On New Year’s Day, a murderous attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans left at least 15 people dead and scores injured. Those killed were ordinary people out celebrating the start of a New Year, being happy and hopeful, and taking advantage of a city that celebrates like no other. Understanding the “who,” and the “why,” of this crime is necessary to prevent further violence but also to calibrate threats accurately, avoid hyperbole in defining it and the perpetrator, and prevent useless and ill-conceived inflation of terrorism risks in the United States.
The FBI currently assesses that the perpetrator, a U.S. Army veteran, was acting alone. Law enforcement officials are also rightly investigating the crime as an act of terrorism. They established a terrorism link after reportedly finding that the perpetrator carried an ISIS-style flag in his truck and pledged allegiance to the group in several videos posted online. This is not the first incident in the U.S. when self-radicalized perpetrators have used the moniker of ISIS to justify their brutal violence. Other incidents include: the December 2015 shooting in San Bernadino, California; the June 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida; and the October 2017 truck attack in New York City. The 2017 attack in Manhattan is similar to the incident in New Orleans. In both instances, an individual claiming fealty to ISIS drove his rented truck into a crowd of innocent civilians. And the New Year’s attack on Bourbon Street likely won’t be the last incident involving a deranged perpetrator linking his violence to a designated terrorist group.
On slow news days at the beginning of the New Year, the focus on an ISIS link dominates media conversations. Alas, the narrow focus on ISIS has the effect of flattening out deliberative and useful conversations about self-radicalization, lone wolf terrorism, and mental health. It also means that other useful discussions are not adequately addressed, including those concerning the profiles of offenders, the tactical capacity of individuals, and the role of social media in enabling this kind of inspiration. Regrettably, when it comes to acts of violence defined as terrorism there is a tendency to avoid the logical conversations we should have as policy makers, responsible media and commentators, and instead focus on the “sexy” stuff, such as the actual or alleged links with foreign terrorist organizations rather than the things we know about most crimes including the crime of terrorism.
It is easy to forget that the focus on ISIS serves terrorist organizations well by ascribing acts of violence and/or terrorism to them when they may have played no concrete role. In fact, that is precisely what ISIS leadership has long demanded. In a sense, the tenuousness of the link does not matter. ISIS seeks the appearance of global reach – whether the characterization is accurate or not. And it is a propaganda success for ISIS if the ordinary public is convinced that it has ubiquitous reach, even if in fact there is little truth in the assertion. In fact, homeland terrorism threats in the United States are dominated by an “amorphous threat environment where individuals or small cells independently plot attacks to advance a range of ideologies and political objectives.” The fact that one individual links himself to ISIS does not mean that the group played a constitutive or organizational role in his action, or that the threat of ISIS as an organization is manifestly higher on the territory of the United States. The public needs to understand that the trapping of a flag and videos crediting ISIS do not make this individual a card-carrying member of his identified terrorist group.
There are good reasons to be cautious when assessing the individual perpetrator and the overall risk or terrorism. Providing ISIS the unwarranted credit it seeks could facilitate political overreach, as well as the misuse of governmental tools in response to an inaccurate characterization of threats.
None of this is intended to suggest that law enforcement or the public should dismiss the link to terrorism in New Orleans. Quite the contrary. It is to underscore the value of accurately and precisely defining the threat and the actors involved, as analysts would in any other crime. It is also a reminder that the U.S. government should not treat terrorism as an exceptional or existential threat but instead deal with it logically and objectively as it would any other crime.
Were the media and the U.S. government to take a more nuanced approach to discussing terrorism, it might help break the cycle of affirmation that ISIS and other terrorist groups rely on to produce and encourage horrific violence. An inability to think logically and coherently about the motivations of individual perpetrators only helps groups such as ISIS advance their aims. Terrorism prevention requires the media and the U.S. government to do a better job in naming the crime, identifying its causes and responding to it in a sensible way.