Peter Conzen
FANATISMUS
Pschoanalyse eines unheimlichen Phaenomens
300pp. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. 27euros.
3 17 017426 6
Marc Sageman
UNDERSTANDING TERROR NETWORKS
220pp. University of Pennsylvania Press. $20.95; distributed in the UK by Plymbridge. £19.50.
0 8122 3868 7
As recently as 1975 there was virtually no literature about terrorism except for some very readable thrillers on the pattern of Day of the Jackal. But during the past decade it has grown exponentially (amazon lists more than 5,500 books on the subject), and if one adds the literature on Iraq, Islamism and related topics, there is standing room only and not much of that either. This is true in particular with regard to the United States, and in some respects this enormous growth is to be welcomed, for it shows intellectual curiosity. Many who even a year ago did not know the difference between zakat and jihad now write with confidence about some finer points in the theology of Ibn Taimiyyah and the Koran exegesis of Sayyed Qutb.
But some of the issues involved are complicated and cannot be mastered within a year or even two. Furthermore, there is a tendency among authors (not only among political-science professors) not merely to describe and analyse an important and fascinating phenomenon, but to attempt to establish a general theory of terrorism and political violence. So far, no
such theory has emerged and it is more than doubtful whether it ever will. At best, such theory-building helps to explain the emergence of terrorism in certain countries at a certain period. But it is quite useless and even
misleading with regard to other places and periods. This is true in particular with regard to the question of motivation, and it is therefore more than welcome occasionally to come across new studies which, while far from providing conclusive answers, take the discussion to a higher level.
Peter Conzen, a practising German psychoanalyst and the biographer of the psychologist Erik Erikson, is primarily concerned with the phenomenon of fanaticism, and it is of course true that terrorism, whatever its political or
religious orientation, is bound to be fanatical; happy, contented people seldom kill. Conzen is well aware of the problems involved in “analysis in absentia”, of the transfer of insights gained from single patients to historical processes, especially if they take place in cultures other than our own. But, with all this, psychology can make a contribution towards the investigation of political and religious violence. Social and political factors should not be neglected, but they can take us only up to a certain point and not further. They cannot explain why, out of a group of people believing with equal intensity in their cause, feeling equally aggrieved, oppressed, antagonized, downtrodden, marginalized and so on, only a few will become terrorists whereas the others will not. Are those who opt for violent action the bravest, or the most sensitive, or the most consistent in their beliefs, are they the ones who feel hatred most acutely? (But this raises more questions concerning the origin of hatred.) Is there such a thing as a human disposition towards fanaticism, or even a fanatical personality? This, of course, is hotly contested by many who claim that terrorists (or fanatics) are just people like you and me. But if this were true there should be some six or seven billion terrorists around, which quite obviously is not the case. In other words, there must be in certain groups, for whatever reasons, a greater inclination than in others towards paranoia, a belief in holy terror, a world full of distrust,
dishonesty and destruction. There must be
an inclination towards fanaticism.
Dr Conzen devotes considerable space to the fanaticism of Hitler and his cronies; fanaticism was one of Hitler’s favourite terms, often used in his speeches – he wanted his followers to be more fanatical. But the Nazi story is a different one, and, similarly, an analysis of the mental make-up of the German terrorists of the 1970s sheds only limited light on the Islamist terrorism of our days. The leading members of the RAF (Red Army Faction) all had reasonably happy childhoods (which neither Hitler
nor Stalin had); only one or two came from Nazi families, which might account for the revolt against the generation of the parents. But there still was a fear of love and intimacy among them, which has nothing to do with either generational revolt or the Vietnam war.
Fanaticism cannot be explained easily with reference to childhood experiences – or a longing in later years for a feeling of absolute security and harmony. There is no clear profile of the German terrorists; some came from the drug scene; in some cases megalomania may have played a certain role; some adopted a bourgeois lifestyle after the terrorist interlude. Having shed the radical left-wing beliefs of their youth, some went later on all the way to neo-Fascism and extreme nationalism. Certain common features can be detected, such as the inclination towards finding a home in a group (a trend even more strongly stressed in Marc Sageman’s Understanding Terror Networks), the feeling of absolute loyalty towards their comrades-in-arms, great enthusiasm and passionate visionarism. But in the end there simply is no accounting for the thoughts and feelings of a handful of people out of 70 million.
There is another insurmountable difficulty on the way to composing a psychological profile – the immense differences between terrorist groups even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One cannot possibly attribute sadism (to give but one example) to the Russian terrorists or the anarchists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – they went out of their way not to hurt innocents. On the other hand, sadism and a destructive impulse are quite obviously an important factor in the activities of various contemporary groups such as, for instance, Algerian terrorists in the 1990s or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group in Iraq. It is not enough to kill indiscriminately, which has become common practice, the enemy should not just be murdered, he should be tortured and made to suffer: some of al-Zarqawi’s followers reproach him – you have been cutting throats too fast.
This is a feature which has greatly baffled psychiatrists and forensic scientists who have shrunk away from dealing with the issue of mass murder, be it serial murder, or crimes against humanity, or indiscriminate terrorism. It is not an illness, nor are the perpetrators disturbed in a clinical sense; sociopaths do not fit into existing schemes, so they are not included in the standard diagnostic manual of American psychiatrists DSM-IV. As Julia Kristeva once noted, medieval men and women would have found it easier to accept the notion of evil than modern man, including forensic scientists. Some of them at least, until recently, have regarded evil an absurd notion for which there was no room in their discipline.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Conzen’s Fanatismus is the summing up of past attempts to explain fanaticism. There was, of course, a variety of subspecies – the fanaticism of a threatened collective, the fanaticism of social disintegration and, above all, fanaticism in the service of an idea or an ideal such as a religion or a
secular political religion.
Conzen stresses the importance of the group and of group pressure in fanatical movements. Members may regard themselves as instruments of God simply carrying out His will, but the same phenomenon of blind obeisance can also be found in groups which are not at all
religious – the subservience to the leader, be it Ocalan, of the Kurdish terrorists, now in prison, or Prabhakaran, the head of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
Can fanaticism be reduced? If aggression is part of the human condition, can it be directed to constructive outlets? This problem has preoccupied psychologists and not only them, for a long time, and while Peter Conzen poses the question, he has no more answers than
others before him.
Marc Sageman, now a practising psychiatrist with a training also in political sociology, worked with Islamists (apparently in Pakistan) on behalf of the CIA during 1986–9. He does not think much of psychoanalysis (psychodynamics) but believes in empiricism. He dismisses a variety of mistaken notions about the motives and origins of Islamic terrorism – it is not rooted in childhood trauma, the relative-
deprivation concept is not of much help, nor
the frustration-aggression thesis. He is sarcastic on the insights of the “authoritarian personality” school, for which he finds no evidence among the practitioners of jihad. Nor does he find evidence for a paranoid disposition; in this respect he goes too far, for paranoid beliefs are clearly widespread among terrorist indi-
viduals and groups. If one were to prepare a world map of paranoia such as is manifested for instance in conspiracy theories, one would find that while it may be found in every country, it is more manifest in some than
in others, with the Islamic extremists on top of the list.
As Sageman sees it, there is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, the global jihadists pursuing jihad, with foreign volunteer groups such as al-Qaeda – and, on the other, the fighters of Taliban and other local groups, including the Palestinians. But what motivated the foreign volunteers? Broadly speaking, a common doctrine (Salafi Islamism), a common social background, a common psychological make-up, and being in a particular situation at the time of recruitment.
But there is one issue even more important than all these factors and also more important than a common ideology, and this is the crucial role of social bonds at a time when such bonds in society have decreased or disappeared. This refers to friendship, the role of street gangs, social cliques. (Sageman uses fashionable terms such as “networks”, “nodes” and “hubs” rather too often in this context.) The author sees this activism as born in cliques of confused young people in need of a message, recruited at the periphery of radical mosques; in these circumstances very little brainwashing may be needed. But for his aversion to psychoanalysis he could have added that these are young people with a weak ego. He also notes in passing the growing impact of the internet in this context, but this is an operational technicality rather than a motive.
What follows from these insights is rather obvious, that there is not much point in arresting the small fry, but that one ought to go for the hub of the cliques (or the network) and that penetration of the ranks of the jihadists is essential.
What is one to make of these arguments? The emphasis on the role of the gang or clique is very important and has been overlooked in the past – except perhaps by those focusing on street crime. This issue is probably central with regard to the groups which Marc Sageman knows best, namely the Islamist volunteers; it does not necessarily apply to the same degree to terrorism in other places and times. Societal bonds are very important but whether they are more crucial than ideology and an inclination towards hatred and fanaticism (about which, so far, we know very little) is doubtful. And so the search for motivation continues.
