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Terrorist (E)motives: The Existential Attractions of Terrorism

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1057610x.2011.621116

1521-0731

Simon Cottee, Keith Hayward,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

Abstract This article describes a number of possible existential motivations for engaging in terrorism. Three in particular are identified: (1) the desire for excitement, (2) the desire for ultimate meaning, and (3) the desire for glory. Terrorism, according to the argument set out here, is as much a site of individual self-drama and self-reinvention as a tactical instrument for pursuing the political goals of small groups. The conclusion explores the concept of "existential frustration," and suggests that terrorist activity may provide an outlet for basic existential desires that cannot find expression through legitimate channels. Notes 1. Quoted in Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to Be Human (London: Allen Lane, 2010), p. 318. 2. "What limited data we have on individual terrorists," she writes, "suggest that the outstanding common characteristic of terrorists is their normality" (Martha Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," Comparative Politics 13(4) (1981), p. 390). 3. For a useful typology of popular stereotypes about terrorism, see Conor Cruise O'Brien, "Thinking about Terrorism," The Atlantic Monthly, June (1986). Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1986/06/thinking-about-terrorism/5045/ (accessed 20 June 2011). 4. See David Wright-Neville and Debra Smith, "Political Rage: Terrorism and the Politics of Emotion," Global Change, Peace & Security 21(1) (2009), pp. 87–88. 5. See Max Abrahms, "What Terrorists Really Want: Terrorist Motives and Counterterrorism Strategy," International Security 32(4) (2008), p. 78. 6. Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). 7. Jerrold M. Post, "When Hatred is Bred in the Bone: Psycho-Cultural Foundations of Contemporary Terrorism," Political Psychology 26(4) (2005), pp. 615–636. 8. James Wood, "Jihad and the Novel," The New Republic, 3 July 2006. Available at http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/jihad-and-the-novel (accessed 3 February 2011). 9. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (New York: Modern Library, 1998), pp. 55–67. 10. Ibid., p. 58. 11. Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), p. 114. 12. See Norman Geras, "Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil," Normblog, 27 January 2008. Available at http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/01/hannah-arendt-t.html (accessed 20 June 2011). 13. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963). 14. Ibid., p. 276. 15. Ibid. 16. To reiterate: for some individuals. Not all terrorists are embarked on such a project. 17. Again, to avoid any misunderstanding, it is not suggested that the existential attractions of terrorism exhaust its attractiveness or are comprehensively definitive of the range of motivations that may lie behind terrorism. Walter Reich is surely correct in his insistence that no single explanatory perspective can possibly do full justice to a phenomenon as complex and diverse as terrorism (Walter Reich, "Understanding Terrorist Behavior: The Limits and Opportunities of Psychological Inquiry," in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, State of Mind (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1990), pp. 261–279). 18. It goes without saying that in developing an appreciation of what it feels like to engage in terrorist activity or to be an active member of a terrorist organization one is not excusing, still less justifying, terrorist behavior (for a similar insistence, see Stern, Terror in the Name of God, pp. xvi–xvii). 19. For two important exceptions, see Konrad Kellen, Terrorists—What are They Like? How Some Terrorists Describe their World and Actions (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1979), and Andrew Silke, "Courage in Dark Places: Reflections on Terrorist Psychology," Social Research 71(1) (2004), pp. 177–198. 20. Although an oversimplification, existentialism can be seen as having its roots in two traditions. First, there is the ethical tradition associated with Søren Kierkegaard (broadly theological) and Friedrich Nietzsche (secular). Second, and in many ways opposed to this ethical tradition, is the more systematic, reflexive existentialism that stems from Husserl's more methodological phenomenology, and on which most twentieth-century existential philosophy is founded. 21. C. A. J. Coady, "Defining Terrorism," in Igor Primoratz, ed., Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 5. 22. See especially Silke, "Courage in Dark Places," pp. 185–194. 23. See John Horgan, "The Case for Firsthand Research," in Andrew Silke, ed., Research on Terrorism: Trends Achievements and Failures (London: Frank Cass, 2004), p. 30; Martha Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Terrorism: An Agenda for the 21st Century," Political Psychology, 21(2) (2000), p. 410; and Konrad Kellen, On Terrorists and Terrorism (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1982), pp. 1–2. 24. See especially Michael Walzer, "Terrorism: A Critique of Excuses," in Steven Luper-Foy, ed., Problems of International Justice (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), pp. 237–247; and C. A. J. Coady, "Terrorism, Morality, and Supreme Emergency," Ethics 114 (2004), pp. 772–789. 25. See Coady, "Defining Terrorism," pp. 4–5. 26. Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Terrorism," p. 409. 27. Bill Buford, Among the Thugs: Face to Face with English Football Violence (London: Arrow, 1991), p. 207. 28. Ibid., p. 205. 29. Ibid., p. 195. 30. Sebastian Junger, War (London: Fourth Estate, 2010), pp. 144–145. In one of the most poignant passages in War, Junger recalls a conversation with Sergeant Brendan O'Byrne, who is quoted as saying: "Combat is such an adrenaline rush. … I'm worried I'll be looking for that when I get home and if I can't find it, I'll just start drinking and getting in trouble. People back home think we drink because of the bad stuff, but that's not true … we drink because we miss the good stuff" (p. 232). 31. Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (London: Pimlico, 1977), p. xv. 32. Ibid., p. xvii. 33. J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1959), p. 14. 34. Ibid. 35. Giorgio, Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist, trans. Antony Shugaar (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), p. 79. 36. Ibid. 37. Bommi Baumann, Terror or Love? The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerrilla (London: John Calder, 1979), p. 41. 38. Ibid., p. 29. 39. Aukai Collins, My Jihad: The True Story of an American Mujahid's Amazing Journey from Usama Bin Laden's Training Camps to Counterterrorism with the FBI and CIA (New Delhi: Manas, 2006), p. 72. 40. Ibid., p. 203. 41. It ought to be pointed out that the two dominant methods of contemporary terrorist attack, remote-controlled explosions and suicide bombings, do not involve physical interaction with victims in terms of direct and open violent struggle, and thus pack less of an adrenal punch, so to speak (see Martha Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Political Terrorism," in Margaret G. Hermann, ed., Political Psychology: Contemporary Problems and Issues (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1986), p. 384; and Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 441). 42. Kellen, On Terrorists and Terrorism, p. 10. 43. See especially Baumann, Terror or Love?, pp. 66, 108; and Giorgio, Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist, pp. 93–106, 171, 175. 44. Ibid., pp. 93, 130. 45. Ibid., p. 156. 46. Ibid., pp. 119–120. 47. Ibid., p. 126. 48. Ibid., p. 118. 49. Ibid., p. 119. 50. Randall Collins discusses this point in Violence, pp. 440–447. 51. Collins is especially insightful on what he calls "the attraction of clandestine excitement" (see Collins, Violence, p. 438). Stephen Holmes, referring to the Hamburg cell behind the 9/11 attacks, also writes very well about "the sheer excitement of a cloak-and-dagger life behind enemy lines." "The pleasure of partaking in a secret combat mission," he says, "is itself a motivation. The same can be said about the chance to be, for once, the member of a highly select group, a killer elite" (Stephen Holmes, "Al-Qaeda, September 11, 2001," in Diego Gambetta, ed., Making Sense of Suicide Missions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 150). Quoting Georg Simmel, Holmes writes that the secret "produces an immense enlargement of life" (ibid.). 52. For a good synopsis, see Collins, Violence, pp. 430–440. 53. Quoted in ibid., pp. 434–435. 54. Quoted in ibid., p. 437. 55. Giorgio, too, is emphatic on the importance of dressing well: "I would never set out to undertake a proletarian expropriation if I didn't feel that I was dressed right" (Giorgio, Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist, p. 64). There are few other examples that better materialize Neal Ascherson's observation about the "sinister frivolity of Italian urban terrorism" (Neal Ascherson, Foreword, ibid., p. x). 56. Collins, My Jihad, pp. 32–33. 57. See Bernard-Henri Lévy, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (London: Duckworth, 2003). 58. Collins, My Jihad, p. 34. 59. Ibid. 60. See Marc Sageman, "Small Group Dynamics," in Sarah Canna, ed., Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism Threats: Current Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Root Causes, the Role of Ideology, and Programs for Counter-radicalization and Disengagement (2010). Available at http://www.start.umd.edu/start/publications/U_Counter_Terrorism_White_Paper_Final_January_2010.pdf, p. 133 (accessed 11 January 2011). Hence Sageman derogatively refers to them as "terrorist wannabes." This points to an issue somewhat obscured in contemporary discourses on terrorism and radicalization: namely, that not just anyone can become a member of a terrorist organization. Konrad Kellen put this well over thirty years ago: "A person does not simply join a terrorist group the way one joins most other kinds of groups. Nor is one routinely accepted by a terrorist group. The would-be terrorist must first be acceptable to what, in an inverse way, is a very choosy, elite, and special organization" (Kellen, Terrorists, p. 35, emphasis in original). For a comprehensive account of the participation of American citizens in jihadist activity, see J. M. Berger, Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go To War in the Name of Islam (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2001). 61. See Abby Goodnough and Liz Robbins, "Mass. Man Arrested in Terrorism Case," The New York Times, 21 October 2009. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/us/22terror.html (accessed 8 January 2011). 62. Availabe at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1094.pdf (accessed 7 January 2011), p. 25. 63. To the astonishment of senior American law-enforcement officials, Hammami is currently commanding guerrilla forces with the Shabab in Somalia. 64. Andrea Elliott, "The Jihadist Next Door," The New York Times, 27 January 2010. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31Jihadist-t.html (accessed 10 January 2011). 65. Giorgio, Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist, pp. 92–93. Hammami is a good example of what Zygmunt Bauman calls a "sensation-gatherer," a figure, perhaps unique to the late modern world, who constantly craves new experiences (Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p. 146). 66. Elliott, "The Jihadist Next Door." 67. Baumann, Terror or Love?, p. 20. 68. David Matza and Gresham M. Sykes, "Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values," American Sociological Review 26(5) (1961), pp. 713–714. 69. Samuel Z. Klausner, "The Intermingling of Pain and Pleasure: The Stress-Seeking Personality in its Social Context," in Samuel Z. Klausner, ed., Why Man Takes Chances: Studies in Stress Seeking (New York: Doubleday, 1968), p. 139. 70. See also Stephen Lyng, "Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking," American Journal of Sociology, 95(4) (1990), pp. 851–886; and Lynn E. Ponton, The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 71. Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," p. 393. 72. See especially Silke, "Courage in Dark Places," pp. 186–190. 73. Ibid. 74. Martha Crenshaw raises this possibility in a particularly astute discussion in Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Political Terrorism," pp. 388–389. 75. Ibid., p. 395. 76. See, illuminatingly, Atran, Talking to the Enemy. By "cosmic," is meant, following Mark Juergensmeyer's use of this term, "larger than life" (Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 149). 77. See, classically, Glenn Gray, The Warriors. 78. Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), p. 3. 79. See Atran, Talking to the Enemy. 80. Ibid., p. xi. 81. Edward A. Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II," Public Opinion Quarterly 12(2) (1948), p. 281. 82. For a good overview, see Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 127–134. 83. Or as a U.S. Marine lieutenant trenchantly expressed it, referring to the first Gulf War: "Just remember that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting for each other, just for each other" (Quoted in Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, p. 38). 84. Junger, War, p. 79. 85. Ibid., p. 239. 86. Ibid., p. 159. 87. Ibid., p. 214. 88. Ibid., p. 215. 89. See Kellen, Terrorists, pp. 8–9, 34. 90. In his memoir Inside the Jihad, Omar Nasiri vividly describes the joys he experienced in training with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Chief among these was the sense of solidarity he felt with his fellow trainees: "Standing amidst these mujahidin … I was as swept up as the others by the feelings of love and fellowship and brotherhood" (Omar Nasiri, Inside the Jihad (New York: Basic Books, 2006), p. 151). 91. Junger, War, p. 57. 92. See especially Barry E. Collins and Harold Guetzkow, A Social Psychology of Group Processes for Decision-Making (New York: Wiley, 1964), pp. 140–145. 93. Crenshaw, "The Causes of Terrorism," p. 395. 94. Wright-Neville and Smith, "Political Rage," pp. 88–89, 90–91. 95. Susan Sontag, for example, was roundly vilified for acknowledging the bravery of the 9/11 hijackers (see her comments in "The Talk of the Town," The New Yorker, 24 September 2001. Available at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/09/24/010924ta_talk_wtc (accessed 28 June 2011)). Andrew Silke, referring to the controversy entrained by Sontag's remarks, comprehensively nails it when he writes that "the idea that terrorists can display courage is controversial not because it runs against research findings on terrorist psychology (it does not) but because they are the enemy and we are not predisposed to recognize positive virtues and traits in such quarters" (Silke, "Courage in Dark Places," p. 189). 96. In their research on Palestinian suicide terrorism, Ami Pedahzur, Arie Perliger, and Leonard Weinberg suggest that altruism, in conjunction with fatalistic despair, is a significant motive for Palestinian suicide terrorists (see "Altruism and Fatalism: The Characteristics of Palestinian Suicide Terrorists," Deviant Behavior 24 (2003), pp. 405–423). 97. Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, pp. 157–185. 98. Willem De Haan Jaco Vos, "A Crying Shame: The Over-Rationalized Conception of Man in the Rational Choice Perspective," Theoretical Criminology 7(1) (2003), pp. 39–43. 99. Ibid., p. 48. This argument is consciously and strongly indebted to Jack Katz's analysis of "stickup" in his brilliantly evocative book Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 100. De Haan and Vos, "A Crying Shame," p. 48. On the "ways of the badass," see Katz, The Seductions of Crime, pp. 80–113. 101. See Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). 102. Here the authors are thinking specifically of ongoing work in the field of cultural criminology: see, for example, Keith Hayward, City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience (London: GlassHouse, 2004); Wayne Morrison, Theoretical Criminology (London: Cavendish, 1995); Curtis Jackson-Jacobs, "Taking a Beating: Narrative Gratifications of Fighting as an Underdog," in Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward, Wayne Morrison, and Mike Presdee, eds., Cultural Criminology Unleashed (London: GlassHouse, 2004); and Jeff Ferrell, Keith Hayward, and Jock Young, Cultural Criminology (London: Sage, 2008). 103. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. 104. Ibid., pp. xi, 124–128. 105. Ibid., pp. 190–218. 106. De Haan and Vos, "A Crying Shame," p. 51, emphasis added. 107. Arie W. Kruglanski and his colleagues develop a similar argument in their account of contemporary suicide bombing (see Arie W. Kruglanski, Xiaoyan Chen, Mark Dechesne, Shira Fishman, and Edward Orehek, "Fully Committed: Suicide Bombers' Motivation and the Quest for Personal Significance," Political Psychology 30(3) (2009), pp. 331–357, especially p. 349). 108. In a superb article on the practical challenges of conducting research on terrorism, John Horgan recounts an episode in which an intermediary warned him, with a slight hint of menace, that a prospective interviewee, a member of the Provisional IRA, "wouldn't have time for people who call him a terrorist" (John Horgan, "The Case for Firsthand Research," p. 42). 109. See Crenshaw, "The Psychology of Political Terrorism," p. 398; Albert Bandura, "Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement," in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (Washington, DC: The Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 1990), pp. 161–191; and Andrew Silke, "Courage in Dark Places," pp. 189–192. 110. Quoted in Andrea Elliott, "The Jihadist Next Door." 111. See, notably, Robert Pape, Dying To Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005). 112. Olivier Roy, "Al Qaeda in the West as a Youth Movement: The Power of a Narrative," August (2008). Available at http://www.ceps.eu/book/al-qaeda-west-youth-movement-power-narrative (accessed 6 February 2011). 113. Ibid. See also Olivier Roy, "The Allure of Terrorism," The New York Times, 10 January 2010. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/opinion/11iht-edroy.html (accessed 6 February 2011); Brian Michael Jenkins, No Path to Glory: Deterring Homegrown Terrorism (Santa Monica, Calif: RAND Corporation, 2010). Available at http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/2010/RAND_CT348.pdf (accessed 6 February 2011), p. 4; and Atran, Talking to the Enemy. 114. See http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2010/nyfo050410a.htm/?searchterm=FaisalShahzad (accessed 11 January 2011). 115. http://www.project-reason.org/images/uploads/contest/shahzad_transcript.pdf (accessed 11 January 2011), pp. 28–29. 116. The target of an FBI sting operation, Smadi's efforts came to nothing: see http://dallas.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/dl092409.htm (accessed 11 January 2011). 117. http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1074.pdf (accessed 11 January 2011), pp. 2, 3. 118. Ibid., p. 4. 119. Quoted in Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, "Inside Al Qaeda," Newsweek, 4 September 2010. Available at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/04/inside-al-qaeda.html (accessed 11 January 2011). 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid. 122. Sageman, "Small Group Dynamics," p. 131, emphasis added. 123. Ibid., p. 130. 124. Thomas J. Scheff, Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 94–96. 125. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein:The Duty of Genius (New York: Free Press, 1990), p. 111. 126. Ibid., p. 112. 127. Barry McCarthy, "Warrior Values: A Socio-Historical Survey," in John Archer, ed., Male Violence (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 106. 128. Ibid., p. 112. 129. Ibid., p. 107. 130. See Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Terrorist Threat (London: John Murray, 2006), p. 123. 131. Sageman, "Small Group Dynamics," p. 130. 132. Ann Marie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg, The Road to Martyrs' Square: A Journey into the World of the Suicide Bomber (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 73–76. 133. Ibid., pp. 72–73. 134. Ibid., p. 118, emphases added. 135. Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), p. 93. 136. Ibid., p. 94. In his memoir, Aukai Collins tellingly recalls that during his time recovering in a hospital in Dagestan he, and "a room full of bearded rebel soldiers, all missing at least one body part," would spend their days watching Hollywood action movies. By an overwhelming consensus, their favourite was Mel Gibson's Braveheart: "We watched it at least once every couple of days," Collins remembers (Collins, My Jihad, p. 115). 137. See especially Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (New York: The Free Press, 1955). 138. Obviously, not everyone who experiences overwhelming existential frustration becomes a terrorist. 139. See especially Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); and Atran, Talking to the Enemy. 140. For an insightful discussion of possible scenarios, see William James, "The Moral Equivalent of War," Essays in Religion and Morality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 141. Kareem Fahim, Richard Pérez-Peña, and Karen Zraick, "From Wayward Teenagers to Terror Suspects," The New York Times, 11 June 2010. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/nyregion/12suspects.html (accessed 7 February 2011). 142. Available at http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/06/06/alessa_mohamed_complaint.pdf (accessed 7 February 2011), p. 7. 143. Ibid., p. 6. Alessa's personal legacy was clearly a pressing object of concern for him: referring to Major Nidal Hassan, the man responsible for the Fort Hood killings in 2009, Alessa was adamant that he was "not better than me … I'll do twice what he did" (ibid., p. 7). 144. Ibid., p. 14. 145. For a useful summary, see C. A. J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 43–49. 146. Benito Mussolini: Quoted in Sissela Bok, A Strategy for Peace (New York: Pantheon, 1989), p. 174. 147. Glenn Gray, The Warriors, p. 215. 148. Ibid., p. 216. 149. Ibid. 150. Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, p. 5. 151. Reich, "Understanding Terrorist Behavior," p. 279.