Here we go again.
CNN reported two days ago, March 1:
"The number of US homegrown terror cases has risen sharply, the FBI boss has said ...
Some 2,000 FBI domestic terror probes are open, up from 1,400 at the end of 2020, Director Christopher Wray said.
Arrests of racially motivated violent extremists,´ including white supremacists, have tripled since 2017.
For the first time, Mr Wray called the Capitol siege ´domestic terrorism´."
Is Wray right? Wrong? Are all extremists terrorists?
Wray raised a nagging question: what is a terrorist?
"Our working definition can be summarized in the following paragraph:
A terrorist is most often a middle class rebel (1) experiencing magnified marginal and/or transitional conditions, who (2) voluntarily (3) goes through certain rites of passage, among which are (4) clique membership and (5) a deliberate decision to commit a criminal act which is almost always (6) violent and usually (7) murder, in (8) the name of higher intentions or convictions without (9) retaining consciously the ambiguity of his criminal act and his higher intentions/convictions. He manifests powerful, unconscious, ambivalent emotions in two ways: (10) converting his intentions/convictions into idées fixes or absolute truths, the opposite extreme from ambiguity, and (11) wielding uncertainty as a weapon. That uncertainty is total, as demonstrated by the fact that (12) everybody -- allies, non-combatants, even himself -- is a potential victim.
A concluding note: it is the syndrome, the running together of components, which counts -- not components in isolation.
By not admitting what he cannot admit, the terrorist guards his secret, even from himself.
By not admitting what he is, the terrorist shows the gravity that admission holds for him. To my knowledge, no terrorist or other middle class rebel ever said what he is.
What he is, is the secret he keeps: he is a middle class rebel."
Thomas Belvedere, "The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion." The book is on Amazon.
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