I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth.
ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to the emirs."
When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence. Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
Finally, is there anywhere to find the original article by Piketty in English? The linked version is in French.
Things don't have a single cause. "ISIS grew out of staggeringly unequal distribution of Mideast oil wealth" and "ISIS is motivated by extreme interpretations of Islam" are able to coexist perfectly well.
Do you have any examples of "the same people" being inconsistent here? Because usually when people complain about inconsistency like this, it's actually different people being mentally categorized together, not actually the same people.
Last sentence is an excellent point. This is a group of groups of groups. Acting like ISIS is one entity with one set of attributes is like claiming the same for the workforce of a city. They're one thing in one way with similar goals, direction, and activities but substantially different in other ways.
> And I get downvoted for saying something nice? Some
HN (and possibly its rules) frowns on "+1" or "I agree" style posts that don't add additional content to a discussion, and people will sometimes downvote you accordingly.
I find Daesh far scarier than other Islamic fundamentalist movements because their techniques are more sophisticated and their aim is much higher. The "they're killing us!" argument is so silly... terror attacks are to stir western nations into violent action, not to actually significantly injure us. And it works - far too many Americans and Europeans live and act politically in abject terror of very low-impact, unlikely events.
What scares me about Daesh, though, is that I think they're trying to goad outside powers into massive wars with each other! This is why they've attacked everyone - the US, France, Russia, and all the major Arab nations. Everyone is off fighting in Syria, and not as a unified front, but a bunch of independent powers making independent alliances and jockeying for position.
During a recent presidential debate, Rand Paul wisely asked the question, "Are you ready to shoot down Russian planes?" (note: I'm not a Rand Paul supporter. I just thought he was spot-on with this.) If the US creates a no-fly zone while Russia wants to do bombing runs in it, we could have a situation where American and Russian planes are in direct combat. There's a non-zero chance that this could lead to nuclear war and the destruction of the West as we know it. And we've already had the first taste of it, with NATO member Turkey shooting down a Russian plane.
If I wanted to destroy the West, that's exactly what I'd do - provoke a war between the US and Russia with those giant Cold War nuclear arsenals.
And that makes me think Daesh is by far the most sophisticated and dangerous enemy we've seen since the Nazis.
I'm not really sure how you can read the history of the organization and come up with that. al-Tawid was founded at around the same time as al Qaeda (within a few years), and they merged to become al Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS/ISIL.
In some ways the person I was responding to was right because, between Osama and al Zarqawi, Osama was definitely the moderate. But you're talking about wanting to kill everyone who isn't a muslim vs. everyone who isn't sunni muslim.
The idea that ISIS is something fundamentally different is driven by the media. It's sort of how DARE tries to scare parents by saying "This generation is smoking some really crazy stuff you're not familiar with!"
Pretty different from what? Afghanistan in the 70s/80s was almost exactly this: a destabilized national government, insurgent forces taking and holding territory, global powers being dragged into it. The only differences are the rhetoric.
Since you kind of elided it, their stated reason for killing is more or less "because you're not Muslim". We could take it at face value, but there's nothing useful you can do with that information.
What would be useful is to know how so many people get to that place. What are the conditions that radicalized thousands to the point where they are willing to kill others just for being less Muslim than they see themselves?
I think the Post's use of the word 'blame' is meant to be provocative. Western powers obviously aren't scheming to create ISIS with wealth inequality, and improved wealth distribution obviously won't inspire ISIS to lay down their weapons. But if that inequality really is a cause, it's worth trying to fix it if you want to head off the next manifestation of ISIS.
> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
I do. I think the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to a combination of mental illness and lack of education. I don't think it really matters which crazy ideology you pick, you can use it to justify your actions. And if the crazy, uneducated, people weren't shooting up a Planned Parenthood, they would be shooting up a theater, or a school, or any number of other places. The solution is to educate kids and to treat the mentally ill.
Why does this tiny group of Muslims commit hate crimes, while the vast majority do not? Piketty thinks it's income inequality, what's your explanation?
> If it's income inequality, then why are most terrorists highly educated and relatively well off?
As I understand it, Middle Eastern terrorists are disproportionately from the thin and relatively insecure middle class, neither the oligarchs nor the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
I don't think this is at all inconsistent with income inequality being a major contributing factor, though its not as simple as personal poverty being a driving factor.
At the very least that data does not really fit the theory. At some point you have to consider that when the facts do not fit the theory perhaps the theory is wrong, rather than to try to spin the facts in such a way that they fit the theory in a weird way. I think some people are too attached to a particular theory being true, rather than finding out the right theory.
> At the very least that data does not really fit the theory.
What theory? It certainly fits a theory: that insecurity (and, thus, plenty of downward mobility), limited upward mobility, and a steep drop to the bottom combine to provide a condition in which members of the middle class become more prone to reject the existing social order and adopt extreme alternatives that are offered.
You see, that's precisely what's twisting the facts to fit the theory is like. If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor. And that's why they go on suicide terrorist attacks?!
If it was the poor who did the attacks then it would confirm the theory, but if it is not then that would also confirm the theory...
Lets bring in some new facts: terrorists are disproportionately college educated. The 9/11 bombers were all college educated and some had PhD's from western universities. How will these facts be made to fit this theory?
I'm sorry if I sound disparaging, but I've had this debate 50 times before, and the mental gymnastics to keep an incorrect theory alive are virtually impossible to penetrate to the point that I'm not even sure if there are any conceivable facts that would falsify that theory in the minds of those who believe in it.
> You see, that's precisely what's twisting the facts to fit the theory is like. If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor.
The insecurities of the middle class and the direction they push hardest being a key factor in both revolutionary violence and support for tyrannical government (depending on whether the fear of the continuation of the current or the fear of its collapse dominates, which can vary for different members of the same middle class) isn't exactly a novel theory, even outside the specific case of middle eastern terrorism (in fact, the first time I seem to remember it is in the context of the 19th Century European revolutions.)
> If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory
No, you don't, because the theory that "income inequality" is a contributing factor does not imply that the actors are "the poor".
If you have a theory that their own poverty is the reason that individual terrorists become terrorists, you'd have to revise the theory, but that's not what the theory was to start with.
> that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor. And that's why they go on suicide terrorist attacks?!
No, that economic insecurity combined with lack of upward mobility in the middle class leads to disillusionment with the existing order, desperation, and susceptibility to alternative worldviews to those supporting the existing order.
Now, where on top of the economic conditions, you also have a situation where, due to a variety of factors (including attempts to repress alternative views to preserve the power and privilege of the existing elites) there aren't non-violent, non-radical groups that provide something that feels like a plausible alternative, those susceptible to alternative views are going to be, more than in other circumstances, drawn to violent, radical groups.
> I'm sorry if I sound disparaging, but I've had this debate 50 times before, and the mental gymnastics to keep an incorrect theory alive are virtually impossible to penetrate to the point that I'm not even sure if there are any conceivable facts that would falsify that theory in the minds of those who believe in it.
Facts that would falsify a theory of economic inequality contributing to terrorism would be statistics showing that, controlling for other factors that demonstrably contribute to terrorism, economic inequality has no correlation, or a negative correlation, to terrorism.
The things you offer are facts that would falsify particular models of how economic inequality contributes to terrorism, but those particular models seem to be strawmen.
"Ah, gee, I really hate Planned Parenthood, and it's a good thing they exist, because if they didn't I'd have just as much reason to shoot up a theater instead."
Maybe crazy, uneducated people are shooting up places, but the places they shoot up are disproportionately the target of religious shaming, an activity with little rational basis or utility other than the spawning insular communities who willfully shun education and moderation.
"I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth."
Because they're proven masters at propaganda and messaging. To take prop at face value is the definition of naive.
"ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia."
That's their justification for their actions, not the reason. Come on.
Recruiting for ISIS pays $5000 - $10000 per successful recruit.
If their true motivation is purely religious, if religion is the INCENTIVE, then why incentivize people with lump sumps larger than yearly income from honest work?
ISIS represents a way out of poverty, at least, that's how they sell it in recruiting.
"When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence."
We call that quid pro quo, and yes, it's intentional. If Islam itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority, then it stands to reason that Christianity itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority. So long as conservatives blame Islam in general for ISIS, we will blame Christianity in general for Westboro Baptist, for Clinic Terrorists, for Jehovah Witness child negligence murder, etc.
"Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?"
We do, often, we bemoan the war against education (ignorance as pride) and growing wealth inequality for social tension and violence both here in America and worldwide.
> We call that quid pro quo, and yes, it's intentional. If Islam itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority, then it stands to reason that Christianity itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority. So long as conservatives blame Islam in general for ISIS, we will blame Christianity in general for Westboro Baptist, for Clinic Terrorists, for Jehovah Witness child negligence murder, etc.
You are mimicking the rhetoric of the worst, most extreme segment of your opposition, which brings you (and this conversation) down to their level.
"You are mimicking the rhetoric of the worst, most extreme segment of your opposition,"
No, we're not mimicking the rhetoric of the "worst, most extreme".
To suggest that is hyperbolic, and ironically itself represents the exact rhetoric you're trying to accuse me of engaging in.
The worst and most extreme segment of the opposition says "lets use violence to terrorize those who disagree". This level of violent discourse is far worse and more extreme than the rhetoric we mimick.
We're not engaging in that rhetoric, rather we're engaging in the mainstream popular rhetoric of people who don't agree with those extremists.
"Whoever fights with monsters..."
Honestly, the hypocrisy of you engaging in unfettered hyperbolic bullshit for the sole purpose of demonizing me as a monster is hard to overstate. Talk about monsterous, you should be teaching me how to distort words and demonize others, as you clearly are my superior in this area!
No doubt that for some the motivation is financial, but do you think that the motivation for the 1000+ people who left from Europe to join IS in Syria the motivation is financial? Do you think that for the guy who drives a bomb truck in Syria the motivation is financial?
This is not about putting blame anywhere, but about acknowledging an essential piece of the puzzle so that the problem can be solved. Note that I used to think as you do but a couple of months ago I started to do some research into what actually motivates terrorists and groups like ISIS and I came to the conclusion that a huge part of it is religious. That theory simply fits the facts much better than any other.
Ah. People are in poverty and to get out of poverty they blow themselves up in a public place such that they can murder a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. Got it. Good to know.
First, it's extremely complicated. Second, yeah, it's probably a mixed bag, some probably sincerely believe in their ideology and think that blowing themselves up is a good deed, others are in it for money or other reasons. What has been proven (pretty strongly at this point) is that it's the M.O. of many terrorist organizations to recruit men from poor households... and they tell them after they're dead from the suicide bombings, they'll sustain their families monetarily. To the would-be suicide bombers, this seems like a good rational choice within the reality of their situation: struggling families, living in desolate conditions with not much hope in sight.
The matter of the fact is, a lot of these poor families that are approached by recruits would tell the recruiters to fuck off if they were not in such hopeless conditions.
If your country was destroyed, there was no jobs, you had no money, no food, your home was crumbling, your siblings starving, your parents helpless... and you were 17 and powerless, and someone offered you $10,000 to do it... would you? Would you do something terrible to ensure that your family got a huge payday that would put food on their table for potentially years?
You seem to think everyone's decency has a price, especially poor people. Pretty depressing thought but thankfully not true. Otherwise people would be blowing themselves up all over the world, including the US. Instead it is almost entirely the members of one death cult.
No. No I would not murder dozens of innocent people. There's a lot of poverty in the world and the vast majority of the impoverished do not commit such atrocities.
I guess it was too much to ask you to walk a mile in their shoes, because we internet dwelling rich folk literally cannot comprehend poverty on this level, of watching your family die before your eyes as a teenager.
"vast majority of the impoverished do not commit such atrocities."
The vast majority don't have a years pay untaxed offered, never have to make the choice. Easy to say they won't do something when they have no option to do it.
Then again, with how INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL ISIS has been at recruiting perhaps you need to reevaluate your opinion of how the impoverished of the world behave when given opportunity.
Many impoverished will loot during riots or engage in widespread gang violence in cities, they'll overthrow secular governments in favor of Islamic ones in the Arab Spring, they'll take the money and kill for ISIS.
I think people need to be more honest and realize that true destitution means they don't have to play within the bounds of economic and moral systems. We're controlled by our jobs and our money, and if we have neither, we will do whatever is necessary to provide for ourselves and our families, including hurting people "from other tribes".
It is possible for me to walk two miles and still conclude that no I would not purposefully murder dozens of innocent civilians. It's possible I've even thought about this before.
But it's cool that you think there's only one logical outcome and anyone who disagrees is just too unempathetic to see why your view is the only correct view.
ISIS is a fundamentalist millenarian dead cult making up some thousands of people, the question and the issue is why they haven't been run out of the areas where they operate by the ordinary people that live there, and their existing power groups. It is completely uncontroversial that ISIS are substantially tapping into existing and real sectarian grievances in the area. In Syria, that is down to a lack of development in rural Sunnis areas, and human rights abuses by the Shia-led regime. In Iraq, it is down to the loss of power of Sunni groups after the fall of Saddam, and the transition in power and patronage towards the Shia majority. Just saying over and over again that ISIS is evil is just repeating an obvious truth, the question is how do explain their success, and how do you undercut their power base, and a substantial part of that is to do with the allocation of money and power for the Sunni areas in Syria and Iraq.
2) Usually when someone is upset, they're very bad at articulating the actual thing that is upsetting them. Often when someone is upset, they'll say (and think) it's about something that is actually unrelated but happened to come right before the outburst of pent up frustration. To me, Islamism is a suspiciously rational explanation for completely irrational violence. Islam's pretty old, the book hasn't changed, but we're seeing a big spike in coordinated terror against civilians in the last couple years.
This is over a short period and doesn't count stuff like the Sudanese "civil war" muslim raids on Southern villages, which would have made that graph look like a rounding error.
If there is one thing I've learned in life, it's that people don't know why they do many (or even any) of the things they do. They do them for reasons unknown to themselves, and then afterward, supposing there is demand, they fabricate reasons. Not lies necessarily, more like their "best guess" as to why they did it.
When the judge asks the teenager why he microwaved a live hamster and the teenager says "I don't know" he's not only being honest but actually insightful. And because society demands reasons for every action, most children soon learn that "I don't know" is an unacceptable answer.
So no, I don't believe what comes out of ISIS's mouth(s) regarding why they do these things.
I'm not sure why you do either, and it's a fact that neither do you.
It's not a case of believing what's coming out of ISIS' mouth - most people, even on the Left you decry, do. The question is why, when they utter this stuff, do so many people listen?
The mistake you're making in your analogy is comparing a group of people to a single person. ISIS is not one united front, and most of the people who actually fight -- not the leaders making videos, but the people doing the killing -- do so for much less grandiose reasons.
Casting the rise of ISIS as a black-and-white, good-vs.-evil struggle allows some very clever politicians to have their way: torture some folks, spy on citizens. But if we look deeper at the situation, we'll see that motivations are more complex. In doing so, however, we (the West) must confront our role in the situation.
"For the first time since he came into the room he smiles—in surprise—and finally tells us what really motivated him, without any prompting. He knows there is an American in the room, and can perhaps guess, from his demeanor and his questions, that this American is ex-military, and directs his “question,” in the form of an enraged statement, straight at him. “The Americans came,” he said. “They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn’t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn’t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.” [0]
The left claims ISIS happened because of geopolitical bullying that the West did in that area for about a century now. The right claims ISIS happened because they are religious nutjobs fundamentally opposed to western values.
I think it's not either / or. I think it's a messy situation with a complicated causal web. It's more like all of the above.
You get Picot / Sykes after WWI to stir up trouble in the region. And the creation of an artificial state after WWII in the region, which the West keeps sponsoring so that they dominate the area militarily. And things like the CIA coup to remove Mosaddegh from office in Iran, who ended up being replaced with a theocracy. And the relentless pressure and meddling from the West, for the purpose of maintaining an oil supply.
And then you get a bunch of religious nutjobs ruling various places in the area. And a religion which seems to have a particularly "robust" attitude towards "holy wars". And then throw in the mix some climate shifts that knock out harvests and upset the price of food staples. And maybe the economists are right, too, and vast inequalities of all sorts in the area just made everything else worse.
If any one of the factors mentioned above was acting in isolation, nothing would have happened. But the stack, as you see, is pretty thick, and I guess something broke somewhere. It's all of the above. It's not one single, isolated reason.
Maybe because the Planned Parenthood shooter specifically mentioned "no more baby parts"? And Planned Parenthood has been HEAVILY featured in the media this last year, falsely painted by the christian right as a baby-killing organization?
> I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth.
Accepting it doesn't really answer much.
> ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia.
Yes, and if we accept this, we are faced with the question of what makes particular people in particular times and places likely to accept and act on messages like this, and what circumstances enable them to be successful when they do. Daesh isn't the only group to promote an ideology like this based on interpretation of some ancient religious text (nor is the phenomenon of groups trying, or even succeeding, in doing that limited to the Middle East, or the Islamic world, nor are the Quran the only text which has been used in this role.)
Nor, for that matter, was Daesh (though it had a different name!) new to this when they first started achieving real success -- they had similar goals and interpretation of Islam before they became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, when they were known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, and when they rejected their affiliation with al-Qaeda to style themselves first as "the Islamic State in Iraq", then "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant", and finally "the Islamic State".
> When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence.
Women's health clinic attacks by violent religious extremists with an overt religious motivation are a recurring pattern in the US; assuming that another such attack is part of that pattern rather than breaking with it is not exactly a giant leap. In any case, the ideology behind the attack and the conditions which made the attacker susceptible to adopting that ideology are distinct issues.
> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
Actually, lots of people on the left -- the only people who generally acknowledge the overt ideological motivation of violence of Christian religious extremists -- point to social factors like income inequality and persistent poverty as among the factors that make people susceptible to that extremism (as well as pointing to deliberate acts by certain political elites to fan that extremism and channel it for political ends as contributing to the uptake of the extremism.) These positions are complementary, rather than incompatible.
There's a difference between the stated motive of ISIS and what enables them to exist and grow. I have a hard time believing that they can be so effective in their recruitment efforts with a message based entirely on an interpretation of an old book. It is more plausible to me that they prey on desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected people to join their cause.
Wait, you have a hard time believing they can be so recruitment with a message based on an interpretation of an old book?
More than 2000 years of human history and religion shows that an awful lot of things (both positive and negative for the world) have come from religion, based almost entirely on old books and interpretations. The supposed word of a supposedly all knowing/powerful deity is enough inspiration for an awful lot of people.
Being educated does not mean you're above believing in bullshit. There are a lot of highly educated people with a college education or a PhD who believe him ghosts, crop circles, bigfoot, alien abductions, the 'dangers' of GM food, conspiracy theories or think that vaccines cause autism.
That doesn't make those beliefs more plausible, regardless of if a certain amount of smart people believe in them. Similarly, it doesn't shield people from religious extremism, or any other form of extreme view for that matter. People are irrational, some lack critical thinking skills (and everyone forgets to use them at least some of time). You don't become a Vulcan the minute you get through college.
Exactly. This is not about desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected people, but about people who sincerely think that the best thing for this world is to implement the Qur'an to the last letter. You can be a rocket scientist and a religious idiot at the same time.
Highly educated people cannot possibly be desperate, mentally unwell, or disaffected? That's also "simply false" and you say so yourself: "You can be a rocket scientist and a religious idiot at the same time". You can be highly educated and a lot of things at the same time (which one would know from reading HN on a regular basis), but perhaps only the traits that fit your narrative are allowed.
Being a religious idiot is not the same thing as being desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected. The point is that the picture that is being sketched is in-congruent with reality. If we want to have any chance to solve this issue the first step needs to be a honest examination of the causes, not academics taking their pet topics and trying to fit terrorism and ISIS into that.
What causes a successful college student who has just gotten a job as an architect to decide that the best use of his life is to fly a plane into a building? What causes a person in their twenties in Europe to decide that the best use of their life is to go to Syria to join the Islamic State? Or to go to Paris and shoot up a theater?
Let's back up a bit. What causes a person to decide to go to planned parenthood to shoot up a bunch of doctors? Is it because of income inequality? Climate change? Russian foreign policy? Or maybe it is because he is sincerely convinced that the metaphysics of this world work as follows. At the time of conception the soul enters the embryo. In order for this soul to enter heaven the baby needs to be baptized. If this doesn't happen then their soul either goes to burn in eternal hell or to limbo. Now, there is a clinic next door where people are literally killing babies before they are baptized (i.e. abortion). The doctors are evil maniacs who are putting thousands of babies in hell. Maybe we should do something to defend those babies? God wants us to do something to save His babies! If we don't save His babies we are evil and he will put us in hell!
You see, the problem is that in this worldview shooting up doctors at planned parenthood is a most moral action.
Now imagine that you sincerely believe in the following metaphysics. We are living in the Matrix, but this Matrix is a bit different than the one in the movie in that to leave it you don't pick up a telephone, but you have to die. This Matrix has been set up by the Creator to test you. If you obey his commands you will get eternal bliss in heaven when you exit the Matrix, and otherwise you get eternal suffering in hell. What are the Creator's wishes? He hates the Infidels. He hates that they publish cartoons to make fun of Him. He hates their societies are filled with sex, personal enrichment, and lack of devotion to Him. He hates that they occupy Jerusalem, His holy city. He hates that there is no worldwide Caliphate. He has written in his book that to ensure a place in heaven you can kill infidels. You get 72 virgins in heaven, and you get to pick a dozen people from your family who will also get a place in heaven. So what is this guy thinking while shooting up random people in a theater in Paris? He is counting the kills, and the Creator is counting with him. The number of people he kills will determine how much the Creator will love him. When he has killed enough he presses the button on his suicide vest to teleport into heaven, and start selecting family members to ensure their place in heaven when they die.
This Jihadist suicide cult worldview is the #1 problem, and people keep writing articles about income inequality, climate change, foreign policy, etc. No doubt these are contributing factors, but when are we going to address the elephant in the room? This is not something that only the mentally ill can believe in. This is a mind virus that can spread. It has spread. Polls show that about 10% of Muslims worldwide support ISIS, that is 160 million people. We need to stop it from spreading, for instance by encouraging competing pacifist mind viruses of moderate Muslims, empowering people who have a personal stake against this mind virus (women, gays, intellectuals, etc), educating people about different religions and atheism, stopping people who are spreading this mind virus (there are many Salafist and Wahhabist organizations that openly operate in Europe), and stopping their money streams coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, provide intense personal support to refugees and immigrants to make sure they integrate into the societies in Europe and the US and to make sure they learn the language, get European and American friends, don't live in closed parallel societies, etc.
You articulated your argument well (upvote!) and I don't disagree with a lot of it, but here is where we differ: why is it that this particular "mind-virus" is so much more transmittable than others? This is where I believe the other factors come into play. You basically agree with me when you start listing potential solutions to defeating the "mind-virus" in your last paragraph. The things you list are addressing the "other" factors. Education and support, for example, are things that help to close the inequality gap.
Indeed, there are factors that influence the susceptibility to this mind virus, but to understand the factors that influence it you first need to acknowledge that it is a religious mind virus. None of the articles that analyze this have acknowledged this (at least not the ones that I have read). That's partly because for atheists and moderates it's hard to imagine that somebody really believes that stuff, and partly because of political correctness.
An example why it's important to understand this is that the data shows that education in general does not work. Many terrorists are highly educated; a lot of them even have college degrees. So raising the general level of education is probably not effective. Education about religion might be.
Other important factors are tribal us-vs-them mentality, and (perceived) grievances.
You ask why this mind virus spreads so easily. That question is not very hard to answer: people are susceptible because they already believe that the Qur'an is the infallible word of God, and the things that ISIS does are sadly a plausible interpretation of the Qur'an. Such a belief in the infallibility is in itself dangerous, and I don't think we will have long term peace until the majority no longer believes that. Christians used to believe that about the Bible but the majority no longer does. Hopefully Islam can make a similar change, but I'm not very optimistic.
You are miss understanding what he meant. I don't think he meant to explain the reasoning used by the attackers, he is however trying to understand what caused all these people to start killing in the first place. ISIS surely feeds on religion, but the root cause of the problem is not only religion, just as the root cause of the Crusades wasn't.
To address your analogy, proponents of Planned Parenthood aren't killing pro-lifers en mass using robots and tacitly supporting the most extreme pro-lifers to address a third enemy. The analogy doesn't work at all.
There is no reason why both Piketty's and ISIS' rationale can't both be true. ISIS's eschatological religious propaganda wouldn't have nearly the resonance and recruiting power it does if it weren't for the current state of political and economic inequality in the middle east.
Also, while the Planned Parenthood shootings are tragic, they are not widespread and frequent enough to be attributed to an aggregate measure such as income inequality.
Edit: removed my comment about how we'd have to have Christian armies rising in the US to have a situation comparable to ISIS. Apparently that rubbed some the wrong way.
Not income inequality. Not climate change. Islamic extremism.
Those who claim otherwise are merely playing politics to advance political agendas.
Sam Harris, the well-known atheist author and speaker, describes such people well[0]:
"These people are part of what [Muslim reformist] Maajid Nawaz has termed the “regressive Left”—pseudo-liberals who are so blinded by identity politics that they reliably take the side of a backward mob over one of its victims. Rather than protect individual women, apostates, intellectuals, cartoonists, novelists, and true liberals from the intolerance of religious imbeciles, they protect these theocrats from criticism."
To say the problem with ISIS is anything other than Islamic extremism is a red herring. In this case, Piketty has long been advancing his political agenda regarding income inequality. He is merely playing politics here, using the ISIS problem to advance his agenda.
> To say the problem with ISIS is anything other than Islamic extremism is a red herring.
This assertion seems obviously false. ISIS isn't suddenly "better" because they are killing in the name of something other than "Islamic extremism." There are also plenty of extreme right-wing muslims who don't kill people, which also suggests that a generic diagnosis of "islamic extremism" is not enough to explain ISIS.
If you /really/ believe ISIS is powered by a fervent belief in fundamentalist Islam and nothing else, then there are no remedies other than killing every member of the group as their rhetoric inescapably leads to the conclusion they should kill everyone who disagrees with them. Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off. If all muslim extremists are driven solely by personal belief in islamic extremism, we would never expect them to change their behavior.
But people do change! All the time. So, even if you believe that all extremely right-wing muslims want to kill everyone all the time (a preposition I find hard to believe myself), you should also see that some (most I would say) muslim extremists choose not to kill most of the people most of the time. If we want to save as many lives as possible we should, while we push back against the intellectual garbage of extreme Islam, should also work to understand the factors that cause some extremists to kill and others to live in relative harmony.
> Of course, to believe that, you also have to believe previous groups that espoused philosophies with similar conclusions (Al' Qaeda, etc) were lying - as we haven't kill all of their members and their terrorist & militant activities have fallen off.
Well, to be fair, for part of the time al-Qaeda was dominant in the threat list, the group now calling itself "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" was calling itself "al-Qaeda in Iraq".
Sure - and al'qaeda "central" kicked them out because they believed ISIS was too extreme and violent. Since then they have worked with groups as diverse as the FBI[0] to oppose the goals of ISIS. The whole interaction makes believe all the more that 'Islamic Extremism' is far too general a term. When dealing with groups that self-identify as islamic extremists, it's vital to understand what they mean by that, but it's insufficient to understand the entire picture.
Okay, and why is Islamic extremism taking root and spreading?
It's like a body, you've got loads of bacteria all over your body, including some nasty MRSA stuff on your skin. This isn't normally a problem. But sometimes something can trigger a situation where the bad bacteria can spread and literally eat your body.
ISIS would be a footnote in an odd corner of the world if it weren't for favorable conditions for them to flourish.
This very much includes Islamic extremism as their call to legitimacy as a caliphate resonates with far too many.
It is absolutely not a red herring to point to the root conditions for ISIS success. It's incorrect if one thinks it's ONLY income inequality, compared to an interplay of conditions (Iraq destabilization, income inequality, Islamic extremism, and geopolitical machinations providing a destabilized Syria amongst them).
Ok. How about "because the states stopping them were sabotaged by external actors". In Iraq's case pretty obvious. From a local's perspective, here's what the US did :
1) remove nationalists from power by destroying all infrastructure. They sucked, but they sucked for everybody and they weren't nearly as bad as religous muslims.
2) jobs ... gone. Money ... gone (or gone soon). Family ... partially gone. Tribe ... partially gone. Security forces replaced by US troops, who don't speak the language.
3) this situation persists for years.
4) (for Sunni's, Christians, ...) US replaces security forces (suddenly) with an army exclusively formed by a religious grouping that Sunni's are attacking wherever they can (Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan ...) who are looking for revenge.
6) several tens of thousands of people that this happened to were soldiers.
So why is islamic extremism spreading ? For Iraq, you have the answer above this sentence. For Europe/America the answer is different. It is not spreading within the older generation, people who fled the middle east. It is spreading within the youth. How ? Well :
1) schools, bankrolled from Saudi Arabia and Turkey teach islamic supremacism to the kids of immigrant muslims.
2) western european states do token cleanups of these schools every 10 years or so, but not fast enough to make them stop.
3) these kids are not educated to the level even bad local schools educate local youngsters. At 18, they are suddenly abandoned, and quickly find out that no job, no family (not possible without job), no car, no status symbols, ... sucks
4) furthermore. Suddenly islamic supremacism educated kids finds society (including muslims) shun them, or worse. Why ? They have no decent skills, and because of the supremacism thing they are prone to violence.
5) they subsist on welfare for a while, generally causing trouble around them and little else.
6) someone offers them a purpose. "Free" brides (ie. kidnapped women and children. Like most muslim scholars, daesh sees nothing wrong with forced marriage at 6, after all the prophet did it. Makes you wonder how "normal" muslims morally deal with that). A state and police force that supports the supremacism and a free ride over. Oh and a monthly paycheck that more or less matches local welfare checks and what you might call life insurance.
The biggest thing stopping them: daesh has a reputation for getting people killed and abandoning them.
Let's get real here : if the US did the same to a Western European country it did to Iraq, there'd be isis/daesh territory in the middle of Western Europe, no doubt.
Also let's face facts here, and scale the problem. Daesh/islam will not be recruiting really large amounts of muslims from the western world. But it is growing : these people will cause a civil war in Europe unless the situation changes.
People who hold to your preferred cause are the only sane ones, and everyone else is "merely playing politics." Cool.
Or maybe, just maybe, the real world is a little more complex than that. Maybe it is Islamic extremism and climate change and income inequality and a thousand other things all interacting with each other.
I don't doubt that Piketty is using ISIS to advance his agenda, because that's what people do. Everybody everywhere is using ISIS to advance their agenda. Piketty uses it to support his ideas about income inequality, and Sam Harris uses it to support his ideas about Islam.
Ultimately, pointing fingers does nothing. The question is, what do you do now to fix things? I don't see anything actionable on that front coming out of the "Islamic extremism" cause.
There's actually lots of really important actions that get mostly ignored precisely because saying that this is related to religion is politically incorrect.
1. The West should more publicly defend the people who stand to gain most from a decrease of religiosity in Muslim majority countries: women, intellectuals, gays, etc. Those are the people who have a self-interest in reform, and thus are most likely to actually try.
2. In Europe in particular there should be a bigger emphasis on religion in education; particularly education about different religions and about atheism.
3. Any immigrants and refugees should get personal and very intense help to integrate into European society, and gaining a European passport should be tied to achievement of those goals.
4. Salafist and Wahhabist organisations should be banned, and any money coming from Saudia Arabia and other Gulf states investigated.
I am not disagreeing with you here, but what you are saying doesn't discount that income inequality could still lead desperate people into Islamic (or more generally religious, or even more generally, ideological) extremism. Blind faith thrives among the poor and uneducated.
Many Muslims are subject to extreme indoctrination and brainwashing regarding the metaphysics of martyrdom. Jihadist imams have figured out the virality of this particular meme, and the environment in which it may take root.
Depressed economic conditions end up gifting jihadist recruiters with more reasons for individuals to join up and become a martyr.
The biggest issue is the believe that there is a separation of "extreme islam" vs "mainstream (non-violent) islam" when the calls for violence in the religion are extremely clear and in their holy book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LBpmPXv1R4
Just read the article - the Washington post did quite a bit of editorializing.
> Le tout-sécuritaire ne suffira pas
Translated roughly as "Total security will not suffice" (or the "state security apparatus" will not suffice). His argument isn't that inequality created ISIS. But rather that:
> C’est une évidence : le terrorisme se nourrit de la poudrière inégalitaire moyen-orientale, que nous avons largement contribuée à créer. Daech, « Etat islamique en Irak et au Levant », est directement issu de la décomposition du régime irakien, et plus généralement de l’effondrement du système de frontières établi dans la région en 1920.
He says the evidence shows that terrorism preys on the "powder keg" of middle-eastern inequality, and that the invasion of Iraq (and destruction of the previous regime) lead to the creation of ISIS. Not exactly ground breaking.
Anyhow, I'm not going to translate the whole thing, but near the end this:
> Rien ne peut excuser cette dérive sanguinaire, machiste et pathétique.
"Nothing can excuse this bloodthirsty, masochist and pathetic act"
> Tout juste peut-on noter que le chômage et la discrimination professionnelle à l’embauche (particulièrement massive pour les personnes qui ont coché toutes les bonnes cases en termes de diplôme, expérience, etc., comme l’ont montré des travaux récents; voir également ici) ne doivent pas aider.
"We can only note that unemployment and discrimination don't help"
> C’est par le développement social et équitable que la haine sera vaincue.
"It's through social development and equality that hate will be defeated"
Again, not ground breaking. It took the west several reformations of our culture/religion, and 2 world wars to finally get our heads out of our proverbial asses. Also, social welfare has played a huge part in the rise of a real 'middle class'. We aren't as capitalist as we think, and 'socialism' is part of the reason inequality isn't as bad today as in 1900. But, as the data shows, inequality is on the rise yet again (as conservative politics are also on the rise).
He's sort of right, but not in the way this article is going to be interpreted domestically (see comments in this thread for an example). Oil revenue in the Gulf countries has enabled wealthy elites to sponsor madrassas around the world, which are pivotal to the spread of Wahhabism, an arch-conservative branch of Islam. The Gulf elites are not the cause of Wahhabism (its roots go further back and it was more of a grassroots movement in the 1970s), but they are its most important promoters.
Another contributing factor is high birthrate in poor Muslim countries which has caused a bit of a demographic shock (the low-birthrate Europe has simultaneously benefitted and suffered from it, first importing immigrants from MENA as a source of cheap labor, and them having to deal with the disaffected and radicalized 2nd generation of the original immigrants, after failing to integrate them successfully into the mainstream society). It is no secret to anyone that poor uneducated people who are also highly religious tend to have more kids on average. This is one of the primary causes behind Islamisation of Turkey, formerly a staunchly secular country. Turkey is now, together with the Gulf countries, one of the major "sticks in the wheel" behind eradicating ISIS in Syria.
I don't really see the controversy, it's just a reframing of well-known issues about the conflict, using different terminology.
For instance, there's obviously an economic element to the conflict between the richer, more urban Shia Alawites who live principally in the Western part of Syria, and the poorer, more rural Sunni population. I have read that part of the destabilization is down to mass movements of the urban poor into the cities in the years running up to the conflict.
And Saudi Arabia and other wealthy oil rich states clearly provide religious and armaments funding to support hardline interpretations of Islam, which means that the conflict between Shia and Sunni takes on a much more fundamentalist tone. That power arises from their wealth relative to other regions in the area.
As I say, I don't think either of these things are particularly controversial. If we were talking about the rural poor moving into the cities in China, we wouldn't have a problem talking about it as an issue of income inequality. It seems quite obvious that this is a major issue in a lot of the developing world (where income inequality tends to be far higher than in the West, particularly in resource rich countries).
I wouldn't say this has much relevance to policy in the developed world. It would be dubious if Piketty tried to use this to draw conclusions about the West, but I can't see he has done that.
And don't even think about saying the even more accurate, "revolutions often happen when there is strong income inequality and limited upward mobility, the rich can afford luxury, the poor can't afford to eat, and the middle/working class -- who can afford to eat, and even have some leisure to think about insecurity, and to think about who to blame for their insecurity -- see the conditions of the poor and the luxury of rich and their own risk of joining the poor, and blame the rich for it"...
Its rarely the poor who lead who revolutions, its usually the middle/working class (and often those members of the existing elites that, either from genuine sympathy or opportunism, decide to take up their cause against the rest of the elites.)
It could contribute to it but seems to miss... idk.. the whole history of the Middle East post Western involvement. The patterns we see today in the Middle East go back to around 1900 or so with attempts of imperialists to hit them, divide them, turn them into indentured servants, and take their resources. Combine that with religious, ethnic, power-related, and financial aspects over decades to get a huge mess. So, I'd be looking at money, power, religion, and typical politics as a start.
Looking at that, I see the same trends that relate to violent regime change and terrorism over there that I always see. It usually involves a Western power (esp U.S.) covertly screwing with a country to cause a regime change or battles between them + eastern country (esp Russia) for influence/resources. The radical ideology and funding put in by Saudi Arabia comes into play. The damage and power vacuums from an invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan fuels it, literally with fuel & weapons. ;) Arab Spring and aftermath of that may have been the final straw setting things in motion.
All in all, looks more like Western imperialism, local dictatorships, and religious sect (esp Saudi-promoted) combining to create a disaster that leads to many innocents being beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered over there with a few in the West, too. Same stuff, same area, different country and year.
And, unlike international media, most of the Western media is consistently avoiding the U.S. imperialism and Saudi Arabia angles. Just like they did for Iraq. Just like for 9/11. The problem isn't income inequality: it's countries sabotaging other countries with corrupt ideology, covert actions, and overt war. The result is what CIA types call "blowback." We call it tragedy but they won't let dots be easily connected.
One of the episodes of the 1960s Batman series involved the UN, and seeing that episode playing in bar a couple of months ago made me think of how no TV show today would feature a UN plotline; the most likely plotline indeed would only be about diplomatic immunity - ie how some people get to be above the law. My point here is that in the late 1960s, international diplomacy was respected enough to be part of the pop culture conversation. Fifty years later, teh pop culture conversation centres around popular violence (mass shootings) and terrorism, like ISIS. It seems to me that in the past, people had hopes for the future and believed the politicians were working to make a better world. Today, they don't believe that and see how politicians have created a world were some people are above the law and the rest of us are considered irrelevant and to be placated with realty-tv entertainment.
When inequality leads to hopelessness, what are we to honestly expect?
The original headline is "Le tout-sécuritaire ne suffira pas" which they translated as "Clamping down with law and order will not be enough" (which looks like a good translation to me). The linked Washington Post article is titled "This might be the most controversial theory for what’s behind the rise of ISIS." Yet on HN it's called, "Thomas Piketty: Income inequality is behind the rise of Islamic State." Was something changed, or did the person who posted this decide to make up something that would incite controversy?
Agree, it really distracts from his point when Piketty deliberately ignores the other obvious factors (religoius extremism, tribalism, power vacuums, etc) and fails to integrate it into the quagmire everyone is aware of.
Modern liberalism offers no solution to the problem of evil. It assumes that as long as your basic needs are met, and you're mentally sane, that you will behave as a rational, non-violent person. It sees humans as essentially materialist, subject to the same universal desires, which can all be met in similar ways, and which are never distorted to any great degree. So it is stumped by the sort of despair that such jihadists harbor in their hearts, for according to its philosophical principles, such a thing should not be possible.
Modern liberalism leaves no room for evil. The contemporary social conservative-liberal axis reflects personal responsibility. Conservatives believe individuals are entirely responsible for individual happiness and liberals believe society is entirely responsible for individual happiness. If westerners are joining ISIS they are not evil, they have been failed by the collective and are seeking happiness elsewhere. They want variation, excitement, or certain moral standards that western society cannot or will not provide. Is that evil? If we lived in ISIS-controlled territory we'd likely want to escape and would also be branded as evil by those in power.
I'd argue income inequality is very much the culprit in this problem: individuals need not be in economic strife to feel unsatisfied with life. Wealth helps enable empowerment but individuals still need the mental tools to maintain it, and our society vastly undervalues mental health (except among the most fortunate).
You statement assumes that everyone who joins/supports ISIS is evil or brainwashed like the people in that article.
Imagine you are a resident of a town just captured by ISIS in Syria. Assuming that they don't kill you immediately for being a Shia, Kurd, Christian or Yazidi, how hard would it be for you to say no to supporting them, when the alternative is death, or to flee to another place only to be forced into destitution due to lack of economic opportunity.
No doubt ISIS seems to have a special capability to recruit people with sociopathic desires, but any army marches on its stomach, and that requires regular, non-evil people, to participate in the effort.
The simple counter-argument is that it is not the only driving factor. And Piketty offers no real proof (by his very lofty standards) to show that this is the principal contributing factor (which in itself would be huge).
A more interesting question is finding the 'catalyst(s)' that led to the rise of ISIS.
On the surface this explanation doesn't make sense. Is there a correlation between extremists and countries with high income inequality? If so, provide some evidence apart from cherry picking countries which happen to have high inequality and other problems. Why aren't free democratic regimes which also have high inequality equally plagued by these problems?
Also, energy prices have fallen dramatically, affecting the coffers of many middle east governments. I don't know why he doesn't address this.
Maybe he addresses these issues in his actual research but it is missing from every piece trying to link inequality to all societies ills.
> "Members of Hezbollah's militant wing who were killed in action in the 1980s and early 1990s were at least as likely to come from economically advantaged families and have a relatively high level of education as they were to come from impoverished families without educational opportunities."
> "Instead of viewing terrorism as a direct response to low market opportunities or ignorance, we suggest it is more accurately viewed as a response to political conditions and long-standing feelings (either perceived or real) of indignity and frustration that have little to do with economics."
He is not positing a general theory of income inequality and extremism merely offering a hypothesis for recent extremism in the middle east. Saying "I think X is the cause of Y in country Z" is not the same thing as saying X is always the cause of Y in all countries all the time.
If you can make causes conditional to one particular location, how is that a good explanation? Are extremists more likely to be the poorest of society? From what I read, this is not the case.
It happens all the time. Causes lead to different outcomes in different environments. In biology for example poor diets lead to different diseases in different parts of the world.
Extremists are more likely to be poor. Some instigators may be well-off people doing it for whatever purposes, but your rank and file, your average suicide bomber is more likely to be idle, unemployed with nothing better to do
Why should this be the "most controversial theory"? Have we already forgotten what triggered the Arab Spring, and consequently the power vacuum that created the IS?
The only thing off, as far as I can tell, is the remark that "economic deprivation and the horrors of wars [...] benefited only a select few of the region's residents." I'm not sure if this is the WP mis-reading Piketty, but he makes it pretty clear in Capital that war benefits no one, especially the super-rich. It's not like the Arab aristocracy were itching for multiple revolutions that called into doubt the existing power structures.
Given how awful inequality is in the Middle-East and seeing that the United States is not really far (comparing for France for example), it just made me realise how worse the situation is in the states.
The rise of ISIS is pretty simple, the power vacuum created by the destruction of the Ba'athist Iraqi state and the subsequent withdrawal of US troops was filled in Shi'a areas by Shiite militias and (largely Shiite) Iraqi government forces, in Kurdish areas by the Peshmerga, and in the Sunni areas by the Sunni militants who had been fighting the US troops. Lots of groups fought the US of course, a number were wiped out to varying degrees. Because the US held an overwhelming advantage in conventional firepower, the only groups with any lasting "success" were the ones that embraced terrorism as their core of their operations. When the Americans left the strongest of these groups -- ISI -- consolidated power and the destabilization in Syria created another power vacuum which ISIS flowed into.
I stopped reading as soon as he compared having few resources to living in "conditions of semi-slavery". Slavery is the treatment of people as economic goods to be bought and sold, full-stop. Having to work harder for a living than others in wealthier areas is not slavery, it's not even close to slavery. Not being able to leave your hometown because you can't afford a plane ticket is not slavery. Not being free does not make you a slave.
I dismiss any purported economic argument as a political one when the arguer makes this misrepresentation. You're not talking about how the world is anymore, you're talking about how you want it to be.
So in the Middle East the top 1% control 26.2% of the wealth (under a "high inequality model"), and in the US the top 1% control 22.83% of the wealth. Just 3.5% more and the US will turn into a medieval barbarism state.
When will people stop believing this crap. There is one variable that explains a tremendous amount of human misery: surrender of the mind to a supreme authority (human or god). Of course there are other important factors, but when are we going to acknowledge the elephant in the room?
I don't think 'we' have trouble acknowledging your elephant.
Rather, simply pointing at the elephant smashing everything in the room of the Middle East seems unproductive in light of the fact that we have such an elephant in our very own room. Ours just happens to not be smashing things currently.
It did do so quite recently though (and rather more violently that ISIS), and not just throughout our entire history, but the history of all of humanity. The elephant is part of human nature.
Isn't it much more productive to look at the many underlying factors that might cause elephants to go berserk, both external and internal to the human individual, and then try to find solutions based on that?
Increased income equality might be such a factor, or it might not. But at least it acknowledges all the elephants in all the rooms, and offers a possible way out. Pointing at the one elephant somewhere else does no such thing, and is likely to enrage ours (in fact, it already seems rather agitated).
Finally, I actually do think that the increasing inequality and centralization of power in the US does significantly increase the chances of a regression to a more 'medieval barbarism state'. It's just not happened yet.
Calling for "far more education" does not at all address the inconvenient facts that education in the Muslim Middle East is illiberal and will not produce the same effects that increased education in a Western environment will. See anything by Will McCants or Shadi Hamid for more info.
This is an economist's view of a non-economic problem.
This misses the point entirely, I think. The problem isn't income inequality so much as low income in general in that region. There is very little opportunity. But low opportunity is coupled with generally high education and literacy rates and a massive population boom. A young population, unemployed intellectuals, and authoritarian government has always led to revolution. Always. It's human nature. It's happened at points in European history, and it's happened in China and Japan and elsewhere.
As a musician, I play some middle eastern music and own several instruments from the region. I have a doumbek (cast aluminum goblet drum) from the well-known GEF in Egypt, and another from Syria. The difference in construction quality is shocking. When showing the Syrian drum to people, I sometimes say "You've heard about the precision industrial powerhouses of Syrian manufacturing, right? No? Here's why." But what's even more shocking is the difference in the quality of the "good" Egyptian drum versus pretty much any instrument made in China or Indonesia these days - CNC-milled parts, quality finishes, and tight construction rule in even the cheapest Asian manufacturing.
Manufacturing in the Arab world, such as it is, is mostly trapped in the 19th century, unable to escape craftsman roots. This is terribly inefficient and unproductive. The Arab world is technologically incapable of manufacturing complex devices like cars and surface-mount electronics. And it's not for lack of educated people or a desire to do better. Other forces are at play here.
Revenue from raw resource extraction (oil) is just exploitation, and it's time-locked. Sooner or later, oil fields run dry, and they'll be back where they started, basically just agricultural communities. It's a shame, because the region and cultures there have provided some of the most important advances in history (like the number zero and algebra), and I'm sure it could rise to that effectiveness again, given the right conditions.
But oil exploitation is good for both the local authoritarian regimes, and for the western powers that run their economies on cheap Arab oil. That leads to a massive militarization and government-level resistance to modernization and advancement. It sucks. In a way, oil is the worst thing to happen to the middle east.
And who has an answer? Clearly, the world of desert kingdoms and post-fascist Baathist regimes is ripe for revolution. But the answers seem to be either go forward, into the scary world of modern relatively peaceful democracy and freedom, or backwards into the glory days of centuries ago. And the Islamic fundamentalists who want to go backwards are strengthened by the general lack of interest in the west for real democratization, and the preference for petty regimes we can control from afar.
It's been clear for a very long time - what's needed is: Opportunities for creation of wealth, access to health care and specifically mental health care and lots of education.
There is absolutely no credible, facts-driven research to suggest that lack of wealth, access to health care, access to mental health care, or access to education have a direct correlation to individuals joining terrorist groups or the rise of such groups. It's just a common trope repeated because it fits with people's existing ideologies. Terrorism is much more complicated than that.
That's a bit generalizing. This paper[1] talks about the over-representation of engineers in violent Islamic organizations. Specifically talks about how there are fewer engineers in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia versus Palestine and other countries in the same type of groups. There seems to be /some/ correlation between economic opportunity and sub-segments of the population joining these types of groups.
I can't read the paper now but I've read on that specific topic before. The assertions were usually that people drawn to the clear-cut answers of engineering also wanted to organize the world with definitive rights and wrongs, and those 'black or white, no shades of grey' people are more likely to agree with the zealotry of terrorist groups.
I'll agree with you there. Among impoverished and religious, they're still a tiny percentage. It's definitely complex what causes the individuals to convert. However, the factors that promote it seem pretty consistent. ;)
I'd say that the factors are anything but consistent. The closest thing to consistency is the personal desire for an all-encompassing identity, being a part of something bigger than one's self, and being raised in a society or culture that reveres illiberalism and the combination of religion and state.
The occurrence or absence of cash is too broad to draw a correlation to terrorism. Same goes for weapons. Power vacuums enable organized actors but those same actors (in this case Islamists) can also gain a foothold by coopting the democratic process of a powerful state. None of those things address the mentality of terrorists or the ideology of groups that give rise to organized terrorism.
You know, I often ask myself when presented with your argument: How come we don't hear about suicide bombings or mass (targeted) killings against Paris/Europe, US or other western nations by the multitude of poor, highly uneducated peoples of various (christian) countries in Central or South America (or christian majority countries in Africa even). Sure they have killings and other bad things happen, but usually contained within the country.
I see Islam (I don't see a difference between the so called "extreme islam" and "moderate islam" as their holy text is pretty clear that it is extreme"
You didn't address his argument at all. Just an ad hominem.
Is that because you can't address it? Because his thesis seems quite reasonable to me. And historically, we certainly know that societies with extreme income inequality are less stable than those with more equality.
You are addressing a one-sentence summary of the argument, not the actual argument, which is much more complex than "income inequality results in terrorism."
There's over 50,000 violent deaths per year in Brazil. Not that the Paris attacks weren't bad, but yes, Brazil suffers from violence due to inequality.
I'd argue that the main problem with the theory is that there are plenty of places where there is high income inequality (such as the United States, as indicated by the diagram) and something like ISIS seems rather unlikely† .
Sure, you can say that inequality may have contributed to the issue, but there are a ton of factors that have resulted in Syria being plunged in Civil War. Pointing to any one as a decisive factor seems like an inevitable simplification. Also, it doesn't really answer the question "Why _now_?". Claiming that something eventually happen is not really predictive if no time frame can be given.
† Or I might be overly optimistic about my own country's stability.
archgoon: We have had extremely frequent domestic terror incidents in the US recently which can be readily linked to religious and political extremism, notably the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shootings.
To me, there is a mild quantitative difference between a civil war with a death count in the hundreds of thousands and millions displaced versus a few dozen killed every year.
I don't see anywhere in Piketty's theory a place to plug in "Amount of Inequality" and expected number of deaths.
Piketty thinks ISIS arose because of income inequality. Greenie professors think ISIS arose because of global warming [1]. Isolationists think foreign interventionism gave rise to ISIS (see elsewhere in this subthread). ISIS themselves think they're following the teachings of their religion and would probably find all these other excuses that the West is trying to make for their existence rather silly.
Wow. Talk about gratuitous negativity. Lots of people have a favorite theory about where Daesh came from. Blame Bush. Blame Obama. Blame Islam. Blame oil companies. At least this hammer isn't one we're already sick of hearing. What do you actually think is wrong with Piketty's analysis, other than the fact that he has actually published on this topic before?
Understood, but why do you think that hammer is out of place here? A hammer is still a useful tool for certain tasks, and a true statement doesn't cease being true when it's repeated. If Piketty is wrong, the constructive response would be to explain why.
What if instead I said that the rise of the Islamic State can be traced back to dictators allowing a small elite to get rich off of oil, while oppressing and impoverishing the masses, who finally revolted? I'm guessing you might find that less objectionable even though it's just a specific rendering of "income inequality."
While I agree, there is one point that must be considered: the Arab Spring directly sprang, if you will pardon the pun, from an extreme rise in the prices of basic staples, and the population of the Middle East didn't have the income buffer to compensate. Not being able to afford bread tends to lead to a lot of revolutions, or at least the breakdown of society. Just ask France.
Once the obvious cause (religion) has been eliminated, whatever remains, however unlikely must be the truth.
Except the obvious has only been eliminated in his analysis because of a dogmatic belief in human/religious/cultural equality (module disadvantages caused by economics and western foreign policy).
Actually, most Muslims do not realize that Muhammad is not somebody to be emulated. They are simply unaware of who he really was, or use creative interpretation similar to how Christians interpret the Old Testament.
Having grown up in a Mennonite community I'm sadly very well aware of how uninformed most Christians are about what the bible says.
My favorite was catching shit in a passive aggressive manner about my tongue piercing and then thanking the elder for bringing his concerns about his wife and daughters ear piercings to the group for discussion, as surely he was not pointing out the spec in someone's eye while ignoring the log in his own, and then wondering whether this proscription from Leviticus on piercings also meant that we should no longer consume pork as we certainly did not want to be one of those pick and choose Christians who only listen to the parts of the bible they like.
Needless to say a lot of people we're very pissed at me that day.
I'm starting to suspect that as any thread on Hacker News involving the Middle East, Islam or Islamic terrorism grows longer, the probability of someone calling Mohammed a pedophile approaches 1.
Calling? It's a pretty well established 'fact' covered by Islamic sacred text, Its an assertion held by 1.8 billion Muslims. The books could well be works of fiction, the vast majority of people who assert the truth of the books are Muslim. I'm perfectly willing to accept that Mohammed was neither a prophet, nor a child rapist, but Muslims believe these things bring glory to him. However, to be respectful of their faith we must take their assertions at face value.
It's about as controversial as Jesus being a bastard, or God being intolerant of homosexuals.
Keep in mind it's not so much that Mohamed was a 'paedophile' by our modern definition, rather that the definition has changed over time.
Even in our own culture it was once the norm to betroth daughters to suitors while they were pre-pubescent, and to marry them as soon as they reached puberty... Polygamy is also a result of a violent era in which there were more unattached women than men - and in which having a husband was the only social security net.
The problem is the literal interpretation of a 1300 year-old book in today's society (which is pretty much the whole philosophy behind Salafism/Wahhabism, that ever so destructive ideology propagated by our friends the Saudis). There's still Christians today that think it's OK to burn witches at the stake, and do...
Edit - I love the downvotes for stating that mideivel attitudes are due to circumstances that arose during the middle ages (actually, a little bit earlier).
>Even in our own culture it was once the norm to betroth daughters to suitors while they were pre-pubescent, and to marry them as soon as they reached puberty.
I'm interested in learning more. Can you narrow down what you mean by "our own culture", and provide a time frame? Like "Early America 1600-1800", or England in the 1400s, Anglo-Saxon culture, 1200, or Irish-Catholic 1300, or whatever. And then maybe point in the general direction of references where one could look this up. Maybe books or internet search terms?
From the time of the Roman empire until the French Revolution, the 'legal' marriage age for women was 12 (as per Roman law and later Church law). You could be betrothed (promised) at any age. Historic documents also show marriages did happen at younger ages. It's well known and easy to find through multiple sources (Google).
one interesting quote (of course there is the Roman law you are refering to as well):
"...most of Northwestern Europe, marriage at very early ages was rare. One thousand marriage certificates from 1619 to 1660 in the Archdiocese of Canterbury show that only one bride was 13 years of age, four were 15, twelve were 16, and seventeen were 17 years of age while the other 966 brides were at least 19 years of age at marriage. And the Church dictated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families; in the certificates, the most common age for the brides is 22 years. For the grooms 24 years is the most common age, with average ages of 24 years for the brides and 27 for the grooms."
> The American colonies followed the English tradition, but the law was more of a guide. For example, Mary Hathaway (Virginia, 1689) was only 9 when she was married to William Williams. Sir Edward Coke (England, 17th century) made it clear that "the marriage of girls under 12 was normal, and the age at which a girl who was a wife was eligible for a dower from her husband's estate was 9 even though her husband be only four years old".[1] Reliable data for when people would actually marry are very difficult to find. In England, for example, the only reliable data on age at marriage in the early modern period come from records that involved only those who left property after their death.
To add to this, some people (both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists) believe any sort of progress is 'wrong' (or at least superfluous) because Jesus will return (ironically Muslims also believe Jesus will return, but that he's Muslim, and not quite the son of God, just a great prophet) to smite their enemies anyway and bring about the 'end'.
You seem to be reading an intent behind my comment that isn't there. Whether or not it's relevant to the actual topic at hand, it seems inevitable that it will be brought up.
While inequality may be ONE factor, it is definitely not THE factor. Much more important are the factors of American imperialism, Islamic extremist ideology, destabilization of Iraq, and so on.
What Piketty is right about, however, is that it is the policies of the West is in part to blame for the extreme rise of inequality in the Arab world. That said, I am not too certain Arabs would have fared better on their own.
We need to start realizing that reality isnt a great headline. Making bold or absolute claims is a good way. Once we keep that in mind it makes these conversations easier.
It has everything to do with it. Imperialism destabilized the region, led to the removal of the stable and sovereign Iraqi government and the fomenting of the Syrian civil war (to the point of funding elements that became ISIS) with the aim of removing that government as well. The results of all of this created the conditions for extremism in general and ISIS in particular to arise and build.
I don't think the idea that US intervention in Iraq is to blame for the Syrian civil war holds true, considering that revolution swept across huge swaths of the Arab world with Arab Spring. Syria was as ripe for revolution as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. If we hadn't invaded Iraq, it'd just be Saddam Hussein dealing with rebels instead. Baathism is a dead end government style, out of touch with today's world. Only the rich oil kingdoms have been able to avoid Arab Spring, and not by a whole lot.
American Imperalism has a long history of provoking and/or arming people in the area to prompt regime change. They also support Saudi Arabia who export radical Islam to the area and fund terrorism (including 9/11 per Commission Report). Assad regime was one of America's opponents. And, of course, the group hitting him happens to form out of the remnants of and with weapons from the American imperialism in Iraq. Surprise, surprise...
How many of you read the article?
How many of you read the original article, the one published in Le Monde, in French?
I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the people here criticizing what Piketty is saying don't even know what he is saying.