Acorns
The trouble with the ‘rage, injustice, grievance, violence inflicted on Muslims, marginalization’ approach is that it takes the action being explained too seriously, too politically, too as-if-rational-y, too as-if-adult-ly, and above all, as an instrument, a tool, a means, rather than as an end in itself, which is what it is. It is not a case of: bang: redress our grievances lest we do it again; it’s a case of: bang: hooray, ha ha, nyah nyah, take that, suffer, die, hooray. Period. The killing is the goal. 7/7 is not October 1917 or the Easter Rising, it’s Auschwitz and Rwanda and Srebrenica.
Along with a huge element of childish fun and games. It’s important not to overlook that. It’s necessary not to ignore the sheer and mere thrill element, the disaster movie element, the fire-crash porn element, the video game element, the macho element. Don’t think all that is not part of it, because it is. Everybody must know that, at some level (because it’s kind of obvious), but it doesn’t get mentioned much. Odd, that. It must be true. (It was true of many of the people – maybe all of them – who put together Little Boy and Fat Man, too. They were scared, they were overawed, they were worried, but damn, they were excited and thrilled too, and not just at the success of the physics, although that was part of it. They were thrilled about the great big bang and the fire. People like this stuff. It’s as well to remember that.) I’d be willing to bet (not that there is any booky I could place the bet with, because no way to confirm) that if there had been a way to achieve the same number of deaths instantaneously silently and painlessly – that way would have been rejected with scorn and derision. No – the bang and the smoke is part of the fun, and would not have been given up. The whole undertaking was an Excellent Adventure. I can do that, watch this, ooh let’s get rucksacks, ooh let’s do it at 8:50 just like 9/11, ooh people will see us on CCTV just like the guys at the airport on 9/11, ooh aren’t we cool.
This is Eichmann in Jerusalem stuff of course. The court, and people in general, wanted to see Eichmann as scary and grand and important, in proportion to what he wrought. But Arendt pointed out that he wasn’t. He just wasn’t. There is no proportion. There just isn’t. There is no mechanism that prevents terrible things happening for the most trivial of reasons, or wonderful valuable people from being casually killed by shallow petty unthinking people with nothing much in mind. It happens.
I get the whole banality of evil stuff. But…really, do you think that’s all that’s going on here? Since the days of the Achille Lauro, Lebanon barracks, USS Cole, ’72 Olympics, (I’m way out of order with this list!) several uprisings in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, Saddat, Rabin, suicide bombings in Iraq, 9-11, 7-7, Bali…etc.
All this is simply narcissism? Bang! “Wow! How cool!”? Childish fun and games? Machismo?
No, I don’t think it’s all that’s going on. But I do think it’s at least possible that it’s a big part of it, and that that whole aspect is well worth talking about. For a number of reasons.
To quote my favorite line from The Day The Earth Stood Still: “You’ll feel different when you see my picture in the paper!”
Really, are OB’s remarks about the psychology of jihadist footsoldiers really so shocking and controversial? If you want all the sordid little details, read the psychiatrist & political scientist Marc Sageman’s well-researched book about al-Qaeda’s recruitment and indoctrination methods.
Or dip into Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, an oldy but a goody which I recently saw recommended somewhere. I thought it was here, but I can’t find it in N&C.
Yeah, True Believer is a wonderful classic, but it’s rather general. Sageman’s Understanding Terror Networks is specifically about al-Qaeda and its various “nodes” (one of which the London bombers were clearly part of). A very enlightening study.
Sageman book sounds very interesting, and necessary.
Sageman collected biographical data on more than 400 al-Qaeda-style terrorists and found that almost all of them came from upper-middle-class, moderately religious families and were well-educated (most possessed engineering degrees). As isolated, homesick college students studying abroad in Europe, they joined various all-male Islamic “study groups” out of sheer loneliness and a sense of alienation. These “study groups,” typically affiliated with a nearby mosque that preached a virulent Salafist ideology, fed the homesick boys a steady diet of grievance-nursing, ethic self-pity, and grand fantasies of heroic martyrdom. Group dynamics and the inevitable Law of Group Polarization took over, with the usual ratcheting-up effect. And behold, a jihadist is born!
OB’s comments about “fire-crash porn” got me thinking. There’s been a lot of concern about biological & chemical weapons use by terrorists, but how often have they actually been used? The sarin attack in Tokyo of course and the US anthrax letters, but I couldn’t think of any others off hand. Could it be because these weapons just aren’t as spectacular as good old-fashioned explosives? It’s a bit like “War of the Worlds”; if you read the novel the most effective and terrifying weapon used by the Martians was their “Black Smoke”, yet this never appears in any of the subsequent film versions. Death rays and bangs are more fun.
OB, OB (shaking head sadly), I distrust the obvious and your remark that “Everybody must know that, at some level” is strikingly remiciscent of statements by others that you have criticised soundly.
I’m going to pretend that you didn’t write this (obviously) fairly silly post.
Could it be that these weapons just aren’t as spectacular as good old-fashioned explosives? – Michael
Maybe, but it’s much more likely due to the fact that nerve gas and bio weapons are much harder to come by. Explosives are comparatively easy to get. Any half-way competent criminal organization can buy some TNT or C-4 on the black market. And even I, a mere linguini major, would know how to cook up a little bang-bang with ordinary chemicals (I took a minor in chemistry).
Nerve gas and plague germs may lack the fireworks aspect, but they are, in a way, much scarier to the general public. But unless you’ve got a large, military-style lab, it’s difficult to produce either weapon. It took Aum Shinrikyo a lot of time and money to whip up the small amount of sarin they used on the Tokyo subway–and it wasn’t nearly as deadly as they had hoped for (less than a dozen dead), because it’s difficult to find an effective method for dispersing gas or germs over a large mass of people. Much cheaper and easier to buy or make some explosives and get some fanatical loser to blow himself up with it in a crowded place.
Depressingly, though, it’s probably only a matter of time before the jihadists combine the two by getting hold of some radioactive material (more plentiful on the black market than either gas or germs), mixing it in with explosives, and setting the dirty bomb off in some downtown metro area, probably in NYC or London. Bad times.
So, if we encourage people to remain as children, either through the ‘Big daddy’ religions telling them what to do, say and think, or through the eternal adolesence of popular culture , and add that to the ‘I feel your pain’ of the empathy industry and the ‘everyone’s a victim’ society, then it is hardly that surprising that the tantrums produced are going to be a little more spectacular than crying for sweeties in the supermarket.
Just so, David. I think all this solemn brow-smiting about Grievances and Rage and Alienation and Disaffection that one hears (though that’s certainly not all one hears) is just reinforcement. Even encouragement.
Keith, I’m curious about what you think is silly. Sure, some things that people take to be obvious are neither obvious nor true, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is obvious – and some things are obvious but hidden or obfuscated or euphemised or ignored. Obviousness cuts both ways, or perhaps several.
So what’s silly? You think it’s silly to suggest that the perps enjoyed the melodrama? If so, why? And…do you still think so now? After the bang bang, haha, madeyoujump?
Okay, “some things that people take to be obvious are neither obvious nor true, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is obvious”.
So how do you work out what is obvious and true? I thought that’s where argument and evidence, particularly the latter, come into play.
“…the video game element, the macho element. Don’t think all that is not part of it, because it is.” Here, OB, you, like too many others, are putting thoughts, attitudes, and motivations into the bombers’ heads. And, I think, that, in some ways, your suggestions are just as glib and unconvincing as others I have read.
The first four (and sadly, but not surprisingly, they were only the first) are dead and no-one, including al-Qaidi, really knows their motivations. The reported behaviour of one involved in the most recent attacks is not really consistent with a “huge element of childish fun and games”.
OB: “And…do you still think so now? After the bang bang, haha, madeyoujump?”
Yes, I still think so…perhaps more so: “The witness told a newspaper the man, who seemed to have been a would-be suicide attacker, was dazed when his device failed to explode properly.” “‘He looked dazed and confused and very shaken.'” But perhaps he’ll enjoy the melodrama later…
Of course, perhaps you are right — you certainly could be — but I don’t think that it is obvious!
[Don’t mind me. I’ve just read Julian Baggini’s excellent “The pig that wants to be eaten” and I no longer think anything is obvious!]
We can tell something about them from the tactics they chose and the ideology they espoused. I don’t know if “childish fun and games” quite captures it, but there certainly is a strong element of self-dramatizing grand guignol in blowing yourself up in a crowd of civilians. Something rather adolescent about that, don’t you think? Then look at the stated aims of the Salafist Jihadists: resoration and expansion of the ancient Caliphate, stretching from Morocco to the Phillipines (plus a big chunk of Europe), the imposition of universal sharia law, the brutal subjugation of all women, etc. What rational, emotionally mature man would destroy himself in an utterly vain attempt to achieve such things? The sheer wacko grandiosity of their goals and tactics strongly suggests an adolescent-macho mentality not too far removed from that of those two losers at Columbine.
Keith – Fair points! I think what I meant was something more like – ‘everyone probably at least suspects this if she thinks about it.’ (And yes, even that more qualified guess is debatable.) There is evidence for the whole train of thought, though. Statistics on crime, for one thing.
Yeah, childish fun and games was a bit rhetorical. Still – I think there’s at least a considerable chance that there’s a large element of that, however shame-faced and secret. I think there’s a good chance they find the whole thing more fun than they would admit openly. Terrifying, but fun – terrifying and fun.