As far as I am concerned the session “Embedding Fear. The Internet and the Spectacle of Heightened Alert” on January 31st, was the star panel of this year’s Transmediale. It featured a motley crew consisting of economist Loretta Napoleoni, artist and writer Naeem Mohaiemen, and journalist and Arab scholar Yassin Musharbash, all expertly tied together by the inimitable Brian Holmes.

Brian Holmes introduced the session, which was supposed to reflect on the role the Internet plays in defining the legitimacy of a perceived threat, by summarising the well-known sociologist and former advisor to Tony Blair Anthony Giddens. I have to admit that I got the impression Brain Holmes was not too much a fan of Professor Giddens. In any case, the case made was that presumably one of the consequences of modernity is, that disconnectedness lies at its heart. Our mediated society throws us back into a state of mediated individualism. It was on this note that the panel was framed.

Naeem Mohaiemen, also nominated for the newly conceived Vilem Flusser Theory Award, livened up the panel with a theory performance. I have come to love these personal and performative interventions during academic and festival conferences., as they really engage the audience in a playful, but content-driven manner. He imparted a personal account wherein the position of the individual caught up in narratives – or rather the web - of trust and distrust took centre stage. The individual in this case being himself. Under the maxim “one bad google can ruin your day”, Naeem described how airports are hermetically sealed fear environments, where systems of distraction such as restaurants, duty free shops, ear plugs, on-board movies and the like cloak us in the semblance of comfort. Every time when encountering airport and immigration officials Naeem performs his little dance of trying to appear non-threatening. So he normally clutches a book, has his i-pod dangling casually around his neck, and tries to look suave, relaxed and cool, always greeting the official with a smile and a “how are you”. Just imagine what would happen if the official would google him, and find suspicious or potentially incriminating material. Would the official - time permitting and going slightly beyond the surface – find that Naeem is only 3 steps/3 google searches - away from linking himself to Omar Sheikh, who is linked to a hijacking and the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl.

Yassin Musharbash – who got a rather bad battering from the audience during the 2-hour Q&A – talked about his journalistic research on terrorist/jihadi websites. He made a very important point in stressing that with the Internet, you never really know whether you’re in effect talking to the people, you think you’re talking to. Are these a bunch of school kids fooling around, or are these really “the bad guys”? And who are the bad guys anyway? Later Loretta Napoleoni made it clear that nowadays…well…they’re pretty much all bad. Nevertheless, cyber anonymity makes investigative journalism extremely difficult, because you cannot verify your sources. The spectacle of the Internet in an age of security paranoia only feeds into a sense of an abstract and non-locatable enemy. The quintessential terrorist has no face really; it has almost become an abstract and unidentifiable evil. Just as Mr Bush likes it, I would say, as it fits snugly like a glove into his neo-crusaders rhetoric.

Musharbash used the example of Al Qaeda publishing a bi-monthly online zine in Saudi Arabia, featuring palatable topics such as manuals for making bombs, abduction tips, etc. The zine in question appeared to have opened a questions/plans of attack column, supposedly for readers to send in their queries. However, only the answers were published, not the questions/readers’ letters. So, is this real? Is this fake? And if it’s fake, is its purpose an invitation to act and recruit or does it function as deterrent/misinformation for those mining “intelligence”, or does it do both? Who is this directed to? To peers, to “the West”, to secret intelligence services? Fascinating questions. So is also the case of jihadi websites asking their members to take an online oath, in order to do away with possible spies. Especially within the context of online communication, and where lurkers often make up the bulk of a community, this becomes interesting fodder.

Up next was Loretta Napoleoni whom I had heard speak previously a few years ago in Rotterdam. At that time she spoke about the relation between economy and international terrorism, i.e. how one should follow the money trail if one wants to understand anything at all about how our world works. This time around her story did not come as a surprise, but I guess sometimes we need to assert the obvious in order to reveal the spin. As an Italian Napoleoni conceded that her fellow-countrymen are masters of conspiracy: from Machiavelli. to Berlusconi.. When researching her forthcoming book, she discovered we live in a web of illusions (hmm…where have we heard that one before?), which she calls the “market matrix”. Amongst these are of course the political illusions created by politicians (now…that does sound very familiar!). Her main premise was that the politics, and therefore also the industry, of fear is not a new thing, but are devised to terrorise and control.

It is no secret that the production – or rather the spin – on data and knowledge is used by politicians, freedom fighters, terrorists and other idealists alike. The Cold War is the prime example of how the politics of fear function(ed): each side played up the other’s side’s nuclear threat. All this was done to scare the electorate and maintain a status quo; a particular global power balance, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And let’s not forget the industry and economy of fear here: can anyone nowadays seriously believe that fall-out shelters would protect them from nuclear strikes? When in 1993 Napoleoni started researching terrorism, there were a handful of experts: now it’s a whole industry. Let’s just think of the countless consultants, terror and security analysts, security firms, etc. Cash cash cash in!

Spin is of course the turf of the media and the press: now the internet scores big time for all sides, but before radio, TV and print were the propaganda channels. It does make you think twice about the concept of free and independent press, and makes you wonder whether contamination is eventually inevitable. Popular politics would have us believe that the biggest threat we face in the West nowadays is terrorism. That is yet again a well-spun illusion: terrorist attacks in the West have been in a steady decline since the 1990’s. Where terrorism did grow significantly is in the Arab and Muslim world, but not in Europe or the US. What has changed is our perception of it: after 9/11 terrorism stopped being a crime, and something propagated against a state. The discourse and the politics of fear transformed it into a war waged between civilisations, wherein the targets are civilians: it becomes a war waged against the indvidual.

Napoleoni stressed that though the fear of terrorism is irrational, and not in sync with reality and the facts, our fear and how we experience it, is nevertheless real. Terrorism is just felt more as a real threat, and has become a morbid form of entertainment, with noone putting the real events into the right perspective. So how do we fight such strong and mean machineries of power? How do we turn a mass hysteria around, and debunk prejudices which are so primitively constructed? I think sometimes people just want to believe all the clichés about the clash of civilisations because it gives them something to hold on to, and allows them – the easy way – to define themselves in the negative: they are all what their Other is not – nevermind how dangerously false and misinformed these conceptions are.