What Creates/Causes Terrorism?

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone have any theories? My theory is this that oppression/government creates terrorists.

Dogma, radical/extreme ideology.

They preclude thought, rationality and decency of and kind.

True that does but your forgetting political Terrorism. that also precludes thought, rationality and decency of and kind.

Also their has been left-wing terrorism ecoterrorism. And Lone Wolfe terrorism.

Pretty much.... I mean, the quibble is that terrorists do think, they are rational, they can be decent and kind in certain contexts. They are just so extremely ideological that all of these human costs are worth the outcome, and where their cognitive efforts are extremely biased.


I think that's absolutely false.

The issue is that while some terrorist organizations are a result of some very disliked policy by governments, a lot of them are due to some extremist ideology or religion. So, Aum Shinrikio in Japan was not some group that was driven underground by the horrors inflicted on it by the Japanese. Instead it was an ambitious cult that turned into a suicide cult after the leader failed to gain any notoriety in the larger world. It actually tried to get political power and failed. The Marxist terrorist organizations aren't really just matters of evil capitalism(even though some people may be radicalized by some bad corporate action), but rather they are violent sects seeking to destroy the capitalist system because the members feel alien enough from society to do so and were recruited.(And note: In any society, there will be plenty of people, even highly capable people, who feel alienated at one point or another and who will then be open to these kinds of ideas) But.... the response just does not fit. How about the KKK? They're considered a terrorist group. How oppressed are they? The oppression model just doesn't fit. We're better off understanding terrorism as being something like a corrupt meme, similar to a bad cult, than we are to see it as "freedom fighting".

A perceived problem, and a belief that non-terrorist options cannot solve the problem.

How do you even define "terrorism"?

State sponsored acts of mass murder like the Lockerbee bombing are called terrorism.

But so are the acts of local cults, and so the acts of lone individuals.

Both the Muslim American soldier who went on a shooting spree in arizona, and the anti muslim Swedish mass murderer in Sweden are called "terrorists". But the mass shooting at Columbine is not usually called terrorism, but simply "mass murder". So when does a mass murderer become a terrorist?

Ted Bundy is not considered a terrorist, but unabomber Ted Kozinsinki ( a serial killer with a cause) might be so labeled.

And its true that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". There is that bias as well.

So its hard enough to define. Harder still to find one single "cause".

Last edited by naturalplastic on 12 Jun 2012, 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

The government isn't only a cause, but it is, itself, a terrorist. They get what they want done by scarring the hell out of people.

This.

Under the common, implicit definition of terrorism, i.e. acts of violence organised by a group (*) of people with the purpose of coercing another group or a government into changing a present policy or adopting a new one, it happens when a group feels strongly enough about a cause (which happens often), and when there are no reasonnable ways of pursuing the change through legal means -- even if legal change is unlikely, its virtual possibility is important.

In the specific context of whatever acts of terrorism are committed by Middle Easterners against the USA, the cause is repeated American intervention in the area. Obviously, they can't petition to the Congress or President, they can't vote in the next election, and their governments cannot openly confront the United States, so... there you go, terrorism.

(*) I think "organised" and "group" are key terms, if we want to keep the concept of terrorism as clearly defined as possible. This way, the Norwegian bomber/mass murderer isn't a terrorist, because even though he had planned his action, he was not a group -- and positively changing a policy can't be done alone, since a single person will be arrested very quickly, which is not good for the endurance of the cause. He is just a murderer, probably a crazy one too. In the same way, a mob which commits vandalism during a riot, even a riot degenerating from a legal protest organised by a group, would not be committing terrorism, since the actual violent acts were not organised. If the distinction isn't made, "terrorism" becomes confused with "politically-flavoured violence".

There are many reasons behind acts of terrorism, just like there are many reasons people have committed murder.

What about knowingly not stopping a terrorist act? Does that make the people in charge of that country terrorists?

I think fear of social change - especially when hatred for another group of people is involved - is a major cause of terrorism, particularly concerning the KKK. They saw desegregation and voting rights for blacks as threatening to the world that they knew, where a white man - no matter how poor he was - had had a higher social status than blacks.
The same could be applied to the Klan at the birth of their organization during Reconstruction, when whites had feared loss of their social footing with the Confederacy's defeat, and the emancipation of the slaves.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think crazy people with a control issue who want to force everyone else to live/believe/think like they do are the ones who cause terrorism.

You can't blame a government for terrorism. Terrorists attack innocent and many times random people. Terrorist acts aren't rebellion against anyones government, they are temper fits taken to the extreme. The terrorists want to have their way so bad, they can't stand that someone else isn't doing what they want, so they plan an attack and kill bunches of other people just to "show them".

Rebellion against governments is called revolution, not terrorism. Saying that governments cause terrorism is like saying that wife beating is caused by mouthy women who won't obey and can't cook.

Declension has put it concisely and well.

As for "lone wolf" terrorists, I think they are mainly crazy people.

Easy answer is getting fed up with the BS and resorting to extreme actions in an attempt to prove your point...or letting some cause like religion or maybe a political ideology take over your logic and being willing to do anything to support it and or prove its the correct way.

As for who dies in a terrorist attack, at the risk of sounding cold hearted........no one has any idea what percentage of those people where actually 'innocent' most humans are hardly 'innocent' unless we are talking babies and very, very young children that have not been corrupted by anything yet. Not saying its good to kill a bunch of people in the name of terrorism, but I hate the assumption that they were all 'innocent.'

Do you really have to ask?

The answers are there, easily findable, if you are willing to look for them.

What causes terrorism? Dissatisfaction. Culture. Mindset. In that order.

As the victims of terror are killed without knowing it's coming, and very often are just ordinary people who have never harmed the terrorists, they are innocent in my mind.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer