NCJ Number
170154
Date Published
1997
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This chapter profiles the characteristics and development of a typical terrorist.
Abstract
Terrorists tend to be young, uneducated, poor, and without a normative societal frame of reference for socioeconomic success and personal value. Because they are young, their values tend to be less clearly formed or understood. As a whole, they are less rational and more emotional than their elders. Terrorist leaders use their valueless, emotional tendencies to make them adherents of their violent ideologies. The young recruits become compliant followers of the orders of their leaders, because they have neither the education, the values, nor the emotional maturity to assess the terrorist ideology and behaviors pressed upon them. Further, most terrorist recruits have been exposed to violence from their early years. They neither understand nor recognize the need for limits on violence. Many have seen homes destroyed and families killed in ongoing conflicts with those whom they have been conditioned to believe intend to destroy all that they value. The concept that there is an ethical perspective that should temper, restrain, or stop their violence is beyond their understanding, because they have seen almost every type of violence used against almost every conceivable victim. Whether it is possible for modern civilization to counter this cycle of the radicalization of the young toward violent terrorism is questionable, but unless these trends are reversed, civilization will have to cope with an increasing spiral of terror-violence. A case study of terrorist Abu Nidal is provided, and students are asked to assess his profile. 7 suggested readings and 9 notes