I Respect the Anti-Drone Position, but I am Still Very Ambivalent

[OnyxCollie]

42. Here's a guide. Do the hard work.

Terrorists undoubtedly act from complex motives. Although rigid classification of their motivation must be therefore somewhat artificial, it is nevertheless useful for analytical purposes to identify four basic cat- egories: (1) common criminals motivated by personal gain; (2) persons acting as a consequence of a psychopathological condition; (3) persons seeking to publicize a claim or redress an individual grievance; and (4) ideologically motivated individuals.36

The last category more than the others seems to fascinate writers, terrify the public, and intrigue the media.37 Seeking to confer upon themselves a special status by virtue of their purported adherence to higher political or ideological values, these actors, however, engage in no more than common crimes seldom justified by the ordinary principles of criminal responsibility.38 The ideologically motivated offender seeks to accomplish an ideological or political objective by means which are un- lawful, presumably because no other effective legal means are available to accomplish his goal.39 That proposition has become the cornerstone of an entire rationalization process for the use of violence. The contem- porary ideologically motivated offender frequently claims to be acting in self-defense, by reason of necessity, or under compulsion. In some in- stances the perpetrator claims to be the victim of a system which left him no viable alternative.

~snip~

Ideologically motivated actors frequently perceive themselves as "justice-makers." They consider their action, even when abhorrent to them, to be dictated by circumstances beyond their control or condi- tioned by the limitations imposed upon them by virtue of their inherent political weakness. The gradual transformation which such individualsundergo before resorting to forms of terror-violence evidences that be- lief. Within this category of ideologically-motivated actors the process appears almost always the same:

1. heightened perception of oppressive conditions-whether real or imag- inary;
2. recognition that such conditions are not the immutable order of things, but amenable to active reform;
3. that action designed to promote change is not forthcoming;
4. that one must at last resort to violence;
5. that such action need not be successful, but only contribute to setting in motion a series of events enlisting others and leading to change (a realization that dissemination of the cause is more important than suc- cess of the action);
6. that the individual's self-sacrifice outweighs the guilt borne by com- mitting a violent act (thus violence without guilt);
7. that the cause transcends the need to rationalize the act of violence (the self-gratification merges with the higher purpose). This transformation of consciousness is accompanied by two additional conditions:
8. the ethnocentricity of the values opposed to the desired change justifies the same arrogant ethnocentricity of values of the actor (thus polariza- tion of values without a mechanism for reconciliation by virtue of evo- lutionary and participatory social change leads to violence); 9. the absence of resocialization of actors who do not conform to social norms stigmatizes them and prevents reintegration into society, which further radicalizes them and leads to increased violence.

Bassiouni, M. (1981). Terrorism, law enforcement, and the mass media: Perspectives, problems, proposals. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 72(1), p. 8-10.