FUNDACIÓN VÍCTIMAS DEL TERRORISMO 93 - ENGLISH

58 MANUEL GIMÉNEZ ABAD FOUNDATION T he world is undergoing a reorgan- isation and terrorism has become yet another reactive expression of this Fact. The century of globalisation and interconnectivity began practically with 9/11. From then until the pandemic of 2020, the imaginary of international problems was staged in Huntington's clash of civilisations, personified in the figure of Bin Laden and the organisation he headed, al-Qaeda. In the Hegelian logic of globalisation (thesis, antithesis, synthesis), the neces- sary antithesis, the movement of reflux and opposition to globalisation —whose axiological keys are Western and not peaceful, as it involves the rationalisation of weaker cultures—was identified, until the war in Ukraine, as so-called jihadist terrorism. But there is little new in this approach. In this regard, President George W. Bush himself points out, "the only thing modern about the activists' approach is the weap- ons they want to use against us." With the advent of mass media in the 19th century, this took on a different meaning, in which symbolic elements and the message took precedence over the violence itself. To understand the key factors behind terrorism in the age of globalisation, we CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM "TERRORISM AS A GEOPOLITICAL PHENOMENON" ZARAGOZA, 26 NOVEMBER 2025 must understand the decline in relevance of ideology, which has been replaced by narrative, the importance of personal and even health factors in events with global impact, the mechanisms used to construct the enemy, and the social nature of the phenomenon. And there is no better way to do this than by reflecting on the past and our own experience. It is also necessary to understand the in- teraction of violence with geopolitics and the transposition of the phenomenon into the different dimensions of securi- ty, understanding its multidisciplinary nature of the latter. What is relevant is not the effects but the lack of security ASSOCIATIONS AND FOUNDATIONS