Are Regular Americans So Different From ISIS Recruits?

Like many of us I have been following the aftermath of the shootings in San Bernardino, which merges with the aftermath of the shootings in Paris and in Chattanooga and Fort Hood. Americans seem baffled at the way ISIS and other Islamic militants are able to radicalize people at a distance by using the Internet and social media: turning them against their governments, making them believe crazy conspiracy theories, convincing them to donate money and, in the most extreme cases, commit violence. How can people be so gullible, so vulnerable? How can they adopt such extreme views?

But we shouldn’t be so surprised, since in the past few decades the same thing has been happening to millions of our fellow Americans. Mostly on the right, but on all parts of the political spectrum, people have become radicalized through a steady dose of cable TV, talk radio, social media, and targeted advertising. Just as ISIS looks for vulnerable recruits, people who are socially isolated or spiritually adrift or struggling to make it in modern society, so those who seek to profit here at home have become expert at fine-tuning their propaganda. Two of the most common targets are working class white men who have been losing jobs and dignity and hope and are looking for someone to blame, and evangelical Christians—especially older evangelicals—who think the broader culture is turning against them. Millions have apparently been willing to believe insane theories (the President of the US is a secret Muslim, global warming is a scientific hoax, the government wants to take away your guns enroute to a UN-backed New World Order) that seem to explain why their lives or the country as a whole aren’t going the way they’d hoped.

Clever manipulators—prominent among them media figures like Glen Beck whose business model centers around mesmerizing listeners with scary, they’re-coming-to-get-you stories–are able to weave these crazy ideas into a seemingly coherent narrative, an entire alternative reality, just as delusional in its way as ISIS’s plans to restore the Caliphate. These messages are backed up by a gaggle of seemingly objective experts and scholars, supported by a network of think tanks, foundations, and institutes embedded in well-known universities—many of them funded by a handful of wealthy donors. (One of the most influential of these is just up the road from where I live, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a prolific producer of libertarian ideas heavily funded by the Koch Brothers).

On the left I don’t think the pathways to radicalization are as centrally-managed, but it is undeniable that the majority of American colleges and universities have a largely unquestioned liberal slant and contain pockets of extremism where it is easy for young students to go through an intellectual Looking Glass. Fringe ideas and half-truths about corporate malfeasance and dark government plots to infringe civil liberties move easily from the seminar table to the streets.  We should remember that the playbook for politicized recruitment was written in the 19th and early 20th century by Marxist-Leninists who made special efforts to enlist young, educated idealists; it has been copied across the political spectrum but remains alive on the left. Having an advanced degree often just means you are cleverer at justifying your particular delusion.

How far do common opinions differ from reality? As polarization has grown in the US, we have become more prone to demonizing the opposition. The Washington Post had a story the other day (What a divided America hears when Obama speaks Feb 14, 2016) that included a survey about how Republicans and Democrats view the opposite party, which shows a tremendous factual misunderstanding. Not surprisingly the gap between fact and reality characterizes both sides but is wider on the right. Democrats who think that Republicans are largely old, rich, southern fundamentalist Christians face off against Republicans, who think Democrats are largely black, gay, atheist union members. And in both parties large numbers agree with the stereotype held by the other side!

These delusions have real-world consequences. Passionate haters are more likely to donate money to a multitude of causes, go to protests, vote, pressure elected officials to take radical stands–and resort to violence. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, lived in an earlier version of this alternate universe, and the Oregon occupiers are an example today. There is good reason to think that activists on both sides of the political spectrum deliberately inflame political debate with these sorts of falsehoods and conspiracy theories to increase donations and get out the vote.

Thinking about what is happening in our own country should make us less judgmental about radicalization of Muslims, and give us an intuitive understanding to help us recognize and counter it in other communities. And I think it should occasion some soul-searching, because non-Muslim Americans are not immune to similar strategies of manipulation and radicalization.