Bombs and Cars and Crowds: How Terrorism Ends
How shall we think Christian-ly about recent extremism?
The holidays saw a string of grievous violence around the world. A former Muslim, now apparently a supporter for the far-right and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party drove a car into a Christmas market in Germany on Christmas. An attack in New Orleans saw dozens killed or injured by an Islamic State motivated US military serviceman who drove a car into a crowd. Then a cyber-truck packed with fireworks exploded outside a Trump property in Las Vegas at the hands of another US military veteran. And, the FBI arrested a Virginia man with no apparent criminal record on firearms charges finding over 150 bombs and evidence that he’d been using pictures of President Biden for target practice. Apparently “he believed political assassinations should be brought back,” though his lawyers reportedly argued “the contention that someone might be in danger because of their political views and comments is nonsensical.” Hm.
As I read the various news items over the holidays I was shocked by the ideological diversity of attacks and threats… and yet their similarity. While motives are not fully known in all these situations, it reminds me of the stirring comment by extremism researcher J.M. Berger:
If you believe that only “the other guys” can produce extremists and that your own identity group cannot, you may be an extremist yourself.
I remember a jolting experience I had in a training on cultural intelligence. Military intelligence professionals staged different rooms with artifacts, books, letters and personal affects and then asked participants to identify threats. Most of us went with common stereotypes and accused the most common perpetrators from our cultural perspective. Most of us missed the clues because we were actively looking for threat in our perceived enemies and discounting evidence in our own identity group.
There are many eerie similarities between extremisms of all types. One glaring fact is most acts are committed by men. Consider the ‘family resemblances:’ strict/literal textual hermeneutics, male dominant militancy, apocalypticism, a desire to proactively bring about the end of days through force, clear out-group blamed for the ills of society, intellectual vices such as closed-mindedness, dogmatism, cognitive bias, strong in-group dynamics (high entatativity), high degree of certainty in holding beliefs (fanaticism), strong dismissal of modernism as a threat, skepticism towards science, beards, guns, role of women... I could go on. If we were to compare for example the right wings of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism we’d find vast similarities. Ironic that extremists have so much in common with their enemies!
The different manifestations feed one from the other. I’ve referenced the work of Julia Ebner previously who observes that Islamic and right-wing Christian extremist rhetoric amplify and echo one another. This ‘mutual radicalization’ perpetuates and gains traction from narratives: ‘the West is at war with Islam’… ‘Islam is at war with the West1.’
There is a huge perceptual gap in the media - extremism is far more portrayed as Islamic, when the right wing brand is vastly more common. Our natural bias toward our own in-group blinds us to inconvenient facts. I don’t want to acknowledge (since they are broadly speaking, my identity group) that most terrorism in the US, however, is perpetuated by right-wing Christians or that since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides.
One key to stopping the spiral is addressing it in our own camp. When discussion of politics, war and religion start to escalate to othering and hostility, we can call it out. Especially for Christians who hold to the normative ethical and moral principles Jesus taught, we need to wrestle with applying these difficult teachings.
Recognizing extremism as such, even in our own identity group is a start, but how do we address broader escalating violence? This is a long answer that keeps many smart people, very busy. While not simple, one thing that is certain: retaliation, escalation and retribution only perpetuate the problem. Revenge begets more revenge, those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
It seems that Jesus’ teachings of non-violence, non-retaliation, love of neighbor, love of enemy and praying for those who persecute have more applicability than just the interpersonal level. The duty of government to protect, enforce laws and promote the common good is acknowledged, but what might these ethical and moral principles look like at a societal level? What is the role of the private citizen, of houses of worship, of neighbors? How might we intervene in the lives of people who feel so desperate or disgruntled earlier, before they consider violence? This is a complex but proactive conversation I pray occupies our thoughts more than the natural defense/retribution response.
To demonstrate this isn’t just a ‘Christian’ idea, I’ll conclude with a longer quote by terrorism expert Audrey Cronin who studied the rise and decline of dozens of extremist movements through history:
Terrorism is so repulsive and outrageous that those responsible for order and the protection of civilians have a natural propensity to try to crush groups through overwhelming oppression, either domestically with police and security forces or externally with military force. The Basic instinct to fight fire with fire., to meet treacherous force with a devastating counter punch, is as long standing as the Old Testament and Machiavelli's The Prince. What a shame that the modern historical record fails to support such a noble impulse.
The good news is that terrorism virtually always fails, As long as policymakers are wise enough to avoid ceding power to the treacherous use of force.
In today's globalizing world, the focus must be on the counter mobilization of the popular will, using strategies of leverage rather than compellence to prevent a campaign from drawing energy from the state's response and to lay bare the effects of this indiscriminate violence for those it claims to champion2.
Julia Ebner. “How Far Right and Islamist Extremists Amplify Each Other’s Rhetoric.” Presented at the TEDxVienna, Vienna, November 10, 2016.
Cronin, Audrey Kurth. How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. p. 205-206