Becoming a Terrorist: Non-Fiction Sources for Extremist Morality in Novels of Doyle and Lessing
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UNIVERSITY OF MARIBOR FACULTY OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY BECOMING A TERRORIST: NON-FICTION SOURCES FOR EXTREMIST MORALITY IN NOVELS OF DOYLE AND LESSING DIPLOMA THESIS Mentors: Student: Prof. ddr. Kennedy Victor Špela Logar Associate prof. dr. Klampfer Friderik Maribor, 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank both mentors, dr. Victor Kennedy and dr. Friderik Klampfer, for their professional guidance, assistance and advice with literature, and all the thought-provoking comments and ideas during the process of writing. Without their help and considerate counselling, the writing of the thesis would be hard and perplexed. Most of all I thank them for their patience and time dedicated to my diploma paper. Most of all I would like to thank my husband, for all his moral and overall support during the last year. 2 ABSTRACT Literature can provide the reader with a different view and perhaps a window for a deeper understanding of the behaviour of others and even suggest possible grounds for justification of their deeds. For example, the scientific literature on terrorists is scarce. Some of it suggests that terrorists are not psychotic, irrational individuals, but normal people who are forced to approach the world from a different perspective than the rest of us. In my thesis I will examine two novels by Roddy Doyle and Doris Lessing and compare their portrayals of terrorists with interviews from real-life terrorists found in Stefan Aust's The Baader-Meinhof Complex. From the perspective of individual psychology, social psychology and sociology, I will argue that Doyle and Lessing provide a realistic portrayal of terrorists' behaviour that helps us to better understand the extreme circumstances that these characters found themselves in, and their reactions to those circumstances. KEY WORDS: terrorism, becoming a terrorist, justification, moral deeds, terrorist's behaviour, violence. POVZETEK Književnost lahko bralcu nudi drugačen pogled in mogoče okno za globje razumevanje obnašanja drugih in mogoče celo ponudi možne temelje za upravičevanje njihovih dejanj. Na primer, strokovna literatura o teroristih je skromna. Nekatera predlaga, da teroristi niso psihotični, neracionalno posamezniki, temveč normalni ljudje, ki so prisiljeni pristopiti svetu iz druge perspektive kot mi. V diplomskem delu sem preučila dva romana Roddy Doyla in Doris Lessingove ter Stefan Austov Baader-Meinhof Complex. Iz pogleda individualne psihologije, socialne psihologije in sociologije bom argumentirala, da Doyle in Lessingova nudita realističen portret obnašanja teroristov, ki nam pomaga bolje doumeti ekstremne okoliščine, v katerih se ti liki znajdejo, in njihove odzive na te okoliščine. KLJUČNE BESEDE: terorizem, postati terorist, upravičevanje, moralna dejanja, obnašanje teroristov, nasilje. KAZALO VSEBINE 1 INTRODUCTION _____________________________________________ 1 1.1 Moral Justification of Terrorism ____________________________________ 1 1.2 Is a terrorist a prototypical malevolent mind? Or should we think of terrorists as ordinary people caught in unfavourable circumstances? ________________________ 4 2 TERRORISM ________________________________________________ 12 2.1 What is terrorism? ______________________________________________ 12 2.2 Terrorism from a moral point of view _______________________________ 16 2.3 Violence as a Political Instrument – Can violence be (morally) justified as a political instrument? ___________________________________________________ 19 3 FICTION AS REFLECTION OF REALITY _________________________ 24 3.1 The epistemic value of fictional works ______________________________ 24 3.2 Can we learn about the formation of a terrorist mind from fictional accounts? 25 3.2.1 A Star Called Henry _________________________________________________ 25 Henry ______________________________________________________________ 29 3.2.2 The Good Terrorist __________________________________________________ 34 Alice _______________________________________________________________ 35 3.3 Grounds in Reality ______________________________________________ 41 3.3.1 TheBaader- Meinhof Complex _________________________________________ 42 4 THREE APPROACHES TO /VIEWS FOR UNDERSTANDING _________ 47 4.1 Individual Psychology ___________________________________________ 47 4.1.1 Terrorism and psychopathy ___________________________________________ 47 4.1.1.1 The frustration-aggression hypothesis _______________________________ 50 4.1.1.2 Narcissism and narcissism-aggression_______________________________ 51 4.1.1.3 Terrorism and psychodynamic accounts _____________________________ 53 4.2 Social Psychology ______________________________________________ 55 4.2.1 The role of the leader and group belonging _______________________________ 60 4.3 Sociology _____________________________________________________ 63 5 THE MIND OF A TERRORIST __________________________________ 67 5.1 Nationalist-Separatist Terrorism ___________________________________ 67 Irish Republican Army (IRA) ____________________________________________ 68 5.2 Social Revolutionary Terrorism ____________________________________ 71 The Red Army Faction (RAF) ___________________________________________ 73 i 6 CONCLUSION_______________________________________________ 82 ii 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Moral Justification of Terrorism The term terrorism has become an inescapable part of our lives, one which cannot be avoided in every-day news. Terrorism in the previous century did exist with numerous terrorist groups’ activities in different countries and continents, which made their mark on history but it seems to have attained a different level in the 21st Century. If terrorism is an act of violence, can violence be ever morally justified? Surely if a victim defends himself/herself from the aggressor, that must be reasonable and justifiable. There are two viewpoints on this problem in ethics, as Iwill see, one from the consequentialist and the other from non-consequentialist theory. Based on the first theory, a person’s deeds are judged solely on the consequences of his deeds. If the consequences are best or sufficiently good, the action is right and if the consequences are bad, the action is wrong. What determines to the goodness and badness of the consequences is the effect on the people involved. The same goes for terrorism: if the consequences are good, terrorism is justified. Nick Fotion lists clear criteria for morally justifiable terrorist acts. First, we must be able to prove, that the goal is good enough to justify its means; secondly, that with the act of terrorism this goal will be achieved; and thirdly, that there are no other means possible which would cause less moral or collateral damage that can enable us to reach the same goal (Primorac, 2007). Non-consequentialist theories also offer various arguments. From a wide perspective, terrorist acts can be justified in two ways: we can call upon right and righteousness of terrorism in certain circumstances, or claim that although intrinsically wrong, terrorism can nevertheless sometimes be all-things-considered morally justified. Therefore, non-consequentialists do not refuse consequence, 1 they just deny that it is only about consequence and take other circumstances into account. Moving away from the action itself, in this paper the attention will be on the person, the terrorist. Who is a terrorist? What makes one become a terrorist? Is it something one is predisposed to become? How does a terrorist justify the killings and excuse the wrong doings to himself or herself? Where does his morality stand? I will emphasize the reasons which I believe are of crucial importance for becoming a terrorist. The aspects considered will be individual psychology, where the individual’s personality and character traits, his value system, personal morality, patterns of reasoning as well as potential forms of pathology will be inspected in order to find connections with one’s (rational?) decision to become a terrorist. The second aspect will be social psychology, where group belonging, group thinking and social identities will be considered; here, the role of the group leader and/or group will also be put into perspective and a connection with a missing father or mother figure and the leader as a substitute will be taken into account. The third aspect will be social, examining practices and institution(s), seeking causes of terrorism in politics, religion, cultural conflicts, poverty, inequality and the colonial past. I will also explore another assertion: if a child experiences some kind of trauma or is exposed to certain level of violence, such as violence to members of his or her family, is it possible that these events change his/her perspective on morals, on what is right and wrong, what sort of behaviour is permissible and accepted in society? Is it possible that these events significantly change the value system of a young individual in order that he or she is actually convinced that his violent actions are justifiable? There is a naïve belief that terrorists are psychopathic monsters, this being the way we tend to reason and explain to ourselves the incomprehensible deeds of killing they perform, and to justify harsh reprisals. As I will show in the second part of this chapter, it is not so. A terrorist is no more than an average individual who decides to take certain action in order to stand for certain goals, to stand for his or her beliefs to better the life situation he or she has found himself