Treating enemies as vermin to be exterminated actually amplifies the terror it targets

Evidence

While “we” have “families” who are being senselessly killed, vermin have neither memory nor motive; they act unreflexively, autonomically. Their extermination is a practical problem; it is simply a matter of finding their nests and using the right kind of weapon. Applying this thinking to Hezbollah or any other group is appalling racism, naturally, but also astonishingly poor strategy, implying no understanding of Terrorism whatsoever. Destroy all the infrastructure, kill all the operatives: but you will have only created more images of atrocity; indestructible and infinitely replayable repositories of affect, which, by demanding response and producing (a usually entirely justified) recrimination, act as the best intensifiers and amplifiers of Terror. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1454

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with ‘Realists who attacked Baudrillard’ in the prior paragraph and with counterterrorism critiques like manufactured-plots in Islamophobia in America. — connects to: Terror’s content is hunting objective enemies once real ones are exterminated; The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories; Brutal counterterrorism can backfire by recruiting and legitimizing the enemy — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2276 (+5 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: why atrocity images function as self-replicating propaganda for the side being bombed — the ‘replayable repository of affect’ as an unintentional amplification engine.

Broader Connections

• Destroying terrorists creates replayable atrocity images that amplify terror #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1454
• Terror’s content is hunting objective enemies once real ones are exterminated #expands (0.82)
• Brutal counterterrorism can backfire by recruiting and legitimizing the enemy #corroborates (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2276
• The objective-enemy category permanently renews terror as targets shift across categories #expands (0.78)
• Totalitarian terror targets objective enemies rather than actual opponents #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 946
• Each security countermeasure provokes a still-superior adaptive terrorist response #corroborates (0.75) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2277
• Enemies are rhetorically recast as animals or demons before being killed. #qualifies (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 613