Friday, February 27, 2015

Never before have terrorists deliberately maximized spectacle and outrage


Above, the body of Lufthansa pilot Jürgen Schumann being removed from his plane in Mogadishu, 17 October 1977, after he had been shot on board the plane 4 days earlier in Aden. If you think ISIS has been been good at finding new ways to grab attention, such as their relic-destruction antics in Mosul, it would be worth reading about their 1970s predecessors, the Red Army Faction and their Arab allies -- allied over politics, not religion. ISIS may not recognize the precedent, but the mixture of calculated outrage and calibrated callousness looks very familiar now. Imagine what the affair of LH flight 181 would have looked like in today's media world.

AP Photo via Die Welt.