"The power of demagoguery to hypnotise ordinary men"

"In truth, we have always known about the seductive power of death cults on the young," writes Janet Daley in the London Times in one of the most sensible essays we've read to date -- other than our own posts on the subject -- re why those British-born middle-class Muslims blew themselves and their fellow citizens up. "We know about the power of demagoguery to hypnotise ordinary men. It’s not as if we have never been here before or that such things are unprecedented in western culture." Our homegrown mass murderers Harris and Klebold -- "The Depressive and the Psychopath" of the Columbine High School massacres -- come to mind. Daley explains:

Bizarrely those who have, it is always said, all of life to look forward to are the most likely to be spellbound by the mystical summons to end it. Young men, particularly, are prey to this madness: they have so much life before them and so little understanding of what makes it precious.

The immigrants know why they have come and who they still are. It is their children who are the truly displaced people. These children have no actual recollection of the old country but, having been raised in insular communities whose only cultural references were to the lost home, they do not feel a part of the new place either.

How difficult must it be [easy as pie] for a power-mad imam [the psychopathic Klebold figure] to persuade a disoriented young Muslim man [the depressed Harris figure] that his alienation from inner-city British culture is soundly based? He can be told that his vocation, and his salvation, lies in the ultimate repudiation of the decadence and depravity of this place that he himself did not choose.

"This is categorically not an apologia," affirms Daley:

I am certainly not saying that because I believe this event -- or this behaviour -- to be somehow comprehensible, it is therefore excusable . . . There is a campaign of mass murder that is clearly being incited by external forces and that must be dealt with in the most relentless and unforgiving way.

But the risk is great of creating a myth of uniqueness here that will make us feel helpless. What happened in London on July 7 was hideous and unforgiveable but it was not as extraordinary -- or as fathomless -- as all that.

Oh, how we wish our political leaders would pay some serious attention to the recognizable psychological dynamics of Islamicist terrorism. Unfortunately, GW and Tony, first among equals, are still too busy kowtowing in dhimmitudinal humility to the irrelevant politically correct mantra that Islam is a "religion of peace."

Comments

[Tara]

I have grown weary of terror apologists and enablers.

What more will it take for all of us to realize that there is a faction of Islam that wants us dead and will use any and every means to achieve our death?

[andophiroxia]

Perhaps when these terrorists will kill these apologists an enablers, will they be aware.

However, it may just cause them to rationalize more, of which we can no longer reason with them [the apologists and enablers].

[goomp]

Finally there seems to be a growing realization that our enemy is Islamic and a cult of that religion which must be eliminated not appeased. Here's to the columnists and bloggers who speak out.