Following the Event Around. 9/11's Acting Imperatives in American, French and Dutch National Newspapers

In this paper I argue that an interesting way to investigate the transformative capacity of events is to trace the various acting imperatives for change that people attach to them in the years afterwards. I apply this method by following the acting imperatives that are being related to 9/11 in American, French and Dutch national newspapers, during 5 different periods: 9/11 itself, the Madrid train attacks in 2004, some ‘normal’ weeks 5 and 10 years afterwards, and the assaults on Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, in 2015. The analysis shows some patterns in the imperatives that are similar in the three countries, but at the same time indicates clear national differences. In the United States, 9/11 is an attack on the country’s safety within its own territory, which incites insuring safety both internally (creating the Patriot Act) as well as internationally (invading Afghanistan and Iraq). In France, it is essentially an attack on another (Western) country, with little consequences for domestic policies. And in the Netherlands, 9/11 becomes an assault of Muslims on Western lifestyles, which fosters the implementation of assimilationist integration policies.