In November it’ll be 10 years from that dreadful November night in Paris and I feel that Europeans *for VERY good reasons* don’t talk about this much anymore.
So… how was it?
In November it’ll be 10 years from that dreadful November night in Paris and I feel that Europeans *for VERY good reasons* don’t talk about this much anymore.
So… how was it?
Comments
I don’t remember fear spreading across Europe for one. I was in London about 500 metres away during one of the ‘terror’ attacks. It was handled quickly by the Police etc. Lots of unmarked police vehicles and vans doing the terrorism response.
Sadly in this day and age it’s not that uncommon or unexpected.
Its not talked about much just like we don’t discuss the Kobe earthquake, boxing day tsunami or 9/11 very often. I think that’s a worldwide thing not a European response.
I still felt safe as it is still a very rare occurrence.
Romania. People were saying “lucky us we are to poor for this” or “if they come they will steal the bomb before they plant it”.
So no fear or problems, terorist attacks are extremely rare here. But we still have people fighting with swords
Military patrols in the streets and at every event in the city.
Anxiety everytime there is a loud of noise in public place (still kinda exists tho).
Fake bomb alerts all the time at school or train station.
The London attacks were sorted by police action, so did not disturb me. However it showed the slowness of response to general public to say ‘all is well’. A message that should have been much more public.
No fearspreading. I just remember the livestream beheadings and that – besides feeling very sorry for the victims- I thought what shitty little fucks this Isis ballsacks must be.
I was 18 and what i remember very clearly is when ISIS put on a video threatening Spain in Spanish and we thought it was hilarious because we found out the terrorist had a Spanish mom and we called him “El hijo de la Tomasa” (Tomasa’s son).
Obviously I remember the attack in Las Ramblas and arrests like every week. But I don’t remember widespread fear. Lots of police in places with lots of people.
Thankfully my country was relatively unaffected due to lack of permanent migrants staying here, but man I remember the tents full of people near Keleti Railway station and II. János Pál pápa square in Budapest.
It was distopian. It was like I wasn’t even in Hungary.
Reported collective sexual violence “Taharrush” in 2016 but after 10 years you can find no followup. Now we assume “deep state” silenced all the victims or it was a nothingburger.
Funny to see that some people are like artifacts from the past and they are still living the same anti-immigrant language.
I don’t think we had any terrorist attacks in Greece, but I remember the news, a bit. Charlie Hebdeu and the like. I was finishing the 6th class and entering highschool.
No big deal. And on top of that look at the countless accidents happened at Christmas markets in EU during these past 10 years. We’re getting accustomed to this crap…
It was in a region that had unrest as long as I live. For me it was just another page of the same people fighting similar ones.
All I remember is its brutality with beheadings that were filmed and spread through social media. I was never tempted to watch any of those.
I actually do remember the fear being wide spread indeed. Specifically remember a lot of people doubting about going to big events like the Pride in Amsterdam. People had second thoughts about places with big crowds. Most people still went anyways but it was definitely present imo
Ten years ago I lived in Cyprus, and there was not even a hint of fear that a terrorist attack is a possibility.
Until very recently, Cyprus has a mostly-neutral diplomatic outlook which kept it off the radar of most foreign terrorist groups. Since the 90s the internal terrorist groups were also dealt with.
Felt like a big overreaction as per usual. Odds were 100x that I get killed by a drunk driver or even a vending machine falling ontop of me.
In the past ten years about 32 thousand people died in traffic in France and 160 thousand were seriously injured (2 million minor injuries).
The news about the middle east was terrifying though, I felt bad for the locals having to live there.
The intercity train called Isis InterCity to the town Szombathely had to be renamed because of it.
Originally, it was named after the Egyptian goddess, because Szombathely used to be an Ancient Roman city called Savaria (Saint Martin (the one with the geese) was born there!) and one of the ruined buildings found is the Temple of Isis which is fully reconstructed and can be seen.
I remember my older sister being freaked about about the vehicle that crashed into Berlin Christmas market , because her friend was there 2015. There was a deep (but not panic) fear, but also a deep misunderstanding of the intentions. Or not being able to understand this primitive emotion that is responsible for these terror attacks. We forget about it because theres no reason to look for explanation in this sick view of world that isis and other organizations carry.
I Remember sheer panic in the school group chat.
The group was mostly inactive, people would write there to ask for homework and schedule interrogations but when the Parisian events unfolded everyone was texting trying to update one another on the matter, it was surreal as if that event had singlehandedly brought us into adulthood. (We were all 15-16 y.o. at that time).
On a funny sidenote my friend copypasted a wall of text summoning up the chronology of the events but at the end of the text that little rascal made a slight modification. He added “PORCO DI DIO” in caps lock (in Italian that’s akin to writing down the N word) and sent the text, a girl from the groupchat copypasted that same message without noticing the addendum she then sent the same text to her family groupchat who were known to be extremely conservative and religious.
She texted back in tears shouting that she was grounded for the month, that made the whole class have a laugh and distracted us from the terror we were feeling.
Scary times, I was never really scared that anything would happen to me but it was just a ticking time bomb (literally) when you were gonna hear about the next incident on the news. And it just kept happening over and over and it felt like it was something that we’d just have to get used to.
I was doing my military service in 2015 and we had one guy of Iraqi-descent in my company who headed off to fight ISIS shortly after we completed service. IIRC he was killed a few months later.
I don’t remember “fear spreading across Europe.”
More of: “The bloody idiots did it again. Halfbrained morons. And I am so sorry for the people who died and their families.
Now, back to normal.
Those disgraceful idiots with peas for brains aren’t going to stop us from living our lives freely in our democratic and secular countries. On the contrary, we are going to appreciare our freedom even more.”
Fear spreading was not something I’d say was happening over here. It was mostly irrelevant, too far away
I’m from Slovenia which was supposed to be a transition country, but ultimately some refugees stayed.
When there were big groups going through the country, they (ab)used the public transport system – they went on the buses, but not all had money to pay, so (someone from government or the public transport companies) said to just let them ride the bus to wherever they wanted / needed.
I was studying in university at the time and was using public transport to get around.
One time I was on the bus when they came aboard on one of the bus stations. They were more kind and respectful than an average teenager, even if they didn’t speak even a bit of English.
I didn’t really feel fear about the refugees. I felt more fear that someone from Europe would go on a killing spree on those refugees, like in the USA school shootings.
I dont have the idea this is a thing in The Netherlands. When specifically Islam related terrorism the murder of film director Theo van Gogh is probably the most prominent incident. Thats probably the turning point in Dutch history.
I think we were all just waiting for the next thing. It really was something every 2 weeks when it was at the worst and for me aswell who lives in Stockholm i started to avoid the metro, the city parts and drottninggatan in particular. I guess i am happy about that now…
If i feelt like this in Stockholm i truly can’t imagine how it was to live in London or Paris during that time
I found it pretty scary. Me and two friends of mine were watching that event unfold live on the news, all of us just turned 20 and felt like the world was safe, because where we were living at the time was safe and nothing ever happened there (somewhere in the UK). I also really like Eagles of Death Metal and had almost gone to that event with those two friends, but we couldn’t get the money together. So I guess a lot of the fear came from the fact that I could have been there if we’d gotten that last bit of money needed.
It was talked about a lot around me after that for a month or so and then it was never talked about again. Then the Manchester Arena one happened too and freaked me out again, because my little sister this time almost went to that event but had gotten sick.
Stressing about my BA thesis and grieving for Christopher Lee, Leonard Nimoy and Lemmy Kilmister. Missing the 90s, as usual.
It felt very unsettling to worry about those terror attacks and ISIS’s influence in general.
It felt even more unsettling because I didn’t even understand ISIS as a concept – it was expanding and waging violence, but it wasn’t even a country lol. Just a bunch of terrorists on the loose.
So overall, I remember feeling persistently uneasy and confused.
Work was hell then and work is hell now. Beside that I was more concerd about finishing the project I was doing than worrying about some religious nutjob deciding to go of the rails down in Europa
I moved to Barcelona a few weeks before the 2017 attack there.
I don’t remember any widespread fear. Unfortunately, these events can happen anywhere in Europe but each individual is extremely unlikely to be directly affected by them.
They were awful, it was a scary time with many avoiding Paris and London or where people congregate. But whilst we still need to remove terror plots today, although police seem to be better at foiling them.
My opinion is that we need to stop meddling in the Middle East. Isis was born in a vacuum after western countries thought we could just invade and place sympathetic leaders in charge. It was a failure in foreign policy which only creates massive instability.
I visited Brussels and the EU parliament close to that peak and I remember the barricaded streets and police with rifles always in sight when there (not a common sight in Europe).
I was in Paris in 2017 and the army being around Eiffel Tower etc. was kinda mad to see. Back here in Northern Ireland there never was really any worry of threat from islamists tbh, don’t think any attack from them has ever happened here
I remember fearing Muslims at that time.
Now I realise that I was heavily brainwashed along with the rest of the world.
And that Israel actively funded ISIS. And that ISIS never attacked Israel once…
I was in high school during those years and I remember the “je suis Charlie Hebdo” everywhere, the Bataclan attack and the one before Christmas in Berlin. My class was supposed to go to Cracow that year but many people refused to go because of terrorism. I also remembering crying during the concert One Love Manchester after the attack after Ariana Grande’s concert, people hugging and singing while they were commemorating the victims
I remember the infantecimally small chance of being injured or killed in a terrorist attack and the disproportionate amount of media coverage such threats get in comparison to issues that kill millions like drugs, poverty, pollution and obesity. You know, the real issues and not the politics of fear and the stigmatisation of ‘others’.
Had the terror attack in central Stockholm not even an hour after I was in that exact spot. Then the bombing at Brussels airport the day after I was there. Then next time I flew there it was all in temporary tents and soldiers everywhere. For that matter the crazy military presence in general in France and Belgium was really weird, assault rifle guards at synagogues etc.
The Cold War was a much bigger threat, and the current war in Ukraine is too. ISIS were never a that big of a deal.
Fear wasn’t spread . At least for me. I never felt that fear close to me. Was mostly a usa thing in my eyes.
I remember that due to a name similarity, the intelligence agency that my mother ran and I was part of had to close. We struggled for a bit and actually ran a somewhat successful drug business before landing on our feet. This was before my coma, however, so many of the details are a bit hazy.
Mainly the refugee crisis. They were walking west on the motorway right when we needed to go that way, so we chose to make a detour via Slovakia because we had no idea about how the situation would develop.
I remember being more sad than scared.
Yeah, bad stuff.
I never really believed it’d happen in Italy. Because… reasons, there are actually studies on the topic.
I don’t think there was any particular fear over here. What happened in Paris was certainly big and made the news, but I don’t think most people were worried anything would happen here given how very few such incidents have happened in Portugal. I’m actually struggling to think of any terrorist attack that has occurred here during my lifetime. And even when they threatened that they were going to “take back” the Iberian Peninsula I don’t think people paid them much mind.
Feeling really sorry for all girls named Isis. It wasn’t a super popular name, but it also wasn’t uncommon (I didn’t know anyone with that name though)
We were just getting called racists, xenophobes and islamophobes by Western Europe etc. Beside that completely chill.
Nothing much, when I grew up there was a lot of terrorism in Europe too. Planes and trains were bing hijacked, an embassy and a primary school taken hostage, IRA and RAF bombings, kidnappings and killings. I never had the feeling Europe was immune to terrorism, It was a tragedy but it didn’t influence my life in any way, chances of being the victim of a terrorist attack in Europe were always minimal.
In Ireland it felt quite far away to be honest, we’d hear about it on the news of course and you’d keep it in mind whenever you went abroad, but I never really got the feeling that there was something going to happen here.
The closest it ever felt was when a former member of the defence forces was found to have gone over to Syria as a sympathiser, and ended up marrying and having the children of fighters. She was detained by US forces in 2019 and convicted of foreign terrorism. She had been lured by online recruitment after having converted to Islam. The whole thing was kinda wild, although nothing compared to what other countries saw
The refugee crisis and the terror attacks in the news, otherwise I was just chilling playing Skyrim and Witcher 3. 13 to 14 November is a night I’ll never forget though, that was a crazy evening/night, seeing the death toll go from 3 to 130
I’m Irish and I remember that they never attacked us and I don’t remember ever personally feeling any worry that they might. I was incredibly worried for France, the UK and other countries
I knew they’d have it coming their way. That “caliphate” was not a sustainable system, specially because they were pissing a lot of powerful countries off.
Hearing of other countries problems – all the people, the terrorist attacks – while our politicians were showing off anti-refugee rhetoric.