Nurturing
fanatics
Terrorist groups build on followers’ need for self-assurance.
By Wayne Anderson
Story ran on Tuesday, November 06 2001
The number of victims of robbers, highwaymen, rapists, gangsters and other
criminals at any period of history is negligible compared to the massive numbers
of those cheerfully slain in the name of true religion, just policy or correct
ideology.
- Arthur Koestler
How can we begin to understand those who rammed planes into the World Trade
Center and killed thousands of innocent people? Our president constantly refers
to them as evil people, but that label might hide more than it explains.
Saint or devil?
Osama bin Laden does not see himself as evil. In an interview on the program "Frontline," he
said, "They rip us of our wealth and of our resources and of our oil.
Our religion is under attack. They kill and murder our brothers. They compromise
our honor and our dignity, and dare we utter a single word of protest against
the injustice, we are called terrorists."
Contrary to seeing himself as evil, bin Laden believes he is working hand in
hand with God. In another interview, this time with John Miller for ABC, he
said, "I am one of the servants of Allah, and I obey his orders. Among
those is the order to fight for the word of Allah … and to fight until
the Americans are driven out of all the Islamic countries."
He has affirmed that he sees terrorism as an act of vengeance against the United
States, "the Great Satan." Bin Laden is a man to whom the murder
of thousands is seen as a rational way, supported by Allah, to send his message.
Creating fanatics
Obviously, he couldn’t strike without volunteers on the front line who
are eager to give up their lives. We must be careful not to get too caught
up in seeing the members of al-Qaida as irrational, insane and evil. That thinking
can lead to underestimating their danger to us. Bin Laden’s followers
have their own rationality, and none of them would agree that they are in league
with the devil.
What can we say about his followers? Some insight is given in a book written
in the 1950s, "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements" by
Eric Hoffer. He said zealots go through an emotional process of renouncing
their individuality and finding identity in a violent cause.
Hoffer believed the fanatic is an insecure person who cannot create his own
self-assurance and can find it only by becoming passionately attached to what
he sees as a holy cause, one for which he would sacrifice his life. This kind
of fanaticism leading to suicide is not new: Remember the 900 followers of
the Rev Jim Jones at Jonestown, Guyana; the 70 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas;
and the 30 Heaven’s Gate members in San Diego? All these people saw themselves
as aligned with right, and in most cases, with God. It is just the consequences
that are different.
