Wednesday, June 13, 2007

A NSS Moment If Ever There Was One

You gotta love this Reuters article about this report, "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization." commissioned by the think tank EastWest Institute.

Their main finding is a real shocker!

Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil"

Well, EastWest Institute, I think this theory of yours has really hit the nail on the head.

Of course, I would have been more surprised if they had discovered a single group of religious extremists since, oh I don't know, say...the dawn of time that didn't use such language.

But, hey! That's just me and my crazy high standards.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading the article, I'm not sure that was their main finding--I think it's just the one the author of the article chose to lead with. After reading the whole article, the comment that all three extremist groups use that same binary language comes as the prelude to this conclusion: therefore, one can't successfully combat such extremism by employing that same kind of binary language. I think the author of the piece is more to blame for leading with that, without the conclusion they draw from it.

Rich Horton said...

Yeah I know...I was going for the easy joke at Reuters expense and EastWest was just in the line of fire.

But the gist of the whole report reminds me of this bit from The Onion.

Hitler Commits Suicide; Ravaging of Europe 'A Desperate Cry for Help,' Say Therapists.

Fuhrer's Slaughter of Millions Blamed on 'Serious Self-Esteem Issues'

'If We Had Only Known How Much He Was Hurting Inside,' FDR Says

Berlin - Absent from the public eye for months, Adolf Hitler is reportedly dead by his own hand in an air-raid shelter in Berlin, where he had sequestered himself during his final days.
Dr. Theodore Beaumont, director of the Virginia Psychiatry Center, said he believes Hitler's marching on Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France, and his systematic killings of millions of people in Germany, was "a desperate cry for help."
According to Beaumont, "This is classic attention seeking behavior."
Beaumont said Hitler made his plea for approval the only way he knew how: by lashing out.
Other experts agree. "The British and American forces just reciprocated negatively by advancing from the west," said Dr. Johan Freberg of the Paris Center for Mental Illness. "And Russian soldiers reinforced Hiter's self-fulfilling prophesy of 'othering' by attacking from the east, instead of lending a sympathetic ear, which may of been all Hitler needed."
Upon learning of the self-esteem issues that led Hitler to militaristic "acting out." Allied leaders are seeing the once-hated despot in a new light.
"I heard his angry speeches but failed to search for the hurt little boy beneath those words," lamented British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. "I feel guilty - there's so much more we could have done for him."
Said President Roosevelt, "Inside that maniacal mass murderer - beneath the veneer of evil and sadism - there was a scared little child searching for love."
Psychologists say the global carnage of the Second World War could have been averted if only U.S. forces had met Hitler's emotional needs, giving him the love and approval he so desperately sought.