The West’s Worm 25 Years On

Twenty-five years on, we know what we have become, but we struggle to admit it; and through a strange balancing act, we have chosen to reverse the blame: the ideology of the aggressors is increasingly overlooked, whilst that of the victims is increasingly scrutinised. Twenty-five years after the attack on the Twin Towers, Western public opinion finds itself having to contend with a very dangerous undercurrent, as a result of which what jihadism targeted on 11 September – open society with its idea of freedom – has, by different means, become the target of a section of the West. Twenty-five years after the attack on the Twin Towers, it is easier to find the West – which over these twenty-five years has learnt to defend itself – in the dock of international public opinion than those who, twenty-five years ago, struck at the heart of one of the symbols of the West, with its idea of freedom. It is no coincidence that, twenty-five years on, in our collective memory, alongside the aeroplanes that brought down two skyscrapers, resulting in nearly three thousand deaths, each of us carries many other images: the usual ridiculous conspiracy theories, the usual hidden truths, the usual people who knew but did nothing, and then the West’s ‘mistaken’ wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, exported democracy, neo-colonialism, the mistakes and horrors committed by democracies defending themselves—which, when they defend themselves, always get it wrong, whether they defend themselves with weapons, with laws, or by expanding the scope of action of the security forces. The West, struck by suicide attacks on 11 September twenty-five years ago, has been put on trial by the West itself, which has gradually chosen to push the ideological roots of the attack – by which we mean radical Islamism – into the background, and has chosen instead to shine the spotlight on the freedoms that the West is alleged to have violated in defending its own freedom.

Kamel Daoud, an irreverent commentator, wrote a few days ago in Il Point that, twenty-five years after 9/11, the event is no longer being erased through conspiracy theories, but rather through the reversal of responsibility. The facts are not being denied. It is known that al-Qaeda hijacked the planes, struck the Twin Towers and killed thousands of people. But, according to Daoud, over time a narrative has taken hold in which the attackers are seen less and less as aggressors and increasingly as the product of America’s failings, Western wars and its relationship with the Muslim world. And the risk one can discern today when taking a critical look at the legacy of twenty-five years of the fight against Islamic jihadism is clear, says Daoud: if the West is portrayed as the root cause of everything, terrorism risks becoming a reaction, an act of revenge, almost an understandable response to a prior injustice. And however much that date may be commemorated, the risk is that 11 September will be forgotten – not because it is no longer discussed, but because we cease to clearly remember the ideology that fuelled those attacks.

Since 11 September 2001, the free West has been living in a situation not dissimilar to that which Israel has faced for decades – jihadism remains the main terrorist threat in the EU: In 2025, it accounted for 24 of the 45 attacks carried out, failed or foiled, 347 of the 486 arrests and five of the six victims caused by terrorism – yet it tries by every means to forget this, driven by a sense of guilt. Tamir Hayman is the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel and, a few days ago, contributed to a report organised by the Council on Foreign Relations marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of 11 September. Hayman does not merely draw a parallel between Israel and the rest of the West regarding the post-11 September era, and the way in which global jihad has forced liberal democracies to rethink the protection of their citizens – with new border controls, intelligence coordination, biometric checks, international cooperation and cyber-intelligence capabilities – which is why today a large number of European countries that demonise Israel in order to protect their own freedom rely on Israeli technology (Frontex, for instance, uses Israeli Aerospace Industries’ Maritime Heron drones in the Mediterranean for maritime surveillance). He goes a step further, however, and observes that the twenty-five years since 11 September underscore how democracies often overlook the ideological dimension of the threat and, in doing so, end up underestimating what drives those who threaten our freedom.

Twenty-five years on, we know what we have become, but we struggle to admit it. And the paradox facing the model of an open society—which was targeted by the attackers twenty-five years ago— a blend of individual freedoms, economic freedoms, democratic freedoms, freedom of movement, and freedom to pursue prosperity through the mechanisms of capitalism, is that it continues to be regarded as a target to be struck by jihadists, yet has also begun to be transformed into a target to be struck by those who, twenty-five years on, ought to realise that the West is not protected merely by screening aeroplanes: it is protected with care, with love, with attention, by taking seriously the threat posed by those who wish to destroy it from the outside and by those who, today, tragically, wish to weaken it from within.