Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict

FIight, Flight, Mimic is the first systematic study of deceptive mimicry in the context of wars. Deceptive mimicry -- the manipulation of individual or group identity -- includes passing off as a different individual, as a member of a group to which one does not belong, or, for a group, to ’sign’ its action as another group.

Mimicry exploits the reputation of the model it mimics to avoid capture (flight), to strike undetected at the enemy (fight), or to hide behind or besmirch the reputation of the model group (’false flag’ operations). These tactics have previously been described anecdotally, mixed in with other ruses de guerre, but the authors show that mimicry is a distinct form of deception with its own logic and particularly consequential effects on those involved. The book offers a theory and game-theoretic model of mimicry, an overview of its use through history, and a deep empirical exploration of its modern manifestations through several case studies by leading social scientists. The chapters cover mimicry in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict, terrorism campaigns in 1970s Italy, the height of the Iraq insurgency, the Rwandan genocide, the Naxalite rebellion in India, and jihadi discussion forums on the Internet.

Thomas Hegghammer is Senior Research Fellow in Politics at All Souls College, Oxford University. He is a political scientist and historian who specializes in the study of militant Islamist groups. His books include Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge 2010), JIihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists (Cambridge 2017), and The Caravan: Abdallah Azzam and the Rise of Global Jihad (Cambridge 2020). He worked for two decades at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo and has held fellowships at Princeton, Harvard, and Stanford Universitites as well as at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Diego Gambetta (PhD, FBA) is Carlo Alberto Chair in social and political science at the Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin, Italy, and Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. After his Cambridge PhD (1983) he was Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge (1984-1991). From 1992 to 2012 he held various positions at the University of Oxford. In 2012, he took up a Chair of Social Theory at the European University Institute, Florence, before moving to his current position in 2019. He has held visiting positions at several universities (Chicago, Columbia, Science Po, College de France, ETH, Stanford and NYU).