Terrorist Manifestos

This book examines terrorist manifestos as integral components of political violence. Rather than treating these texts as propaganda or operational signalling, it approaches them as structured acts of meaning-making where personal grievance, ideological conviction, and societal rupture converge.

Through a series of case studies, including Anders Behring Breivik, Dylann Roof, Brenton Tarrant, John Earnest, Patrick Crusius, and Juraj Krajčík, the book traces how manifestos articulate, justify, and ultimately enable acts of violence. It shows that these texts do not merely explain violence after the fact, but participate in its construction.

Moving beyond dismissal or condemnation, the analysis situates manifestos within broader cultural and political dynamics, revealing how they draw on existing narratives while reshaping them into calls for action. In doing so, the book challenges prevailing approaches that treat such writings solely as threat indicators or extremist artefacts, and instead argues for their careful and critical reading as part of understanding contemporary political violence.

Written in a clear and analytically grounded style, this monograph offers a distinctive framework for examining the relationship between language, ideology, and violence. It will be of interest to scholars of terrorism, political violence, and security studies, as well as readers concerned with the role of ideas in shaping acts of destruction.

Monika Gabriela Bartoszewicz is a Professor of Societal Security at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, where she leads the Secure Societies research group. A field-driven political scientist, she examines how societies imagine, construct, and respond to threat, from terrorism and migration to the politics of crisis and resilience.