Most of us feel helpless when it comes to the atrocities that are taking place here and around the world by terrorist hate groups. Whether these tragedies are ISIS-directed or ISIS-inspired or spawned by another group of fanatics, those who perpetrate them are young and old, male and female, and come from every corner of the world. Who are they? And what attracts them to a lifestyle of violence and bloodshed?
According to the Associated Press, 150 people have left Sweden to join ISIS. Twenty-three of them have already died in combat. The U.S. government has identified fewer than 12 Americans who have joined the Islamic State, however, exact numbers are unavailable.
Other young recruits have come from France, Germany, Australia and Canada. Britain is prosecuting nearly 50 of its own citizens who have returned from Syria. Disenfranchised people, indoctrinated by terrorist groups, have been sent back to their countries of origin to establish terror networks at home.
Christopher Dickey, a foreign editor of The Daily Beast, told CNN that many recruits in their teens and 20s are drawn to terrorist groups because of what he calls “TNT” – Testosterone, Narrative and Theater. They are lost and alienated souls who identify with other oppressed groups. What drives them, Dickey says, is that they aspire to be someone.
To be someone. That phrase is at once startling, puzzling and downright sad. To be someone. How did they lose themselves? Who stole their personhood, robbed them of their identity, deprived them of a life that mattered? Between the cradle and the classroom, when and where did life become so empty that they replenished the void with poison?