By Patrick J. Buchanan
“A mass movement,” wrote Eric Hoffer in “The True Believer,” “appeals
not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but
to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.
“Their innermost craving is for a new life — a rebirth — or, failing
this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a
sense of purpose, and worth by an identification with a holy cause.”
Such a man was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a criminal with a decade-long
record of drug-dealing, assault and robbery, who shot and killed a guard
at Ottawa’s National War Memorial and then burst into Parliament and
shot two others before being cut down.
A psychiatric evaluation of Zehaf-Bibeau in 2011 found, “He has been a
devoted Muslim for seven years, and he believes he must spend time in
jail as a sacrifice to pay for his mistakes in the past.”
Now Zehaf-Bibeau is known to his countrymen and the world. Now his deeds are celebrated by the Islamic State he sought to join.
To understand the appeal to such men of the Islamic State, despite
its cruelties, beheadings, crucifixions, slaughter of prisoners, rape
and sale into slavery of the daughters and wives of enemies, there are
few better sources than the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer.
Why do young men and women travel from a free prosperous West to
fight in Syria and perhaps die in a suicide bombing? What do they seek?
What does ISIS offer? And a more alarming question — why do these
jihadists and terrorists continue to gain ground and attract new
recruits?
Bin Laden may be dead, but he is world famous and by no means
universally loathed for slaughtering 3,000 Americans. During the Bush
era, he was more popular in the Muslim world than the U.S. president.
Al-Qaida may have been obliterated in Afghanistan, but has spread to
Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, spawning imitators, like ISIS,
from the Maghreb across the Middle East into black Africa.
Why are almost all the suicide bombers, the martyrs, on their side?
Wrote Hoffer: “All mass movements generate in their adherents a
readiness to die and a proclivity for united action. … All of them
irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project
breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all …
demand blind faith and single-hearted allegiance.”
Does this not fairly describe the Islamic State?
Still, what does ISIS offer the young?
A second chance at a heroic life.
A cause to die for. A vision of a new world as Allah intended it.
Communion and camaraderie. And should one die striking a blow against
the infidel, there is martyrdom and a place of honor and happiness in
the world to come.
To the True Believer, writes Hoffer,
“Chaos is his element. When the old order begins to crack, he wades
in with all his might to blow the whole hated present to high heaven. …
He alone knows the innermost craving of the masses in action, the
craving for communion, for the mustering of the host, for the
dissolution of cursed individualism in the zest and grandeur of a mighty
whole. Posterity is king.”
Another attraction of the Islamic State is that it appears to be not
only the strongest of the jihadist movements but also the most feared by
America.
An indispensable aspect of mass movements is hatred, writes Hoffer. Mass movements can never rise and spread “without a devil.”
Indeed, he adds, “the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to
the vividness and tangibility of its devil … the ideal devil is
omnipotent and omnipresent. … The ideal devil is a foreigner.”
Superpower America fits the bill perfectly, assuming the devil role
by intervening in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Our presence in their war testifies to the truth of what their leaders
preach: We are the ones America fears most.
In a West saturated in self-indulgence, to many young Muslims, this
must have an appeal. Again, Hoffer: “There is no doubt but that in
exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in
self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost
humility, is boundless.”
The Islamic State cannot defeat the United States. But in fighting
against the United States, ISIS sends a message to an Arab and Islamic
world where we are not loved that they are the enemies we fear most.
If you wish to fight the Great Satan, come join us.
Thus, while we are killing them, we recruit for them.
Moreover, in waging war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we are not
only sheltering the Shia Crescent of Iran and Hezbollah, we are fighting
a Sunni war that Sunni powers like Turkey refuse to fight for
themselves.
We are now on both sides of the Sunni-Shia sectarian struggle that
has never been America’s war, and we have no credible strategy and no
credible army to win it. Who got us into this?
No comments:
Post a Comment