All terrorists not poor
That all eight suspects in the recent terror plots in Britain, including six physicians, are connected to the medical profession seems to have surprised many people. How can such people be connected to such horrific conspiracies? But the persistent idea that most terrorists are poverty-stricken people demanding a fairer world is mostly a myth. At least from the anarchists of the late 19th century on, terrorists have tended to be single young men from the middle and upper classes, who start out seeing society’s terrible injustices.
Schooling has introduced them to the comforting certainties of ideological fanaticism, their lofty education (compared with that of most of their poverty-stricken compatriots) tends to make them see themselves as more important people than perhaps they really are, and they have the mobility and connections to do maximum damage.
They often have the rage that comes from feeling that their fullest ambitions – which they believe their educational and social status entitles them to have completely satisfied – are being thwarted, and their dignity undermined, by the powerful West. And they might find the ambiguities and anomie of modern life difficult to bear.
For the ones living in the West, the humiliation of seeing themselves daily as being perceived as somehow second-rate increases their anger and thirst for vengeance against societies that shame them by working far better than their own.
So they lash out where they can – against those democratic and open societies that admit them.
Of course, these same people, if they get into power, tend to be anything but kindly leaders. They want power above all, and tend to bring cruelty to office.