There are two main audiences for this book. First, anyone
interested in the history of the global jihad movement, including its
intellectual precursors, its development, its ideologies, and its structural
weaknesses should read it. I present both my own translations and
interpretations of original Arabic documents and share the insights of the best
scholarly work on the subject in a short and accessible book meant for a wide
audience.
The second audience includes anyone interested in issues of
political violence. The concluding chapter on “movements of rage” is a broad
discussion on the various forms of political violence and how they have been
categorized and understood by different scholars.
The vast majority of political violence undertaken over the
past century has been based on Enlightenment ideals. Those on the Left argued
that revolutionary violence often represents the forward and scientific march
of history, including the overthrow of feudal and repressive monarchies from
France to Russia. New and more progressive societies are the outcomes of such
social revolutions. Fascists and others on the Right have also often espoused
political violence as a means for the conservative modernization of society, to
“make the trains run on time”, in Mussolini’s famous phrasing. National
liberation movements in the post-World War II period often justified political
violence in the name of greater freedom and liberty.
By contrast, I argue that there is a small subset of violent
political groups that are antithetical to Enlightenment ideals. They espouse
nihilistic violence—in the political sense of the word that comes from the Russian
anarchists of the 19th century—that is system-destroying; not surgical violence
for more modest outcomes. Movements of rage also adopt apocalyptic ideologies
that see a cosmic struggle between good and evil, which always have as a
feature the notion of cultural contamination by outsiders and Fifth Columnists.
By using a movement of rage lens, I can make valuable comparisons of global
jihadis to the white nationalists today as well as earlier groups such as the
Khmer Rouge, Red Guards, and Brownshirts in Germany.
This book represents a natural culmination of intellectual
interests and experiences I have had in life. I first caught interest in issues
of political violence as an American exchange student living in Iran in 1978 as
the revolution to overthrow the Shah was launched. Later, for my dissertation
at Berkeley, I detailed the first Palestinian uprising against Israel’s
continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which became the basis of my
first three books and many essays. Other research conducted in Syria, Yemen,
and South Sudan continued my focus on political violence, its root causes, and
its various manifestations. The terror attacks on 9/11 and subsequent wars in
the Middle East led me to write this book, to capture in one accessible volume
the most important aspects of this new phenomenon of global jihad.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
The wide angle
There are two main audiences for this book. First, anyone interested in the history of the global jihad movement, including its intellectual precursors, its development, its ideologies, and its structural weaknesses should read it. I present both my own translations and interpretations of original Arabic documents and share the insights of the best scholarly work on the subject in a short and accessible book meant for a wide audience.
The second audience includes anyone interested in issues of political violence. The concluding chapter on “movements of rage” is a broad discussion on the various forms of political violence and how they have been categorized and understood by different scholars.
The vast majority of political violence undertaken over the past century has been based on Enlightenment ideals. Those on the Left argued that revolutionary violence often represents the forward and scientific march of history, including the overthrow of feudal and repressive monarchies from France to Russia. New and more progressive societies are the outcomes of such social revolutions. Fascists and others on the Right have also often espoused political violence as a means for the conservative modernization of society, to “make the trains run on time”, in Mussolini’s famous phrasing. National liberation movements in the post-World War II period often justified political violence in the name of greater freedom and liberty.
By contrast, I argue that there is a small subset of violent political groups that are antithetical to Enlightenment ideals. They espouse nihilistic violence—in the political sense of the word that comes from the Russian anarchists of the 19th century—that is system-destroying; not surgical violence for more modest outcomes. Movements of rage also adopt apocalyptic ideologies that see a cosmic struggle between good and evil, which always have as a feature the notion of cultural contamination by outsiders and Fifth Columnists. By using a movement of rage lens, I can make valuable comparisons of global jihadis to the white nationalists today as well as earlier groups such as the Khmer Rouge, Red Guards, and Brownshirts in Germany.
This book represents a natural culmination of intellectual interests and experiences I have had in life. I first caught interest in issues of political violence as an American exchange student living in Iran in 1978 as the revolution to overthrow the Shah was launched. Later, for my dissertation at Berkeley, I detailed the first Palestinian uprising against Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which became the basis of my first three books and many essays. Other research conducted in Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan continued my focus on political violence, its root causes, and its various manifestations. The terror attacks on 9/11 and subsequent wars in the Middle East led me to write this book, to capture in one accessible volume the most important aspects of this new phenomenon of global jihad.