Media and radicalisation: Grappling uncertainties in the new media ecology – radicalisation gone wild

As part of her evidence to the UK government appointed Iraq Inquiry,1 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director General of MI5, 2002-2007, directly connected the UK’s role in the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 to an increased threat of radicalisation in Britain. She stated:

Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – not a whole generation, a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam.