Manchester: The newest terrorism, and the future of terrorism

!- Start of DoubleClick Floodlight Tag: Please do not remove Activity name of this tag: UCB001CP Retargeting URL of the webpage where the tag is expected to be placed: http://unknown This tag must be placed between the. The suicide bombing of a concert in Manchester, England, is indicative of the latest trends in terrorism - trends that have emerged as recently as the last few years, and will continue in the wrong direction for years to come. The tragedy illustrates the new normal in terrorist motivations and behaviors; unfortunately, you would not necessarily know that from the typical reactive platitudes, myths and diversions, thereby suppressing the evidence-based approach that is so desperately needed in studies of terrorism. In the 1990s, a few scholars identified the rise of what they categorized as - new terrorism ,' characterized mainly by increased lethality and religious motivations (religious terrorists - relative to secular terrorists - tend to focus on killing as many infidels as possible rather than to discriminate among political targets). Unfortunately, these foresighted scholars were largely ignored until the shock of the attacks on 9/11/2001. Now, more than 20 years since new terrorism was identified, I and my colleagues W. James Stewart and Aarefah Mosavi have found what we have termed the "newest terrorism. This year, we finished our analysis of 45 years of terrorist behavior for a forthcoming book (to be published in October, entitled Countering New(est) Terrorism ), to produce the first large-n (big dataset) differentiation of new/religious and old/secular terrorism.