The Unstoppable Rise of Terror

In 2005, I wrote about terrorist groups as a prime example of self-organization.¹⁰ They recruited young men, brainwashed them to be passionate about the cause, and then unleashed them to do whatever harm they could. In that essay, I was critical of the role of formal high commanders and the U.S. strategy of targeting leaders as the means to fight terrorism. Now, the increasing number of individual and small-group terrorist attacks all over the world prove that the strategy of independent actors wreaking hell wherever they can is growing in force and will continue to destabilize and terrorize us.¹¹

But more information has come forth, offering detailed descriptions about the founding and ongoing organization of ISIS. These details come from men who identified themselves as loyal and devoted members to the cause of ISIS: to destroy Western civilization and achieve worldwide control as Muslims.¹² They left or were willing to reveal details of ISIS’s inner workings because they became disgusted with what one called “the crazies” from Europe who had no religious basis and eagerly participated in violence that “has become too extreme . . . such things as crucifying, burning, and drowning its opponents and those who violate its rules.”¹³ In another case, it was the beheading of prisoners in order to create training videos, where the executioners questioned their best camera angle.¹⁴ This may strike us as darkly ironic, but it’s also instructive: it reveals that there can be limits to people’s indoctrination and training—sometimes their deeper humanity pierces through.

ISIS has organized itself in three forms: as a theocratic state, as a hierarchical military force, and as self-organizing individual jihadists. Even as members of ISIS are defeated as a state and as a military, it is the increasing numbers of young people, spurred on by their alienation, enraged at the death of their leaders and ongoing military strikes, that will continue to wreak uncontrollable terror upon our world.

In the face of this reality, we can choose for our humanity or collapse in fear.

A relief worker for Mercy Corps in Syria commented that, as the bombs were going off near where she was delivering aid, “I didn’t feel fear. I felt dignity.”

Selfies

The beautiful bodies painstakingly trained

to be objects of admiration

are taking photos of themselves on the beach.

Any one of them could be

the handsome man smiling with his love

in that Instagram he sent

from the Bataclan before

he became an hour later one of many bloodied bodies

people clambered over to escape.

The Great Flaring Forth is

how some name the new story of the

Universe and its Big Bang birth

but now it’s our story

as we flare up wildly

flinging fear

that disinters our lives into

terrors no longer remote

from those on the beach

posing in their perfection.

Margaret Wheatley

Written after the Paris attacks, November 2015,

at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia