Given recent gruesome events in the Middle East--the unanticipated taking of territory in Iraq by ISIS and now the videotaped barbaric beheadings of two Americans and one British citizen described by Prime Minister David Cameron as acts of "pure evil"--I can't help but recall something I wrote on this subject back in 2006 in the Preface to my book Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: "Indeed, there are those savvy political and military observers who argue that World War 111, an inexorable global clash between radical Islam and Judeo-Christian or secular western culture, each side perceiving the other as evil incarnate, is already afoot." This would, of course, be the nightmare scenario should the unstable situation in Iraq and Syria and the escalating battle against ISIS spark such an apocalyptic cataclysm. Hopefully, it will never come to that. But I was also reminded of my previous postings here about Al-Qaeda several years ago, in which I discussed the psychology of terrorists and their motivations, both conscious and unconscious. It seems appropriate and timely to revisit these posts (Parts 1 and 2) today, with an eye toward how they might apply to the phenomenon of ISIS, an even more virulent and violent strain of Al-Qaeda:
"Yesterday, Christmas Day, 2009, a twenty-three-year-old Nigerian with purported Al-Qaeda connections, apparently tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet carrying almost three-hundred-passengers-plus-crew as it prepared to land in Detroit, Michigan. Miraculously, as with the infamous "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid in 2001, the allegedly "sophisticated" device he attempted to detonate did not work as planned, and disaster was once again averted.
But authorities, who are officially calling it an act of terrorism, are concerned that this could be part of a concerted effort by other similarly armed individuals intending to bring down passenger planes. In 2006, British police broke up a plot to blow half-a-dozen commercial airliners out of the sky on their way to the U.S., using a chemical explosive that may have been similar to the one employed yesterday. Eight men were arrested in that investigation. Hopefully, this is not the case for now, and we Americans have dodged yet another terrorist bullet. But where will it all end?
Whether politically motivated, as apparently in this case and possibly that of the recent Fort Hood massacre, or personally motivated, as in so many of the other recent mass murders I've been writing about here, terrorism is itself a type of madness. Perpetrators of terrorism express their rage and indignation at the world destructively, violently, in a desperate, last-ditch and sometimes suicidal attempt to gain recognition, fame or glory for themselves and their cause. And, ultimately, to provide some shred of meaning to their otherwise meaningless lives. Terrorism is typically an infantile and narcissistic act of violence stemming from profound feelings of impotence, frustration and insignificance. In their own ways, the vengeful shootings at Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, the Omaha mall and Pittsburg fitness center were, like the mad bombings of Ted Kaczynski (the "Unabomber"), all evil acts of terrorism.
Terrorists try to force the world to meet their own narcissistic, grandiose demands, and, when this doesn't happen, they lash out violently. Terrorism is a failure to find a creative solution to life, to finding and fulfilling one's true destiny. Terrorism is, in most cases, the madness of frustration and resentment. Terrorists harbor a wicked rage for recognition, both personally and politically. While we know next to nothing about yesterday's would-be terrorist (see Part Two for more about him), it seems safe to surmise that he was seeking some kind of attention for his cause, in this case, the very negative attention of downing an airplane and killing as many people as possible to make a political point and to psychologically weaken the perceived enemy, America.
Such violent actions are intended to sow the seeds of terror among the American people, and to negatively impact the U.S. infrastructure and economy. To this end, the events of 9-11 did, I suspect, succeed to some extent, and are not totally unrelated to the current critical condition of our economy. If people become too fearful to fly on commercial airlines and avoid doing so for any significant duration, this could bankrupt the vulnerable airline industry and seriously impact the already crippled economic engine of this country. While it is still unknown whether Friday's wanna-be terrorist was working alone or operating on orders from Al-Qaeda or some other radical Muslim group, the problem is that, though evidently still fairly inept, if they keep trying, terrorists will eventually succeed in destroying passenger planes on U.S. soil. The stakes here are terribly high.
Terrorists are fanatics willing to both kill and die for their cause. In this case, that cause is radical Islam and jihad. But what are the psychological factors that render such terrorists so susceptible to extremist ideology? Osama bin Laden was born in 1957, seventeenth of fifty-two children. His billionaire father died in an airplane crash when Osama was 12, leaving a vast fortune to his numerous offspring. Osama, possibly bored with his cushy lifestyle, became radicalized around the age of twenty-two when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, financially supporting and physically fighting with the mujahideen (freedom fighters) in this eventually victorious David and Goliath contest. This success presumably inflated his ego and provided a sense of purpose and meaning that may have been previously lacking despite of, or due to, his economically and socially privileged position. He likely bitterly blamed materialism and Western values for his former existential vacuum, and continues angrily lashing out against it today. Radical Islam and violent terrorism (jihad) against the West and all it symbolizes--including perhaps his wealthy, thoroughly Westernized father--became bin Laden's raison d'etre. (See my prior posts.)
Yesterday's attempted terrorist attack was reportedly perpetrated by a deeply religious young Muslim man, who, much like Osama bin Laden, hails from a wealthy and privileged family. He had been a mechanical engineering student, residing in a ritzy central London flat prior to this suicidally terrorist act. While he supposedly claims to be an operative for Al-Qaeda, one wonders whether his underlying motivation may have been more about violently rebelling against his own family and materialistic upbringing than hatred for the United States per se. The problem, of course, is that the United States makes a perfect target for the unconscious transference--and I am using this term in the classic psychoanalytic sense--of anger, rage, resentment and embitterment toward parents and other authority figures onto the ultimate symbol of Western materialism, power, wealth and capitalism: America, "the great Satan," as radical Muslims hatefully refer to it.
So long as there are angry young men like bin Laden, the 9-11 hijackers, Richard Reid, and perhaps yesterday's alleged would-be terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Al-Qaeda and other political and religious cults will continue to find it easy to recruit and provide confused, embittered, disillusioned, frustrated, rebellious, alienated individuals with a rationale, purpose, and means to violently act out their personal rage toward their parents' values and society at large."
As C.G. Jung said more than half-a-century ago, "Today we need psychology for reasons that involve our very existence. . . . We stand face to face with the terrible question of evil and do not even know what is before us, let alone what to pit against it." (See my prior post on the "shadow.") Indeed, we are confronted today with a very real existential crisis. ISIS is stronger, more rabid, and better equipped than Al-Qaeda ever was. They are recruiting fighters from all around the world, including the U.S. and U.K. Right now the civilized world is trying to decide exactly how to respond to their primitive aggression and brutality, eerily reminiscent of the Nazi movement in Europe seventy-five years ago. All we can do is hold our collective breath and wait to see exactly how the evil deeds of ISIS will be answered.