The Telegraph is reporting live on the Copenhagen shootings. (I know; it’s not my favorite paper either, but the live reporting is useful.)
19.34 DANISH PRIME MINISTER SAYS COPENHAGEN SHOOTING IS A TERRORIST ATTACK, WHOLE COUNTRY IS ON HIGH ALERT
19.24 This is the photo released by police of the gunman.
18.38 Danish PM calls Copenhagen shooting ‘terrorist act’
18.23 More from David Chazan in Paris.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, tweeted: “Freedom attacked in #Copenhagen. Solidarity with the Danes. @BCazeneuve (French interior minister) is going there. France does not yield. #JeSuisCharlie
18.15 DANISH POLICE SAY THEY DO NOT KNOW IF COPENHAGEN SHOOTING INCIDENT WAS A “TERRORIST ACT” BUT ARE INVESTIGATING IT AS ONE
17.50 Two suspected assailants escaped by vehicle after Copenhagen attack: police
It’s like a goddam flashback.
The pathetic thing is that this is young man shit. Young men are fodder for this kind of thing. They’re the IRA, they’re gangs, they’re Shining Path, they’re Nazis or neo-Nazis – whatever. There’s a veneer of ideology but the bedrock is adventure and excitement and danger. It’s adrenaline more than it is ideology. And all it takes is two or three young men, and you can put a whole crucial part of a society and culture at risk. If just a very few strategic young men take it into their heads to make it dangerous to go to conferences where liberals and secularists gather…then things get a lot worse with a minuscule expenditure of human capital.
I see the common link in most cases as tribalism, not “adrenaline.” Almost every group you mention has an ethnic or religious dimension. Shining Path would be the major standout as a predominantly ideological association. Accordingly I would point out that leftwing/anarchist terror groups have been where we have historically witnessed women joining the violence to an appreciable degree as well (modern rightwing/tribalist groups now reflecting that advance). Women simply do not exist in the same tribal matrix, which is why tribalistic men will take out-group wives they ‘control’ without thinking much about it, yet flip out about a woman voluntarily marrying out-group. Islam follows that pattern precisely.
They are murderers. Nothing else about them matters.
Plenty else matters. Murders have causes, and not all causes are equal. Understanding the causes is vitally important to stopping future murders. Culturally driven murders (whether tribal or religious or take your pick) need to be addressed through cultural changes, and those changes can’t happen if you don’t recognize where the problem is and what is causing it. It’s not as simple as “murderers will be murderers”. And neither will be the solutions.
Tribalism too, yes. Adrenaline and tribalism. And anyway that doesn’t explain absolutely everything, yadda yadda, but I do think the fact that the perps like the excitement and the showing off gets overlooked too much.
I remember seeing a study about how in a small social group of young people, a drive to outdo one another tends to quickly lead to activities they would quickly see as irrational when alone.
We see this in typical “Jackass” type stunts. I remember as a young man we would try to push each other into bushes while walking to lunch. People tend toward irrationally extreme action, ignoring consequences or harm, to gain a feeling of acceptance or self-esteem in a group.
I also see such effects in movements like gamergate. It relies on underlying biases and bigotries, but involves actions that the actors would recognize as irrational if not part of an insular culture of one-upping each other.
And there’s the Robbers Cave experiment.