What did you do with my RWHN?

[Cain]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Right, in this case the root cause seems to lie in social alienation.

Yes, for sure.  Social alienation, possibly exploited for reasons discussed in the previous thread.

[Junkenstein]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Right, in this case the root cause seems to lie in social alienation.

That's something I suspect society will have distinct difficulty facing. Society can't take the blame so the Actor must be at fault and punished. Society is Us and we are good. He is Bad and must be shown to be such. He can't be Part of Us or that might mean that We too could be Bad.

The script's pretty much set from there.

The list with this factor is getting quite long, and incidents are racking up quite quickly.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Right, in this case the root cause seems to lie in social alienation.

Yes, for sure.  Social alienation, possibly exploited for reasons discussed in the previous thread.

Yep. Very possibly.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What is entirely avoidable is the other picture it paints about disenfranchised young men. Am I correct in that this is a group that's well known to be at risk for radicalization, um, everywhere?

Yes and no.  There's a correlation of sorts, but it's not as clear cut as that.  Many terrorists are quite middle class in their socio-economic status, when you investigate.

Right, in this case the root cause seems to lie in social alienation.

That's something I suspect society will have distinct difficulty facing. Society can't take the blame so the Actor must be at fault and punished. Society is Us and we are good. He is Bad and must be shown to be such. He can't be Part of Us or that might mean that We too could be Bad.

The script's pretty much set from there.

The list with this factor is getting quite long, and incidents are racking up quite quickly.

And also yep, on the head.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's interesting, because we were talking about this a bit over a year ago, I think... that's how the Common Walls project got started. All this othering and alienation is having a pretty significant impact on the American psyche.

[Doktor Howl]

Both brothers also had a strong sense of Chechen pride, Tamerlan being desperate to belong to something and Dzhokar identifying with a culture that, from what I read, he had very few ties to.

Those are the factors that need to be looked at, more than anything.

Something about Irish Americans getting worked up over the IRA, drunkenly bawling Irish ballads, despite knowing nothing about the situation in Ireland, or its actual history.

Hmm.

Right. Again, scatterbrained at work. That sentence isn't meant to imply that Chechen pride was the problem, but that a lack of American cultural identity is.

<insert group> pride is by definition a corrosive thing.  It is Othering made not just acceptable but almost MANDATORY.

You could see that here on PD, when feminist or gay or transexual pride turned to sneering comments about "CISHET man tears".

You can see it everywhere.

I don't mean we shouldn't encourage differences, I mean "pride" quickly turns into "us vs those bastards".

[Doktor Howl]

Im just saying that people that do horrible acts should be made accountable, but also those that influenced given person to do said horrible acts. But influences can become abstractions with no sole guilty individual, who would be accountable for a crime derived from systemic poverty?

Woooo...So, basically, we would convict the parents, for example, alongside the person who committed a crime?

The disconnect here is that you seem to be stuck in the American paradigm of punishment, rather than thinking about social shifts that could reduce crime, which is the main reason we need to understand what causes kids like the Tsarnaevs to do what they did. "Reducing crime" and "arresting people" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Punishing people doesn't prevent crime at all.

I was specifically responding to his comment about holding people accountable, in that post.  His follow up argument (the cartel member example) seems to be saying the same thing.

I asked for clarification, but he seems to have missed that post.

So I am responding to the two different arguments; yours, and what I perceive his to be.

Well, sorry for not directly quoting, but, I thought the Cartel example was a good clarification, but no, parents should not be convicted for things their child did... either the child didn't know to a full extent their crime and are just partially accountable (economical restoration if it was damaged goods, but not jail time), or they did know what they were doing, so accountability rests upon themselves.

Oh, okay.  I misunderstood, then.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Both brothers also had a strong sense of Chechen pride, Tamerlan being desperate to belong to something and Dzhokar identifying with a culture that, from what I read, he had very few ties to.

Those are the factors that need to be looked at, more than anything.

Something about Irish Americans getting worked up over the IRA, drunkenly bawling Irish ballads, despite knowing nothing about the situation in Ireland, or its actual history.

Hmm.

Right. Again, scatterbrained at work. That sentence isn't meant to imply that Chechen pride was the problem, but that a lack of American cultural identity is.

<insert group> pride is by definition a corrosive thing.  It is Othering made not just acceptable but almost MANDATORY.

You could see that here on PD, when feminist or gay or transexual pride turned to sneering comments about "CISHET man tears".

You can see it everywhere.

I don't mean we shouldn't encourage differences, I mean "pride" quickly turns into "us vs those bastards".

It's way too easy. And recognizing that in myself is part of what gave me the current (and admittedly absolute) respect that I have for human life.

[Left]

Regarding regular criminals...I read this a while back, and I find it interesting, if not...well, conclusive.
The vast majority of abused kids do not grow up to be criminals...

http://www.primal-page.com/stein.htm

Maltreated children are characteristically frozen in the traumatic moment, feeling like someone, but not really themselves, and with no real demarcation among past, present, and future. Devoid of historical perspective, absent the learned link between cause and effect, the abused child grown up proceeds without premeditation. Indeed, only the bad act itself announces the intention to commit it.

    In one research study I did (Stein, 2007) with 65 offenders, the vast majority of the men, roughly 80% I would say, were horrifically abused in childhood: Broken bones, loss of consciousness, attempts on their lives by parents or parental surrogates. About a third of those I interviewed were sexually abused, often by more than one caretaker. This is a relatively common historical portrait of serious offenders.

    Of the 65, the eleven most pathologically dissociated offenders had committed the most vicious crimes: kidnapping, attempted matricide, murder, arson, serial rape, aggravated assault, and armed robbery. Five of these men professed amnesia for their offenses, although they did not deny committing them. This is actually low as a national average. Research (Partwatiker, Holcomb, & Menninger, 1985; Taylor & Koppelman, 1984; Bradford & Smith, 1979) indicates that as many as a third of violent offenders may not remember committing their crimes; some studies have found that percentage of offenders claiming amnesia for their acts climbs as high as 50% when the crime is homicide (O'Connell,1960).

    But even when dissociation is not so complete as to induce amnesia, it is still severs memory in notable ways. For example, despite the destruction they have wrought, almost all the felons I have worked with describe themselves as peaceful; their violent selves feel like what psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan (1956) called the "not me" part of personality:

The thing is?
I don't think terrorists fall into the above, at all.
Criminals and terrorists are made differently.

...Somehow the terrorists come to see what they are doing as morally righteous...we need to find out more about that.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Interestingly, the Provisional IRA probably has a very good claim to being a working class terrorist organization, though it's hard to say exactly how the economic condition of Northern Ireland may have impacted on this, being as it was.  Still, far more of the leaders there, while very clever men, were of more modest means and backgrounds than most.

It always struck me that the IRA turned into an organised crime syndicate pretty quickly. Is this a fair assessment? If so, it might explain the class thing?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Regarding regular criminals...I read this a while back, and I find it interesting, if not...well, conclusive.
The vast majority of abused kids do not grow up to be criminals...

http://www.primal-page.com/stein.htm

Maltreated children are characteristically frozen in the traumatic moment, feeling like someone, but not really themselves, and with no real demarcation among past, present, and future. Devoid of historical perspective, absent the learned link between cause and effect, the abused child grown up proceeds without premeditation. Indeed, only the bad act itself announces the intention to commit it.

    In one research study I did (Stein, 2007) with 65 offenders, the vast majority of the men, roughly 80% I would say, were horrifically abused in childhood: Broken bones, loss of consciousness, attempts on their lives by parents or parental surrogates. About a third of those I interviewed were sexually abused, often by more than one caretaker. This is a relatively common historical portrait of serious offenders.

    Of the 65, the eleven most pathologically dissociated offenders had committed the most vicious crimes: kidnapping, attempted matricide, murder, arson, serial rape, aggravated assault, and armed robbery. Five of these men professed amnesia for their offenses, although they did not deny committing them. This is actually low as a national average. Research (Partwatiker, Holcomb, & Menninger, 1985; Taylor & Koppelman, 1984; Bradford & Smith, 1979) indicates that as many as a third of violent offenders may not remember committing their crimes; some studies have found that percentage of offenders claiming amnesia for their acts climbs as high as 50% when the crime is homicide (O'Connell,1960).

    But even when dissociation is not so complete as to induce amnesia, it is still severs memory in notable ways. For example, despite the destruction they have wrought, almost all the felons I have worked with describe themselves as peaceful; their violent selves feel like what psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan (1956) called the "not me" part of personality:

The thing is?
I don't think terrorists fall into the above, at all.
Criminals and terrorists are made differently.

...Somehow the terrorists come to see what they are doing as morally righteous...we need to find out more about that.

Yeah, that's what Cain and I were talking about when we were saying how with terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers the key seems to be social alienation, not disenfranchisement like it is with common types of crime.

[Telarus]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0801/Why-Rolling-Stone-boycott-backfired-as-Tsarnaev-cover-flies-off-shelves


People talking about the boycott actually increased interest in the issue. CONGRATULATIONS.

Only 5 percent of Rolling Stone's [normal] circulation comes from single-copy sales, but the surge in newsstand sales for the August issue, to north of 13,000, is a lesson on how media works in today's communication-saturated environment. The lesson, in short, is that publicity of almost any kind pays.

"Media boycotts most often play into the hands of those who are being targeted," says Ben Bogardus, chairman of the journalism department at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. If the August issue had simply appeared without comment, it would not have garnered such numbers, he adds.

Beyond that, the controversy revives the magazine's credibility, especially in the eyes of its targeted demographic: young people, says Mr. Bogardus.

"You have a group that sees itself as anti-establishment anyway, and now here is an issue that the Establishment is boycotting. This says to that desired demographic, 'This is really something you should read,' " he says, noting that "you could not pay for" this kind of message-specific advertising.

[Left]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0801/Why-Rolling-Stone-boycott-backfired-as-Tsarnaev-cover-flies-off-shelves


People talking about the boycott actually increased interest in the issue. CONGRATULATIONS.

Only 5 percent of Rolling Stone's [normal] circulation comes from single-copy sales, but the surge in newsstand sales for the August issue, to north of 13,000, is a lesson on how media works in today's communication-saturated environment. The lesson, in short, is that publicity of almost any kind pays.

"Media boycotts most often play into the hands of those who are being targeted," says Ben Bogardus, chairman of the journalism department at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. If the August issue had simply appeared without comment, it would not have garnered such numbers, he adds.

Beyond that, the controversy revives the magazine's credibility, especially in the eyes of its targeted demographic: young people, says Mr. Bogardus.

"You have a group that sees itself as anti-establishment anyway, and now here is an issue that the Establishment is boycotting. This says to that desired demographic, 'This is really something you should read,' " he says, noting that "you could not pay for" this kind of message-specific advertising.

And this is good.  We need, as a society, to take more than a knee-jerk look at how terrorists come about.

[MMIX]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0801/Why-Rolling-Stone-boycott-backfired-as-Tsarnaev-cover-flies-off-shelves

"You have a group that sees itself as anti-establishment anyway, and now here is an issue that the Establishment is boycotting. This says to that desired demographic, 'This is really something you should read TRY,' " he says, noting that "you could not pay for" this kind of message-specific advertising.

[/quote]

With just that one minor alteration that starts to look suspiciously like a mechanism we have seen before . . . now where was it ?

[Salty]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0801/Why-Rolling-Stone-boycott-backfired-as-Tsarnaev-cover-flies-off-shelves

"You have a group that sees itself as anti-establishment anyway, and now here is an issue that the Establishment is boycotting. This says to that desired demographic, 'This is really something you should read TRY,' " he says, noting that "you could not pay for" this kind of message-specific advertising.

With just that one minor alteration that starts to look suspiciously like a mechanism we have seen before . . . now where was it ?
[/quote]