Tag: terrorism

Can hatred be an ideology?

Posted on by kathiemm

The Ideology of HatredIn her book The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse, Niza Yanay argues that conflicts formerly identified as struggles for national autonomy or self-determination are now being viewed as products of hatred. We heard a lot of that after 9/11: “Why do they hate us?”

Perhaps the answers would have seemed too embarrassing if the media had asked questions such as, “Why do they want control of their own oil, of their own territory?”

Yanay argues that hatred is not the opposite of love but rather is intricately intertwined with it. Think about it. On a personal level, how often do husbands, wives, lovers, and children say “I hate you” to the people they love and need most?

Yanay categorizes hate into two types:

  • Hatred by the oppressed toward an oppressor
  • Hatred by the oppressor toward the oppressed.

The first, she points out, can be easily understood. The second type, however, requires the development of an ideology to support it—an  ideology that portrays you and your particular group as moral, good, and just, and any “Other” as hateful and dangerous.

While political-military leaders and the media may reinforce such an ideology–for example, referring to an “Axis of Evil” or “Muslim terrorism”—people have an unconscious desire to connect with the “enemy.” For example, sometimes Israelis refer to Palestinians and Arabs refer to Jews as “our cousins.”

Yanay offers a way out of the sort of hatred promoted in the Middle East and elsewhere: form friendships, even in the face of conflicts, just as we do in our personal lives. Most of us have good friends who occasionally frustrate us, anger us, refuse to see that we are right and they are wrong. In general, though, we value those personal friendships enough to work things through.

Nations can do that too.

Kathleen Malley-Morrison and Majed Ashy

An earlier version of this two-part review was recently published in the American
Psychological Association journal, PsycCRITIQUES, August 2013.

Creating young martyrs: What leads young people to resort to violence?

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Alice LoCicero

The accused Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, grew up in my home town of Cambridge and went to the high school my kids attended. They look like kids my children would have gone to school with, and their friends and family Creating Young Martyrsdescribe them in ways that make them seem normal and good.

How could young folks we might easily have known and loved act intentionally to create carnage, terror, and radical disruption of lives and psyches? As President Obama asked: What would lead them “to resort to violence”?

Dr. Samuel (Justin) Sinclair and I set out to answer an eerily similar question when we researched kids at risk of recruitment to the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist organization (now defeated) in Sri Lanka. We wrote about this research in our 2008 book, Creating young martyrs: Conditions that make dying in a terrorist attack seem like a good idea. Our findings help explain this apparent contradiction.

What we learned, both from reviewing others’ research and combing through our own findings, is that many kids who engage in terrorist actions, or who aspire to do so, think that their actions are going to bring attention to the grievances of their people, which they perceive–rightly or wrongly–as legitimate, and to begin to address a highly asymmetrical distribution of power, a distribution that disadvantages the group they identify with. The ultimate goal then, the “end” that for them justifies the means, is to help their peoples’ cause. Aware that they will die in the attack or soon thereafter, they see their actions as dutiful or, in Western terms, altruistic.

I realize that this idea–that young people who do things that result in killing, maiming, and disruption, do so with altruistic intent–is highly counter-intuitive, but it comes to my attention over and over again in our own and others’ data and in the words of family members of kids engaged in terrorism.

In the award-winning documentary film, “My Daughter the Terrorist,” in which filmmaker Morten Daae and director Beate Arnestad follow two Tamil girls, trained to be Black Tigers, who are prepared to blow themselves up in a terrorist action, the mother of one of the girls speaks about her daughter, saying, “She was different. She dreamt of becoming a nun.”

Alice Locicero is Past President and Co-Founder of the Society of Terrorism Research, as well as Chair of Social Sciences at Endicott College. She is a certified Clinical Psychologist, and has been a faculty member at the Center for Multicultural Training and Boston Medical Center, as well as at Suffolk University. In earlier roles, LoCicero served as Senior Psychologist working with families at Children’s Hospital, Boston, and as Clinical Instructor at Harvard Medical School. A member of the Massachusetts Behavioral Health Disaster Responders, she provides mental health services to family members of victims of terrorism and other man-made and natural disasters. She traveled to Sri Lanka in May and June of 2007 to learn about conditions that make terrorism an appealing idea to some youths.

(This post was originally published in the ABC-CLIO blog.)

Poverty: A terrible terrorist, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Charikleia TsatsaroniBegging

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst violence.” Poverty is also a terrorist.

Poverty means threats of or actual loss of jobs, loss of pensions, loss of one’s home, loss of hope. It means living under the heavy shadow of a big national financial debt, constantly terrorized by the risk that your country will be bankrupted, fearful of reprisals if you protest austerity programs that bring no relief to poverty. After three years of austerity in Greece, freedom from such terror feels unattainable.

All these violent expressions of poverty can have serious consequences to people’s health and psychological well-being. For example, currently the Greek health care and education systems lack adequate materials and personnel, and have become more difficult to access, as well as less egalitarian. Unemployment has reached record-breaking rates.

Greek people seem increasingly distrustful. Such social distrust can sometimes take the form of violent social conflicts. For instance, racist attacks on immigrants and refugees are more common since the financial crisis, because some people consider immigrant groups and refugees to be the cause of unemployment in Greece. Also, for the first time since 1950, the infant mortality rates went up in 2012, as well as suicide rates and psychological problems (e.g., stress, panic attacks).

Poverty is a nearly global problem hurting individuals and communities well beyond the borders of my own country. For decades, many organizations around the world have tried to deal with it. Do they work together or compete or undermine each other? Where do their interests lie–with ordinary people or the power elites?

What can ordinary people do to stop this form of violence? Are there effective ways to help? Are there peaceful ways to protest against poverty and the terror it produces?

I have sought answers and inspiration in different places such as the thought-provoking films from the project “Why poverty?” that aim to inspire people to ask questions about poverty, become part of the solution, and bring positive change. More significantly, I try to remain mindful and engaged.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Arresting the cycle of violence

Posted on by kathiemm

As of this writing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the “second suspect” in the Boston Marathon tragedy, is still alive. We should all pray that he recovers. We need to hear his story. He needs to tell his story.

Boston Marathon explosion
Photo by Aaron Tang. Used under CC Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

How does a young man who features Salaam alaikum (Peace be with you) on his Twitter page become involved with guns and bombs? Some people will manage to see threats hidden in his tweet, “There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don’t hear them cuz they’re the minority,” but if that comment is labeled dangerous, we are all in trouble.

From Marathon Monday afternoon until the final capture of the bloodied Dzhokhar, the media entertained Americans with the kind of thrilling stories they love—starting with scenes of fires, bodies, panic, and heroism, and ending with firefights, helicopters, a bloody boat, and what seemed like an endless wait (will they let him bleed to death?) before Dzhokhar’s capture. The good guys triumph; the bad guys are vanquished. What could be more righteous?

Fueled by adrenaline, many Americans want to maintain the excitement, brandish their masculinity, prove that “ya better not mess with America.” Thus we see stupid and hateful messages like Fox News commentator Erik Rush’s tweet, “Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.” The statement itself promotes evil; it is inherently terroristic.

Far better to listen to the recordings of the Interfaith Healing Service in Boston.

The whole world expressed sympathy and support for the United States following the tragedies of 9-11. Yet the government’s subsequent use of those events to promote narrowly-conceived nationalistic interests with pitiless aggression and the slaughter of thousands cost us that support.

Right now we have seen again an outpouring of sympathy for the losses just suffered on Marathon Monday. Let’s not blow it again.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology