compromise
04-22-2013, 03:01 PM
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100213299/if-only-the-boston-bomber-had-been-a-white-american/
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/04/bostonBomb_2541782b.jpg
But yet the pity of it, Iago, oh the pity of it
One of the most unpleasant things, in the aftermath of terrorist attack, is the way commentators want the perpetrator to fit a particular profile. The title of this piece tells you pretty much all you need to know: 'Let's hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American'. It's a silly article, whose author probably now regrets writing it. But it is scarcely less attractive than the told-you-so triumphalism of some conservative writers on discovering that the likely murderers are Muslims.
To be fair, the immediate aftershock of an atrocity rarely brings out the best in people. It is difficult to focus on the horror of what has happened, so we often engage in a kind of displacement activity by considering its indirect implications. Insurance brokers reacted to the 9/11 attacks by calculating the effect on premiums; traders sold shares; Palestinians pressed it into their own quarrel with Israel; one Labour spin doctor thought it was 'a good day to bury bad news' and, disastrously, put her thoughts in an email. My friend Tom Utley later wrote an immensely brave column admitting that his very first thought, before he came to his senses, was that the unleashing of terrorism against New Yorkers would jolt them of their support for the IRA. His point was that we can't help thinking idiotic things when we are in a state of shock, and he proposed an amnesty for anything said or written in the first 24 hours after an attack.
We don't know what motivated the Boston bombers. Vast edifices of speculation are being built on the flimsiest of foundations. Had the bombers been white and Christian, in the McVeigh or Breivik mode, it would have been Leftists drawing conclusions and Rightists insisting (correctly) that there are few meaningful conclusions to be drawn. Because they seem to have been Muslims, it is the other way around. Had they simply been deranged young men à la Cho Seung-Hui, both sides would have been over-interpreting. None of it gets us very far.
What many terrorists have in common – Red Brigades, Islamists, animal rights extremists or, indeed, loners – is not ideology but personality. Most are male and in their twenties. They are generally bright, and often have some education. They are shy and withdrawn, and have usually had problems finding girlfriends. They have, as almost all young men have, some violent tendencies. What makes them different is that they have found a cause that vindicates these tendencies.
The magisterial Anglo-Dutch writer, Ian Buruma, wrote a fascinating profile of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Moroccan-Dutch boy who killed the film-maker Theo Van Gogh with a machete. Bouyeri ticked almost every box: young, shy, a history of getting into fights, no luck with women, a grudge against the people around him. What pushed him from adolescent angst into murder was finding a nexus of sympathisers who validated his bellicosity. Through the Internet, and through Islamist cells, he met others who understood his alienation, encouraged his anger, taught him that such feelings were not only normal but, if properly channelled, noble. Buruma showed that Bouyeri's character was not so very different from that of Volkert van der Graaf, his near-contemporary who murdered the Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn. Had van der Graaf been born of Muslim parents, it is easy enough to imagine him finding legitimacy in Islamism rather than animal rights militancy.
The fact is that, in every society, some young men are drawn to violence. The kind of Muslim boys who become suicide bombers might, had they been born in different circumstances, have been drawn to, say, the Baader-Meinhof gang or the IRA. All terrorist organisations play on the Strurm und Drang of the angry youth. They encourage his dislike of modern bourgeois society. They tell him that he feels alienated, not because he is anti-social, but because he sees things more clearly than other people. They nurture the idea that his aggressive fantasies are heroic, that they should be directed rather than repressed.
Some youngsters with murderous impulses. In most cases, thank God, their impulses are left latent until, often through the ageing process, the danger passes. Not this time. Though we talk of ensuring that such monstrosities can't happen again, we know they will. Causes come and go; human nature is constant.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/04/bostonBomb_2541782b.jpg
But yet the pity of it, Iago, oh the pity of it
One of the most unpleasant things, in the aftermath of terrorist attack, is the way commentators want the perpetrator to fit a particular profile. The title of this piece tells you pretty much all you need to know: 'Let's hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American'. It's a silly article, whose author probably now regrets writing it. But it is scarcely less attractive than the told-you-so triumphalism of some conservative writers on discovering that the likely murderers are Muslims.
To be fair, the immediate aftershock of an atrocity rarely brings out the best in people. It is difficult to focus on the horror of what has happened, so we often engage in a kind of displacement activity by considering its indirect implications. Insurance brokers reacted to the 9/11 attacks by calculating the effect on premiums; traders sold shares; Palestinians pressed it into their own quarrel with Israel; one Labour spin doctor thought it was 'a good day to bury bad news' and, disastrously, put her thoughts in an email. My friend Tom Utley later wrote an immensely brave column admitting that his very first thought, before he came to his senses, was that the unleashing of terrorism against New Yorkers would jolt them of their support for the IRA. His point was that we can't help thinking idiotic things when we are in a state of shock, and he proposed an amnesty for anything said or written in the first 24 hours after an attack.
We don't know what motivated the Boston bombers. Vast edifices of speculation are being built on the flimsiest of foundations. Had the bombers been white and Christian, in the McVeigh or Breivik mode, it would have been Leftists drawing conclusions and Rightists insisting (correctly) that there are few meaningful conclusions to be drawn. Because they seem to have been Muslims, it is the other way around. Had they simply been deranged young men à la Cho Seung-Hui, both sides would have been over-interpreting. None of it gets us very far.
What many terrorists have in common – Red Brigades, Islamists, animal rights extremists or, indeed, loners – is not ideology but personality. Most are male and in their twenties. They are generally bright, and often have some education. They are shy and withdrawn, and have usually had problems finding girlfriends. They have, as almost all young men have, some violent tendencies. What makes them different is that they have found a cause that vindicates these tendencies.
The magisterial Anglo-Dutch writer, Ian Buruma, wrote a fascinating profile of Mohammed Bouyeri, the Moroccan-Dutch boy who killed the film-maker Theo Van Gogh with a machete. Bouyeri ticked almost every box: young, shy, a history of getting into fights, no luck with women, a grudge against the people around him. What pushed him from adolescent angst into murder was finding a nexus of sympathisers who validated his bellicosity. Through the Internet, and through Islamist cells, he met others who understood his alienation, encouraged his anger, taught him that such feelings were not only normal but, if properly channelled, noble. Buruma showed that Bouyeri's character was not so very different from that of Volkert van der Graaf, his near-contemporary who murdered the Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn. Had van der Graaf been born of Muslim parents, it is easy enough to imagine him finding legitimacy in Islamism rather than animal rights militancy.
The fact is that, in every society, some young men are drawn to violence. The kind of Muslim boys who become suicide bombers might, had they been born in different circumstances, have been drawn to, say, the Baader-Meinhof gang or the IRA. All terrorist organisations play on the Strurm und Drang of the angry youth. They encourage his dislike of modern bourgeois society. They tell him that he feels alienated, not because he is anti-social, but because he sees things more clearly than other people. They nurture the idea that his aggressive fantasies are heroic, that they should be directed rather than repressed.
Some youngsters with murderous impulses. In most cases, thank God, their impulses are left latent until, often through the ageing process, the danger passes. Not this time. Though we talk of ensuring that such monstrosities can't happen again, we know they will. Causes come and go; human nature is constant.