Will we ever really know why people turn to terrorism? | Peter Beaumont | Comment is free | The Observer

Will we ever really know why people turn to terrorism? | Peter Beaumont | Comment is free | The Observer
Extract:
not only should we be cautious about accepting at face value the avowed rationale of those who turn to violence, but we should understand that the way terrorists frame and imagine their own acts can be as persuasive sometimes as the actual "cause" itself.

And the reality is we often start from the wrong point. The "explanatory" ideology supplied by perpetrators is not enough. It does not tell us what we really need to know: how and why an individual, even within a group, gives themselves permission to kill .

If I have a hunch, it is that what connects a certain class of killer –whether the lone gunman responsible for a mass shooting, or certain kinds of terrorist and fighters who video themselves committing atrocities – is that the way they imagine themselves in their own story impinges on reality and obscures moral considerations.

This matters because if we treat atrocities such as Woolwich in terms of a simplistic and mechanistic cause and effect, we strip events of a deeper human agency and meaning and ignore the fact that someone chose to kill, rationalised that act of murder and thought themselves exempt from our usual laws.

Perhaps most telling of all is that we never seem to ask the boring question: why do the overwhelming majority of even those attracted to an ideology, no matter how angry or alienated they might feel, not choose to commit such acts of violence?