ‘is’ inside the UK. Though a seemingly political level, such a proof can be consistent with the time period’s fixed evolution from its emergence to characterise state violence within the French revolution, to its modern growth by means of the fixed addition of recent prefixes (cyberterrorism, narcoterrorism, and many others) and kinds.
The altering nature of terrorism?
Past the definitional questions raised by Starmer was a particular temporal declare in his remarks on which we need to focus right here to the impact that the character of terrorism itself has essentially modified. That what some within the police service have been calling cases of MUU (blended, unsure or unclear) violence constitutes a radically new type of terrorism. As Keir Starmer (2025) put it:
Britain now faces a brand new risk. Terrorism has modified. Prior to now, the predominant risk was extremely organised teams with clear political intent. Teams like Al-Qaeda. That risk in fact stays. However now, alongside that we additionally see acts of maximum violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, younger males of their bed room, accessing all method of fabric on-line, determined for notoriety. Generally impressed by conventional terrorist teams. However fixated on that excessive violence, seemingly for its personal sake.
It’s essential, right here, that we recognise that Starmer’s speech is just not an outlier in making this argument. Take Tom Tugendhat, the then UK Minister for Safety, who in 2023 equally mixed what many beforehand noticed as ‘previous’ terrorists, just like the IRA, and ‘new’ terrorists like Al-Qaeda, contrasting them to what’s now being positioned as a brand new kind terrorism:
There was a time—there actually was a time—after we had what was once often known as spectaculars, which had been orchestrated by the IRA—for instance, in Bishopsgate—and by al-Qaeda, ISIS and so forth. These occasions had been orchestrated to focus on venues that you simply thought you knew. They had been the type of incidents that had been designed to alter Authorities coverage in a really radical manner by killing, typically, tons of of individuals (Dwelling Affairs Choose Committee 2023).
For students of terrorism – and significantly those that had been round for the brand new terrorism debate within the early 2000s – this represents, within the phrases of 1 colleague, “an enormous switcheroo”. That debate within the early 2000s, was one organised round a declare that the kinds of terrorism confronting states just like the UK had dramatically modified.
For some students, and for a lot of politicians, the terrorism seen in assaults like 9/11, 7/7, Bali and others, was essentially completely different to what had gone earlier than. In that debate, Al-Qaeda – at the moment held up by Starmer as representing a type of terrorism which is very organised with clear political intent – was contrasted with older teams just like the Provisional IRA, which had been seen as organised and with clear political motivations. Al-Qaeda, as a substitute, had been seen, within the early 2000s, as a loose-knit collective, missing political motivations, and extra lethal due to this (see Neumann 2009). This characterisation is, in fact, the very reverse of the traits now connected to such teams by Keir Starmer. So, what’s going on right here?
On terrorism and time
It’s greater than merely that which is new turns into previous. Had Starmer merely contrasted “new” terrorism to “older” types of terrorism of twenty years in the past, one may quibble about whether or not twenty years was sufficient time to go for one thing to be designated as “previous”. However that might be a subjective name. What’s of curiosity is that the very issues which had been seen to make Al Qaeda “new” twenty years in the past, seem to have been inverted, in order that their core traits now distinction successfully to a “newer” type of terrorism. The place Al Qaeda had been as soon as nebulous, spontaneous and religiously motivated, now – for onlookers akin to Keir Starmer – they’re organised, skilled, and political. As soon as the antithesis of organisations just like the IRA, teams like Al Qaeda and ISIS are actually their equal – all equally antithetical to lone actors like Rudakubana.
What additional thickens the plot, is that while there may be settlement in different nations that political violence is altering, it doesn’t all the time result in ascriptions of novelty or newness of the kind prompt by Starmer, Tugendhat and others. Within the US, for instance, there was comparable consideration to what FBI Director Chris Wray referred to as “salad bar extremism” (US Senate 2022), the place people who interact in violence cite a variety of disparate, and typically contradictory, concepts, grievances and ideologies:
[I]ncreasingly, we’re seeing folks with this sort of bizarre hodgepodge mix of ideologies. The old-school world of type of folks with some purity of radical ideology then turning to violence is commonly giving technique to individuals who have type of a jumble of mixed-up concepts.
However within the US, this distinctive type of terrorism has not sometimes been characterised as new. As a substitute, politicians have sought to hyperlink this to earlier types of extremism, significantly racist and much proper violence related to organisations just like the Ku Klux Klan and others. Thus, the Nationwide Technique for Countering Home Terrorism (Nationwide Safety Council 2021, p. 30), for example, states:
America has seen the face of home terrorism earlier than. Our nation has struggled towards teams and people who refused to simply accept that, as a democracy, we should settle our variations peacefully and in accordance with the rule of regulation. Victims of the 1921 Tulsa bloodbath bore the horrible brutality of home terrorists of their period. Victims of the 1995 Oklahoma Metropolis bombing suffered the terrible inhumanity of home terrorists of their time.
Right here, hyperlinks and connections are made between the terrorism issues of the current, on the one hand. And, on the opposite, prior types of political violence and terrorism, particularly these related to far proper, racist violence. Continuity relatively than discontinuity, evolution relatively than revolution, is the narrative right here.
On terrorism, time, and politics
How may we account for this obvious disjuncture, and what does it inform us about Starmer’s (re)positioning of Al Qaeda as ‘previous’ terrorism?
In a single sense, we might merely recognise that the UK and the US are very completely different polities with completely different political establishments, cultures, histories, and issues. Variance between them – by way of how violences are understood and categorised – ought to, maybe, not come as a shock. But in some ways, this emphasis on politics and the political may give us one other manner into these questions regarding the best way that terrorism is taken into account traditionally.
We argue that framings akin to these thought of above characterize completely different political makes an attempt to mobilise terrorism’s pasts and presents as a way to assist explicit political (within the broadest sense) initiatives, causes and objectives. Linking current political violence to older types of violence has a political resonance within the US; connecting modern violence to issues like Klan violence of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries serves to stress the seriousness and harms of such violence. Within the UK, in contrast, makes an attempt to hyperlink current violences to both the current previous (the put up 9/11 and put up 7/7 durations) or older histories of terrorism (‘the Troubles’ in Northern Eire) lack the identical type of resonance as a result of – at the least by way of the UK authorities – there may be restricted curiosity within the complicated historical past of identification and violence of that interval.
The Good Friday Settlement is broadly seen to have ‘ended’ the Troubles, and the query of whether or not and/or how one can ‘keep in mind’ this era is complicated (Graham and Whelan 2007; Lundy and McGovern 2008). Thus MI5 Director Normal Ken McCallum (2020, emphasis added) places it: “Twenty-two years on from the Good Friday Settlement, nice issues have been achieved; Northern Eire at this time doesn’t undergo in the best way that it did. Almost everybody has moved on”. There seems, due to this fact, little political capital to be constructed from drawing references to previous durations of battle and violence that many would relatively overlook. This lies in distinction to the US, the place debates in regards to the civil struggle, how one can commemorate (if in any respect) key figures inside the confederacy, and the historic legacy of slavery and racial violence, all burn with a fierce depth in a deeply divided political second (Clinton 2019; Ghoshal 2015).
By way of the newer previous, the UK – maybe in distinction to the US – has not been shy in legislating to fight terrorism. Since 2000, the UK Parliament has handed seven substantial items of counterterrorism laws – a mean of 1 each 3 and a half years – with an additional piece of laws (the Shield Obligation) at the moment earlier than Parliament. This stands alongside six variations of CONTEST, the UK authorities’s counterterrorism technique, and repeated additions to the UK’s checklist of proscribed terrorist organisations. In different phrases, maybe in distinction to the US – definitely by way of ‘home’ terrorism – the UK has been very energetic by way of introducing measures to fight terrorism. On this context, rhetorical appeals to novelty and distinctiveness turn out to be extra interesting as a method of preventing questions across the insufficiency of the various measures launched since 2000.
In brief, the dissonances we now have recognized – the place Al Qaeda transfer from being seen as ‘new’ terrorists who lack political motives and organisation, to being seen as ‘previous’ terrorism which reveals simply these qualities; in addition to how the US sees such terrorism as steady with its historical past of political violence however the UK doesn’t – are basically political. While the 2 nations do have completely different histories of political violence, there may be little inherent in such histories which clarify the divergence. We argue that temporal designations of up to date acts of terrorism – acts of violence carried out by people like Rudakubana – as ‘new’ within the UK, and ‘not new’ within the US, replicate the political methods of key actors inside these respective nations. Identical to the ‘new terrorism’ debate within the late Nineteen Nineties/early 2000s, a lot right here is to do with the justification of recent measures to deal with the violence, and relatively much less, if something, to do with ‘correct’ periodisations of political violence.
References
Clinton, C. (ed) (2019) Accomplice Statues and Memorialization. Athens: College of Georgia Press
Ghoshal, R. (2015) ‘What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Reality Fee, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes towards Racial Redress’, Race and Justice, 5(2), 168-191
Graham, B., & Whelan, Y. (2007) ‘The Legacies of the Useless: Commemorating the Troubles in Northern Eire’ Surroundings and Planning D: Society and Area, 25(3), pp. 476-495
Dwelling Affairs Committee (2023) ‘Oral proof: Pre-legislative scrutiny of the Terrorism (Safety of Premises) Draft Invoice, HC 1359’. Out there at: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/13353/pdf/
Jackson, R., Jarvis, L., Gunning, J., and Breen-Smyth, M. (2011) Terrorism: A Essential Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lundy, P. and McGovern, M. (2008) ‘Telling Tales, Dealing with Truths: Reminiscence, Justice and Submit battle Transition’ in Northern Eire After the Troubles: A Society in Transition, ed. Colin Coulter and Michael Murray. Manchester: Manchester College Press pp. 29-48
McCallum, Okay. (2020) ‘Director Normal Ken McCallum makes first public handle’. Out there at: https://www.mi5.gov.uk/information/director-general-ken-mccallum-makes-first-public-address
Nationwide Safety Council (2021) Nationwide Technique for Countering Home Terrorism. Out there at: https://int.nyt.com/information/documenttools/biden-s-strategy-for-combating-domestic-extremism/22ddf1f2f328e688/full.pdf
Neumann, P.R. (2009) Previous and New Terrorism. Cambridge: Polity.
Starmer, Okay. (2025) ‘PM assertion on the Southport public inquiry: 21 January 2025’. Out there at: https://www.gov.uk/authorities/information/pm-statement-on-the-southport-public-inquiry-21-january-2025
US Senate (2022) ‘A Evaluate of the President’s Fiscal Yr 2023 Funding Request for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’. Out there at: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/a-review-of-the-presidents-fiscal-year-2023-funding-request-for-the-federal-bureau-of-investigation
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