Debunking the myth of "self-radicalized" terrorists like the Tsarnaevs

This Misha might be entirely innocent, or he might not be. Regardless, it’s unlikely that American law-enforcement officials are going to find any hard evidence incriminating him or anyone else who might have served as a facilitator, even if they planned the Boston Marathon attacks themselves. What the FBI and American police departments do well is gather and document evidence that that can be proven in court. But the help given by Suri’s new facilitators is not the kind of help that would produce evidence. It’s emotional and psychological. Which is why the New York Times’ armchair psychologizing about the importance of Tamerlan’s boxing failure is so misguided. If Tsarnaev had been serious about boxing, he could have responded to exclusion from an amateur boxing tournament by turning pro. The problem, as his trainer pointed out, was that he lacked discipline—just like large numbers of talented and undisciplined young fighters who channel their street skills and nerve into all forms of crime.

But Tsarnaev’s alleged turn to violent crime is hardly extraordinary—the particular form of crime he chose is worthy of closer and more nuanced attention than the press seems capable of giving it. No one becomes a jihadist terrorist in a vacuum, any more than one finds oneself in a U.S. Army uniform shooting at Taliban fighters in a vacuum; recruits may have all kinds of personal reasons for signing up, but there’s a pre-existing structure that then welcomes and shapes them and directs their actions toward a larger strategic purpose.

And so the big problem with the concept of “self-radicalization,” then, is that it suggests that these damaged men act either at the direct behest of an entity with an address or that they behave alone. but the case is increasingly neither. They are instead, horrifyingly, acting in deliberate concert with the beliefs of tens of millions of people, to whom they are heroes. These attacks are not accidents of individual psychology or humiliation. They are part of a larger plan shaped by some very smart sociopaths to use such people for horrific ends.