The Madding Crowd: Understanding Terrorists’ Mad Mindset
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,”
– Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray (1751)
I know madness; I know it intimately.
I spent a half-century confronting it in my office, as well as at Bellevue, and other psychiatric hospitals.
I never treated a terrorist, but I encountered many patients who, given the right circumstances, could easily become one. I have also known non-patients who could do the same.
Consequently, learning of October 7, Bondi Beach, or the latest mass-murder, is appalling, not surprising. The reality is, terrorism is endemic to humanity, transcending all temporal and geographical boundaries (e.g., 216 BCE – Canae, 8 BCE -Rape of the Sabine women, 1756 – Oroi-Jalata, China.)
As the world’s eternal scapegoat, Jews are disproportionally victimized by it (e.g., programs, Crusades, Holocaust.) Lest we imagine we are immune from it, let’s not forget: Samuel 15, 3: “Destroy (Amalek) completely. Kill men, women, infants, nursing-babies, oxen, sheep, camels and donkeys.”
Two dynamics motivate instilling terror. The first is CONSTRUCTIVE DESTRUCTION.
The surest way to induce adversaries to surrender is to terrorize them beyond human endurance (e.g., Sherman’s march to the sea, Hitler’s blitzkriegs, Allies bombing Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.)
And yet, though this scale of terror is incomprehensible, this is not terrorism. (Its victims might not agree.)
It is perpetrated by soldiers, not terrorists. These acts of aggression, occurring during wartime, are intended to end hostilities, thus reduce casualties. (Had the Allies been forced to invade Japan to end WWII, far more Japanese, not to mention US soldiers, would have died as a consequence.)
In contrast, true terrorism is motivated by MADNESS (both meanings.)
Dissatisfied with their lots in life, terrorists are angry at the world. In their minds, they were dealt an inequitable, intolerable hand and this is the only way to get even.
Happily married, successful, loving parents do not sacrifice their enviable lives to kill as many strangers as possible.
Devastating arboreal conflagrations require parched timber; riots only occur when the populace is unhappy. Terrorists are miserable, with nothing to lose. Weapons of mass destruction provide powerless individuals an ephemeral omnipotence. In their minds, martyrdom is a raison d’être, finally imparting an enduring significance to their previously purposeless lives.
They are also mad, as in psychotic, out of touch with reality.
All humans are born with the instinct to preserve life. We are forced to consciously overcome it when we enter the armed forces, civilian or military. Terrorists convince themselves they aren’t killing humans, but infidels, savages, vermin, Zionists. Accordingly, they not only have the right to do so, but indeed the obligation.
When humans disintegrate to become suicidal or homicidal, we all implicitly understand that is crazy (why those are the sole justifications for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization.)
(Most) soldiers are neither homicidal nor suicidal. They kill if they must, die if they can’t prevent it, but prefer to avoid both. Soldiers fantasize about returning home. The distinction between dreaming of a White Christmas and 72 virgins is not a difference of religion, but of psychopathology.
(White Christmas, the best-selling song of all time, written by Jewish Irving Berlin, is less about Christmas than about returning home for the holidays. Though born Orthodox, Berlin personally celebrated Christmas, but never enjoyed it because his only son died that day.)
What if we understand their reasons? Doesn’t that mean they aren’t crazy? No.
Just because we can connect the dots of someone with loose associations and comprehend their grievances does not make them rational. Nor does it make their grievances sane.
The sad reality is, most insane individuals wander the periphery of civilization untreated, and unfettered. Whether because of cost, convenience, or philosophy, our approach is, no harm, no foul. If you don’t bother us, we won’t bother you.
When an individual traverses the globe to assassinate a celebrity whom they consider evil, everyone acknowledges they’re crazy. Why should that conclusion change if they feel that way about an entire race or religion?
What if they’re not alone in their assessment? It’s still crazy.
We often see folie a deux, two isolated family members convincing each other they’re right and the whole world is wrong. Less frequently, we see similar Munster-like families. Unfortunately, there are also large, self-isolating passionate groups that figuratively (in the case of Jonestown, literally) swallow the Kool-Aid. What begins as mass-hysteria becomes mass-murder.
Belonging to any tribe, even a terrorist madding crowd, makes an isolated individual feel like they’re finally part of a loving family, something they felt deprived of in childhood. They will do absolutely anything the tribe demands not to be expelled.
As society evolves, we become more tolerant of differing belief-systems. You can worship any God you choose (or no god), practice any religion you believe. You can even fervently believe I am destined for Hell because I don’t agree with you. You cannot however, try to send me there yourself.
When your belief system threatens our existence, we can no longer afford that tolerance.
Just a society is compelled to destroy microbial pandemics, we must also destroy terrorist endemics to ensure our self-preservation. That is not only our right but our obligation.
Not to do so, would be truly mad.
