That’s Men: The quest for certainty can lead to extremism

Why do young men and women from Ireland, Britain and other Western countries go to fight for Islamic State, formerly known as Isis? Are they monsters? No they’re not, though their involvement may lead them to do monstrous things.

This is not the only case in which young people have left Ireland to fight in wars abroad. Irish people fought on both sides in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939. Both sides committed atrocities, the Franco fascist side more so than the Republican side.

For movement in the opposite direction we could go back farther to the Rising of 1916 for which some people of Irish origin travelled from Britain. They were billeted in a disused mill in Kimmage in Dublin and became known as the Kimmage Garrison.

So why do they do it? According to psychologist Prof Arie Kruglanski at the University of Maryland, fighting for a cause appeals particularly to people with one particular trait. These are people who find ambiguity especially hard to accept. They need what he describes as “cognitive closure” or adherence to beliefs that leave no room for doubt.

This isn’t to say that everybody who seeks cognitive closure will become a terrorist, but that trait is especially strong among people who get involved in extremist activities. Prof Kruglanski’s work included a study of the psychological motivations of 10,000 Tamil Tigers after they had been defeated in the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Transactional analysis It’s telling also to look at a theory called Transactional analysis. This approach describes the psychological positions we take in respect of ourselves and other people. For example, “I’m okay, you’re okay” is seen as a healthy position. “I’m not okay, you’re okay” reflects a poor sense of self-worth, and so on. Extremists and fundamentalists take a position that has been described as “I’m okay, you’re okay, they’re not okay.”

If you look at the type of things that supporters of Isis say on social media, this is exactly the sort of certainty that membership or support seems to give them: an identity so strong it can withstand the condemnation of most of the world.

In this respect it provides the ultimate in “cognitive closure”.

The shocking thing is that this psychological trait can be perverted into slaughter, enslavement, rape and torture. It would be comforting to think that this is because Isis is made up of psychopaths. I expect it attracts psychopaths, but much of the horror is about values.

If you think of values arranged in an order of importance, when something is placed at the top, whatever values – such as human rights, in this case – are subordinate to it can be dispensed with if that is dictated by the highest value.

So if the establishment of the wretched caliphate of Isis is the highest value, then the torturing, the killings and the beheadings seem justifiable if they sustain the caliphate.

A person who placed the right to life above the caliphate would find it difficult, if not impossible, to carry out these atrocities. We need to be careful with our values. The wrong values given the wrong importance can take us to dark places.

If it is the case that young people joining Isis are responding to ordinary human motivations in the first place, how should we deal with that?

I think we should heed the reported warnings of some Muslim figures in Ireland that extremists are coming into this country to preach hatred to impressionable young people. These young people are not that different to all the other young people who seek certainty in an uncertain world.

We need to ensure we are not allowing those who wish to use them to set them on an evil road.

And we need to pay attention now, not after they have put themselves beyond the pale of forgivable behaviour.

For more on Prof Kruglanski’s work, see an article by Chris Mooney on the motherjones.com website at bit.ly/kruglanski

pomorain@yahoo.com