An article in today’s Wall Street Journal quotes a Princeton economist discussing the causes of terrorism:
“There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen,” he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia. “When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed,” he says, “malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics.”
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6812/wsj-lack-of-civil-liberties-breeds-terrorism/
WSJ: Lack of Civil Liberties Breeds Terrorism
Previous post: Is Intellectual Property the Key to Success?
{ 13 comments }
Also, muggers are less likely to stab you if you give them your wallet.
But why are the ACTS of terrorism committed in England where the terrorists had more civil liberties than in the muslim countries from which the terrorists orginated?
I can’t rememeber where I saw this, but I think Mises commented that under a strictly socialist regime, the only freedom left is suicide. I guess w/ these ME bombers they think they’ll take a few other people with them when they go.
“I can’t rememeber where I saw this, but I think Mises commented that under a strictly socialist regime, the only freedom left is suicide. ”
Unless it’s at the State’s behest, even that may not be allowed.
In the realm of terrorism the “Islamic terrorists” are an anecdote, not a representative sample of terrorism as we have seen it in so many different manifestations.
At the risk of over simplification, we have a handful of control freaks who use the name of Allah to cloak their own sick obsessions.
The question that is interesting is how are they able to proselytize people so intelligent and educated as has happened in Great Britain.
This is not a new question, but a recurring mystery. As I recall, there were some very bright well-educated people among those in the mass suicide in 1978 in Guyana led by Jim Jones.
For that matter, look at the excesses of some of the PETA folks; not exactly a group deprived of their civil liberties nor short on education or intelligence.
Hitler managed to persuade an entire nation of, some would have us believe, the most intelligent people on the planet. No, not my opinion but simply stated to make the point.
One over-simplified reason the terrorists tend to be well off could be that it takes an education and an awareness of the world around you to realize that you do not have freedom and that foreign powers are melding in your affairs.
Response to: “But why are the ACTS of terrorism committed in England where the terrorists had more civil liberties than in the muslim countries from which the terrorists orginated?
Posted by: tom at July 5, 2007 2:07 PM
Tom, the reason terrorist acts are committed in the England is that countries such as England and the U.S. provide financial and military support to countries such as Israel that are oppressive of muslims in the Middle East and also to countries such as Pakistan, with the Western governments supporting oppressive regimes like General Musharraf’s in Pakistan.
The Pakistani President does not represent the majority of the population, but he maintains power through oppression and use of force through ISI (Inter-services Intelligence) agency and the military, and the elimination of dissenters such as the removal of Chief Justice Chaudhry. (http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2007/05/general-strike-shuts-down-pakistan.html)
Additionally, the UK stood side by side with the U.S. at the onset of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, an occupation of a muslim country by what are seen as “infidels”.
Conclusion:
So, there are a variety of factors that result in terrorist acts being committed in the UK. When people do not have the means (think conventional army) to respond to oppression, they use any means necessary (think terrorist attacks). If you want to know what can be done to prevent them, your governments foreign policy needs to be closely examined.
How many terrorist attacks took place in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia? Just because you like A (civil liberties) and dislike B (terrorism) does not mean A reduces B. In fact, I would imagine that in the limit, eliminating A would also eliminate B, just as killing everybody on earth would solve all human-caused problems (including human deaths!).
What I did find interesting is that the recent attacks in England were the first I’ve heard of in which any Iraqis participated, outside of Iraq that is. I never really bought into blowback theory, because the area the U.S has screwed with the most is latin america, and the last time there was an attack from them was when two Puerto Ricans tried to kill Harry Truman. England and France have messed around a lot more with the muslim world, but the U.S is still the Great Satan. However, the participation of Iraqis in attacks against Britain is a datapoint in favor of blowback.
I was surprised nobody here has yet mentioned that this Krueger is most famous for his study showing that raising the minimum wage increased employment, which has been widely attacked by many but few as vociferously as Austrians.
It seems to me that we are not talking enough about the faddishness of jihadism among Muslim youth. There have been several incidences in history of groups of young men who imitated an admired young man who killed himself. For example, after the publication of Goethe’s “Die Leiden des jungen Werthers”, a wave of youngsters dressed and acted like Werther and even committed suicide in imitation of him. History is full of such phenomena.
Werther killed himself for love, but he cut an impressive figure doing so, complete with thin, wan face and cool clothes that other youths admired and imitated. When I see the faces of the jihadists, I think of Werther. They all wear the same super cool outfits, now some fabrics of which are imitated on Paris fashion runways. They cultivate the same serious, other wordly face, the same devotion to violence. They dress the part, then they go to Allah. This may be even cooler than dying for love.
Wearing the jihadist outfit, the beard and hair, cultivating the right look and the talk and maybe even wearing black lipstick like Bin Laden are part of what is going on here. I’m not saying the suicide cultists are not sincere. I’m saying they are following a fad.
Fads wear themselves out when something cooler comes along. That could be engineered by marketing specialists.
It seems people don’t want hear what the jihadist themselves say. And they clearly say that this is not about Iraq or Afghanistan or something else.
They combat the jihad to spread Islam (submission to Allah will). They are interested in nothing else.
They are not different from fanatical communists willing to kill others and themselves for the cause.
Is it so difficult to understand this simply fact?
It is not the lack of civil liberties to breed islamic terrorists, because their aim is not to bring freedom or full democracy to all, but only the dominion of their religion over any and all people and places.
TGGP,
How many terrorist attacks took place in Hitler’s France? Stalin’s Germany?
Comments on this entry are closed.