DR. MICHAEL LEDEEN
May 2, 2013
We are guided by myths more often than by reason. Nothing new
there; man is a myth-making animal. Myths spring up from our
collective unconscious, they cover the globe, and they shape our
thoughts and actions. The great philosophers and the great
psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts tried hard to "free us"
from myths so that we could properly understand our world and
ourselves. Spinoza thought that emotions were the result of unclear
ideas (I don't agree, and neither does Barbara, the very clear object of
my strongest emotions, but I digress).
Good news: the doctor is in, and he's going to help you. He's more
modest about his abilities than the great thinkers and healers, so he's
just going to help you understand our world. As for understanding
yourself, well, maybe Obamacare will pay for it.
The Myth of the Day is: the "homegrown terrorist." Sometimes he or
she's called "self-made," but it all comes to the same thing. The idea
is that there are normal Americans who, on their own, and certainly
without any input from foreign countries or terrorist groups, up and
become terrorists.
Such persons exist - from the Unabomber to those who have slaughtered
innocents in our schools or movie theaters - but they are not the sorts
that I'm talking about, the sorts the myth commonly refers to. The myth
and the phrase are typically applied to actual or would-be killers who
are motivated by strong ideological or religious beliefs. Most of the
time, the myth is used to suggest that the bad guys in question don't
have any links to our foreign enemies. They're just Americans gone bad.
Ask yourself the obvious question: how did they go bad? From JFK's
assassin to the Fort Hood killer, most of them found meaning in life in
violent ideologies that turned them against their countrymen and,
profoundly, took them away from home.
Foreign ideologies. Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist, Nidal Hasan
was a radical Muslim. Both killed Americans in America, after coming to
identify with doctrines that were anything but homegrown. Moreover, in
recent years, establishing contact with foreign forces has become a
piece of cake. We do it online, we don't have to travel overseas to get
our indoctrination (although, as if to prove the point, a considerable
number of them do). Even when it "happens here," the indoctrination more
often than not takes place at the feet of foreign teachers and
trainers. Take the radical mosques, for example. Most of them are funded
with Saudi money, their texts come from the Saudi Kingdom, and their
imams are trained by radical Saudi Wahhabis.
It does violence to the English language to call such avid followers
of foreign leaders and foreign doctrines "homegrown terrorists." They
may have lived here, they may even have been born here, but at a certain
point they became alienated and turned to non-American visions and
visionaries.
The inner turmoil of such terrorists has been
well described by the famous writer V.S. Naipaul:
Everyone who is not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is
not simply a matter of conscience or belief. It makes imperial
demands. A convert's worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab
lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He
rejects his own; he becomes...a part of the Arab story....People
develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of
converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These
countries are easily set on the boil.
Those people are boiling, too, perhaps more so in a non-Muslim land
like ours than in countries that have gone over to Islam. The same
intense inner strife applies to those who join other totalitarian mass
movements, whether Nazi, fascist, or Communist.
They are not homegrown. They are converts, and they have taken leave of us to join our enemies.
The people to whom the usual meaning of "homegrown terrorist" can be
accurately applied are the nativist right-wingers like the Aryan
Nation. But they are not the folks about whom the myth is commonly
used.
There, doesn't that feel better? Your 50 minutes are up. We accept credit cards and Blue Cross.
Coming Soon: The Myth of the Threat of War.
Dr. Michael Ledeen is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is also a contributing editor at
National
Review Online. Previously, he served as a consultant to the National
Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department. He
has also served as a special adviser to the Secretary of State. He holds
a Ph.D. in modern European history and philosophy from the University
of Wisconsin, and has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and
the University of Rome.
He is author of more than 20 books, the most recent include:
Accomplice ot Evil: Iran and the War Against the West; The
War Against the Terror Masters; The Iranian Time Bomb; Machiavelli on
Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are As Timely and
Important Today As Five Centuries Ago,
Tocqueville
on American Character: Why Tocqueville's Brilliant Exploration of the
American Spirit Is As Vital and Important Today As It Was Nearly Two
Hundred Years Ago; and,
Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away.
Dr. Ledeen regularly appears on Fox News, and on a variety of radio talk shows. He has been on PBS's
NewsHour
and CNN's Larry King Live, among others, and regularly contributes to
the Wall Street Journal and to National Review Online. He has a blog on
Pajamasmedia.com.
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