The theory of the "self-radicalizing" or "lone wolf" terrorists is not one I find very persuasive.
I realize there are people who have done very serious and extensive research into terrorism — which I haven't done — and they find it persuasive. My hat's off to them for their credentials and their experience but…I don't buy it. Not on the Tsarnaevs' story, or others (like Muhtorov from Uzbekistan).
I just have too many questions and am not persuaded. I see us being driven as public toward this version of the story, and I think it is too soon, and too lacking in facts.
In a news analysis piece Home-Made Style of Terror, Jihadists Push New Tactics with the HTML header of Terrorists Find Online Education for Attacks, the New York Times has crafted the quintessential "self-radicalization" piece. It makes it seem as if, Khan Academy-style, disaffected young men can just watch jihad videos that Google hasn't managed to delete from Youtube and become organized for violence. While I'm the first to speak up about the influence of the violence-inciting Internet and its affect on real life (in cases like Newton or Colorado), I have to point out that it's not just "the Internet" and somebody has to make the videos in an organized way.
I think it fits the "progressive" narrative to be able to accomplish a number of things at once: excuse Obama's FBI for not catching these suspects; accuse "America's wars" (by which they mainly mean Bush's war on terror) for having "blowback" or "chickens coming home to roost"; distract attention from very real organized Islamist threats as a way of minimizing terror, and making it seem as if it is a socio-economic problem for which the US bears responsibility.
No sale.
My comment at the Times:
This news story is an artful construction of the new narrative arriving
just in time for Obama's winding down — with good reason — of wars in
Iran and Afghanistan. It soothes the public into believing that we don't
need any wars against people who in fact do make us their enemy first,
but can just use localized crime control and not even worry about the
spread of extremism. It also dangerously undermines the First Amendment
by suggesting that television coverage spawns copy cats and therefore
implies that consideration should be given to controlling it, even as it
indulges in print media version of the same thing spreading the idea of
the Lone Mujahid Pocketbook.
Yet the same saturation coverage
that worries anti-TV liberals who wants a pass in their own form of
coverage is what enables the community to be alert and be strengthened
in their determination not to be afraid and to support victims with
solidarity.
There's also the moral equivalence of putting up
home-grown bombers not related to Islamism next to those who are —
although worldwide, there are far, far more cases of Islamist extremists
killing far more people than white militias and a foreign and domestic
policy is in fact needed.
As for the Tsarnaevs, the hand of
Moscow is big in this case, with many unanswered questions of why
Russian intelligence didn't arrest an American resident in touch with at
least one or more militants *assassinated* by Russian forces. When were
they going to tell the FBI *that*?
* * *
another comment I added to the discussion on the Times which is mainly running toward "blame the victim chickens-roosting" theorizing and exoneration of Islamists — with a few exceptions:
I'm glad you spoke up about this reality, it is grating to hear the
readiness with with the "progressive" mind discounts the very real war
waged against the US by Islamism. This article frankly seems to be in
that vein.
What I find perplexing about this new narrative of the
"self radical" is how such persons can be decoupled from the very real
industry of financed, planned, and dispersed videos of jihad. They
aren't made in a backyard; some of them have very high production
values. These videos take organization and discipline and work, and that
means they are the products of organizations. If someone contacts such
an organization and keeps watching their videos and chats with their
operatives on Youtube or other social media, how is that "self"
radicalization?! It is radicalization due to the planned and perpetrated
incitement of imminent lawlessness that is jihad. This raises the
question of whether Google shouldn't just remove videos but notify law
enforcement of patterns of jihad videos that they both remove or don't
remove. Yet the geeks would not countenance CISPA, a law intended to
achieve just such cooperation between Internet companies and the
government.
My comment:
I appreciate the academic rigour you are bringing to this topic.
Whatever one’s criticisms of the NYPD approach, it has worked. You
can’t beat that with a stick. We may not have the luxury to adopt more
idealistic/ideological approaches that pretend ideology isn’t a factor,
as the ex-FBI-turned-ACLU advisor is telling us (see NYT piece).
Christian Caryl has accomplished what no other journalist has done
and contacted the mysterious “Misha,” which is a diminutive of the name
“Mikhail” and therefore is just as much his “real name”. But from the
sound of it, he didn’t have much time with him and spoke with him
outside his home, for perhaps 20 minutes. It doesn’t sound like he sat
down with him for 4 hours. So while I respect that he made a judgement
that Misha “wasn’t Salafist,” we can’t be sure. And I’m not sure what
the “10 ways you can recognize a Salfist instantly” are anyway. Beards?
Quoting certain prophets?
I’m troubled by the way in which we are all being driven to this
“self-radicalizing” narrative that seeks to minimize the role of
organized terrorist groups so opportunistically just when Obama needs to
wind down two big wars against Islamic countries.
Religious cults of any stripe usually have two key features: a)
pressure to advance yourself spiritually by recruiting others, and
therefore having to proselytize aggressively not just out of zeal but
out of an imperative to advance in the organization b) a demand to
think from the cult’s ideas and discard old ways of thinking, i.e. love
of music as proof of progress.
But both of these factors need a personal bond or connection, it
seems to me, and can’t just make do with a Youtube. For one, the
“youtubized” theory seems to overlook that in fact very organized,
funded, resourced, determined, planned operations are the ones making
persuasive videos and disseminating them — and also socializing with
people in comments on Youtube and forums that go with the video. For
two, the obvious sequence of the video account beginning *after* the
trip to Dagestan seems to be underplayed.
The tendency with either the “self-radicalization” or “Islamist plot”
hypotheses is that they completely leave out the possibility of a
staged Russian intelligence operation which isn’t some wild conspiracy
theory when we take into account that Kadyrov ordered a Chechen leader
assassinated in Vienna and former FSB agent Litvinenko was murdered with
polonium 2010, pointing to the state as actor. These and many, many
more incidents involving hired Chechens or turned Chechens or mysterious
assassins sometimes posing as Islamists means that you have to keep an
open mind about this option, as both Putin and Kadyrov could be
motivated against the US for revenge, both over the Magnitsky List and
the larger issue of the war in Syria and US support of rebels there.
But whatever the version of the story, there likely had to be a
person or persons who mentored Tamerlan, even if they didn’t train him
formally in some camp, and this person doesn’t have to be a Salafi to
push him toward more rigid thinking (and that may have been Misha’s
role). Someone has to give him the moral green light to kill and
overcome what would be a natural conditioning of conscience not to kill —
and Misha spent enough time with Caryl to let us know that if he had
been Tamerlan’s teacher, he wouldn’t have countenanced violence. So
likely there are others (or Misha is misleading us).
There’s an awful lack of curiousness about the glaring hole in the
Russian intelligence story to the US. Here’s the Dagestanti
anti-extremism center of the MVD (police) telling Novaya gazeta (a
deliberate leak) that they know Tamerlan was in touch with Nidal, the
18-year-old jihadist killed by Russian forces, and yet Moscow neglects
to tell the FBI *that* — and talks only about a Youtube account? A man
from America is in touch with at least one or maybe two jihadists in
Dagestan (there are multiple jihadists discussed as possible contacts),
and nobody questions him? He is allowed to leave the country without
incident? Really, guys?
We keep hearing about the two incidents in the Cambridge mosque as
somehow exonerating this mosque of radicalism. Yet reportedly Tamerlan
met Misha at this mosque in 2009 when it opened, and his family members
described him as becoming more radicalized after this meeting; he was
also not expelled from this mosque but returned again after these
incidents, so perhaps *some* of his thinking was more radical than the
black Muslims in the mosque who wished to honour Martin Luther King,
Jr., but was exactly in line, for example, with other hate concepts,
i.e. with at least some members’ radical rejection of the Jews and
Israel, as you can see in this video:
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/minding_russia/2013/04/the-angry-young-men-in-tamerlans-mosque.html
At the end of the day, the entire “self-radicalization” theory hinges
on watching Youtubes or joining in Internet fora. Yet Tamerlan made his
Youtube with the radical jihadist films, some of which were removed by
Google, in *August 2012* which was *after* he returned from his six
months’ sojourn in Dagestan, which also included side trips to Chechnya
and started and ended in Moscow.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/22/tamerlan-tsarnaev-youtube-jihadist-radicalisation
So how was he self-radicalizing via the Internet before that? Perhaps
the FBI’s forensic studies of his Internet use may shed some light on
this question. Until then, I’m going to continue to look for clues in
the Russian side of this story where there are contradictions and gaps,
and not just listen to former FBI agents and Harvard psychologists
recruited by the Times to fit a narrative they’ve constructed. Any
narrative is a construct, but I think we should challenge those that are
designed to sooth us into complacity and fit White House foreign policy
after the fact rather than reject those that seem too awful to
contemplate.
Leave a Reply