The terror industrial complex now includes social media and private contractors

Evidence

Terrorism and reactions to it can also effect broad and diffuse social changes in the direction of decreased openness and trust. Officials in both czarist Russia and contemporary Italy hesitated to appear in public. Businessmen travel with bodyguards in bullet-proof limousines, altering their route for each journey. Diplomats live unostentatiously. The White House is ringed with concrete barriers. The long-term psychological effects of suspiciousness, isolation, and mistrust are largely unknown; they are surely destructive of political community. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4173 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Recurrent terrorist threats not only perpetuate mass surveillance but also have spawned a huge private security industry to which the government outsources security operations costing billions, with lax oversight and insufficient accountability (Risen, 2014). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2431 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The local element hasn’t disappeared, though; indeed, our communications have made conspiracism more intimate than ever. Social media allows us to fasten a conspiracy on a seemingly random or inconsequential person: the victim of a school shooting, say, or the owner of a pizza parlor. Self-appointed online detectives can use digital tools to contact, expose, harass, and occasionally terrorize the alleged plotters in ways that would have been impossible even twenty years ago. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 73 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A terror industrial complex produces Islamophobia through interlocking institutions — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 736; Terrorism fears spawned a poorly-overseen private security industry — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2431; Terror threats are socially constructed to match pre-existing terrorist profiles — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in…, 273 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

• Terrorism fears spawned a poorly-overseen private security industry #corroborates (1.00) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2431
• Sustained terror threats corrode public openness and trust across a society #qualifies (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4173
• War on Terror profiteering concentrated in a few politically connected corporations #qualifies (1.00) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 860
• Social media turned conspiracy theories from distant abstractions into targets for direct harassment. #corroborates (1.00) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 73
• Profit motives drive saturation coverage that amplifies terror threats beyond their real magnitude. #corroborates (1.00) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 363
• A terror industrial complex produces Islamophobia through interlocking institutions #complicates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 736
• Terror threats are socially constructed to match pre-existing terrorist profiles #complicates (0.80) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 273
• Terrorism became a defined category through expert construction and federal funding #complicates (0.80)
• War on Terror strengthened rather than replaced the military industrial complex #complicates (0.75) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 230
• Industrial society is totalitarian through need-manipulation, not terror #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 109
• Journalistic terrorism narratives map labor migration onto an imagined terrorist geography. #complicates (0.75) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 324
• Military and prison industrial complexes are symbiotic, sharing technologies #complicates (0.75)
• Total-institution socialization via isolation and occupancy transforms civilians into terrorists. #complicates (0.70) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2127