Post: #1

I usually equate extremism with the impoverished, but some of the highest level guys (i.e. bin Laden) have been well educated and well to do. What motivates these guys to pursue this? I was thinking religious fanaticism, but even that is typically something you see with the more impoverished. Maybe I should be asking why people of this stature become religious fanatics?

Post: #2

Perhaps you should start with the Bush family, pere & fils.

Post: #3

(08-10-2013 08:59 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  Perhaps you should start with the Bush family, pere & fils.

Yep. Bush and family is the cause for all of our problems. Thank god he got elected and not a Democrat, or we'd have no one to blame.

Post: #4

How many 'smart' trust funders join cults? As the con artists will tell you you need marks that are smart enough to sell themselves the dream.

Post: #5

It has been theorized that revolutionaries (and militant Islam is a revolutionary creed) usually come from the middle class. The rich are invested in the status quo; the poor are ill-educated and consumed by the daily grind for existence. The middle class has education (necessary to organize and propagandize); and the middle class has enough wealth to engage in political activity, but not enough wealth to be secure from all risk of future poverty.

I believe this theory has empirical merit, at least for some revolutionary movements. The French Revolution, for example, (and contrary to the belief of Marxist ideologues,) was driven by middle class resentment of the older aristocratic classes. If memory serves, many (most?) of the 9/11 hijackers were middle-class.

Though the rich as a class are rarely revolutionary, there are plenty of exceptions for individual rich revolutionaries. Incidentally that would include Osama bin Laden, the son of a billionaire.

Post: #6

Seriously? I thought it was common knowledge by now that a large part of their motivation is the political interference of the USA in the middle east esp. Via Israel.