TV as a weapon

The fact that terrorists began to choose symbolic goals in order to achieve the maximum media effect

About the same number of people live in Belgium as in Moscow - 11 million of them from 6% to 8% profess Islam. According to surveys, about the same amount of Muslims lives in Russia, although Islamic leaders tend to double these numbers.

In the capital of Belgium, Brussels, the Muslim population reaches 23%. According to the mufti, these figures also approximately correspond to the Moscow, however, most likely, even taking into account all illegal Muslim migrants in the Russian capital, there are much fewer. But unlike Russia, where one of the most bloody terrorist attacks in the history of mankind - Beslan and Dubrovka took place, in Belgium until last week, not a single terrorist attack occurred with the number of victims of more than eight people. The incidents were rare and, as a rule, led to one or two deaths.

The Parisian and Brussels terrorist attacks gave the largest surge in mortality in the hands of terrorists in Western Europe, but it is still difficult to call it phenomenal-in the 1970s and 1980s Basque, Irish and other militants killed many times more people (see infographics).

The difference is that modern terrorists began to choose symbolic goals, achieving maximum media effect, and as a result - panic in society. The TV has become an even more important weapon of terror than the bomb itself - especially because it contributes to its self -reproduction, mobilizing the new, hating the world of losers, who hope to get their fifteen seconds of fame.

A unique country

After the Brussels tragedy of the Security Service and the state institutions of Belgium are strictly criticized for the inability to confront the threat. Belgium is often called the "richest failure state in the world." The country deserved such a characteristic mainly by the fact that in 2010-2011, she lived for 489 days without a government due to the inconsistency of the two main ethnic communities-Flemish and Vallonskaya. And now, Belgium is unique in that Flemish separatists playing for the independence of Flanders, the key historical region of the country play the main role in its parliament and government. Belgium’s birth trauma - ethnic disunity - has always been a source of discord, leading to the politicization of state institutions, in particular security services, in which ethnocratic parties compete with each other for key posts.

To claim that the Belgians became victims of their own tolerance is like accusing Alexander II of the 1917 revolution, because he released the will of the fortress

But all this did not prevent the country from being safe and prosperous at the same time. The level of ordinary crime in Belgium is slightly higher than the average for the EU. But they kill people in Belgium three times less than in Lithuania and Estonia, where there are almost no Muslims, as well as four times less than in Russia (according to the World Bank and Eurostat).

Belgium has one of the most successful economies in Europe, which is ahead of GDP per capita, Britain and Japan. Moroccans and Turks, which make up the vast majority of Belgian Muslims, made a very significant contribution to the country's economic success, making up the shortage of labor market in the era of economic boom.

The war of ethnicrates

It is impossible to explain what happened in Brussels with the help of propaganda memes that Russian propaganda spreads. Obviously, migration and radical Islamism are interconnected. But to argue that the Belgians became victims of their own tolerance is like accusing Alexander II of the 1917 revolution, because he released serfs.

Victims of terrorist attacks in Western Europe

Explosions in Brussels were the result of the failure of the Belgian special services, which looked at the terrorist group located under their nose after its members arranged a terrorist attack in Paris. Before that, for years they looked through the fingers for years at the Islamist networks growing in the country, which as a result gave the largest number of militants in Western Europe for jihadists operating in Syria and Iraq. But instead of dramatically improve the interaction of security services, officials continued the war of ethnocracies. When the Brussels trace was discovered in the Parisian terrorist attacks, the Minister of the Interior of Belgium, Yan Yambon, who represents the batch of Flemish separatists, accused the power of the franco -speaking Brussels of inaction and incompetence. He put them as an example of the success of the police in Antwerp, where he managed to cover a large network of radical Islamists who were engaged in recruiting fighters for the Islamic State* in Syria.

Imams for marginals

Meanwhile, as one of the creators of this network told the New Yorker magazine, those who were not brought up since childhood in Islamic traditions became the best and convinced militants, that is, people from secular families of Muslim origin or from families who had no relation to Islam. The surrendering network Jayun Bontink is the son of a Belgian military and a woman from Nigeria. Both parents are Catholics. Such as he was rather a rule than the exception in the detachment under the leadership of the Syrian Amr al-Absi, to which dozens of Belgians and other Europeans joined. Lusers, marginals and adventurers-if they had not been selected by radical imams, someone else would have picked up.

Radical Islamism is only one of the series of sectarian totalitarian ideologies that attract people who have problems with education and prone to deviant behavior. He himself will inevitably end his life in the same place where all his predecessors are at a landfill of history. But the feeling of “hate this world” and the desire to “kill everyone” will continue to visit people further, and the weakest of us will be a desire to fulfill this, finding an excuse in muddy political ideas.

* ISIS (IG, Daish, the Islamic State) is a terrorist organization banned in the Russian Federation.

Source: www.statista.com, December 2015