The lure of easy answers

When I first received the schedule for Reimagining Europe back in the summer, the broad theme for this blog was ‘Values, identity and belonging’. Coming to write this in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Friday 13 November in Paris, in which 129 people died and hundreds more were injured, it now seems a dismally prescient brief.

The violence carried out by Islamic State threatens to drive a wedge of fundamental differences between the communities that already coexist uneasily in Europe, playing neatly into narratives that mass migration from the Middle East cannot be reconciled with the values of the existing populations. The bombings and shootings were carried out on a Friday night in packed venues – a football stadium, bars and restaurants, a concert hall – symbols to IS of the decadent West.

The immediate reaction, alongside the huge police presence throughout the capital, was to tighten border controls. Elements of the press made much of the fact that one of the terrorists appeared to be a Syrian refugee. It quickly transpired that a Syrian passport found on one of the body of one terrorist was a forgery – a ‘chess move’ intended by IS to turn public opinion against the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the country.

In fact, all of those positively identified so far were European nationals who were radicalised at home. In an era of globalisation and connectivity, in which IS recruits via social media and communicates using encrypted messaging, there is no need to import terrorism physically – but, from a strategic point of view, there is much to be gained from people thinking they are opening their borders to a flood of hatred and violence.

In such circumstances, Christians must be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16). The war is one of propaganda as well as guns – with one fuelling the other – and we navigate a minefield of genuine misunderstanding, spin and deliberate misinformation as we try to find and communicate solutions to the challenges facing us. Our obligations towards refugees, ‘the alien within your gates’, risk being presented as sheltering the enemy; the serious tensions between member states projected onto unwitting scapegoats seeking to flee the terror of which we now accuse them. Easy answers are attractive.

For the UK, there is a real danger that such propaganda will sway opinion irrevocably towards the Exit option, short-circuiting meaningful discussion of what is really in our mutual best interests and deciding the outcome of the campaign before it has properly started. The complex and nuanced questions of EU membership – the economic cases for and against, the protections and concessions involved, matters of sovereignty and independence, our identity within but distinct from Europe, the pros and cons of free movement and access to the labour market – all risk being brushed aside in favour of the talisman of our 20-mile-wide moat.

About the author

Guy Brandon is the Research Director at the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge. He joined the Jubilee Centre in 2006 as a part-time researcher and author and is now its Research Director and resident author. He is a trained counsellor and freelance writer, and has a degree, MPhil and PhD in Old Testament theology from Cambridge University. He is married with two children.