Shattering Myths

"They were adults with education and skill ... spent years studying and training in the United States, collecting valuable commercial skills and facing many opportunities to change their minds... They were not reckless young men facing dire economic conditions and dim prospects but men as old as 41 enjoying middle-class lives."
New York Times writer Jody Wilgoren -- 2001 New York Times article

Writing about the airplane-suicide-mission attacks by Islamist jihadists on the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and the aborted attack that went down in Pennsylvania, killing in all instances everyone on board those planes, innocent passengers and jihadists alike. Along with the thousands who died when the New York Twin Towers were destroyed in a hellfire of mangled steel and collapsing concrete.

"The evolution of a terrorist is more complex than a simple uni-dimensional cause-and-effect relationship", concludes a report looking into the radicalization of those ready to succumb to the ideological/religious/political ideas of revenge and hatred. Of whom the left in particular seems to enjoy the profound wisdom of claiming unendingly that such radicalization results from economic and social hardships and disentitlements.

A quick-and-easy response, as an example, compassionately used by Justin Trudeau when, hours after the Boston Marathon bombings he claimed the root causes of terrorism require to be examined. Inherent in that statement that perpetrators are clearly unfortunates requiring understanding for their motives as a result of the poor hand fate handed them as "excluded" from society in some manner, economic or ideologically.

Since then, an analysis for Defence Research and Development Canada has been made public, results that took years to complete and produce, and further years to reveal. "Because so little is known about radicalization and de-radicalization, more research is both urgent and necessary", emphasizes the study report, even while their conclusion is that no link exists between economic factors and radicalization.

The standard explanation that the privileged West is so detested because terrorists have grown into poverty lacking a decent education and opportunities for advancement -- so readily accepted in the West -- propels them into their hateful activities, simply doesn't fly. Though it "finds a willing audience in the First World, the industrialized West and its allies, but is this merely a convenient explanation that appeals to our sense of superiority due to our relative affluence and sophistication, as well as invalidating the grievances of the terrorists and rendering them little more than criminals."

"Although the simple logic of 'poverty leads to terrorism' is still attractive during discussions addressing terrorism, policy-shapers and decision-makers are increasingly shying away from making such simplistic claims about the relationship between poverty and the likelihood of an individual engaging in anti-social or violent activity to draw attention to their ideological agenda.

"We might eliminate psychological conditions such as pure psychopathology, schizophrenia and various impulse control disorders which are often associated with criminal, anti-social activities like murder and rape. If nothing else, individuals with these psychological conditions do not have the attention span, commitment or course of action to conceive of and carry out terrorist activity.

"These are not crazy people with a collection of abnormal psychological elements; they are people who are making decisions on a rational basis who are similar to everyone else around them. They do not present symptoms that they themselves are not aware of or unable to control.

"Radicals are aware that their perspectives and actions differ from those of other people and they make a conscious decision to take that position and hide the fact from those who might threaten their liberty to do so. Radicalization is most likely a process that begins early and is always in action."

As, for example, a societal norm in attitudes commonly seen within specific groups who teach both by osmosis of behaviour and patterning and by direct and continued verbal repetition, the ideology of superiority and fascistic, violent politics for particular gain.