Global Terrorism as a Virus: Pathogenesis of Evildoing

Identifying Global Terrorism

Few weeks after 9/11, Derrida claimed the impossibility to define global terrorism («we do not know what it is» Borradori, 2003, p. 94). Two decades after that major event, it seems that the French philosopher was right to decree the limits of the intellect. Today his words resound as prophetic. From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, cyber terrorism and right-oriented extremism, the recent years offered a fragmented, multifaceted profile of terror threat.

It is properly because of its elusive nature, as Habermas holds, that terror threat deeply challenges philosophy. At its very heart, the German thinker states, terrorism – and religious fundamentalism – is a ‘modern phenomenon’. It reaches the surface of social space «when under the cognitive conditions of scientific knowledge and of religious pluralism, a return to the exclusivity of pre-modern belief attitudes is propagated» (Borradori, 2003, p. 32). Through the lenses of its rationalist belief, Habermas then concludes that September 11, the major event of international terrorism, highlighted a defect of communication. Briefly, the terrorist frame replaces dialogue with violence, and the Enlightenment project collapses because of the incapacity of assuming epistemic pluralism of modern age. On the same basis Hardt and Negri (2001, pp. 147-150), as Olivier notes «cast fundamentalism in the light of the failure of modernization’, but unlike Habermas they insist that it is properly understood as a postmodern phenomenon» (2007, p. 4). As Skoll argues, with the end of the Cold War, 9/11 is the prominent occurrence that demarcates postmodern era (2016).

However, although the identity of global terrorism still remains an open question for everybody, we are in the condition to have a more comprehensive, dynamic view of this tangled phenomenon. It can be observed a series of metamorphic processes that surprisingly recall the pathogenesis of a virus. They are characterized by a cross-species, contagious, mutant dynamics through periods of latency, followed by sudden and violent attacks. With no doubt, the shift in the understanding/interpretation of terror threat has been provided by the COVID-19 pandemic that made all of us more attentive to how these biological entities grip on living organisms to carry out their biological potential.

Through the comparison of global terrorism (2001-2021) to the different stages of the pathogens life-cycle, this investigation will sketch a dynamic interpretation of the phenomenon based on a fluid concept of identity characterized by transformations. In the next paragraphs the author will strive to explore some macro chapters of the subject matter.

• 1.

  The major event of 9/11 will be interpreted in term of the viral entry into a cellular environment. The several stages of the Al-Qaeda spreading recall the invasion of pathogens, from the penetration/fusion into the host cell, to the programmed death of its members throughout suicide.

• 2.

  The Islamic State will be portrayed as a mutation or an emergence (or II type systemic property) within the dissipation of Al-Qaeda.

• 3.

  Cyber terrorism could be read as a case of terrorist spillover in the Onlife (Floridi, 2015) domain.

• 4.

  The spread of global extremism may be equated to the viremia (the massive presence of infectious virus in the blood) of evildoing facilitated by the digital infrastructure.

• 5.

  The processes of immunization with which the social body reacts to terror threat gives rise to the concept of enemy as an insider which constantly interacts with the host.

The complexity of this topic will allow only to sketch some general lines of an interdisciplinary investigation that invites philosophy, political studies and microbiology to a strict dialogue that may be a promising point of departure for the reciprocal advancement in different fields. See the table of contents: