I was reading Hunter S. Thompson's classic work of Gonzo Journalism, Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga when a passage jumped out at me. Thompson is exploring why outlaw motorcyclists want to join the Hell's Angels. At the time, it was pretty much a guaranteed life of unemployment, scorn, and violence. Also, these outlaws, ironically, had to follow a rigid code contrary to their obvious disdain for authority. He notes:
Despite the anarchic possibilities of the machines they ride and worship, they insist that their main concern in life is to be a "righteous Angel," which requires a loud obedience to the party line. They are intensely aware of belonging, of being able to depend on each other.
This, as usual, got me thinking of terrorists or, more specifically, what Bruce Schneier calls "Highly Ineffective Terrorists" which historically has been pretty much all of them. Just like the Angels of the 60's, they are driven by what they believe or are told to be righteous behavior, though society would call it counterproductive and depraved. In the case of the Hell's Angels this seems to involve lots of booze, communal "stomping" of enemies, and gang rape, and to most terrorists, this means killing innocent civilians. To summarize the article, I've linked to yesterday, if you judge terrorists as most do by "strategic" or political motivations, they are remarkably unsuccessful due to what Schneier terms seven nasty, seemingly counterproductive habits:
(1) attack civilians, a policy that has a lousy track record of convincing those civilians to give the terrorists what they want; (2) treat terrorism as a first resort, not a last resort, failing to embrace nonviolent alternatives like elections; (3) don't compromise with their target country, even when those compromises are in their best interest politically; (4) have protean political platforms, which regularly, and sometimes radically, change; (5) often engage in anonymous attacks, which precludes the target countries making political concessions to them; (6) regularly attack other terrorist groups with the same political platform; and (7) resist disbanding, even when they consistently fail to achieve their political objectives or when their stated political objectives have been achieved.
More can be found in Max Abrams' "What Terrorists Really Want". Either terrorists take lessons on strategic planning from the Coyote in Looney Toons or they are not, individually motivated primarily by political goals. What, then, DO terrorists really want? The answer comes through the study of street gang behavior, coincidentally summarized by a local blues band I recently had the pleasure of seeing, the Tokyo Tramps (a trio that left Japan to play Mississippi Delta blues in Boston... that kind of globalization could almost be a post on its own): "Everybody wanna be loved/Ain't nobody wanna be alone."
The Hell's Angels, al Qaeda, and the Crips are all similar in that regard. As economists and sociologists have pointed out, crime really doesn't pay. Don't let the Clipse fool you, slinging rock is usually below minimum wage. The Rochester Youth Survey, aimed at understanding why kids join gangs, found that association with delinquent peers drove people into gangs, and that the factors that kept them out were usually education-related. This didn't mean grades, books, and homework, however. The survey cited commitment to school, attachment to teachers, and parents’ expectations. In other words, they joined if that's what their friends were doing, and didn't if they were able to find acceptance, meaning, and community elsewhere, which for young people tends to be school or their parents.
Thompson notes that the Angels are similar. If an outlaw is alone or an independent, they "will do almost anything to get in a club." The same goes for terrorists "People who join terrorist groups most often have friends or relatives who are members of the group," Scheier explains, "and the great majority of terrorist are socially isolated." Bikers, Jihadis, and gangsters- ain't nobody wanna be alone.
By Alex Olesker
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