Abstract:Victims of terrorism are sometime being used by the authorities to deliver a speech towards a (potentially) radicalized audience. Main ideas are the following: victims are usually being dehumanized by the perpetrators of attacks and the narration of their ordeal gives them a face, and the confrontation between a victim and a extremist causes a “narrative chock” that can help, using emotion, to support a message. The RAN even published in 2015 a handbook supporting this idea.
Being himself a victim (former IS hostage in Syria for almost a year), the presenter, now chairman of a consulting company based in Marseilles, France, argues that this approach has limits and that the victims are mostly important to prevent a polarisation of societies and advocate to keep together moderate persons from all communities rather than addressing radicalized individuals.
This presentation is based mostly on the French experience, especially recalling both collective (victims associations, like 13onze15 for Bataclan attack survivors and families) and individual (Antoine Leiris’ book Meinen Hass bekommt ihr nicht, for the German edition) initiatives to highlight the benefits of some victims’ voices and to suggest good practices.
Vita:Nicolas Hénin holds a master in History of international relations from Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, and a master’s degree in journalism from the Practical Institute for Journalism, Paris.
He spent most of his life as a freelance reporter, based first in Baghdad (2002-2004), then Amman (2004-2007). He then enlarged his perimeter to Africa and covered all of the MENA region, as well as Africa, mostly for Le Point newsmagazine and Arte channel.
He covered intensively the “Arab spring” revolutions and went numerous times to Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. He’s been abducted by IS in Raqqa, Syria, and kept hostage for almost a year.
He now chairs Action resilience, a consulting and training company on counter-terrorism and radicalisation, based out of Marseilles.
He’s the author of several essays, including Jihad Academy (translated to German under the title Der IS und die Fehler des Westens: Warum wir den Terror militärisch nicht besiegen können) and Comprendre le terrorisme and taught as visiting professor at Daegu University (Korea).
He was fellow of the 69th promotion of the Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence (IHEDN).
