Messages from the top about terrorism
They’re telling us in the West to be very afraid, but is that realistic?
Solidarity from a safe distance: It’s the new modus operandi of international fellowship. That’s not a dig at slacktivism, the revolutionary take on revolution that inspires multitudes to click on heart icons across the Internet. Slacktivism connotes laziness. I’m talking about fear.
While the Eiffel Tower and the Brandenburg Gate were lighting up with Belgium’s national colours, flights were being cancelled to Brussels, many never to be rebooked. Brussels, like Paris before it, should get ready to be treated like a leper colony.
“We’re with you in this. Just not with-with you.” That’s the message. “Je suis Charlie from way over here, mercivery-much.”
There’s a cost to the cancellations after terrorist attacks. Paris hoteliers lost an estimated $220 million between the November attacks and February; in Turkey, hotel occupancy has dropped by more than half since 2015. If Europe is a no-go-zone, what do you call adventure tourism? Cuba?
Now, people are entitled to make their own poor travel decisions. But more to the point, instructions to be afraid, be very, very afraid, come from the top.
It’s hard to imagine why else the Canadian government would give a travel information page a title so passive-aggressive as, “Bon Voyage, But ...” Or why else it would double-down on that smug threat with a subsection called, “There’s no place like home.” Or why else that subsection would include the horrifying revelation that “As a traveller, you have to face the fact that you’re not in Canada anymore!”
Travel can be dangerous, of course, much like walking down your own street. But keeping close to home isn’t socially synonymous with risk; the act of moving across a border, any border, seems to automatically signal danger. You either expose yourself to the risk of terrorism or expose yourself as a terrorist risk.
Which way you go depends entirely on who the “you” is, of course. If you’re a tourist, you’re in danger of a terror attack, never mind that, according to the U.S. State Department, the vast majority of Americans who die abroad are either killed in car accidents or kill themselves. Meanwhile, if you’re a refugee or migrant, you’re a danger to others, never mind that every single person suspected of having committed a major terrorist attack against a European Union nation over the past five months has been a citizen of an EU nation.
But above all, never mind the geographical versatility of the modern suicide attack, which, it should be obvious to all, means this: You don’t have to go to terrorism — terrorism can come to you, and it doesn’t have to come very far.
Self-evident though that fact may be, many foreign politicians’ reactions to the attacks on Brussels had remarkably little to do with the attacks and everything to do with refugees.
“I do not see it possible to allow migrants in Poland at the moment. ... There are also terrorists among them,” said Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who apparently missed last week’s latest evidence that there are also terrorists among non-migrants.
“If you can’t control your borders, you don’t know who’s coming or going. Regrettably (Europeans) allowed things to slip and that ... is not unrelated to the problems they’ve been having in recent times,” said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who never clarified exactly who he was calling “things.”
On either side of the border, people throw so many anxieties about terrorism at the line that separates one country from another. If only they refuse to cross it to a new place, people will be safe; if only they keep newcomers from crossing it, people will be safe. But terrorism doesn’t respect national borders.
Neither does mortality.