We Should Relegate Terrorists To The Obscurity Of Their Own Infamy

There are at least three reasons why we should stop publicizing the names of violent jihadists who commit acts of terror. The first is that by doing so – by publishing and republishing their faces, living or (especially) dead – they become globally recognized characters in the show­-business side of this terrorist war, thus fulfilling one of their keenest desires. Consider how during the Bataclan siege in Paris the killers demanded that their hostages call news channels in the moments before the massacre. And is it by chance that the mass murderer in Nice left his identity card in his truck for all to see?

The second is that by going into detail, as we are wont to do, about these zombie lives, by following the trail from a childhood that is invariably “unhappy” to a “sudden” radicalization, by dwelling on the putative “mystery” of a monster who also happened to be a good father, a normal husband, a friendly neighbor always willing to lend a hand, we are taking the shortest route to the banalization of evil, which we have long known to be a grave danger. Why do we need to be told, for example, that the man who slit the throat of a priest in Normandy had a “brilliant personality”? What useful information are we getting when we are shown, over and over, the widow of one of the Charlie Hebdo killers telling us that even now, a year on, she still hasn’t uncovered the slightest warning of her husband’s radicalization?