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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33859 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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There were a spate of these kind of terror attacks in Europe in the mid-2010s. ISIS-inspired, invariably; some 2nd generation disaffected Arab rents a U-Haul and drives it into a crowd on some holiday. The first one was the Nice truck attack in 2016; there were a bunch of copycats and as a result pretty much every major public square in Europe now has bollards to prevent people from getting vehicles into them during busy times.

There are a couple of other similar cases elsewhere; here in Toronto in 2018 an incel hired a van and killed a bunch of people with it.

Terror attacks very much seem to follow specific trends, and it seems to take certain people to think of novel ways to go about it. No one thought of using airliners as weapons until Al-Qaeda did it. Using a truck rental as a weapon wasn't a thing until that Nice attack. I'm not sure why this is, but it certainly seems like people who commit terrorist attacks want it to be recognizeable as such; or alternatively are just generally uncreative.

No one thought of using airliners as weapons until Al-Qaeda did it.

Tom Clancy did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_of_Honor

Edit: roystgnr beat me to it, that's what I get for not reading downthread first.

Using a truck rental as a weapon wasn't a thing until that Nice attack.

As a ramming weapon, yes. But there was a spate of using them in bombings in the '90s. The 1993 WTC bombing and 1995 Oklahoma City bombing both used Ryder rental trucks. But I suppose that just proves your point that people crazy enough to commit mass homicide are rather derivative in terms of their methods.

No one thought of using airliners as weapons until Al-Qaeda did it.

Tom Clancy, "Debt of Honor", wasn't too far off. Disgruntled pilot rather than hijackers, one plane into the Capitol building rather than 4 planes into assorted targets, but it obviously conveyed "a jumbo jet full of fuel is a dangerous missile", and it was the 7th book in a best-selling series that had already been adapted into 3 blockbuster movies.

Using a truck rental as a weapon wasn't a thing until that Nice attack.

It was the weapon delivery system in the OKC bombing, but yeah, not the weapon.

as a result pretty much every major public square in Europe now has bollards to prevent people from getting vehicles into them during busy times.

I've always half-wondered why truck attacks didn't become a more serious threat. It seemed so trivially easy and moderately effective that in the wake of Nice I expected it to become just another Thing that happens regularly. Wikipedia doesn't even list more than a handful of copycats.

it certainly seems like people who commit terrorist attacks want it to be recognizeable as such; or alternatively are just generally uncreative.

IIRC this still holds even if you have a very loose definition of "terrorist"; the "contagious" timing of school shootings suggests that the kinds of assholes who try to become infamous for shooting up a school are much more likely to do so if there's been another famous school shooting recently, as if even though the idea is hardly a secret at this point they don't really take it seriously until they see a de-facto commercial for another one on the news.

I do also think there might be something to the theory

Is killing a lot of people with a gun just that much more satisfying than running them over with a car?

The black trench coats and guns at Columbine were like an evil echo of The Matrix protagonists superhumanly fighting The Man, whereas simply running people over feels like something that could be accomplished by an elderly person confusing the gas and brake pedals. They say that "nobody thinks they're the villain of their own story", but also nobody even wants to think they're just a half-competent mook in their own story, so perhaps when they do slip into villainy they try to make it dramatic. The sort of utilitarian who deduces that you can massacre more people with a car than a gun might also generally be the sort who deduces that massacring a bunch of people doesn't actually accomplish any of your real goals anyway.

The X-Files spin-off The Lone Gunmen had an episode in early 2001 about the government perpetrating a fake terrorist attack by crashing an airliner into the World Trade Center, in order to have an excuse to go to war with half the Middle East. It’s on YouTube, but interestingly it has never made it to any streaming platforms.

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