YOUTH, IDEOLOGY, AND TERRORISM

Adolescent Psychiatry, 2003 by Flaherty, Lois T

Hoffer saw essentially no difference between the great world religions and secular movements. He pointed out that all make a clear distinction between good and evil, offering the hope of replacing the current morass of moral decay and doom with the possibility of future redemption and fulfillment. Movements succeed if they can convince their followers that success is just around the corner and that they are living out glorious roles in bringing about the new reality.

The true believer is someone who has given up hope that things will ever improve and then miraculously finds a cause to join that relegates misery to the past, giving life a new meaning and purpose. Such a person is hooked for life, although he or she may change allegiances, moving to another group as social conditions change. Hoffer stressed the susceptibility to mass movements of those who feel that their lives are spoiled and wasted. Without using the terms, he described individual narcissistic vulnerability. One can see the parallels between what he described and the sudden illumination that comes with the elaboration of a paranoid delusional system in the progression of a psychotic disorder.

Hoffer (1951) also noted that adolescents and certain young adults are among those who are particularly prone to join mass movements, although, in contrast to the true believers, they usually move on when their circumstances change:

There are first the temporary misfits: People who have not found their place in life but still hope to find it. Adolescent youth, unemployed college graduates, veterans, new immigrants and the like are of this category. They are restless, dissatisfied and haunted by the fear that their best years will be wasted before they reach their goal. They are receptive to the preaching of a proselytizing movement and yet do not always make staunch converts. For they are not irrevocably estranged from the self; they do not see it as irremediably spoiled. It is easy for them to conceive an autonomous existence that is purposeful and hopeful. The slightest evidence of progress and success reconciles them with the world and their selves [p. 45].

Hoffer also noted that mass movements take root when societies are in the process of becoming more open, because freedoms and material possessions are more easily grasped. It is as if this opens people's eyes to what is lacking, what could be but is not, and deepens their longing and sense of deprivation. V. S. Naipaul (1981)-in a journey that began in Iran shortly after the revolution and took him through Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia (all countries that fundamentalist Islamic movements have dominated)-noted that the rise of these movements to power occurred as the countries were emerging from colonialist domination and becoming increasingly westernized. One could make a case for this in Afghanistan as well, because the Soviets, notwithstanding their being hated as invaders, did introduce modernizations, including education for women.

GROUP PROCESS AND RADICAL MOVEMENTS