International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 134

Underestimating the Political Dimension in Urban and Geopolitical Violence
or French nationalism.
And while these motivations are stymied in their will to impose their own
interpretation of belonging on the world, we must not see this as suffering a humiliation,
as Dominique Moïsi (2008, 128) explains, but rather as a feeling of belonging
to a political project (such as the Caliphate), which finds itself prevented from
achieving its goal by a coalition of democratic nations. This realist analysis is also
rejected by other experts, including Didier Bigo (2005, 53–100; and 2008 35 ), who
sees it instead as the reaction to a securitarian ideology established since 9/11, of
which the true cause has also been called into question: was it not the responsibility
of Western politics in general, and of the American administration in particular?
And did it not signal the emergence of a “field of (in)security” whose institutionalization
has created the “terrorist” object from scratch solely to satisfy sordid,
covert power games? Moïsi (2008, 131) by no means takes such an ideological and
unscientific approach, but primarily focuses on the “feeling of aggression” to explain
certain violent reactions in the Muslim world, including the Parisian suburbs,
without once considering that this feeling could also originate in a refusal,
not to adapt to the West, but to transform oneself, as opposed to always projecting
their own inconsistencies onto an other.
Conclusion
These various examples illustrate a practical underestimation of the political
dimension in favor of an automatic overdetermination of environment.
This cannot however explain in itself the abuses of oligarchy in place when
it rejects all good governance, which is further presented as a “Western” view. Human
development statistics are often therefore led when ranking variables toward
explaining fragmented indicators for hunger, 36 living standards, health, and prison
35 In line with Bertrand Badie, Bigo and his fellow collaborators in a book he recently edited (2008)
relativize all motivation specific to Islamist actors, identifying as the sole primary factor an influence
from society on some of the London bombers involved in the attack on July 7, 2005, as
summarized by Bill Durodié (Bigo et al. 2008, 300): “The heart of the problem is not therefore what
pushes a minority from various backgrounds, including some fairly privileged backgrounds, to join extremist
Islamic organizations, but rather why our societies and cultures are unable to offer ambitious,
educated, and energetic young people a clear motivation and collective goal toward which they can
direct their life and which will allow them to realize their aspirations. These individuals seek this goal
and motivation elsewhere, including, for some, in arcane and perverted belief systems. In some ways,
the nihilistic criminals who set off their rudimentary bombs in London in the summer of 2005 reflect
the feelings of other discontented individuals in today’s industrialized world. ( ... ).” Thus, unable to
find their place, “discontent” supposedly pushes these individuals to turn themselves into suicidal
machines: here we see that the factor X, the magic factor, the one behind this push, perfectly plays
the role of the final driver, a hidden variable so useful for proving almost anything, up to the lack
of a better political offer. It should be noted that Durodié describes the “belief systems” as “arcane
and perverted” while they are in fact extremely clear and reasoned. This denies the serious political
intention by psychologizing it in a way that is also inaccurate.
36 Sophie Bessis’s work is the archetypal example of this (see for example Bessis 1981).
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