The Psychology of Terrorism

Under the series heading 'Just the Facts' Gerald Posner posted on 5th May 2024 a reasoned plea titled 'Words Matter: Why Not Call A Terrorist a Terrorist?'. 

He detected, in parts of the main-stream press,  a reluctance to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. Apparently Associated Press says that "the terms terrorism and terrorist have become too politicized and [are] often applied inconsistently."  Likewise the world affairs editor for the BBC, John Simpson, said last October that terrorism "is a loaded word," and that "it's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn......".

Gerald Posner thinks otherwise. He wants to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. He thinks that calling Hamas militant is not strong enough; that it 'normalizes' their "horrific acts of terrorism."

I do not think the terms 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' are useful in this situation. They are ill-defined, and tend to obscure the issues. When an angry many loses his temper, he loses the argument; vilifying the enemy is similar; it does not help. 

Calling Hamas a terrorist organisation adds nothing except an unnecessary and unfocussed implication of disapproval. It points to the scary nature of their criminal actions, and hints at a deliberate use of fear to enhance the military and political effectiveness of their crimes. As though such a strategy was not used by large and disciplined armies; nor allowed by the laws of war; because it brakes the rules, like hitting below the belt. Yet, as normally used, the term "terrorist" describes the attitude of the onlooker more than the nature of the crimes. It sheds little light on the psychological motivation of the perpetrator.

Hamas is certainly 'militant'. From the level of support given to Hamas, it seems that many of the 2 million people of Gaza feel desperate. With inadequate weapons, a bunch of brave zealots, maddened by decades of frustration, rush out and attack a powerful, ever-encroaching and inexorable enemy, which is supported and equipped by a superpower. What use is that? 

But what else could they do? Their protests were not heard, and their rockets proved useless. They had only their fists and kitchen knives. 

Who said Palestine belongs to the Jewish people; was it God or Mr. Balfour? And whoever made the declaration, were they right to do so? 

Is there no grown-up person in the room to explain how mixed races and mixed religions can live together? It worked, more-or-less, under the Babylonians, and the Romans, and perhaps best of all under the Turks. 

Inequality: good or bad?

 Inequality: good or bad?

        I was a bit disappointed by the talk Paul Johnson** gave at Clare College, Cambridge, on Thursday 2nd May 2024, titled "Inequalities: what they are, why they matter, and how to address them". He presented many inequalities and many correlations between them: inequalities of income, wealth, education, health, inheritance, ethnicity, gender, geography.  But he seemed less interested than I had hoped in pursuing the mechanisms that could explain the correlations. Maybe he assumed a mechanism, pursuing a 'woke' agenda; poor people are badly educated, are sick, die young and live in the north. It is the sort of story that we hear a lot. And he scarcely touched on remedies.

It is not self-evident to me that inequality itself is a 'bad thing'. Some inequality could be called variety. Some people are tall, some short, some fast, others slow, some numerate others literate.  

Inequality is inevitable. Nevertheless, it can often seem 'unfair' and its unfairness can be painful to contemplate. We are not all born equal.  Our idealism feels let down. Inequality can be mitigated, but not abolished. 

However, some inequality may be by choice? Some people may choose to live on a croft, on Raasay, keep a cow and fish for lobsters. Some may choose to remain in the north east of England without a job, preferring that life to any alternative that they can imagine. After all, I do not want to make money on the Stock Market, nor by flying planes, nor by cutting people open. We should beware of making choices for other people. 

What, then, is bad about inequality, and how far should we go to lessen it? Does the existence of inequality indicate that there is something wrong, or is inequality itself the 'something' that is wrong? 

Two features that I regard as bad for our society are the presence of very rich people, and the existence of very poor people. But they seem to me bad in quite different ways; the very rich distort society when they exercise too much power; and the existence of the very poor dehumanises us. Their poverty hurts us, unless we look away. (To one who is susceptible to envy, 

witnessing great wealth can also hurt. )

Money can be equated with power in many ways. There is the possibility of great hurt if a single individual has more resource than the average state, because such an individual is very difficult to control. In particular, excessive wealth provides excessive means of making more wealth; the situation is unstable – explosive. 

Much of the thinking behind the science of economics supposes that the units (the individual people) behave identically. Most people will use most of their resource most of the time. A billionaire will not; his wealth does not trickle down, significantly, to his hairdresser, or butler, but is salted away for his heirs. 

Perhaps we should look for action points. Should we aim, for example, to improve education in areas remote from London? Likewise, transport infrastructure? Perhaps we should look for a metric that would indicate where state interference with the free market could beneficially be applied; for example monitor the increase in GCSE grades per GB£ spent, on the grounds that a pound spent in Ashington, Northumberland, would yield more marginal benefit than a pound spent in Haslemere, Surrey. 

I was hoping Paul Johnson** would have thought himself, and us his audience, into such territory. Perhaps he will now do so.

Sincerely, Ian West

** Paul Johnson, director of  the Institute for Fiscal Studies