Magnus Ranstorp | An Encyclopaedia On Modern Terrorism & Political Violence Reflects On His Career

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#158 - Magnus Ranstorp is a Swedish academic, hostage negotiator, teacher and author who has been researching and writing about terrorism for more than 30 years.

He is an encyclopaedia on modern terrorism and political violence. He was also the first author to seriously map out the Lebanese Hezbollah and its connection to Iran, Syria and international terrorism.

And so, the insights and experience Magnus brings to the current moment are extremely valuable. 

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 04:22 – How Has The Nature Of Terrorism Changed Over Time?
• 24:22 – October 7th & HAMAS
• 30:52 – HAMAS Financing & Terror Financing
• 52:36 – Israel – Palestine
• 1:09:41 – Biggest Terror Plots That Were Foiled
• 1:18:56 – Sweden Caught In Fundamentalist Islam Crosshairs
• 1:29:31 – HAMAS Gaining In Popularity Throughout The World
• 1:36:47 – Magnus Takes Us On A Tour Of Gaza
• 1:43:41 – Magnus Reflects On His Memoirs
• 1:52:41 – Anders Brevik & Difference Between Political & Religious Radicalisation
• 2:23:09 – Islam & Violence?
• 2:26:41 – Philosophical Differences Between Islam & West
• 2:51:11 – How Much Are Swedes To Blame For The Parallel Societies?
• 3:01:10 – Most Effective Propaganda Magnus Ever Saw
• 3:11:55 – Serendipity In Magnus’s Life

Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode

• Magnus Ranstorp Memoirs

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Coming up on this episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

And had it not been for the US Navy, I'm sure that the war, regional war would have been. So the US Navy, largest aircraft carriers, is parked outside of the coast of Lebanon or mess with Hezbollah, you also mess with Iran. And that's why they're always so much more worried about them because you're facing a state that has huge capabilities. But what Hamas is really good at is financing. They are worth around ten billion dollars.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

That's an extraordinary wealth.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

That's extraordinary wealth. How?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

And then in these group dynamics, they would also videotape them giving their last testimony. So if you videotape someone, then you can't really back out, right? Oh my god. So when you entered into ISIS territory, you had to fill in a form of 23 questions. And it was like it's like a control form of who you are, who are your parents, what's your home address, who who got you in contact with ISIS, why did you come? What route did you take? Um, etc. So they so every single ISIS recruit has one of those files. While they were being interviewed also to check that there are no spies, they also identify people who could potentially also be reinserted back into Europe. What is the scariest terror group you've ever studied? ISIS. Why? They're so brutal, beheading, um this sort of complete lack of any boundaries, even when you kill.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

That was Dr. Magnus Randstorp. He's a Swedish academic, hostage negotiator, teacher, and author who has been researching and writing about terrorism for more than 30 years. He is an encyclopedia on modern terrorism and political violence. He was also the very first author to seriously map out the Lebanese Hezbollah and its connections to Iran, Syria, and international terrorism. So, therefore, the insights and experience Magnus brings to the current moment are extremely valuable. And as you can see, this is a rather long one. Magnus and I met to do this in person, and I'm reminded again how much better these podcasts turn out when I get to sit across from the guest. And so, therefore, to sit with more guests, I need more resources. And to get more resources, I need something from you, my dear listener. I need those juicy reviews. So please, let's round out 2023 plus 200 reviews on Spotify, and that's five stars. That's five stars on Apple, good reads, I don't know, Audible, wherever you listen to the podcast. Pump your good juice into the various algorithms. It does absolute wonders. Two things attracting advertisers, but more importantly, providing some type of authority to a potential guest. So pump in the good juice. I notice every single one of them. So keep them coming. But back to the interview. For this particular one, there are timestamps. So use them as a guide to navigate through. But I hope you do settle in from beginning to end, because Magnus is a compelling communicator on these topics, and we cover much more than just Tamas and religious terrorists. In this conversation, we also cover Norway's most horrific terrorist attack in its history. And as Brevik, Magnus talks about how Sweden has become the number one European enemy of the Islamic world. Magnus reflects on his career, he notices serendipity, he takes us on a tour of Gaza, he emphasizes and highlights the effectiveness of the financing behind all of these organizations. And really, I'm not exaggerating, a hell of a lot more as well. So please share with a friend or a family member or a colleague who you think would be interested, but with absolutely no further ado, here is Dr. Magnus Randstorp. Alright, Magnus, how has terrorism changed over the course of your lifetime?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Well, I was born in the 1960s, and of course, um there were different issues. In the 1960s, you had um Palestinian groups that um a whole alphabet soup uh that uh was around. You you had the different factions uniting under the umbrella of the PLO. Uh you had the Six-Day War, of course, that propelled some of them to undertake action. And then there was a massive explosion of hijackings during that period. Um, and in fact uh uh it co of course coincided also with the Vietnam War. And the Vietnam War and the student protest movements, the new left uh really created the perfect storm for a whole generation. In fact, it is still impacting us today when it comes to um uh the legacy of this, and it's coming back actually now to sort of re reverberate when it comes to the Israeli Hamas conflict. It's the same kind of forces that are coming back that was present in the 1970s. Um during that period too, the Palestinians wanted to internationalise their cause and they tried different methods. They saw also, of course, that the um the sort of French colonial control over Algeria had uh become um successful in in sort of trying to to wrest off um the French rule. Um and so therefore they they they took to to uh to to um uh hijacking, and there was a spate of hijacking occurring in the late 1960s, early 70s. It also coincided with the fact that you had satellite uh TV or or or sort of TV was developing. Um so you had a combination of new communication, you know, travelling around the world through planes became easier, uh the media became worldwide more global, and those coincided um with causes like the Palestinian cause that that sort of married itself to um left wing causes uh and the student movement and the protest and the and the revolt around among young the young generation, which um also meant that um you you had uprisings in Europe, for example the Badom Minov Gang and the Rot Ame Faction and the other left wing groups that uh saw in the Palestinian cause um you know David and Goliath Kos, where it was very clear who was the kolonializer, who was the oppressed, uh, who had the power, who was the victim. And in fact, what happened during that period was also that these Palestinian groups, etc., they were supported by these left-wing terrorist groups in Europe. The was the Red Army faction and the Red Brigades in Italy, the the uh fighting communist cells in Belgium. They all came together, and and uh in fact, some of those Red Army factions, uh for example, uh participated in Palestinian training camps in the Middle East. Um, it's just like in the movies. There's there have been movies that have shown this. For example, when groups are training in Libya, you had the IRA, you had the the other groups that were all coming together. So you had like a real perfect storm, ideological perfect storm, etc. But let me add one level of complexity. It was also within the realm of the Cold War, the the Cold War competition between the United States and Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact. And many of the the in fact uh the Russians and s uh claim uh that they were the one inventing the hijacking instrument to to to as a pressure point. So they funded they funded um Palestinian groups, they trained uh Red Army faction people as well in East Germany with Stasi. But also there was a university, Patrice Lulumba University in Moscow, there where you had revolutionaries going, Palestinians, you had other people going there. And and so so they sort of used terrorism also was not done just by ideological causes, left-wing causes, etc., or Palestinian causes, but they were also sponsored by the Soviet Union. It was part of a battle, a hybrid warfare by the Soviets against the West, and that has continued to this day. But of course, terrorism changed over time. So you had Palestinian groups, they they they also used terrorism to get, for example, the PLO and Palestinian factions used terrorism in the Munich Olympic Games, they received observer status at the UN because of terrorism. Um they um you know was a spate of hijackings, etc. But then, of course, the West woke up and said, look, you know, we have to do something about this, so they developed X-ray machines. And and and the X-ray machines then um meant that the terrorists had to be more innovative, and that gradually over time led to terrorists using plastic explosives and trying to smuggle in different types of uh weapons on board uh through ingenious ways. So, in all of this, right, so you have you have um in the 1980s terrorism becomes also more lethal. Why? Because we arrest uh the first generation of leaders who are more ideologically prone. The second generation in the 1980s becomes more bloody, they have more bl more indiscriminate attacks, like the Abu Nidal Group, they undertook uh Palestinian Group, they undertook uh very deadly operations uh against um uh airports uh where they threw hand grenades, they shot at passengers down, uh etc. And then, of course, you had the end of the Cold War, uh, and the end of the Cold War also meant that some of those groups died. They died ideologically, they died um slowly, uh and we had a new era, and um and and and that was sort of one strand of a multi-strand um development. On top of that, um you had uh uh earthquake moment in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution with the Shah of Iran was overturned and it showed that the impossible was possible. The Shia revolution in Iran also meant that Iran needed to export its revolution. So they began to export uh Shia groups in the Gulf, but also its biggest price was in Lebanon with uh Hezbollah. Um and then began a wave of religious motivated terrorism with Islamism.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

It wasn't religious motivated before?

SPEAKER_00 12:12

It was really there were religiously motivated actors before, but m many of most of the Palestinian actors they were they were uh Marxist, Leninists, you know. They they were you know secular um and therefore political radicals rather than Islamic radicals, political radicals, etc. And and while they were hijacking away in Europe, um then of course uh you had another development sneaking uh quietly that has implications today. Um uh the Muslim Brotherhood uh expanded their activities in the Middle East, uh, and particularly it had an impact because it came to Gaza and to the West Bank and so on. So they began developing social structures for the Muslim Brotherhood that grew into what would later become Hamas. Uh, and Hamas uh is um you know operating on all these different levels, on the social level, on the political and religious level. Um but you know it it took until 1987 when they were founded to become what they are today. Um the and they call themselves, of course, the Arabic uh acronym uh for the Islamic resistance movement. This is Hamas. This is Hamas, the Mukawama. Resistance happens on all fronts and they are mutually reinforcing. So if you strike at Israel, Israel will strike back, and then of course Hamas can move in with social services and take all the sort of uh people who have been affected by it, and then they can convert that into supporters, and you know. And they began acting when we had the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the in the early 1990s with this so-called Oslo Oslo Accord. And that's when they began acting because they wanted to sabotage uh any peace deal between uh Israel and um and um uh the Palestinians. Um I'm not sure that Israel was really they were they were prepared to make concessions etc. But after Hamas began acting and after they assassinated, there also was a a Jewish extremist assassination of the architect Yitzhak Rabin. Um the the whole peace process sort of died a slow death, and the Israelis um started to create facts on the ground to you know that you can negotiate with in the trade. And Hamas, of course, uh in this sort of situation only entrenched themselves even deeper into this. It's complicated to explain all these things because there are someone once told me um uh a senior person who worked within um uh he was a senior MI6 uh head, um he said at a conference I attended um that trying to understand sort of politics in the Middle East is is is is a is extraordinarily complicated. It's like playing three-dimensional chess underwater with all the pieces moving simultaneously. So if you don't understand the macro or the miso or the micro and there are multiple games being played at the same time, you're not gonna be able to handle all of the things. It's like life in general, right?

SPEAKER_04 15:38

Could you speak more to the nature of the change? I thought you said something really interesting there, commenting how once the X-ray was brought in, the terrorism became more bloody because they had to be more innovative about the weaponry they brought in. So in your career since the 60s, well born in the 60s, but at least maybe the 80s when you're really working on this, how has it changed?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, I I I became interested in this really in the 1970s, um, 1979, with the Iranian Revolution, etc. And um it has changed uh in relation to it takes different leaps uh in relation to to technology, in relation to countermeasures that is being done. Um uh so you had the x-ray um for trying to foil um um hijackings, etc. Then the terrorists moved to plastic explosives and trying to circumvent, trying to be ingenious about how do they smuggle on board these things. Of course, we saw the consequences of of of not you know failure of imagination of not having even thought through that you can use an an aircraft as an implosion weapon. So you can actually sort of crash them into buildings and then you know they you you have multiple effects. And you e and also if you have a camera you can film it, right? So you have if you have two crashes into the World Trade Center, you you will make sure that w at least one of them will be filmed and the uh you know the aftermath and so on. So it's also creating the shock effect. Um one of the one of the largest uh you know, following 9-11, one of the biggest uh uh terror events um that we foiled, or luckily we foiled, was the so-called liquid bomb plot that was in 2006. Um uh which really involved they the terrorists had had trying to circumvent airport security and they realized that they can use liquid explosives and they used energy drinks and they could inject uh liquid explosives into them so that uh and then you can seal them, but you can actually build the bombs behind you can smuggle in the different parts and you then you can build a bomb behind uh the airport security m uh measures and uh and the plan was to you you had you had a vast amount of hijackers who were radicalized, they were going to board aircraft at Heathrow uh and heading for North America. Uh seven, eight aircraft were going to take off with two hour intervals towards um the the US. Um once the first ones reached the US shores or or North America or Canada, they were also going to Canada, um, they would start exploding. So you would have sort of almost like a well synchronized explosion. When the last plane had taken off from Heathrow, you would have seven planes that would have been blown up in the air. Uh you can also see how they tried to to innovate and improvise. You had Richard Reed, the shoe bomber. Um very easy construction, but but um uh you know, they tried to to um uh to ignite his uh shoe, uh a bomb that was there. You had um uh the underwear bomber, uh, you know, the concealment in the underwear. Uh so you have all these sort of different um ways. So the airport security is always trying, is all always playing catch-up. You know, what can they use? Uh can you use drones as an attack vehicle, uh airborne uh attack. Uh they realized that when Angela Merkel was doing a political rally and and some of her this was not a terrorist attack, but someone had sent up a drone uh who which circumvented the security, and all of a sudden that came onto the radar. You know, you can actually use drones both to film but also to attack from the air. So you have to think through all these sort of different technologies, and that has sort of exploded. It's just, you know, you have to sit then start to think about how can we find ways to intercept terrorist innovation. How do they learn? How do they learn during their operational planning? Uh and they're very, you know, for example, in in Gaza and so on, they are most of the rockets that they make are made from um you know water pipes, but also through experimentation, um, and also how you make explosives. And when you live under very tight, sort of tight conditions where you where you don't have a lot of things, the same thing with IEDs in Iraq, improvised explosive devices. Um becoming uh you know being good at engineering, being good at sort of experimenting through different Turning scraps into a weapon. Turning scraps into a weapon. Uh you you will then become very proficient. Um and the thing is to sort of try to find, and this is what the US have done in many different theaters, is to find the bomb designer. Uh not the one who delivers the bomb, but the one who designed the bomb. And Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was particularly had one particular person who was who was who was making the sort of the you know the printer cartridge cartridge bombs, you had the underwear bombings, etc. You had planning very clever people who were planning how do we circumvent security and so on. So it's i there's a constant cat and mouse. This kind of innovation also happens on communication. Uh when it comes to how do you how do they communicate without being intercepted? In nine eleven they were very clever because they what they had done was that they in order to communicate back to to um to Afghanistan and to other places where you know internet was was beginning to come. We didn't have really sort of social media to that extent. But how do you send a how do you send an email without being detected? And what they discovered was that they wrote they wrote a uh if you and I were go going to communicate, we we write uh we establish an email address and then uh and then we uh write in draft and we never send it. Uh so you know you can go in and you you can start editing and I can start editing. And that's how they they didn't send some of the emails. They they they they so th that means that if you or NSA or GCHQ or others you will have to go in and break into the service and and to to really sort of find so so that's what they did uh after 9-11 uh you know the the internet cafes in Pakistan or in Afghanistan etc to try to see okay where are they sending these things the same thing with um if you use encryption they can break encryption um uh some of the encryption um but but you have to be able to do that in real time and that's even becoming more challenging because you have so many different platforms and you may even have sort of self-standing servers uh and other things so so so that is a real sort of problem now you also you may have um new technology so how is AI going to impact today um uh this sort of sphere you can you can uh for example use ai to to um uh ask AI you know what's what's the most vulnerable way in which I were to attack a particular target and AI will answer we'll scroll through or you can use self-driving cars and you can uh in the future maybe when this become more you know you can just place a bomb on a self-driving car et cetera you can also do all sorts of things so what the intelligence community and what others are doing is that they are they are really sort of brainstorming what are all possible ways in which we can we can try to do this. And they test they also test the airport security. The test to see if it can be detected and I think that's quite an interesting regarding all this what's the most creative thing you've ever come across I think it's pretty creative to uh when you're gonna do such a big operation um you you you you don't go sort of super high tech you go low tech and then you you um like 9-11 attacks um but you know you you you find all sorts of different ways in which uh surprises you now one of the things that really surprised me was how Hamas did this operation against the Israelis um on the 7th of October 2023. What did they do? Well it was such a large scale operation um uh it it required um actually it wasn't their operation uh originally it was an operation by the Lebanese Hezbollah in Lebanon um ten years ago they had they they were it was leaked that they had a plan to storm across the border and when I say storm through tunnels they had built tunnels underneath uh the you know northern Israel South Lebanon and they uh even ten kilometers in and they were going to storm once once they emerged from the tunnels northern villages and towns and they were going to also attack from the sea um with five thousand men not not uh the three thousand that Hamas used but five thousand and they were going to kidnap people back to Lebanon and they were going to kill as many as possible. So this this what Hamas did was not um their own thinking right it was out there in the open uh and what Israel has been doing uh ever since then has been to try to to um shut down the tunnels because they're more scared of Hezbollah than they are of Hamas. Hamas they got pegged because Hamas is not going anywhere they they have control over the Palestinians or at least they thought they had and they rely too much on static technology most of the forces uh IDF forces in the south had relocated to West Bank because uh it seemed to be more trouble there. It was a holiday um it was an anniversary of the Yom Kippur War um and what they did was they they used drones with bombs to knock out the communication facility so that the IDF could not communicate locally and then they broke through they attacked the um the Century Towers and the towers and before the Israelis could mobilize you had people streaming across and what I didn't realize from the beginning was that this was all across the when you look at a map exactly where people died or where were where they were kidnapped etc it stretches in the north all the way down forty kilometers because the Gaza Strip is forty kilometers long ten to sixteen kilometers wide in the at its widest and you had three thousand armed or two thousand five hundred three thousand armed factions or individuals uh within these factions who were who were just there to to massacre people and they uh to to to actually do this kind of big operation requires coordination and I'm convinced I'm still convinced even though everyone denies it the more you deny it the more it looks suspicious right so Hezbollah is denying denying denying every single speech they're denying why because they don't want to give the Israelis uh but what are they denying they're denying that they were involved this was an entire Palestinian operation so they they don't want to give and and had it not been for the US Navy um I'm sure that uh the war regional war would have been so the US Navy largest air aircraft carriers is parked outside of the coast of Lebanon you got the British you know naval and they even submitted a US um uh U-boat submarine uh which uh can we which carries uh ballistic missiles can also carry nuclear weapons that's a signal to the Iranians do not because Iran is also behind all you know all of this they they provide support both to Hamas but also to Hezbollah um so Hamas is quite a sort of a complex uh organization in that you have you have different committees you have a Politburo uh composed of 15 people and the highest person on the Politburo is Ismail Haniya um I happened to meet Ismail Haniya in 1998 uh when he became the assistant to the to the spiritual leader of uh of Hamas Sheikh Yassin uh nice guy uh he was a nice guy I'd never heard of him actually he was quite sort of I mean he was known but but he was uh he was not so so um uh visible but he would become visible he would become the leader of Hamas he would become the he won the election um for the in the in the um in 2005 2006 um and he has been the leader uh still the the the most powerful person very well groomed uh member um but he was helping the paraplegic uh Sheikh Yasin who stark contrast you know he's sitting in his wheelchair uh he's helping him um and uh so you have this sort of board of the Politburo you have also a council that is composed of all the disparate parts of Hamas um and then you have the military wing and the military wing has around 30,000 forty thousand members um but the important thing is when you look at the the council that makes all the sort of decision they are elected from different parts of Hamas so you have a Gaza leadership and the Gaza leadership it controls of course all of the Gaza Strip and the territory um and you have uh Hamas in the West Bank um you have uh representation from Hamas in prison uh you also have representation from Hamas in the external leadership you also have representation of Hamas in the diaspora in other places and all so it's like a collective decision making. Now the highest leaders of Hamas the ones the ones who've been there a long time who have been on the outside a long time is based in Qatar they have been doing a little bit of a traveling circus they also have connections to Turkey um uh in fact uh um they travel back and forth between Qatar and Turkey um some of the leadership was previously based in Jordan um and I have a funny story with one of the Jordanians if you want me to tell you I'll tell you that story I yeah we'll embrace the humor. Well which let's well we have to because it's such a sort of um it's grim stuff it's a grim stuff and uh and I once met uh with uh one of the Hamas leaders called Mohammed Nazal and Mohammed Nazal you have to understand that you know on the outside leadership they they and this is in the late 1990s or um when I met them but also they've been continuing like this is that they the ones who take the military decisions they're based on the outside so that the Israelis can't touch them right so they can't come and assassinate them. They they do sometimes try it but and and so I'm I'm sitting I'm I actually have been asking Ismail Haney for how do I get in touch with external leadership etc and then he he doesn't really want to give me any phone numbers but but he gives me clues where I should look and and I find them and I find all the numbers and so I I show up and in the in the meeting I come into this meeting the person is um mean looking and in the in the outer office there are machine guns I mean the people guarding him and as I'm sitting talking to him you know we don't talk about any operational you you can never they will never say anything etc so I I was we talk about um you know what do they want um can they see any peace process where do they come from etc you have to dance around the fire um so I'm dancing around the fire and and this guy comes in with his helper comes in with small pieces of paper which he unfolds and he you know he's talking to me he reads it and then he shreds it right and I'm thinking okay he's coming in with operational sort of how into you know I I'm so close to the fire now but then all of a sudden he says to me Magnus he says he didn't say Magnus but he said you know you have to uh understand that the local units in Hebron came uh with an idea of an operation and and he has to prove it so he asked them what kind of operation do you have in mind and he said well we want to kidnap an Israeli politician was then the message relayed back and his answer was probably not in the way I'm relaying it now but he was he was basically don't be ridiculous have you seen the size of that man uh it will be logistically possible and the person that they had suggested was Ariel Sharon and uh for those of you who don't know who Ariel Sharon is he's he has been um very very controversial um he d he doesn't live in he he is dead uh he doesn't live anymore he was um responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon in Palestinian refugee camps etc and defense minister uh very very hated figure uh Likud uh you know very hard man now the only time I ever met Ariel Sharon was in the Knesset and um uh I wasn't there to see him I was in in the Knesset uh and someone said to me would you like to meet Ariel Sharon I thought not it would be great fun it's not a big place either so I said sure but I didn't know what to say to him so um actually what I told him was that you are too fat to be kidnapped by Hamas and he loved it he loved it he loved it they're like uh chutzpah right yeah uh and he loved it so much he said he looked at me he smiled and he uh and uh you also have to understand he has one eye pointing this way other way you don't know which to focus in on and he smiles in a sort of you know little devilish way and he says do you think I pay for my bodyguards uh they they pay me I protect the I provide a big shadow for them how big is he he is he is big he was big he was he was massive is he it's almost like having two persons standing in front of you yeah so um so that that uh shows that even in the sort of darkest uh hours there are there are also senses of humor.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

Yeah yeah you s since we're talking about Hamas or since it was brought up um you mentioned in your opening comments about what the meaning of Hamas was how it was sort of like an attack on all fronts.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah so so so it means these it's the Arabic acronym for the Islamic resistance movement and that resistance takes place on the social front because Hamas is a religious social movement. They want to re-Islamicize society and you you have to do that by by it's almost like um the Swedish welfare state right you from the cradle to the grave we will uh you know we will you know if you martyr yourself you you will pay the family for lifetime you will uh but but also um uh they they reject any peace process they want to annihilate or eradicate Israel but they're also smart because they can be tactical so they can call for a truce but they say that the Palestinian land is is a is a wakf it's a sacred trust not to be given away not to be negotiated so they're absolutists but what they do is they maneuver you know very cleverly and what they did during the operation on the 7th of October was that they were faking that they were content with how it was and they tried to keep quiet on the Gaza front they prevented other groups so that the Israelis wouldn't put a lot of forces there. And also they made trouble in the West Bank so that they you know the forces would go there. And the media manipulation then it's completely intentional this is a part of the attack on all fronts well they they um they um well for two years they were planning this operation and um for two years that they they planned the operation and they tried to um to to sort of show that they it is not us you should be worried about and the really interesting thing it worked I was in Israel three weeks before the 7th of October and I listened to I was at a terror conference um north of Tel Aviv uh the head of the IDF the defense minister and the head of Mossad was speaking and they all were talking about Iran and they were all worried about Hezbollah but Iran Iran and Hezbollah is almost one and the same because they support them so closely. The Iranian Revolutionary guards support Hezbollah they were there for from its creation it's the organisation they really fear because they have really completely different weapon system. It's like fighting Iran on your border but through proxy and they operate together they they do joint operations sometimes sometimes in very far a way like in Argentina they blew up the Israeli embassy uh they blew up the Jewish Friendship Association They operate so you know if you mess with Iran you also or mess with Hezbollah you also mess with Iran and that's why they're always so much more worried about them because you're facing a state that has huge capabilities technical capabilities missiles you know in terms of um smarts you know uh whereas uh Hamas is they're operating on a shoestring right they they uh you know they they have nothing they have to improvise uh etc and it's difficult they they have they have to rely on smuggling so they smuggle but what Hamas is really good at is financing and their financial um global financial uh institutions have been revealed uh over time but they were specifically revealed they were specifically revealed when uh you had um the US Treasury um starting to uh list individuals and list companies uh and what it does reveal is that the three top Hamas leaders who are living in Qatar etc they are worth around ten billion dollars that's an extraordinary wealth that's extraordinary wealth and uh how uh so uh they do it through multiple ways um one way is that they they when they took over Gaza from uh the Palestinian Authority in 2006-7 they um they are taxing goods that are coming in that are being smuggled um and how do they smuggle well you have the Israeli border crossing in the north and you have Uraga in the south and uh they get about 20% of um um um 20% uh of the you know how how much the good the um goods are worth it so for instance several tons of cement is brought into Gaza these three men swipe 20% of what that sale value is off the top. That's right and yes and and also they tax uh other goods they they they levy taxes around 20% uh on top of what is smuggled in tunnels so if it's not for Hamas they will they will tax you uh so you have a taxation system that works they also have to try to sort of they they don't want to try to to smuggle in um uh you know it's difficult to sort of transfer money uh you can do that of course through you like like a Hawala system uh where you write credit notes etc but what they do also is if you want to get a lot of money in you buy goods in Egypt or you buy goods you then smuggle them in and then you sell them and that's how they can circumvent sort of money transfer systems in um so that you I don't understand that say that again no so so so if you uh one way to sort of circumvent this is to buy something big costly smuggle it into Gaza um so Iran finances something um and it's bought in Egypt etc and then it's smuggled into Gaza and then it's sold for cash and that now you have cash you convert goods to cash instead of you cannot really wire money because that that can be sort of seen or you can because these countries also want to conceal their involvement they also now use uh they they are very good at uh cryptocurrency okay yeah so they uh they are uh using that uh a lot uh also with uh exchange houses um and those got so much blood on its hands yeah I had on Zeke Fow two weeks ago um I'm not sure if you're familiar with him but he wrote a book called number go up yeah and among many other things he documents the pig

SPEAKER_04 44:00

Butchering in Cambodia and how all of these scams underneath so much of their infrastructure is tether USD and then a million other coins that they convert into it. It's it's it's kind of crazy just how dirty the money is.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Yeah, no, it's uh it's uh but also I mean they they also have what they call Hamas have an investment company and and that investment company it takes all the sort of money that's been levied. Um they also, of course, uh you get humanitarian aid. So all the humanitarian aid is under the control of Hamas, even to the UN. So they take uh money uh from that, they siphon off money, both for the three men. These three men, but yeah, but also the uh for the organization itself. And they and they have people who are controlling um this investment fund, and this investment fund runs legitimate businesses in Turkey, in Sudan, they have a mining company in Sudan, they have they have a real estate uh conglomerate, they have uh diversified. They diversify the different types of investment. They have it in Algeria, they have it in other places, and uh they are very good at uh at uh generating funding. And of course they also have the diaspora. Palestinians living in Sweden, in Denmark, and other places who are collecting money. So they also send money uh both to their relatives, but also they can be siphoned off. Um so they have you know, uh you have this sort of discrepancy between these poor people living in these, you know, Gaza, ordinary people, poor, uh starving, uh having nothing, suffering, and you have these rich men who are living in luxury apartments in uh Qatar, in Turkey, they buy they buy citizenship in Turkey as well. So you can uh so it it is so upsetting when you see um what they are doing and uh and the sort of wrath that they are have created, of course, with the Israelis having to respond. Um uh so yeah it's it's um it's really interesting. Hezbollah is even better. Yeah, okay. Hezbollah is good at is Buddha Hezbollah is good at generating money, they are good at um you know uh storing money, they are good at concealing it, uh they're also good at moving money, right? And if you're good at all those sort of sort of different things, then because you know money is the oxygen of terrorism. If you don't have money, you can't do very much. And therefore, a priority issue is to try to just like airport security, you have to try to find the new technologies, you also have to counter cryptocurrencies, you have you have to sort of see where you can identify how they're gonna move the money, where they're gonna store it, how can you hurt the organization by tackling the money? And that is a sort of also a really interesting front. So you have you have uh sort of what most people don't see is that the counter-terrorism chase, you have these intelligence services who are who are thinking of how you know what is happening in the organization, how do we keep ourselves safe? But more importantly, they're also chasing down leads uh of an organization, both physically, what is the person's doing together, they're doing it virtually through social media, you know, how are they communicating, how are they uh spreading propaganda, etc. You know, because Italian services can also do a lot of interesting, scary stuff by going into your phone, going into your uh you know, house, listening into uh once they get a sort of ping on the radar, once you are in the crosshairs, they can, you know, it's pretty scary what they can what they can find uh uh and and cover. And then of course you have also on the financial front, how do you how do you counter this? How do you find out how they find themselves, where are their vulnerabilities, how can you counter that? So it's it's a fascinating world.

SPEAKER_04 48:19

A couple days after October 7th, I was watching SVT and the guest, I forget his name, but he was a m member of Cedar, which is Sweden's um governmental body that allocates financial aid throughout the the world. And he was asked about money given to uh Hamas or to Palestine, I'm not exactly sure which you know how it was directed. Yeah, and they asked, how do you know it's not being spent? And he said, Oh, because they promised me that they wouldn't spend it on this. Yeah, and I could not believe that was the official response from the government organization. Because I mean, I'm sure you know the answer to this, but how many millions of euros has Sweden given to Hamas over the years?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

I think uh it's difficult to say exactly how much, but um, you know, it it it's the same thing when they if you give money to Syria and it's the ISIS control, ISIS is gonna take a big cut. You have to, you know, you cannot operate in the environment without them taking a cut. And and of course, what's also been the problem with Gaza, well, first of all, they don't know where the money is actually going. Part of it they do, but Sweden is a huge donor, so is the United States. Um, but it's difficult to sort of count. You have corruption and you have corruption scandals being unearthed all the time in operating and giving money, etc. Um, and also, you know, you have you you're channeling money, for example, Sida channels money to the Islamic relief. Um now, Islamic relief organization, etc., have also connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now, Hamas is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, you know, does it go to the population that is needing or does it go to the organizations? You can't you can't see it.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

So to return uh or to wrap a bow on the money in Hamas, because I think that's so so fascinating, because it feels like if you could somehow really restrict, you know, the income, then they have weightless um material to deal with to then make missiles out of and etc etc etc. But uh Gaza is a disastrous economy, it's a tiny place, I don't know what they produce. Uh like uh so could you break down then a pie chart of the income for these three min three men in Qatar with billions and billions? You mentioned 20% tax on in on goods that come into Gaza, but that feels like it must be marginal since the economy will be so slow anyway.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Well, the it's more sizable than I would think. I don't have the exact numbers with me, but when I looked at the exact sort of, you know, the the economy, they are very ingenious and uh they're not completely isolated uh from the world. The real estate there is who tells uh the 2.2 million people living there. And so you have commerce. Do we have a GDP of Palestine? Yes. I I don't have it here. I had to look it up. Yeah. But uh there there is uh an overall GDP. And uh This says 18 billion as of 2021 USD.

SPEAKER_04 51:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

Does that sound about right? Something like that, yes. And um uh but then of course you have also money being sent through remittances and so on. Um and and you have development. Um problem is that uh you have UNRWA, UN United Nations Work and Relief Agency, um which is run mainly by Palestinians, etc. Um and the problem is that they've also been caught with educational material that shows that they are material that indoctrinates young Palestinian youth, um in terms of um you know the problem is that they teach the kids how to hate uh Israelis because they're part of a struggle. Um and and the problem is that you have had a radicalization since Hamas took over and they were isolated also by the young generation, because they never met anyone uh if it's not a soldier. Uh you can only work, and this is what the Israelis did beforehand when they thought that things were calm and you know they were pretty um amenable, uh, was that they open up for work from Palestinians who are married, who have a family. Uh those kind of uh people can get work permits, some of them, only very limited number, to work in Israel, but you can get ten times the salary you can get from Gaza. So um so I think uh you know it's it's uh it's gone on for such a long time. It's an intractable conflict. You cannot solve the conflict because there are so many moving parts. You have the sacredness of of Jerusalem for both the Jews and the and um also for Christians, but we don't care so much. I mean, we we even you know, I don't know if you have ever been to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, no. Um it's they there you have competition between different strands of Christianity who don't trust each other and they fight so much amongst themselves that every night they lock up the the church where Jesus uh was um uh crucified and resurrected. Um uh and they give the key the key the the person the key uh keeper uh is Muslim, Muslim family who has done this for centuries. Oh wow for for several times. So but you have that, you have all the you know it's really interesting because UNRA ha are classifying also descendants of Palestinians through generations who are descendants of those that that you know may want to return one day. So the number of people living on the outside who never can come back, the diaspora, you know, they they some of them keep their keys to the houses when uh you know after the uh the Israeli-Arab Wars in order to to hope that they return. There's a dream that they return, the right of return. Uh but they are there, you know, there are so many who are living on the in Jordan, in Lebanon, in other places that it's completely inconceivable for Israel. It would be uh suicide for Israel to let back uh all these people. In the meantime, of course, they have to it's a small country, Israel is a very small country. So you have the West Bank uh and then of course there you have the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah and the other factions, etc. You also have Hamas there, but they hide themselves more. Uh it's such a complicated uh conflict, and of course the Israelis also have settl settlers who are building settlements, they have increased those settlements, I think, 450% since they began the peace process, etc. So I mean I I actually met the you know in 1993, 1992, 93, you had the Oslo process, right? They came together under Yizak Abin um and they negotiated Gaza Jericho first. So let's let's sort of relinquish that to the Palestinian Authority, and they can govern that, and also the town of Jericho, which is uh sitting in the sort of Jordan Valley. And um and they did that, and then they said, okay, phase two, we're gonna do Oslo 2, so that would be the West Bank, and then they had different security arrangements there, etc. But as soon as they began doing all of this, Hamas began doing suicide operations and attacks to sabotage the peace process. And that now has gone on for 30 years, uh, and there is nothing left. And you also have a corrupt uh fata Palestinian leadership, um you know um Mahmoud Abbas, um you know, he he doesn't have many years left of him, and uh he hasn't held any elections, it's a corrupt elite, um, doesn't have any credibility with the population. Uh what do you do? How do you get new leaders? And how do you get people who do not want to fight, what do not want to sort of do resistance? And and so I I don't see a way out of this. Um I mean I sometimes listen to people on TV and they talk about well we gotta have a peace process and peace, and there is no conditions for it. And it's even become worse completely intractable with um uh with what happened after the 7th of Oktober. Plus, in Israel we never had a worse when I say we in other words, the West in terms of its relationship with Israel. We never had a worse government. Um, we have a religious government. We have Netanyahu. We have settlements and we have rigious uh settlers and ju religious extremists who are trying to become maximalist on their on their side. They wä. They want to kve a Gewis stat on behalf, you know, on top of the Palestinian one. So I can't see how it's gonna be solved. So we're gonna have conflict uh there in perpetuity in perpetuity. And then on top of that, we got these guys in Lebanon, Hezbollah, you know the Shiya. The there are the proxies of Iran. They have missiles going after uh Israel. We have the Uranians who want to destroy Israel. And of course, we had some hope before because you then saw that there's been normalisation through the Abraham Akkords. You have had normalisation with the UAE. Uh, and now we're gonna, you know, maybe have it with Saudi Arabia. Um and that was all scuttled with this attack. Um so you then have to sort of understand that maybe Iran is behind it, maybe maybe you know Hamas wanted to do a regional war. They wanted they want the West Bank to rise up, they want Hezbollah to get involved. Um, and everyone is sort of waiting now. It's sort of wait and see. They hold they they're in a holding pattern to see what is going to happen, how worse can it get? And of course it's storming in the West, in Europe, on campuses in the United States, in the Western capitals, you have Israeli-Palestinian protests, uh, you have massive amounts of anti-Semitism, you have masses amounts of.

SPEAKER_04 59:33

So surprising, eh?

SPEAKER_00 59:35

Well, I wasn't surprised. Really? No, I wasn't well, I wasn't surprised that it existed underneath. But how do you turn this back into the bottle? Um and and the Jewish Jewish community, um, the Jewish faith community, synagogues, etc., is already a massive terrorist threat against them. And this is from Al-Qaeda, from ISIS, from others. On top of that, now you also have this issue where where uh they're they're going after individual Jews. They are going after them in their homes. They're going after ordinary people who have nothing to do with the conflict. And and and you got a riled up Palestinian community uh together with left-wing, um, she would say uh left-wing extremists. You have a younger generation who doesn't understand anything about the conflict. Um I don't know if you've seen this. There was a there was a funny um uh funny film uh done. I don't know who did the film, but uh it said, look, you know, will you I think it was in the US, will you sign this appeal for uh peace in uh uh for for supporting Hamas and peace in Palestine, right? And and most of the people that they met, they said, yes, of course. But before you sign, let me read the conditions, right? And then it says, Do you you know would you agree to throw homosexuals off uh the rooftops? Uh would you uh agree to a Sharia state? Would you agree to women being veiled and uh you know having uh all the rights and freedoms that we have? Of course they wouldn't sign it. No. So but they don't understand the conflict. And yet what they can understand is that this is a David Goliath fight, that Israel is a militarily more superior actor, and and of course they want to support the underdog, the Palestinians, because they are they have the you know they're suffering through the population, etc. And what Israel I mean I mean I myself has been involved with trying to help in a in a hostage exchange operation between Hezbollah and and Israel. There were three soldiers and a businessman taken captive. I was uh the extended arm of a UN negotiator who sent me in because he wanted to be under the radar, or the mission was to be under the radar. Um we we made contact, we had some contact, we weren't successful. Uh there were others who took over the process, but um uh there was three soldiers and one business person, Israeli Jewish. Uh the Hamas now has 240 20 plus um hostages. Um and previously Israel has done massive asymmetric hostage deal. They have they have exchanged one soldier for 1,400 prisoners, Palestinian prisoners. In fact, the last time there was a big hostage exchange was um when one soldier was kidnapped in in around 2006-07, he was held for a long time and then negotiated a deal that released 1,200-300 people, and one person who was part of that deal is the head of Hamas in Gaza now, uh Yahya Sinwa. And um so you can then imagine the trauma for the Israelis who never leave any soldiers behind enemy lines, who never who who allow for making these asymmetric hostage deals just to get back one of these people. Then you understand what a shock it is for Israel because they've never ever had such a big operation against them. They always you know you know when in the past um Hamas would do a suicide operation, uh it maybe can do double or triple. In other words, there would be two or three people who would position themselves somewhere and then they would pull the cords or they would explode themselves, and then maybe 60 people would die. Um what the Israelis would do then would be to to um well, first of all, retrieve all the body parts of those who were died because they to bury them, but um there's a special unit in Israel who does that, um but also they would find the identity of the person and then they would go to their family and then they would use a bulldozer to to take down the whole house, right? It's like I will crush you if you touch any of our citizens, etc. It's a massive retaliation against the entire family as a deterrence, but now Israel has lost its deterrence, right? It's you know so many people and the level of insecurity is huge in Israel, and the sad part is that most of the people who were living in these kibbutz they were actually um you know more liberal, more peace-oriented. Um they even they even employed workers from Gaza that and they would pay them much more than they were being side, and so um this trauma I think is gonna take a long time for the Israelis to get over as a nation.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:33

I don't know if you would ever get over it.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:35

No. And uh I I let me also I I'll show you one thing just to I don't know if you've seen this. I'm gonna I'm going to show you there is uh there is this uh map that uh was done. I'm going to This is October seven map. And you you can you you see you can actually you can actually see, you can zoom in, and when you see the entire you see these are these red dots here is i i is where every single person died. Wow. Twelve hundred, fourteen hundred.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:30

So it's a map which pretty much shadows the entire Palestine and Israel border.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:37

Gaza, yes. So it's it's from the north to the south. So I thought initially that it was just the area around the festival ground and maybe just a few sort of kibbutz around that, but it's actually from north to south. So when you when you zoom in on the when you zoom in on this uh you know where the music festival, that's that's where the music festival was, right? So when you zoom in on that, right, you can see. You see how many people that uh and when you actually see the individual names and then the individual dots and you see where they died and where they were kidnapped, you understand the scale and scope of this. Because it's so you know i i during 9-11 3,000 people died in the towers. Right. Um and this is uh half of that. So from a small country like Israel.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:36

Yeah, I've heard if it was um taken relatively to the size of the US, it'd be something like 120,000 people murdered, um, or something like that. And is this the most devastating terrorist attack on record?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:53

Uh besides 9-11, yes. Um uh in 2008, the security services were warning there was there was a terrorist attack in Mumbai, and that was for three days. Uh ten people were inserted from Pakistan. And they were had been given they'd never been to India before. And uh when they did the operation they they they had GPS locators, um, which they followed. Uh but when they broke into the Tash Mahal uh hotel, a very luxury hotel, etc., and they were massacring um uh foreign guests that were looking for foreigners. They were they were stunned by when they came into some of the rooms, both the luxury of it, etc. So there's actually recordings of them, these militant Pakistani terrorists going in to massacre people, but they get so stunned when they come into the room and they look around and say, wow, this is all luxury, and they sort of and you can hear uh intercepts egging them on. There's a the there's a wonderful movie uh that shows um Hotel Mumbai. Yes. Which shows the generosity of the ones who were working in the hotel that they would not leave the hotel, they would not leave the hotel while their guests were under attack, which is an amazing, uh beautiful um movie about uh what happened during that day.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:26

Yeah. To move us away from Hamas, Israel, Palestine, you mentioned before the liquid bombing, which was halted in 2006. I was wondering whether you have on top of your head a few or just whether you have offhand a couple of other like 9-11 scale terror plots that have been stopped by law enforcement, and if you could as well just give a broader picture for how effective or non-effective law enforcement has been at bringing down the amount of potential terror attacks that have been attempted.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:04

There was the of course the deadliest attack, but you want to fail. Failed. Okay, or foiled.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:12

Um and naturally I'm sure a lot of that is under wraps. But just things that you know leak through to your desk.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:21

I the after the Mumbai attack in 2008, uh, which was a very, very deadly attack, the person who had done the reconnaissance for who actually gone to Mumbai um to case out the to do the reconnaissance to film all the attack targets, um, he goes back to Pakistan and he's a US Pakistani citizen. His name is David Hedley, and he then wants to do an operation against Julans Posten, the newspaper in Copenhagen. So he comes to Copenhagen and he starts casing out the newspaper which is located in a very close to Newham the touristy place in Copenhagen. Big massive building, it's actually next door to the French embassy today. And he goes into the paper undercover, presents a fake business card as a business person and he cases it out. He then rents a bike, he mounts a camera on the bike, and then he he um bikes around the city, he he cases out the the soldiers on the parade with the big furry hats uh who are parading through the streets. He cases out other targets, the railway station, etc. And then he and then he's he's there on a reconnaissance mission. He then travels to Stockholm um uh to try to get people to do the operation. And he goes to Derby and he communicates the plot back to Pakistan with the organization that's commissioned this. By that time the US intelligence had had found out that he was about to do this. Any sense for how? Uh they uh I don't exactly remember the details, but I think that there were they uh had a suspicion, they arrested him. Um it could also be because of the Mumbai plot uh that that that there were investigative leads. Um anyway what happened then is that uh there is four Swedes, four Swedes who are based in Stockholm who decides to do an operation. Now they have contact with the person that David Hedley met in Stockholm and they decide to do an operation so they travel down to um to Copenhagen. Um now by that time the Swedish security services have have detected this. They informed the Danish security service, so now it's a joint operation, and they are actually casing out the apartment in Stockholm and they then um see that they rent a car, they go these guys are going to uh hardware store to buy um they bought 200 plastic strips um to hold hostages um and then they travel down to to um to towards Denmark. Um to make a long story short, um one person defects from the operation uh halfway down.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:10

You got cold feet?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

He got cold feet, he um he had also it was it was farcical. I would have loved to see the surveillance operation on that because they were following with helicopter, with uh you know, with uh they were shadowing the cars, etc. And all of a sudden they they don't have any sound in the car. So they but apparently they started arguing. And he wanted he wanted to defect, he wanted to sort of jump, he didn't want to go through with it. So he so but he had he is the one who has rented the car. So he wanted to sort of sign over the car to the other person. And uh they have to sort of they they go around trying to find a gas station where they had rented the car to to I think it was a stat oil. And then they do and then they um they uh do this and then they go down, and then of course, as soon as they cross the uh bridge, um it's a Danish operation. Uh but of course the safe house that they were going to use is the contact of the other person who jumped the car. And so they don't find very well around in in Denmark. They found the guy he has to come and collect them in the middle of the night, and of course, they are being followed down by Danish Security Service who are doing surveillance, they know they know probably where this safe house is, they have they have gone into the neighbor, they have drilled a hole in the wall, they have uh they can see through the apartment, they have all the listening. Uh and they show up and and they are in the apartment now, and they they uh get up in the morning and they start to pray and they start to talk a little bit about operation. And then the security service can't wait anymore, so they pounce on them and they arrest them. But what they were going to do was to storm the newspaper uh offices uh with auto an automatic uh weapon with guns, with knives, and with 200 plastic strips. And the plan was to kill as many people as possible inside the the um the the fuck a newspaper. The newspaper and why? Uh because um Yulas Posten had published the um the Muhammad Cartoon um the Prophet Muhammad Cartoon affair.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:34

Um perfectly reasonable to kill a person over that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:38

Well well you know they completely um uh so the they were also going to behead the editors who had commissioned it and throw their heads out the window. Um that prevented a a a big uh you know massacre, um uh but it was through uh joint intelligence operation. Uh I sat through the trial uh of these cast of characters, these four guys, very different, all of them. But the most important thing was that this was not just four guys who decided to go and do this. Um all three of the four had gone out to conflict zones and one person had succeeded, and he had been out with Al-Qaeda uh four years to train for this mission, and he was then deployed back um uh to um to Europe. Um he he tried to evade security but they already had caught on to him. He flew into Athens, he then flew from Athens to Brussels. One of the guys in Stockholm drove down to collect him and then came back. But they were so different, all these four guys. Uh and they they were all convicted to 12 years in prison. Not very long in US terms, but um they received a sizable. So yeah, you have um you have um I would say you have probably 12 um 12 to 13 terror plots just in Denmark that has been prevented, um, that were that were related to the the Prophet uh Mohammed Khartoun uh controversy. It w basically all of them were was about that.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:33

What about now if I'm just thinking of Scandinavian country done something to piss off the fundamentalist Islamic world? I mean Sweden is right in the centre at the moment. You've got this idiot Rasmus Paladin burning Qurans. Yeah. So thinking from all of these uh potential terror attacks against Denmark after a newspaper published to Kazid and Mohammed, what's happening now in Sweden given all of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:04

So I mean so w what what's happened in Sweden is that we have we have created there are two events that created a perfect storm. One event was that there was a there was a disinformation campaign, uh a malign inference operation that that started um in Sweden in the summer of 2021 when you had a a Facebook group uh with pissed off uh parents whose kid has been tak kids have been taken into care uh because they were mistreated or and they all got together in this Facebook group, and some of them were Muslim, some of them involved a criminal clan member who had the kids taken into care. And they began sort of uh doing demonstrations outside social services, etc. And they were there were really sort of frenzied uh attacks against the social services. They were they were publicizing individual social workers' uh names and home addresses and where the kids went to school and so on. Very threatening. Now, all of these sort of smaller protests, they weren't that big. They connected to a social media influencer in the Muslim world. Uh actually, an Egyptian blogger called Mustafa El Sharkawi. He is called on Twitter Shun Islamiyah. And what he does is that he he doesn't like the West. He thinks that the West is in moral decay. He wants to warn Muslims from traveling to the West because things are in disarray here. If you're a woman or Muslim youth shouldn't travel to the West because we do not live according, you cannot be a good Muslim to live in this society. Um so what happened was that this social protest movement and this they connected to the this influencer. And he he has a million followers, uh, maybe more also, multiple channels. And there were other social media influencers that were were sort of interviewing these families and these cases. So you have a connection between the local Swedish environment and you have the global environment through social media.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:30

So Sweden's being spotlighted just through this aspect.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:34

Being spotlighted through this aspect. And of course, when what once they it was also picked up by the Arab media. So you have Al Jazeera, you have uh Al-Arabiyyah, you have all the media outlets in the Arab world. This is a perfect story. You know, you have parents who are crying, their kids have been taken into care, and the narrative that's being promoted is that uh Muslim kids, uh Swedish government agencies, social services are kidnapping Muslim children, kidnapping Muslim children. And they're not only kidnapping them, but they're also placing them in homes uh run by paedophiles where where you're forced to eat pork and you know uh where it's part of an assimilation strategy, so you can't be Muslim anymore, etc. So all these stories are baked together, the narrative is pushed out, but it has also uh you know it it has a perfect dramatic formula because you everyone understands how upsetting it is for a parent to lose their child, etc., and they are longing for this, and and and then you have also this sort of David Goliath situation. You have single parents who have had five of their kids taken into care, and this bad uh state actor, social services, is doing this to all to Muslims. Um, and that became viral, it became viral for for a whole year. Uh, and there were hundreds of millions of people being fed this false narrative. And uh when was this? This was uh it began the real campaign began in January, February or 2022, and then it went all the way down to January 2023. Um, and of course, uh at the time you also had the Quran burnings by uh Rasmus Paludan, a Danish person who who um uh crazy extremist person who uh is burning the Quran that does to provoke um uh immigrant Muslim communities. On top of that, you once he stops, you also have uh an Iraqi person called Salvan Mumika, uh, who is an Iraqi Christian connected to Iranian militias, and he begins to burn the Quran, and so you have sort of you know, you have um a whole year of of Sweden is at war with Islam being pumped out, and on top of that, you got burning the Quran, so it couldn't be it couldn't get worse, and what happens is that uh now the Muslim world is getting involved, they want to boycott Sweden, the international sort of the Islamic conference organization threatening to boycott and sanctioned uh Sweden, but also terrorist groups start to understand that look, we if we attack Sweden, right, we will become real heroes in the Muslim world. So you have ISIS and Al-Qaeda who issued communicates threatening Sweden and they're saying basically a couple of different things. Um there was also, of course, the uprising against the Quran burnings, which resulted in that the Swedish embassy in Baghdad was overrun and they burned the embassy. But what these terror threats really said and the kommunicators was that we need to strike at Sweden. Sweden is at the spearhead of the war against Islam. We need to slaughter diplomats. We need to burn up embassies, we need to to blow up embassies. We need to they haven't learned the lesson of Charlie Hebdow: the terror attack against Charlie Hebdow. So we need to discipline them by striking at them again. The police who is sort of giving the demonstration approvals. They need to they need to um also be a target. It's a legitimate target. So so go into police stations and and um attack police. We need to blow up their soldiers. Um, and this whole sort of theme of we need to to of Charlie Hebda. They were lifting up examples of the Nis attack in 2016 when there was a truck driving down Nissfront promenad. Um, you know, mowing down people etc. So they were they were lifting up these sort of inspiring examples, and said, and they were saying to followers do these attacks. Do this attacks against Sweden. And therefore the combination of the disinformation campaign against social services and the Quran burnings uh led to atmospherics that w really put Sweden as the number one terror prioritized terror target. And what we had was when Sweden was playing Belgium in in football uh in Brussels, um a person who had been fed this or had listened to the propaganda decided to to execute two Swedish supporters who he selected because they were just support football supporters, because they represented a symbol of Sweden.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:26

And the story here is just they were tourists and they were identified as Swedes because they were wearing Swedish football jerseys. Yes. They could have been Australians, could have been Australians, uh, could have been any anyone.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:37

Uh there was no identity, there was no sort of, you know, it's just a random thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:41

And and but such is the hateful Sweden at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:45

Exactly. And and and uh it's very hateful, and and on top of that now you have Israel Hamas and Israel-Palestine conflict being being um superimposed on top of this threat. Um and we see the emotions running high in many of the different capitals. We see ordinary people maybe who who uh want to be involved in this or support this. You see Palestinians, you see also extremist groups that are it's it's a whole sort of soup of people who are very, very upset. And they have also the Jewish community who is being harassed, who's being hounded, and they are in in Sweden for example, in Malma, um there are about 200 uh people who are part of the Jewish community, and they of course feel under massive siege and being threatened, etc. And and you also have all of a sudden a normalization of anti-Semitism that um um and at the same time you have a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with people dying, uh innocent people dying because of what Hamas did, and and of course Israel is trying to to go after its objective and to decimate Hamas as a military organization. Um and everyone loses out.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:15

Everyone loses, yeah, completely. It's like with this Rasmus Paladin fella, he is the single winner at the cost of absolutely every other stakeholder, Swedish society, the Muslim population, the Swedish police, Sweden's reputation. The only person is his own political gain. That's right. Maybe with Hamas, the only benefit is their own political gain. Yes, the Gazan population are clearly the biggest sufferers in all of this. Israelis, oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:49

I mean But the I think you know for for Hamas, um uh their popularity has really shot up, even though they're suffering in Gaza, etc.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:01

So so is there any way to know whether they are their popularity shot up within Gaza?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

Uh well you can't really because there is no public opinion polls that's reliable.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:15

So when you say they've popularity shot up, it's an expression from the rest of the Islamic world.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:20

Well, it's the rest of the Islamic world, but also uh the the few individuals you can actually see this on Facebook or other places where if you go back, they just go back to on the 7th of October and you see how they celebrate, and they know then that a lot of civilians have died. Uh and so it's a sort of na it's a natural, I think, reaction that they they unite together, even though Fatah and Hamas are opposed to each other, they unite against a common enemy. And and therefore the Swedish ambassador uh to Palestini, I mean sorry, the Palestinian ambassador to Sweden, uh she has not she said that I will never condemn anyone from the Palestinian resistance. And she's fata. Uh so you can see that there are currents like that, but you don't know. I mean, I think that if Gazan people could choose freely, etc., they would not choose Hamas. Some would, because it's a religious organization as well. But it it all depends on what society and conditions that they grew up in.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:35

How much you your comment that uh the popularity for Hamas is has shot up since October 7th? How much of that is an expression of disinformation in the media versus just run-of-the-mill hatred of uh Israel and Jewish people? So, really the question is have they seen the same things you and I have seen and come to the conclusion that Hamas is in the right, or have they been given a much more uh sensitive version of the events and therefore all they're seeing in their media is Israel are the oppressors. We did nothing wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:16

Yeah. I think I think it's a function of of the fact that uh most people have relatives down there who have suffered at one time or another. Um and they may not sort of I mean they they they I think that they are celebrating because of um uh some sick sick sense of retribution um um when they you know when they see what has happened and I've also seen that Hamas and others have been saying putting out this information that this wasn't done by this wasn't done by Hamas, this was done by Israeli military. So you have this information, you have also this uniting sense that we are fighting back against and the resistance is fighting back against uh against Israel. Um but what they're not saying is that they are they're killing innocent people, they are you know putting babies in you know uh burning them, uh they are executing innocent people, etc. And therefore, I mean it's not they they they they prefer to forget what happened and then you know go with um uh the issue of um the most important thing is the suffering Palestinians who are suffering at the hands of the Israeli military aggression.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:49

So just selective.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:52

It is selective and they you know um and they they don't maybe take take in um they don't take in all all of the raw sort of emotion. They cannot hold two thoughts at the same time that both sides are suffering. And this is the problem with this conflict, it's so emotional. It's so emotional when you have um I don't know, yeah. It's become sort of symbolic.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:20

I think it's hard to to sympathize with the people of Gaza.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:24

No.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:25

I I I think it's absolutely horrible, but rather than blame blaming Israel, why don't you turn around and blame the people withholding every single thing that would help you to get out of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:34

I completely agree with you. It's it's unbelievable that uh that they are not seeing f and you know any further. I mean, why not uh why not just condemn Hamas, which most people would want, and it's the reasonable thing to do. And then also say, look, I I abhor all the loss of life of civilians, and and and half of them are kids that are dying. Who who can support that?

SPEAKER_04 1:34:58

I saw uh like the most horrific uh graph of deaths under five years old in conflicts over time, yeah, and this one is a huge outlier. Yep. 2030 X, the second It's because it's so concentrated, the sort of um Yeah, two million people live in the place the size of Washington, DC.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:22

Exactly. But but but what I don't understand is is that you know the people who have really nothing to do with the conflict who are not sort of emotionally invested, yes, it's a it's okay to be upset. It's okay to support. But many of them have gone to great lengths of harassing ordinary people who have no impact on the conflict. For example, in the United States, Jewish students who go to university, etc., they they get harassed. Um also you get harassment of Muslims because there's so much focus on Hamas with people who have nothing to do with the issue. So uh and I often, when I ever when I was in Gaza and Israel, etc., you you have sometimes, you know, you can you try to understand both parts, you can sympathize, you can be emotional about these things, but I often said to myself when I was going between two different worlds, between a developed sort of w almost like Western style world in Israel into Gaza where there were donkeys and you know horse and carriage and and Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:30

Explain to us Gaza. Yeah, it's like what were you doing there? Where did you go? What was it like?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:35

Well, first of all, when you go into Gaza, you had to go through the Israeli security, you have to sort of convince them that you should go in, etc. And then you had then you had there was a separate entrance because most of the Palestinians had to go through another entrance. So this was the VIP entrance, right? Where all the sort of international visitors, diplomats, etc. And then we had the long walk, it was like a long tarmac walk on the road, and you can see Palestinian it was it was like a dead zone, right? So and you can see a Palestinian um Palestinian uh offices and taxis waiting in the horizon. So once you you know maybe a kilometer or or so, and then then um then you're there and then it's chaos. So the dirt roads. Um lots of sands, a lot of young kids, um Lot of happy kids playing football, kids everywhere. And as soon as they saw that you were a Westerner, they they were there tugging at you, right? Like anywhere, you would you know they would be tugging, begging for money a little bit, or trying to get your attention, etc. And then you you would stop, you would play flu football with them. You try not to because if if you start giving m money and stuff, then it will never end. And um and then you would take the drive in, and it was very pleasant. I mean, it was uh you know, buildings are often half-built as well, so they never finished building the, you know, so you would see like two stories that were built, and then they they started on a third, but they've never really gotten any any further. Um it's right by the sea. So by the sea line, you have some some um nice uh small, they're very small and very sort of basic hotels. Um there was only one place you can get alcohol. Uh that was a hotel called the Windmill until Hamas blew it up uh because he didn't like the alcohol uh before this conflict? Uh before this conflict, yeah. This is this is many years ago. It's like domestic terrorism? Exactly. Well, well, you know, against against uh you know an establishment that was serving alcohol. Yeah. Um but it was very you know, it's very simple, it's very, and you know, you would sit around, you would uh smoke in a gila, which is uh sort of like uh apple tobacco. Uh life is slow. Uh and I once once went there. Um I based myself in Jerusalem often uh close to the well on in the Palestinian area, right on the borderline. There's no fence between them in Jerusalem, close to what is known as Damascus Gate, going into the old city. So I'm outside um and uh living in a hotel. I used to stay at the Jerusalem Hotel. Uh they were had a nice patio outside the hotel, um uh colonial style. It had grape grapes on the roof. Uh so it was you'd be covered with grapes uh growing above you. And in in one morning I I decided to go to Gaza to interview people in Gaza. But before I went there, I walked up to the sort of Jewish market, downtown Jerusalem on the on the Jewish side. And they have this huge market called Mahane Yehuda Market where they sell fruits and vegetables, etc. I'm there in the morning and then I I decide to um I walk around, I look, I I I believe I bought some grapes. Um and then I go back to the hotel area and I I jump in a collective taxi going to Gaza, uh where we we just get in the car and then we pass money forward, and then you know it's a set amount. And then when we get almost close to Gaza, I hear that there is some commotion. And then I understand uh that there has been a double suicide bombing uh in Mahani Huda market. There have been two people who walked in and with with uh with with a sort of bomb and exploded themselves and a lot of people died.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:11

Um why?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:13

Uh because of the peace process, because of the they wanted to kill ordinary Israeli civilians.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:21

Oh, so this happened in Israel. Apologies were still in Gaza. No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:25

So Mahani Yehuda and the Damascus Gate and all this, this is in Jerusalem. And then I take a taxi down to uh uh Sherut taxi down to Gaza. It is a waste, it takes you know an hour and a half, maybe. And uh as I enter in, I then understand that there has been a terrorist attack uh uh in in Jerusalem, but I continue in to Gaza. And when I'm there for a little while, um I get word that they have they have uh sealed off Gaza. So I'm now locked into Gaza. Nothing happens, no one bombs, nothing happens. So I go to the seaside and I relax for for a few hours. Uh and then I make some phone calls to my friends and they they say it's okay if you if you try to get out. Uh so I I then went out, went up and I got out. Um But Gaza is like uh slow pace of life, nothing really happens very and and people make do of what they have.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:34

And how much of it now is left?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:37

Uh enough hardly anything is left in the north. You can probably, you know, they need to rebuild it probably the whole the whole place. And this is Gaza City, and then you have of course refugee camps further down. And people have you know nowhere to live, uh, etc. So I mean understandably it's a massive humanitarian catastrophe. But the problem is that you know Hamas is controlling who gets in, who gets out, how much should you let in, they're hold they're holding hostages. The Israelis are probably gonna continue because they have to show the Israeli population that they have something to show for for this war, they have exacted revenge.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:16

Well, um I had planned on getting to Hamas at the end, uh so we're only past my first question here, but um obviously we're not gonna be able to get through everything that I'd uh planned. But your book uh sort of goes uh through your career rather chronologically and um documents some of the major terror events that you've studied and um have worked with. So I'm thinking since we've already done Hamas Palace, I'm sorry, since we've already done October 7, there's really only two more I want to bring up with you. I'm sorry, do you want to say something?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:53

Yeah, I I maybe it's useful just to sort of the book that I've wrote is like my professional memoirs of events that have shaped my career, but also it's a way of unpacking the events, the terror events that have shown um how it has evolved over the years. And I really begin with Locky Bee, um the Pan Am 103, when a Boeing 747 is blown up over uh ten on ten ten thousand meters uh in the air um over the over Scotland going towards the United States, and there are about two hundred and fifty passengers on board. Um and there is a suitcase on board, uh a Tushiba boom beat. Inside this Tushiba boom beat radio cassette recorder is about half a kilo of Semtex plastic explosives that detonates uh after about 25 minutes after it's taken off from London 10,000 meters, the whole plane disintegrates and uh everyone on board dies, and it lands on the little little town of Lockabee. On board are thirty-five students from Syracuse University who's going home to to see their parents. So you have this sort of parts of the plane raining down on the countryside in Scotland, and it lands, part of the plane lands in a real est in in a t collection of houses in Lockabee, kills eleven people on the ground. And I was sent there when I first started to sort of really study this to take it all in. And I was full of questions and stuff, but I felt that um all the questions sort of disappeared when I when I saw the sadness in the whole town and and the enormity of what what had happened and so I went there and and I had to meet um I met later on victims, a father who had their daughter, a twenty-three-year-old daughter who was on board going to see her boyfriend who was in America and and she had just gotten into Cambridge to study medicine. And you know, he when he tried to identify her at the morgue, uh he couldn't um because she was so damaged. Um so victims became you know, understanding the victims and understanding that this is real people we're talking about um was important. And then of course, uh as we progressed throughout my career, one of the first things I had to do with my um with my uh supervisor was to organise a terror conference in London, and the foreign minister was supposed to come. Uh, and there was security, but it was the security wasn't good enough. And the Northern Irish um uh Provisional IRA, a terrorist organisation in Northern Ireland, had planted a person, a sleeper agent inside the conference area, and they planted a lunch box underneath the speaker's podium. And a sound technician found this lunch box packed with explosives. You know, maybe an hour or so before it was supposed to get off. So now I'm almost seeing um myself, welcome to this world. This is not just an ivory tower topic, this is real, right? So my career was almost finished before it even started. Uh and then I began studying Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is a Shia group that was taking hostages and so on. I later then moved to Hamas, and Hamas was um a Sunni organization in Palestine who were doing suicide operations against Israel to sabotage the peace process. I then also, right before the turn of um, you know, in the late 1990s, um, I also began working with uh CNN uh and we went out into the Middle East uh because we were noticing, or CNN was noticing, that uh there was something going on. The system was blinking red. So I spent five weeks with CNN in the Middle East. Uh we were working on a documentary called One Day Soon. That day uh happened before we could get the documentary together. Um I then, you know, uh had to I then got to see the the um the material that was retrieved from Al-Qaeda's training camp and we learned more and more. And being at the heart of CNN's operation was really fascinating. So I was I was looking at that as well. Um I then um I then uh came back into the into I then got to go to Libya to um during under Qaddafi, the mad colonel Qaddafi uh to um to try to sort of help British Libyan rapprochement because Libya had been involved in the Rockibi bombing uh in nineteen eighty eight. Um and so I had been there and then I went to the United States and when I came to the United States in the early two thousands I Um because I've been so much to the Middle East, I was placed on the terrorism watch list. And by that was a really interesting experience because then you realize how important it is the issue of human rights when it affects yourself. And I'm happy that I had that experience. It wasn't fun at the time, but uh I was happy I had that experience. I after being placed on that list, you just have to do more fingerprinting, etc. But it mostly researched for Muslims. But so you really felt anger um against this issue. I then at the same trip I went to Latin America to do a conference in Latin America. Um and then I came back. Um and as I am entering back into the United States, I I get pulled over by the Miami immigration service and the sort of what became DHS, and said, Look, you didn't deregister when you left the United States because you were placed on this list. Now we're gonna deport you. I said, Where are you gonna deport me to? And they said, Argentina. I said, I want to go to Argentina, but please bring me back to the UK. I got back into the US after have been sort of held for six hours. And after that I went um uh I then gradually went back to Sweden and coming back to Sweden it was a different environment um because in Sweden it was a sleep sleepy place. Um so I traded sort of Anglo Saxon comfort and the excitement of things happening in being in the middle of things being being in Sweden. And um and I've been in Sweden ever since, but there's also been a very exciting things that uh has also happened here in relation to uh you know working on trying to prevent violent radicalization, etc.

SPEAKER_04 1:52:12

I'm not gonna go through the rest of my career, but I think that uh but maybe you can pick up from Anders Brevik, and the reason why I I select that particular event is because it's not um religious radicalization. Exactly. So obviously October 7th and then the Paris attacks that shall bring up later, this is fundamentalist religious radicalization. That's right. But I wanted to ask you what the similarities were between political radicalization and religious radicalization in preparation for Anders Brevik.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:50

Okay, so so you have um most of the most of the organizations that uh were in Scandinavia in relation to the radical or far right were neo-Nazis and they were, you know, skinheads and others, and they weren't very sort of sort of sophisticated, but there was an evolution over time when it came to um uh radical uh you know far far right ideologies. And also I think uh you know Anders Björn Breivik is uh like a black swan, right? Um it's a black swan event because no one was focused on you know someone a right-wing terrorist doing such a huge operation um against a target that was you know political youth, social democratic political youth. Um but the when when it comes to him, um he had a troublesome um It just reminds the audience who are largely in the US and Australia.

SPEAKER_04 1:53:55

Yeah. So they might not even know who you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:57

I think most people know who Brenton Tarrant is, who uh who did uh right wing extremist um attack again in New Zealand against mosques with the GoPro, etc. But the person who actually did a similar type of attack but uh against a different target was Anders Bering Breivik, who was I think a 30-something um Norwegian who had grown up in Norway who who um was pretty sort of isolated as a person. He he had a troublesome upbringing, his parents divorced. He they did evaluations on him uh psychologically uh and showed that he was emotionally disturbed as a child. He he he showed no empathy, uh these kind of normal emotions. He then, of course, uh you know um developed uh his own thinking and was surfing a lot on the internet. He he then he was of course influenced maybe by the sort of the different theories at the time uh of Counter Jihad, which uh embraced Eurabia um and sort of this plot that the population was being replaced. The white population was being replaced by immigrants, and that there was this konspiracy between the elites to replace the population. And today we call it the Great Replacement Theory that you are replacing, you know, we're facing a white genocide, uh that white people are going to become minorities in different countries, etc. Now, what he did was he was such an odd person that he he wrote a manifesto uh living in his mother's bedroom. And that manifesto is composed of different parts. It's a cut and paste ideological manifesto that is cutting and pasting and plagiarizing different uh aspects of a far right ideology that includes great replacement etc. evidence for that, etc. Now, this manifesto is 1500 pages long. So the other part is you know, okay, so if we have this great replacement, and if we have this, who is then responsible for this? And the ones responsible for this is the Social Democratic Party because they've been in power for a long time. And that then he called them the cultural Marxists. Um and here it becomes really weird because he he he then decides to do a point system of if you assassinate particular persons, he had a list of persons too, um, you you get points. So it's like the gamification of okay, so because uh so taking out revenge against this is going to then require you follow certain rules. But he also created his own uniform, his own universe, uh that was a mixture of you know um make-believe, um almost like you uh dress up. What do you call it?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:25

Cosplay.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:25

Yeah, a little bit uh, but but with uh war, uh war theme. Uh I have no idea. With uh with um reenactments or something. Reenactment uniforms, etcetera. So he creates this sort of whole world um with point system. And then of course he he does what he does is he he does something very strange, and that is that he does a self-interview. So he is such a narcissist, so he he decides to to anticipate once he does this operation um what will media ask. So he would sort of he will actually uh preempt uh these kind of questions, which is which is very strange. Uh, he also of course talks about how he did prepare all of this. And the interesting thing about him was he was such an odd character and such an evil, manipulative narcissist with an extremely warped mind, uh, but at the same time he was very meticulous. So afterwards, um after his terrorist attack, and I'll say a few words about that in a minute, uh the security service really d decided when they looked at all the events, trying to retrace everything etc, was that they could not they could not detect him because he was so careful of concealing himself. So what he did was he first of all he decided to to um generate funding. The way he generated funding was that he found a guy in Indonesia who did fake diplomas, university diplomas. So he sold those. He earned a lot of money from that. Um and he placed those in offshore accounts so that authorities wouldn't find it. And it was multiple sort of accounts in different countries. And he would travel there to take out money, etc. Um he also, in order for the authorities not to sort of do any suspicion, he he rented a farm uh and he ordered fertilizers. So a farm, of course, with if you're a farmer, you have a leg legitimate grounds to order fertilizers, etc., to to to grow your crops. Um he then experimented with what kind of fertilizer is best to use. So he then got grinders, and this is where he made a mistake. So he was grinding them down, the fertilizer, in order to make the bomb. So you have these pellets, so you have to grind them. But he he underestimated the amount of time it would take to grind down. So he was actually planning a bigger bomb than actually what happened. He then also uh applied for 10 credit cards, he maxed out uh um many of the credit cards. He actually had a lot of cash on him when he was caught. But what he did, for those of you who had never heard of Anders Bier and Bravick or the Oslo attack, was that he rented a van and he packed it with explosives. He emailed, or he tried to email out his manifesto 1500 words to thousands of people, but the operation was delayed because he, you know, he there was there was uh a limit to how many you can send out. Uh so he the the operation was delayed, otherwise he would have arrived there earlier when the so the former Prime Minister would have been there, um, who he was going to behead. Um so he park he he drives his truck with explosives to the government headquarters, he parks it, he wears a helmet, and he walks away and the whole bomb explodes and it you know causes massive amount of damage. He then gets in a car and he drives south for about an hour, 45 minutes hour, um to a place where there is a ferry and he's going out to an island where the Social Democratic Youth Party is having its summer camp and there are lots of youths there. Children, children, youths, uh young people, young politically interested people who are having seminars, who are having camps, who are having fun.

SPEAKER_04 2:02:29

So his idea is that it's the next generation of this political ideology which he This is a political ideology that has let in all these sort of changes in society that he doesn't like.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:40

So he wants to erase them. So he goes over, he comes in with an automatic weapon uh on this island, and he shoots everyone and everything that he can find. And he kills, I think, if I remember correctly, something like 80. 80 people. And when the police catches him after a while, and they're very slow to respond, people are hiding uh out in this island in these rooms, and you know, begging for the life, swimming, uh everything. Um when the police catches him, they interrogate him, and he says that look, I'm part of a of a bigger cell. Of course he's lying. And that I'm gonna do be gonna do more unless you yield to some of my demands, etc. Of course they found out that there was no one else, etc. Um I uh went to his trial on behalf of a newspaper to just to cover this, uh to comment on it, and then I actually sat in the in the courtroom, and I've been to many trials, have testified in many trials, didn't testify in this trial, but I saw him and I've never seen anyone like him because normally, you know, you would look at someone and you would see like emotion or some you know, mimic, uh some facial expression, micro facial expressions, you know, some sympathy, some laughter, etc. But he was just a stone-faced person, you know evil incarnate. And um I've later found out by talking to people who have been guarding him in prison, etc., that he's so manipulative that he that individual guards are not allowed to talk to him. And they change out the guards because he is trying is so narcissistic and he's so manipulative that he's trying to to exploit them and to to gain an edge, etc.

unknown 2:04:44

And his condition right now?

SPEAKER_00 2:04:46

He is uh he is uh facing 22 years in prison, but they they can prolong it if he faces it, you know, if he's dangerous to society. But he, you know, when he came onto the scene, uh his manifesto, of course, was read by many far-right uh extremists. And and and then you had there have been copycats of him trying to do operations. The really big one was Brenton Tarrant, um, who um uh who who did this sort of um horrific attack against the Muslim community in in New Zealand. Um but we've had these sort of lone attackers who who are writing manifestos much shorter, of course, um, but then either create their own world or just try to justify why they are attacking particular groups of people. And of course, so you so you're really facing you know these sort of lone attackers or lone who can do terrific damage. But then of course you have also the traditional neo-Nazis who in in the Nordic space there was something called the Nordic resistance movement. But they are more like a military organization, right? So so they they don't do they're they are menacing, they are a problem, they are a threat, but they are more predictable because they do not sort of do these sort of un indiscriminate attacks. What they do though is when once they go after people, they they intimidate them, they they uh even you know beat them up, etcetera. They are they intimidate politicians and others. Um the interesting thing is that I had a journalist once in in in uh 20 2017, 2018, I think it was 2018 uh who called me, who was a BBC journalist, and he said Magnus are not very popular in Gothenburg. I said, Well what do you mean? And then he sent me a picture and that picture was uh a placard with my face on it and and I had made some statements against the Nordic resistance movement and uh they um did not like me very much. Um and I'm showing you now the picture of the Nordic resistance movement and and it has my face on the placard and it said criminal underneath. Um so and I was not the only person that they were they were highlighting, etc.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:28

Um But these so Anders Brevik, would you class him as politically radical or just psychotic in some fucked up sense?

SPEAKER_00 2:07:41

Well, I mean it would be easy just to discount him as psychotic in some sense, but it would do everyone an injustice because you know he was very logical, he he can do very complex tasks.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:55

Uh he he's also it's it's not a question of his his intelligence or his competency, it's more to get to the point of what are the similarities between political and religious radicalization.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:07

I I don't think he's I don't think he is a good example though of comparison because he's an outlier. But the ideology that you associate with far-right extremism is there are some, I mean certain similarities of very strong enemy, you know, strong in-group, out-group, um, identification of enemies. Um for the for the uh neonazis and others it's it's uh they're they're they're focused on Jews. They've they're strong anti-Semitic that we have this sort of global cabal of Taurus and yeah, yeah. And and they are really focused on that. Um, you also have sort of uh the alt-right uh that we've seen. Everyone remembers Charlottesville, etc. But these are like global a global right-wing populist movement, and there the focus is um yes, a little bit on Jews, but more on Muslims. So they're very focused on Muslims. But they have the same sort of concept of the fact that our culture, our way of life, the white race, um is being threatened by white genocide. And and while the alt-right is not sort of violence promoting, what they're trying to do is they are trying to sort of use social media jokes, memes, etc. Uh, to make the unacceptable acceptable to make unacceptable jokes about j joking about you know Jews or others acceptable. And the social media is the vehicle through which they uh you know exploit that. Um whereas the sort of old National Socialism is to try to normalize National Socialism so that you know I mean most people when they hear Nazi, uh neo-Nazi, uh ideology, etc., they they think of World War II, etcetera. And what the strategy has been by these groups has been to try to to soften the language. So those who are not ideologically savvy and saying, hey, look, what you're advocating is you know uh Hitler and dictatorship, etc. Um they are baking together in a language which doesn't sound so dangerous if you don't, you know, if you're reflecting on it.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:42

Do you think people are more susceptible to radicalization with the internet?

SPEAKER_00 2:10:48

Uh they're much more susceptible to radicalization with the internet. I mean, before you had to go and travel and you had to sort of make contact, you have to have a desire, etc. Now you have kids who are exposed to horrific images. And um, you know, while they're playing games, they can be um groomed, uh whoever they get into contact with, it could be terrorists, um, etc. So definitely you have you're at much greater risk. And of course, with uh you know, if you start sort of looking at particular content, the algorithms will make sure that there will be more of the same that you seemingly like. And if you start looking at right-wing extremist ideology, you know, which is just a few clicks away, which you don't ask for, but oh, this looks interesting. What what's this? It becomes more it's like a spiral. And you can become more radical.

SPEAKER_04 2:11:42

What are steps everyone must go through to get radicalized?

SPEAKER_00 2:11:47

Oh, um depends. I think uh i i it there are so many sort of individual predispositions, um That it's different from person to person. Some people are, you know, have an asocial personality. In other words, they have low impulse control. They are adventure seekers. They are and that for them it's about the adventure. It's about the sort of a new vista, a new interest, going down to fight with ISIS, etc. They don't think so much about the ideology. They're not particularly involved. You may have someone who seeks to belong somewhere. And it may be Hare Krishna or it may be ISIS. They just want to be part of a community. They want to be loved. You may have in certain individuals it's not abnormal to be radical. So you have an uncle who is a fighter. So let's just do the family business. And you may have someone, and this is some have happens often, is that when do you think particularly if you think about religion, etc., or even other things, when you're vulnerable, it's often when you when when you start seeking out new questions. You start to think about the big questions in life. You can become a brooder. So you have different push and pull factors. So you have you have attractive factors that pull you towards an ideology. For example, if you are if you're a gang member and you live a chaotic life and you don't know who's gonna whack you, you then um may want to leave that environment. You don't want to do it anymore. You know, you're you're afraid. What this religious ideology offers you is structure and very clear guidelines of what is permissible, what is not permissible. And you go and you embrace this, right? You know exactly what to do. You know exactly what to do, you know, their rules, their regulations, you will sort out your life. So many of the people who left for Syria, they ran from something towards something that seemed to be like a utopia.

SPEAKER_04 2:14:56

You know the story of Anna Sundberg? Yes. Yeah. She was a guest on the pod.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:01

Yeah. Um she was she was a convert and she fell in love. And she didn't have the the keys to to be able to navigate uh because the person she married also was a very ideologically driven person who Yeah, he was a radical.

unknown 2:15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15:20

He was radical and and you can be you know, you can be drawn into these things. I mean I I there is this documentary called Alone Against ISIS in Samamut IS in Swedish. And I met this girl, she was she she she was a bit of a rebel rather, she was not a Muslim. Uh she met this boy who was an immigrant who was a trouble, and he said, let's go on a vacation at the age of fifteen. So then went all the way to Syria and all of a sudden she found herself in ISIS country and then they went to Iraq and he was sent to the front, he died, and there she was pregnant and and alone, she was fifteen, sixteen. So she called home and the parents managed through um intervention to to pull her back and she was rescued uh by someone and and and I met her and she knew nothing about uh the ideology, she knew nothing. She just w was in the wrong place, she met the wrong person, and uh and then she was drawn into this and she forever she will be associated with this.

SPEAKER_04 2:16:42

Do you think that most of us walking around are only one or two or three nudges towards some type of radical position?

SPEAKER_00 2:16:49

Depends on what protective factors we have. So if you have a had a if you have stable sort of upbringing, uh often it comes down to normal things. Why do you become a gang criminal, etc.? It means that maybe you don't have any prospects in life, or that your parents were absent, or that you had terrible upbringing. Um so and then you just have to sort of fill it with meaning and fill it with ideology.

SPEAKER_04 2:17:15

So do you classify like the narco organizations in Latin America as terrorist organizations?

SPEAKER_00 2:17:24

Um some of them may be uh terrorist organizations uh because they also have a uh you know an ideological um focus, like uh FARC Guerrilla, or they also do use terrorism, etc., uh, or the ELN um um the sister sort of organization to Fark. Um they did terrible things. Actually, one of the worst weapons I've actually seen of a terrorist organization is by I think it was the Fark or the ELN who did necklace bombs. So what they did was they superglued um a bomb around your neck. And basically they were they would they did this for monetary gain. Um so if you didn't pay ransom then you know and there were a couple of those going off in the early two thousand. Yeah, it's terrible so i it it that shows also how you know the the evil nature of um if you're committed enough and if you're involved long enough and if you've been indoctorated long enough, then you can go into a really dark place. And that's what we saw with Hamas and and uh the fact that people, you know, there were people who were killing there who who called home.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:45

Um Yeah, I I listened to that.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:48

He was celebrating on a WhatsApp call to his dad or his whole family. Look at these uh Jews I killed, look at me, I kill Jews, like are you proud? Yeah, no, it's uh Yeah, and and I don't know what to kind of what I asked you earlier about the media coverage of this. I don't know what to necessarily believe or not, but some things I'll read and you know, the way that um Jewish people are being um educated, the way that they are being discussed within the Gaza schooling system, if it's true, it's like obviously you're gonna become radicalized. You're gonna grow up in a world where nothing good is these people are the enemy from day one. No wonder you grow up into being a young adult and it's like my whole purpose is to murder these people.

SPEAKER_00 2:19:33

And and and often you know the the most important thing is these these people they dehumanize another human being. So it's you know, they they they use terminology about them that they don't they don't talk to them about them as, for example, politicians, they are the system or they are the enemy. So the language they use and and but then also there's an interesting phenomenon as well, and that is the group dynamics, what happens when you are with other people doing stuff, uh that can also stretch what you will do yourself. And if you are in a living in a small group, um being you know, scared of being detected or you know have be going on a mission, etc. Then you can be very scared of of um of actually um leaving the group. There's so much pressure. So what what Mohammed used to do before this operation was that they would groom suicide bombers and they would actually let them lie on the ground because they celebrate death more than they than life. So you reward is in as a martyr in heaven, all the rewards. But they would have fighters uh go and lie in their graves so they can feel how it for what it feels like.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:03

That's powerful.

SPEAKER_00 2:21:04

And then then in these group dynamics, they would also videotape them, giving their last testimony. So if you videotape someone, then you can't really back out, right? Oh my god. And they would also do another thing. They would guide them, they would actually travel with them, maybe it's a little separate, so they wouldn't, you know, if they were detected that the handler would not see. They would travel with them towards the target, and at the last minute they would tell them what the target was, so they didn't have too much to think about this. And and and they were also sometimes they would remote detonate the explosives so that they didn't know. Some of them didn't know that they were you know driving in a car that was completely packed with explosives, and then they reached a checkpoint and then they would blow them up.

SPEAKER_04 2:21:59

I mean you're not religious, right? No. Okay, so I I I I don't know what it would be like to be so certain and confident that you were going to some glorious afterlife. Yeah. But it seems like it's a pretty compelling motivation.

SPEAKER_00 2:22:21

It is uh if you know one and the and you know, the this has to do with m you know, metaphysical what happens after we die. So um you know, most people get more religious as uh the older they get, the closer the death to death you get. But also the more you think about and the more you think about it, and also you you know, when people start dying around you and when you get older you need comfort.

SPEAKER_04 2:22:51

Is there anything particularly pernicious about Islam or violent?

SPEAKER_00 2:22:58

Um well I think that uh there are certain sort of interpretation in relation to Salafism that uh the Salaf a jihadism uh you know ideology basically they are very devout, follow the first three generation of the companions to the Prophet. So they're very literalist, and uh they it's very rigid in in relation to the to the boundaries in which what what you do. So they regulate how you go to the toilet, how how you you know how you dress, how you behave, social codes, etc. So they're very now over time there's been ideologues that have come in and built up um certain dimensions which then legitimize violence. But these are these are minority groups, they are very few. So no, they I mean some would say that maybe there are some Quranic verses that can be interpreted as more violent than others, and yes, yes they are, but you know, religion is is um is only as much as people make it. Uh you have to operationalize the religion. So how you interpret that uh it's up to you. Um but you know, Islam is to submit uh and there are different schools within Sunni Islam and and and then of course you have Shia and you have other other groups that are maybe not as you know minority groups uh but also not recognized as being they count themselves as Muslim, but they they they're not seen as Muslim. For example, the Ahmadiyya community um are not recognized by some of the mainstream Sunni groups, even though they do great work and they count themselves as Muslims. So I mean I wouldn't look at at Sura Islam as um it w where we have a problem is with Islamism, where you're trying to create a society based on particular based on Sharia law but gradually re-Islamises and changes the legislation, the secular legislation to more religious based legislation. Um so I think it's important to understand that um first of all religion is what you make it to be, and there are lots of different ideologues that can can interpret, twist, etc. But mainly the radical realm has has grown out of the fact that when they tried to re-Islamicize society as a reaction to westernization, to colonialism, to the states in the Middle East have been very repressive against um Muslim communities which have then radicalized them into more violent interpretations. So there are certain ideologues that are important for those who interpret it in a violent way.

SPEAKER_04 2:26:20

Could there be some truth to the idea that since that maybe many of these Middle Eastern economies for the average person isn't a place that's offering you that much opportunity to sort of level up your life and your family's life and you're a devout religious, you're a devout Muslim, and you've been sort of promised to this land and promised a certain you know promised a certain way of life by either the Quran or by your your your your teachers or whatever but then you look around and none of it actually looks that way and then you just start blaming another person. Yeah. Um maybe if I kill them it'll be better for my kids. Is that too bad of a reading into something?

SPEAKER_00 2:27:15

A little bit. Uh I I I I I don't think it's right in the last part. So but the other part is that is that um first of all, um we in the West, our religion is um democracy, the rule of law, uh we are secular.

SPEAKER_04 2:27:36

Is that religion, though?

SPEAKER_00 2:27:37

Well, it's a religion in the sense that it's a faith system that we we cannot compromise on in that we have worked so hard to create it individual rights and freedoms, gender equality, etc. And then that clashes with religious norms, patriarchical structures, clan-based uh system, family, extended family. You know, Middle Eastern societies, I think, are quite happy because you you have huge extended families. I mean, you're never you're never alone, you know. So, in a secular society we don't value uh older people, but there you look up to older people and have respect them. And they don't have sort of loneliness in um in many of it doesn't have to be Muslim societies. You look at uh China, uh look at Chinese uh families and others. It's massive families, you know, it's like a whole solar system. And here we have, you know, we are in the Western society uh more like Pluto. Uh you know, we are solitary planets, maybe, and and hopefully sometimes we can cluster together. I think that that is uh that can be a problem. Um but then uh you know, yes, of course, if you see what many of these sort of theocracies and others try to do is to control. It's like an autocratic dictatorship that tries to say, look at what happened in Iran, right? Women want to not wear the shador, or they they want to be liberated, they want to have sexual freedom, they want to be able to date whoever they want, they want to be able to have a free life. Um the value is our religion, right? This is our religion. Be all you can be. But they don't have um those freedoms, and of course, when you see that all around you with social media, etc., it creates conflict and and and the problem with the Middle East is that they were, you know, the states there were arbitrarily determined, right? With a rule ruler and uh different mandate systems, etc. And then of course, some of them discovered oil. Um and uh and then they you know, some of those states trying to export this super religious, you know, so they can combine being super rich but also believing in this uh you know Salafi way, Wahhabi way.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:07

We've gone quite a while. I was gonna bring up Paris, but maybe we just don't have enough time. Um the only reason I was gonna bring it up was to be in contrast to and there's Brevik as two different types of terrorism.

SPEAKER_00 2:30:22

I can I can very quickly go.

SPEAKER_04 2:30:24

If you want to give us the cliff notes, I think that'd be fascinating. Just because I remember um in my own lifetime, that's probably the only terrorist attack that I was really, really close to with the Bali bombings, which were a big deal in Australia, but I was too young to really notice it as the London bombings. But I have a very distinct memory. Uh I was in Europe at the time at a party, and there were a lot of French people at the party, and the news started sort of breaking out because people had their phones. Um, and then we all sort of learnt about what was happening as it was ongoing. And my roommate at the time, who was French, his brother worked in the Secret Service, brother-in-law, apologies, and he was one of the first responders into the um auditorium. Um, anyway, so I remember thinking at the time, this is so unbelievably horrific, but then so surprised at how the French just sort of shrugged shrugged it off and got on with life. Um anyway, that was the reason why I wanted to ask you about Paris.

SPEAKER_00 2:31:22

Yeah, I mean the so what what happened was that um ISIS had a ISIS uh had a special unit. Um so when you entered into ISIS territory, you had to fill in a form of 23 questions. And it was like it's like a control form of who you are, who are your parents, what's your home address, who who got you in contact with ISIS, why did you come, what route did you take, um, etc. So they so every single ISIS recruit has one of those files. Now there was also a box that you can tick that says, what do you want to do? Do you want to to do an operation? In do you want to become a martyr? Or do you want to become a soldier? Or do you want to do an operation? So there was while they were being interviewed also to check that there are no spies, they also identify people who could potentially also be reinserted back into Europe. And in October 2014, when ISIS when the caliphate has been established, there was uh the spokesperson for ISIS called Mohammed Al Adnani, and he made a directive and he said, Look, whatever means you have at your disposal, use it. If it's a truck, a car, a knife, strike at the infidels, strike at the at our enemies. Now, one of the first operations that was undertaken was was against Charlie Hebdo uh in Paris, and there were two brothers called the Kuachi brothers, and they stormed into the Charlie Hebdo newspaper and they gunned down all of them and then they they there was a manhunt for them, but they also had a friend, and and and and these two Kuachi brothers had been trained by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. But their friend, he would later do an operation just a day or two uh afterwards against the Jewish supermarket, um uh Hypercachet and in Paris, which took where they took Jews as hostage and they killed um some of them. Um interestingly, he belonged to ISIS. So you had like a joint operation Al Qaeda and ISIS sort of almost together. Now everyone woke up, you know. Know my god, what what's happening? Uh terrible attack, gunned down the whole sort of it was a it was an assault against Charlie Hebdo and um freedom of expression, freedom of being able to joke about or you know blasphemous uh expressions. Um and then of course in November of 2015 and later on in Brussels in 2016 in March, you had massive operations. Both of these operations are tied together because it's the same people who you know who were participating in planning and supporting, etc. Now, ISIS had identified a whole collection of individuals which they trained for this specific mission to attack Paris and Brussels. And what they did was that they trained them and then they inserted them through the asylum, you know, where the mass migration, mass asylum seeking wave came. They came in through um, you know, the the Balkan route, the uh uh and they came in in the asylum streams. They then met up in particular places, picked up, assembled in uh Molembek, which is a suburb in of Brussels in Belgium. That's where the operational base is, and then the different people were starting to plan the operation. So they attacked uh uh whole two teams attacked uh Stade France. Um they tried to get into the match that was being played. Um I think also the French Prime Minister or French president, uh I don't know which who was at the match, but there was a French political leader at the match. Uh they couldn't get in, they exploded themselves, but there was another team that went roaming in Paris against restaurants, but also ended up in the Bataclan, and in the Bataclan there was a rock band playing, and they began gunning down people there. Uh and it was a massive massacre of people. Um in fact I one of one of my um students uh was in was um had a g was injured with a gunshot um uh in Paris um at one of the restaurants. Um her friends were killed. Um and then they went into hiding and there was a manhunt. Um and as the manhunt went from Paris to Brussels um they they f forwarded the operation and the operation was to walk into Brussels airport, summon Tim, and uh you had two I think two suicide bombers there um who who killed a lot of people in the check-in areas. Uh but there were others who were going to do an operation they did an operation in the in the underground um uh the um in Brussels. Um one of them was a Swede and uh he there was also he was the the person was a Swede um from Malmö and he had been tossed also previously to go to to the shiphol, the Dutch airport, to case out and to see if he can do an operation there at the same time as the Paris attacks, but he didn't do it. He came back and then later on he was arrested. He was convicted for both uh the Paris attacks as well as the Brussels attack. But they were massive attacks. They were all interconnected, and they had exploited the um the lack of law enforcement capability that the Brussels Federal Police have. There's this there are lots of different sorts of federal fiefdoms uh in in Brussels, which makes them vulnerable.

SPEAKER_04 2:38:13

And then they just drove down to Paris?

SPEAKER_00 2:38:16

Uh well, first they did the Paris, yes, they drove from uh Molenbeck uh to Paris and then they did the operation. Um interestingly, they used um prepaid credit cards um in order not to w which are anonymous. Um and one of the consequences of the Paris attack was that you're not allowed to they they they sort of tighten up so that you cannot have anonymous credit cards anymore. You cannot sort of fill them up with money. You have to you have to link an identity to the persons. And interestingly, um th those were very massive attacks that of course also galvanized um European countries to to go into you know high gear to counter this threat.

SPEAKER_04 2:39:11

And how has France been so successful at mitigating further attacks since then?

SPEAKER_00 2:39:17

First of all, there's been so many attacks. There's been also I mean horrific attacks uh um because you have a large pool of of suspects. Uh you have something like uh twenty thousand people that are national security threats. They had they had over two thousand foreign fighters, so they have the highest number of any European country. Some of those who were part of this terror unit within ISIS were French. That's why they focused also on France. France is also tough on the Muslim communities because they believe in lacite and they believe in they believe in secularism and uh the religious should be very private and and uh so but you had a lot of different attacks. You had the NIS attack with a truck driving down Nis uh Promenade you had um other um you had other attacks you had you know they even went into church and beheaded a priest, uh two perpetrators. They went on the tulis and luckily there was a US Marine on board uh but they were going to use you know to use an attack on a on a train. Uh there were so many other attacks. I mean it was like, you know, massive amounts of attacks, but the French have been really good at um using their intelligence, using their military um and in continental Europe there have been massive amounts of attacks that have occurred. But there it's they have a good idea of who they are, they're not starting from zero, uh, and they build up a sort of an intelligence dossier of with, you know, it's like a puzzle. And you have some pieces of puzzle. The big weakness is that the the French have had um the prisons are um the prisons are um um universities for becoming terrorists because they they don't have any de-radicalization.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:30

The French prisons, particularly.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:31

Yes. Um because they there are too many uh inmates that have this problem and uh they they don't do a lot of work. The way they structure the prisons is not particularly good. Um so there are many cases where people have actually be met up with other terrorists in prison uh and then they started planning.

SPEAKER_04 2:41:53

Man, yeah. You're such an encyclopedia of all these terrorist networks and their attacks over time. I just wonder like why have you why do you do this as a career?

SPEAKER_00 2:42:08

Well, you never plan these things, um uh and I never thought that you could have a career in this. And uh I just you know by chance I met I I was interested in in the excitement. I was you know, uh you get adrenaline kicks, and um I was excited about this issue. I saw you know, it it had like this drama to it, and uh I I was drawn to that. It's almost like uh uh you know real life Netflix. Um and then of and then of course uh you happen to place yourself in situations um out of curiosity, out of interest, uh as a challenge to try to figure out um how do these cells work? How can you how does intelligence services find them? And what is this sort of traycraft? It's almost like you know uh uh you know action movie with spy movie combined, and and this sphere is something that most people don't think about when they go to bed at night. They just think, oh well, we're safe today, etc. But behind the scenes are an army of people working day and night, just like in the movies, to try to to to to keep you safe. And then also it's not just excitement, it's also about you know doing something meaningful and doing something unique and and um and also changing people's lives. Um also being affected by I mean I think you get a little bit you get affected by horrible things that you see. Um but also you think about the victims and look, you know, you and I can go to bed at night, we can sort of put put off the light. It's not our families that have died in all this. Uh we can go on with our lives, we'll jump on to the next incident. But when you start meeting people and they become your friends or the you you knew who they are, etc. You then um think you you then think it's important. Um I remember when I first started this standing in this Locky Bee Chapel and there was a book with all the memories of all the all the victims and they had a f had a you know, I had a photograph and I I was just thinking, my God, this could be me, this could be anyone. And their life was was uh you know the taken out without you know in a horrible way. Um what happened on the Locky Bee plane was that the pressure between you know the depressurized cabin and the outside pressure also meant that when the bomb exploded on board on t on uh 30,000 feet level, um the you know the nose cone of a Boeing 747 broke up, you know, w almost like opening a can. Uh so it was bending backwards uh and one piece of the front end hit the motor. Um they've determined that after the fact. Um and of course everyone lost consciousness and you would be killed by the debris um as the plane is breaking up, etc. Um, but there there's also been they've also sort of i it takes about 35 seconds before uh w you know going from 30,000 feet down to the ground um where you will die from the impact as well. Um but but d just the thought of because I fly all the time, just the thought of this happening up there and that actually you you may wake up. You may wake up the last sort of seven seconds, um and and that's the theory that they had that there were some that did wake up, but but they probably wouldn't know what was happening around them. But anyway, when you stand there in that chapel and you look at those pictures and you think about their families and you think about, you know, how how come they had to die. Uh I think uh often about the 35, you know, kids who went to Syracuse University who were my my age who who never came home to their families. And and to some extent there are I mean there are lots of different victims. They're also victims in the war against terrorism that states have gone too far in the military interventions, etc., in the in different ways, that you also affect other people. But unless you yourself have been affected by either the war on terrorism or by terrorists themselves, it's difficult to comprehend. And uh so therefore you uh you know you do this. I've also been I want to say something positive, um and that is I've met incredible people. So one of the persons I met was um who I look up to. Um I met uh I met um uh this UN diplomat who resolved the Western hostage crisis in Lebanon, Gian Domenico Pico, who was a two-meter tall um Italian diplomat who was wearing dapper Italian suits, etc., who let himself be kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon four times. Why? Because he won he had he was on a personal mission to help these hostages. He didn't have to do that. It was not in part of his job description, etc. And after he resolved that issue, he called me up ten years later when I had met him. He said, Magnus, I need you. And he said, I can't go because there's a hostage situation between Israel and Hezbollah, so I'm gonna send you. And how can I say no to that? So it's been a it's been a series of accidental encounters and uh things that have happened. There was never a plan like this. Um but also it's interesting, it's exciting, but it's also one of the reasons why I wrote the book is uh you also get tired. And you know, you need you need to close part of your life in a chapter and then put it down because my kids uh um I was I was away a lot when my kids grew up uh on different uh tri overseas travel. Uh so I thought, well, I made uh you know, while I remember it, I'll I'll I'll write it down.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:01

So the book is also almost a conclusion to a career as well?

SPEAKER_00 2:49:06

Well, you never know when you're gonna go, right? So I've learned that.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:08

But uh serendipity can come back.

SPEAKER_00 2:49:11

Exactly. No, no, but it it's um while I still remember everything, and and while there is um you know makes sense to me, uh, I thought it was about time that uh you know, if I wait another ten years, um you know who knows what will happen during that time. So I I wanted to write that, and that was my that's my my story. And if you have a book about your life, then you will be there forever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:35

So it's an amazing thing. Yeah. Um and you've been so generous with your time. So please tell me if I'm taking too much of it. But just a few more quick ones if we can get them out of the way. Although that is a perfect place to end it. There are a few questions I haven't asked yet.

SPEAKER_00 2:49:49

You can re rearrange.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:51

Um a tough one to start off. How much are Swedes to blame for the failed integration between the parallel societies in this country?

SPEAKER_00 2:50:01

I think um I think integration and segregation, etc., goes multiple ways. So I think Swedes um are very open and very welcoming. Um we are a consensus-loving country. We we we don't like conflict with people. You laugh because you could probably recognize this. Uh and um we we mean well. Uh we are we have an image of ourselves as the moral guardians of the world. Uh, we have been welcoming people into the country, but we're very poor at taking care of them. So, you know, the government policy has been to be generous. Uh but then of course at the local level they are they are, I wouldn't say dumped, but they are placed. And and they are, you know, you have this the problem is that the ones who live in socially segregated areas, we have 60 places that are socially segregated, where the police have uh more difficult time operating. They can operate in all areas, but they have difficulty. And you have criminal elements, you have parallel society, you have drugs, you have other things that are happening. The problem is that those who live in those areas, they the ones who can make it out of there, they will move. And then you have more people coming in who are socially weak. In other words, they they they don't know the language, they have maybe large families, they're culturally far away from society, they're not educated enough, etc. So I think part part of the issue is of course you have to have agency yourself to be able to to lift yourself and to be willing not to encapsulate yourself into your own society, etc. And I think maybe there Sweden is a bit uh too generous when it comes to giving out uh public money to different um uh associations and and the cultural associations, etc., because it doesn't lead so much to integration, it leads to segregation, it may lead to pulling apart society. But I think that your question is more sort of general in relation to what responsibility do ordinary Swedes have, yeah. I think so. Yeah. So it's not government policy.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52:28

Um no, I think uh I think uh Swedes have a responsibility to be open to foreign cultures and to have that sort of recipe uh receptiveness. Um the difficulty is for some of the societies is to interact with a particular dimension of Swedish uh culture and that is uh alkohol. Um so a lot of our midsummers celebration, others revolve around alcohol. Now that doesn't have to be a problem, but normally it's sort of you know you you uh you're not part of that uh way. But you also have to be receptive of being receptive as a person to other cultures. Problem is that many Swedes they never travel to really experience other cultures on their terms. So they don't go to the Middle East a lot because uh if you, you know, unless you're from the area. Um uh and or they may not go to Africa, they may not go to, you know, I I'm generalizing, but I think that most people go to holiday destinations just to have fun, to swimming, sunbathing, etc. And I'm not talking about the United States, I'm not talking about West. Well, I'm talking about Spain, etc. But but you know, also the US maybe, but but it's not to the developing world where you have different cultural norms, where you have different dimensions that are radically different from our society. If you're not then exposed to that, you're then not as open to be open. So you close yourself with saying, look, it's our way or the highway. Right? This is what they're gonna say. So look, accept our rules or get out.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:20

Yeah. But that's kind of okay, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 2:54:23

It's okay to Swedes don't say that. No, it's okay, but that that's why like certain parties, certain parties have grown as a result of the fact that they don't want to deal with the real issue, the real world. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:34

That's that's true, but to the to your point, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:37

No.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:38

I think that mentality is the same in the UK, the US, and Australia. No. I I think Australia is amazing when it comes to welcoming um other cultures. No. But we make it super explicit. This is what it is to be an Australian. The Swedes, it's all implicit. It's all implicit. You will never be told this is actually how you were supposed to behave.

SPEAKER_00 2:55:00

And this is exactly you you have actually put put your finger on exactly what is the problem, is that you have to have very strict guidelines. And we have to say, look, there is a there are some rules here, and my red line, this is why I do all of this work, what motivates me is to ensure that our religion, democracy, rule of law, individual rights and freedoms from gender equality is upheld. That you're not allowed to infringe on someone else's human rights. You're not allowed to tell your wife, uh, your you know who or anyone you cannot restrict them from dating, from marrying, from you know all the freedoms that is our religion. Um and there we come into conflict with some of the cultures and religions, uh, religious norms, etc. And I think we are super bad at uh actually so saying okay, this this is. The boundaries, this is, you know, you operate within. This is what you need to do. And then the rest of the time you can do it. But as long as you respect all these rights, and we're never gonna yield, you know, we have to spoon feed them. You have to learn the language, you have to get a job, you have to at least try to do that, etc. But instead, we are a social welfare society where it's more it's equally as profitable to have many kids and not work uh and stay at home. And and you know, if you come from a patriarchal society, uh when you have many, many kids, it's difficult to start work uh anyway. So we have to have some limits to how far do we pay different um uh diff you know how how far should the social welfare state go? And I I think we've been really bad and I get upset every time I go up out to these sort of different areas because we then become a very uh unequal society. We will there will always be unequality in societies. But when you look at the sort of conditions, most people just want to get by out in these areas. Um but they have to navigate two things. One is gang criminals, and the other is religious extremism, who wants to sort of tell you what to do and not to do, and they and who spy on you. So uh and that becomes a very unsafe environment. Uh you know, if your kids are running on the street, etc., the likelihood of them becoming a gang criminal, etc., being groomed into something is is getting younger and younger. So brutal. So brutal. Yeah. So we have a lot to learn from our neighbors, um, Denmark particularly. They also break up uh socioeconomically deprived areas. So they actually play with the parameters of if you look at an area that's socially deprived, how many people are unemployed? Who lives in these um, you know, how many people are unemployed who live in a in a particular building? Um uh what is their age brackets? Uh are the students, are they pensioners, etc.? So they they don't let these segregated areas sort of fester.

SPEAKER_04 2:58:12

Yeah, that must be super difficult to uh actually pull the trigger on there.

SPEAKER_00 2:58:19

Well, I mean I I I in 2015, right after Charlie Hebdo, m the mayor of Copenhagen came to me and said, Would you would you take on the task of of leading the anti-radicalization action plan from for our city? Uh and we had one meeting and then of course there was a terrorist attack in Copenhagen against Lars Wilkes, uh cartoonist uh, but also against the Jewish synagogue. Um as part of my task to put together this action plan with the police and social services and others, I went out and visited where this terrorist came from. And in the neighborhood I found um that they are not as socially deprived as the ones in Sweden. Uh they actually had something really interesting going. Uh, particularly the housing associations were doing a fantastic job. They were having um uh you know career coaching for women so women could get a job. There were elderly males in in living in the area who were respected, who took care of y the youth, and um they were delivering newspapers and and um commercial newspapers, etc., to all the residents. They there were doctors and nurses locally who were they you you don't go to the doctor, they come to you, right? So they would collect them there. You had gang criminals um who had defected or had left the environment, who were working in in containers. Um and what were they doing in the containers? They were repairing cars or bikes for free. So if your car, if you're a resident and your car broke down, you you would go to the gang criminal, he will fix a car for free. Or the youngsters would come come with the bikes and say I have a flat tire, and they would fix it for free. So if you create connections locally in housing estates with the residents and you have some structure, um then you're gonna be okay. Yeah. And we you know, easy, easy concepts, easy way of you know, how do you relate, how do you create trust. But you know, it's not done in enough.

SPEAKER_04 3:00:46

Look, I really can't uh keep taking your time, so a few quick ones. Yeah. See how fast you can get through it. What's the most effective propaganda you've ever seen?

SPEAKER_00 3:01:06

ISIS movies who are super slick who actually uses the latest uh animation and uh but also in innovative way it creates the feeling that you want to belong to this.

SPEAKER_04 3:01:26

What is the scariest terror group you've ever studied? ISIS. Why?

SPEAKER_00 3:01:33

They're so brutal beheading um this sort of complete lack of any boundaries even when you kill. So I've seen ISIS movies where they have shown w that you you know how do you stab someone and they had hung up a person on a fence uh in white. A real corpse. A real no, a real person alive. Oh shit. And it was like a cooking course, right? So it's like this is how you do it, and and the person took out a knife, like a huge uh you know steak knife, quite a massive cooking, you know, cooking knife, and walked over and uh and stabbed the person multiple times. Um also horrible to watch beheading videos uh when they are sewing uh on ahead and uh when they are doing very cruel things and and there was there has not been any terrorist organization that has been so cruel like ISIS besides Hamas. And that's why the Israelis say uh Hamas is ISIS uh not ideologically, I mean they're similar, but but you know there may be some overlapping dimensions, but but um in terms of cruelty, um ISIS and Hamas is pretty close.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:02

And um how much more power does ISIS have?

SPEAKER_00 3:03:06

ISIS is still around, they have a massive amount of um pulling power in uh in the Sahel in Africa, uh um and there's nothing stopping them there. Um you have ISIS ISIL Khorasan province in Afghanistan who who are are are are bent on on hitting us in the west. Um there are territories still that are have plenty of ISIS individuals, so you can't really sort of eradicate ISIS. Uh it's also in Southeast Asia, Pakistan, uh others. Um and so you have all these groups still there.

SPEAKER_04 3:03:47

There's a whole I was uh one of my questions here, I won't ask it to you, but it was about the if you could lay on a map, lay on the table a map and just go through each continent and identify terrorist organizations. Um that's a super confronting thing to do. Yeah, because you as you were talking, I haven't thought about Africa for these last three hours, but as you mentioned, it's like, oh yeah, of course, there is millions of people there that are susceptible to radicalization.

SPEAKER_00 3:04:16

And yeah, you and and you have and they have little defense against that, and they and ISIL is using uh local grievances to uh expand, and they are expanding across the Sahel, West Africa, uh, Niger, Mozambique, uh you have all the all the way across to Al-Shabaab, who which is another organization that uh is super brutal and uh is still there. Uh so you have many, many of these ungoverned spaces or difficult to control spaces that are that are quite um um susceptible to uh different forms of groups that uh is going to take advantage. Uh so yeah now we face a huge huge um struggle ahead and it will never be resolved in in my kids' lifetime.

SPEAKER_04 3:05:09

That that would actually almost just be worth like a short little video or even short little podcast um geographically mapping out terrorist terrorist organizations throughout the world. Yeah. Um but this is a weird question. Are you a bit of a historian? Do you cast your eye back? Okay, is there terrorist organizations always throughout history?

SPEAKER_00 3:05:34

Yes. You have uh organizations, uh the zealots, um, you have uh uh you know anarchists uh group uh in and around First World War, you you have uh um yes, you have had uh also I mean thugs, uh uh so you have had a lot of sort of you have had a lot of uh groups that have confronted adversaries throughout history that uh that uh exists. Um But also, I mean they the terrorist groups they also look towards the future in a way, for example, ISIS, what does ISIS want? You would think what does ISIS want? They they they want to herald in the doomsday uh by establishing an Islamic State and by confronting and defeating Shia. They hate Shia more than they hate uh the West. So they they they they they defeat Shia and then they're going to conquer Rome and the West, and they're gonna conquer the world.

SPEAKER_04 3:06:41

Am I ignorant in thinking that this is some type of mind rot?

SPEAKER_00 3:06:46

Well, they uh have a strong belief in their doomsday. This is their doomsday prophecies. So so they want uh to herald in the doomsday, and they they feel that they are at the spearhead of this, and that they when the last battles and when the last sort of the day of reckoning will come, they are saved. So it's about saving yourself, it's about becoming saved. And that's why they they uh have conjured up sort of rewards in heaven, you know, with 72 virgins, with you know, land of milk and honey. Uh and you know, it's like, okay, what's what's life worth if not struggling for that? And then that has become for many, uh this is not just radicals, this is uh, you know, for Muslims in general, uh and for others as well. Christians have also uh uh Christians and other religions um and and basically um i it's sort of making uh sense and meaning uh out of life because otherwise you're just born and then you die, and then there's nothing.

SPEAKER_04 3:07:52

But is that so bad? I mean, I don't know. I I between you and me and everyone listening, but I'm I'm working on big ambition is a book, but multiple sort of long essays on the philosophy of absurdism. Yeah. Uh which is a worldview, which essentially just totally finds meaning in the idea that we are an impossible fluke of evolution. Yeah, we're meat and bones, we're here for a couple spins, and then we're forgotten. Yes. Um Which is true, which I think is the case.

SPEAKER_00 3:08:28

I think it's true because because uh you think about life, you know, different stages in life, and then you you think of what it's like when you are a child and you have your supportive family and your parents, etc. And then all of a sudden they're like uh trees. Yeah. And people and then and then and your important trees die, and you never see other people dying. And and they've had m a mark through me. So they made a mark through me, and then maybe I have children and I make some some marks, etc. But it's you know, sometimes you know when you sometimes if you have done something stupid, maybe it's just time to go to bed. You wake up and there's a new day, and then and then you know you've forgotten the stupid stuff you did the day before. But that day, sometimes you know that your days is gonna come to an end. And then the question is, okay, are you happy with how you made a dent in your life? Absolutely. Yeah. So you have to be content with uh this, and that that is why given the finite nature, how do you find meaning and purpose? And you probably do that because we are very social beings, and one of the worst things about Western societies and stuff is that they don't value family in the way in which other societies may do, or creating social meaning, particularly for elderly people. And I think that a lot of elderly people I sometimes walk around, I think about this because my um my mom used to run one of those uh places, and I grew up with that, um uh taking care of of old people. Uh and I didn't think about it at the time when when they were doing that, but I think about it today uh that there are so many lonely people that are old and sitting in their apartment. The only social connection they make is when they go shopping, or when if they can get out, they and what kind of you know, that's a sad yeah, but that's a sad way of checking out because they're going to check out. So that's a sad way. So the worst possible way is probably to die lonely, uh because no one will actually even know that the tree will fall um uh in this forest.

SPEAKER_04 3:10:45

No, but that is I mean, yeah, we're all guilty of it.

unknown 3:10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:10:50

And that's what religion becomes uh yeah, I guess so a way to make meaning in a different way.

SPEAKER_04 3:10:56

Uh I haven't been able to come around to sympathizing with it yet. No. Um and also, like, is there a greater indication that religion is man-made than this sort of juvenile, sexually repressed idea that glory on earth is 72 virgins and milk and honey? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I I think it's a teenager's idea of a good day.

SPEAKER_00 3:11:18

Exactly. No, no, I but I think uh I think uh but we have to respect uh the fact that people believe in different things. Uh absolutely if they want their own. If the if people want to believe that, that's fine.

SPEAKER_04 3:11:32

Yeah, no, absolutely. Um you actually answered this earlier. I ask every guest the role that serendipity has played in their life, and you were sort of inadvertently answering that question by talking about the random walk of your career, going from here to there. But I wonder if anything sp special stands out.

SPEAKER_00 3:11:51

I think about being receptive to unique individual uh making connections that sometimes you know people become very self-serving in that when they meet people they want to get something out of it. But if they see goodness in people and that you get along together well, that can lead to great and beautiful things. And and if you're open to that, so sometimes you know people think that they can come into social networks and that they can use those social networks to get somewhere. Sometimes they can, but but often it is about that personal connection, the chemistry that you make with a person that can never be bought or and and that's also beautiful in the sense that you don't know where it will lead. So I mean, one of the persons that I met along my journey, we became friends, um, was I don't know if you've seen the the the Netflix series Fauda? No. No. So you should see the neck Netflix series Fauda, which and Fauda is about this sort of unit, the Israeli unit that uh exists in reality that goes behind Palestinian enemy lines to try to find terrorists and find others. And there's and the main person in that in that sort of series is called Doron. And you will notice him because he is the main character. He's bald and he's relatively cool, as cool as a cucumber. Now I met the real life Doran in Israel, and this real life Doran was a super hard guy who used to interrogate people who and I asked him once, you know, what is what's the most effective way of interrogating someone? He said, Look, it's not about exerting physical pressure, even though sometimes they can help. Um, it's about the psychological dance. If you can get them to talk, then then you have something to pull. But I used to go with him uh um and we would eat um and he would he loved Frank Sinatra. So he would be on the radio when we were going in his Range Rover, he would be playing Frank Sinatra and singing all along. I mean, the whole way. And when we came to the restaurant, we were sitting there, you know, seaside restaurant somewhere in Israel, and he would just sort of walk up and grab a mic and he would sing to the entire restaurant. And so he would force me out of my comfort zone because I had to join him. So, so and I hate singing.

SPEAKER_04 3:14:41

And there's footage of you karaoke out there.

SPEAKER_00 3:14:43

There's no footage because it was before a lot of people sort of social media, but um, but you know, you would never experience that. So it doesn't have to be super serious, you just have to like people, and their serendipity is you have to be open when you meet those kind of people to invest in those people, not to try to get something out of them, but just enjoy being with them, and that's that's life. Beautiful, well said, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:11

What a place to finish it. Exactly. Well, we've been charging on for almost three and a half hours, so thank you so much for being generous with your time.

SPEAKER_00 3:15:19

Has it been that long? Well, okay. I apologize. Yeah, I like to talk a lot.

SPEAKER_04 3:15:25

No, it it uh it was very compelling, and I think uh there will still be a lot of people around now.

SPEAKER_00 3:15:33

Yeah, well, um Godspeed. Lovely, thank you, Magnus. Thank you.