When I studied insurgency/extremism more actively I would always hear the assertion, generally voiced in advocacy of increased foreign aid or nation building efforts, that extremists are generally recruited from the ranks of those left behind by the political and economic worlds and violence remains their only recourse. It's a nice narrative because it feels intuitive and provides an addressable problem, the downside is that it's not really true[0]. The 9/11 hijackers were very well educated and not impoverished and while this work looks awesome (can't wait to read it!), there has been previous work that showed that extremists do tend to be more educated than not.
My working hypothesis on why extremists tended to be more educated was (is at least until I read this book?) that educated people are just more likely than uneducated to do the unconventional in any sense, including extremism, since they're aware of more options and know/can learn how to pursue them.
It had occurred to me how it always seemed like the attackers had engineering masters degrees in their little [bios|obits] but I figured that for some reason I was just not noticing the social science degrees. It's nice to see this book and data in general on the subject. I find it interesting the engineers are more likely to split towards right-wing extremism when the extremist ideology is highly likely to be religious or have religious pre-conditions. I generally get the impression that engineers are less religious than their liberal arts counterparts, perhaps the engineers that remain religious are more inclined to become more so?
[0] At least in expeditionary attacks and transnational orgs like AQ, generally attacks on targets in places not at war (i.e. 9/11, Mumbai, London, Madrid etc.). I'm not 100% sure about insurgent attacks that could be termed terroristic so it might depend on the definition you're using.
It's not that they personally are affected negatively by negative political or economic circumstances. It's that their people are. Identity is a powerful thing. Humans evolved a strong sense of belonging and an urge to do everything they can for their tribe.
When it comes to actual attacks, there are more engineers. When it comes to merely joining the ideology itself, however, there are few engineers.
'We realised immediately that this was an invasion, but we couldn't fully process the thoughts. My mother sat there shaking her head from side to side and said: 'Nothing bad will happen.' We were not Shi'ites who they hated. We were just Yazidis who they wanted to have control over.
'We quickly put long dresses over our night dresses. We then ran out onto the street to see the fighters who were approaching. They waved their black flags with white Arabic writing on them in the air.
'The first faces we saw from the passing vehicles were known to us. Regardless what jobs they did before, whether they were craftsmen, teachers or doctors, all of our Arab neighbours seemed to have joined up with ISIS.
This echoes stories from what happened in ex-Yugoslavia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even older stories from Israel's independence war. The same story keeps repeating : a lot of people who lived in areas with lots of muslims suddenly found that nearly all of them hold extremist ideologies. Enough to kill and rape at least. And the thing is, we don't even know most of the time that this happens.
What I think is that most people can't be bothered to actually do anything. If the effort they'll put into their life doesn't include getting an education and the sacrifices an education demands, it likely doesn't include fighting and the sacrifices that demands.
> This echoes stories from what happened in ex-Yugoslavia, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and even older stories from Israel's independence war. The same story keeps repeating : a lot of people who lived in areas with lots of muslims suddenly found that nearly all of them hold extremist ideologies. Enough to kill and rape at least. And the thing is, we don't even know most of the time that this happens.
Not sure if it is good for my ulcer, but here goes.
I think its a bit of a jump to go from those examples to "lots of muslims".
In all instances i see situations where you have lines drawn as much, or more, based on ethnicity than religion. That the two often blend over in various places, because certain lineages has held to certain beliefs over generations, is a confounding variable, not a causation.
Never mind that i wonder how many plays along to save their own bacon. Humans will be humans when push comes to shove.
Lets not forget that Europe had its 30 year war over a disagreement on Christian doctrine.
That's why I specified the difference with expeditionary vs insurgency/local civil war-ish kinds of attacks. Examining ISIS as an insurgency or a civil war (as you hit on with the Yugoslavia comparison especially) has a lot more explanatory power than as a terrorist group.
In this sense I mean terrorist group not as a moral distinction, but as a structural and methodological one. Terrorist group in the sense I mean doesn't really hold territory like ISIS does; they hit civilian targets in order to sway those citizens' governments, not to intimidate them into accepting their own governance; they are not governments.
Once you control lots of territory where people live you'll get all sorts of people joining. The reasons people join transnational terrorist groups are very different than the reasons people join murderous super-rapey governments in the middle of a civil war.
Even if it feels emotionally correct to call ISIS terrorists it's not the best way to analyze them and I think it's part of the reason that our policies and doctrines regarding terrorism, nation-building, foreign intervention are so schizophrenic.
My working hypothesis on why extremists tended to be more educated was (is at least until I read this book?) that educated people are just more likely than uneducated to do the unconventional in any sense, including extremism, since they're aware of more options and know/can learn how to pursue them.
It had occurred to me how it always seemed like the attackers had engineering masters degrees in their little [bios|obits] but I figured that for some reason I was just not noticing the social science degrees. It's nice to see this book and data in general on the subject. I find it interesting the engineers are more likely to split towards right-wing extremism when the extremist ideology is highly likely to be religious or have religious pre-conditions. I generally get the impression that engineers are less religious than their liberal arts counterparts, perhaps the engineers that remain religious are more inclined to become more so?
[0] At least in expeditionary attacks and transnational orgs like AQ, generally attacks on targets in places not at war (i.e. 9/11, Mumbai, London, Madrid etc.). I'm not 100% sure about insurgent attacks that could be termed terroristic so it might depend on the definition you're using.