gsa
Well-Known Member
I do not believe that mental illness and terrorism are mutually exclusive categories. Depressed people, even those deprived of sleep for days at a time, do not generally target two military installations. Just a few hours beforethe shooting, Abdulazeez sent a text message to a friend, which contained a link to an Islamic verse that included the line "Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him." He was also raised in a fairly religious environment and attended mosque regularly. Now, that doesn't demonstrate that he was a terrorist, but consider the following definition of terrrorism:
(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended—
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
18 U.S. Code § 2331
This is why I think it is important that we label people like Roof terrorists. They are terrorists; their actions are intended to intimidate or coerce civilians and to influence the policy of the government by intimidation and coercion. The fact that they are mentally ill...who the hell cares? Plenty of people in the criminal justice system are convicted of crimes, notwithstanding their mental illness.
As for this kid, all signs point to radical Islamic terrorism, albeit the "lone wolf" variety. Consider this, from a New Yorker article last year:
According to Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, the director of terrorism research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, Zehaf-Bibeau fits a profile of “converts with a history of delinquency among the Westerners in ISIL. He’s a little older than average; otherwise, there is nothing unusual about his profile.” Conversion to Islam itself isn’t a cause of violence, as we well know—Dave Bathurst, for instance, is an apparently peaceful citizen, disturbed by his late friend’s act of mayhem. What seems to be the problem, rather, is the fusion of radical jihadist ideology with other personal problems, whether they be alienation, anomie, or various shades of mental illness. In a world where “clash of civilizations” rhetoric is pervasive, it is possible that radical Islam offers the same appeal to some unstable individuals that anarchism had for Leon Czolgosz, who killed President William McKinley in 1901, and that Marxism had for Lee Harvey Oswald. If you are alienated from the existing social order, the possibility of joining, even as a “lone wolf” killer, any larger social movement that promises to overturn that society may be attractive. For a person radicalized in this manner, the fantasy of political violence is a chance to gain agency, make history, and be part of something larger.
“Islamic-extremist online recruiters are very good at pulling in people who are mentally vulnerable,” Heather Hurlburt, of the Washington-based think tank New America, said. She suggests that an effective response to the problem will draw at least as much on the insights of mental health as on the intrusions of the security state. The constant balance that needs to be struck, she said, is between monitoring dangers without alienating allies in the community, as happened with New York City Police Department’s polarizing surveillance of mosques. As Hurlburt noted, “Some of the efforts, such as surveillance of college students’ social-media accounts and police informers in mosques, have been controversial and counterproductive. Insights from mental health, especially post-Columbine, tend to focus on more community-centered efforts, which may give family and clergy tools and non-stigmatizing places to turn for help. Tragically, the father of the Canadian who killed a Canadian soldier with his car on Monday had previously reported him to the authorities.”
Recruiting troubled individuals who can be pushed toward violence ties in well with ISIS’s larger strategy. As Hurlburt observed, ISIS “seems to calculate—correctly, in my view—that small-scale lone-wolf attacks on symbolic targets will get it outsized attention. So you see these propaganda broadcasts encouraging individuals who may be mentally unstable, who may have had little or no actual training, to use weapons like knives and cars that will surely lead to the attackers’ capture or death. The propagandists seem to understand the link between certain forms of mental illness and susceptibility to mass violence, even if we don’t.”
Consider what the experts are saying here: ISIS aims to recruit mentally unstable people, if not as affiliates or soldiers, as proponents of the cause of Sunni extremism. Precisely because symbolic lone wolf attacks will get them international attention.
