Ibrahim wrote:A terrorist may be crazy, in fact its almost a job requirement, but what they are doing is different from the loner-who-snaps that I remember seeing every so often since Columbine.
As you say, there is difference between a lone freak killer and a lone freak killer motivated by an ideology (even one of his making like Breivik)
I found quite thought-provoking
Dmitry Orlov's take on such killers, and the causes for their quite sustained numbers
Excerpts:
We are expected to derive our sense of belonging from our inclusion in a set of impersonal public institutions and participation in a scripted political process. But in spite of what our handlers in politics and the media tell us, our gut sense is that these public institutions do not belong to us, and that the political process is one of manipulation rather than inclusion. Many of us know full well that we live in a kleptocracy that prioritizes international financial interests and the interests of a small, privileged rentier class above all else. More and more of us are being excluded—based on our inability to pay for a middle-class lifestyle.
Where do we belong, then? With the Republicans/Democrats? Looking at the current presidential contest, in one corner we have a wealthy Mormon aristocrat posing as a self-made man, while in the other corner we have an exotic product of the American academe posing as a man of the people and, because he randomly happens to be brown-skinned, as a champion of the children of former slaves. Both are, in fact, faithful servants of financial interests, many of them transnational or foreign. Both will maintain the power of the center at the cost of the periphery, and extend the milking, the bleeding and the fleecing of the people for as long as possible. Meanwhile, the US Congress performs a sadomasochistic folie à deux on behalf of their corporate sponsors. Only 17% of the people approve of their performance. Such a high number is perhaps explained by the fact that roughly 20% of Americans are mentally ill. (Even so, it would appear that a few percent of the mentally ill are insufficiently delusional to approve of congressional performance.)
(...)
When the dominant culture fails to produce a sense of belonging, the human mind regresses to a pre-verbal state, where it is ruled by innate, subconscious impulses that are common to higher social animals. Depending on one's personality and situation, one or another of three major impulses described by Bion may come to dominate the behavior of the individual, and, in due course, the society as a whole.
When it comes to aggressive young males, the sense of disconnection produces in them a heightened sense of insecurity and anxiety which directly affects the sympathetic nervous system. This may cause an animal to behave more aggressively, or, in the case of the human animal, to gather rocks and to find and sharpen sticks, or, technology and finances allowing, to purchase semiautomatic assault weapons and lots of ammunition. This process may then progress through several stages. The end result is the spontaneous development of a warrior mentality—a cultural universal marked by a desire to prove oneself in battle, contempt for death, and a tendency toward what Emile Durkheim called “altruistic suicide.”
The pattern is the same among Homeric heroes, Mongol conquerers, Japanese samurai, European knights of the age of chivalry or Moscow's bandits and racketeers during the violent 1990s. Meaning is created out of meaninglessness through heroic acts of violence performed in keeping with a code of honor. Inclusion in the elite group is achieved via violent rites of passage and creates group loyalty and a sense of belonging. The gun cult in the United States is a strong precursor to this development, and the sporadic shooting sprees are its individual manifestations. This may at some point progress to the point of becoming a mass phenomenon. If it does, it will annihilate the current ruling class and the process of aristocratic formation will begin anew.