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The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


The two have more in common than you might think.

The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


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On both sides of the Atlantic, there are urgent investigations into the radicalization of young men who have committed acts of politically inspired violence.

In Spain, people are seeking to understand the motivations of a dozen young men who plotted terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils that left 14 dead and scores more injured last week. Meanwhile, in the United States, police are looking into the background of 20-year-old Kentucky native James A. Fields Jr., who killed one woman and injured 19 others when he drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters following a far-right rally in Charlottesville.

It would be a mistake to draw too neat a line between the two incidents, but any similarities between Islamist terrorists like those in Spain and white nationalists like Fields are worth examining for what they reveal about radicalization across the globe.

In the small Spanish town of Ripoll, The Washington Post's Souad Mekhennet and William Booth reported that the local community is itself wondering how its kids could have taken part in an attack claimed by the Islamic State. These were young men, they say, some barely old enough to drive. Eight or so of them were from Moroccan-immigrant backgrounds.

One local, the father of two men implicated in the attacks, described the older of his sons as a “problematic” child who fought in school, though he says he was more worried about drugs than religion. In hindsight, he told The Post, he believes his sons may have been radicalized by a local cleric.

Fields' background in Kentucky was the subject of another story by The Post's reporters, who again found hints of a troubled life: struggles with mental illness and multiple reports that Fields abused his disabled mother. “He looked like he was always lost,” one neighbor told my colleagues. “Always quiet and always alone.”

Teachers recall that Fields had a fixation on Hitler as far back as high school. In Charlottesville, he was photographed posing with members of Vanguard America, a self-proclaimed fascist group that recruits online. The group has denied that Fields was a member.

What ties these two incidents? Aside from the obvious practical parallel — the use of vehicles, a crude method of violence that's now a staple of Islamic State-inspired attacks — there are other important similarities.

While there's no “one-size-fits-all” for the type of person who ends up radicalized, isolated young men are clear and frequent targets, recruited by groups who offer excuses for the problems in their lives. Writing in the Guardian, longtime terrorism follower Jason Burke points to a number of similarities in the belief system of the Islamic State and America's far right — an overall “perverted sense of grievance.” Burke suggests that anger over the loss of the Islamic caliphate may echo the Lost Cause of the Confederacy for the far right — not in real historical terms, but “as a mythic symbol of betrayal, of conviction and of what might, indeed should, have been.”

Experts in the field also see parallels in different ideologies. “In some respects, it’s not that different from Islamist extremists,” said Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center to The Post's Terrence McCoy in an article about alt-right radicalization. In some cases the parallels can be painfully obvious: Earlier this year a former neo-Nazi who converted to Islam was arrested for allegedly killing his roommates after they disrespected his new faith.

In the public rhetoric of the Trump administration, there is no acknowledgment of these parallels.
President Trump has been famously willing to point quickly to the motivations behind attacks inspired by the Islamic State or other Islamic militant groups — even when such beliefs don't end up being the reason for the attacks. In the case of Charlottesville, Trump and other Republican politicians focused instead the actions of the so-called “violent left” rather than the motivations of the far-right.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/21/the-radical-ties-that-bind-barcelona-and-charlottesville/?utm_term=.ad734c445138
8/21/2017, 4:08 pm Link to this post PM shiftless2 Blog
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


Excellent article.

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"libido sciendi"..... the passion to know.
8/21/2017, 5:54 pm Link to this post PM Noserose
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


I disagree.
There is no grieve over the loss of the Islamic Caliphate.
The anger is over US arms supporting dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, etc.

These people are rightfully angry about being abused by foreign corporate powers and corrupt influences.

The radical Islamists ARE the oppressed and are right to fight for freedom.

The white supremacists are the exact opposite, ARE the oppressors, and are wrong to try to fight to regain or retain their corruption.

Two different diametrically opposed concepts.

8/21/2017, 5:59 pm Link to this post PM Rigby5
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


It's far more than that. These terrorists are sweeping through Muslim countries and killing Muslims by what hundreds of thousands millions? Look at Mosul and what ISIS had done to those who are poor, raping, chopping off their kids heads in front of them, starving them, refusing medical care, using them for human shields. You cannot possibly be only angry at the US and then give a pass of those sweeping through the ME due to power, control and not being the proper Muslim faith. Why would anyone support and give a pass to what is happening in the ME and to their own people! The are exactly like white supremacists telling other Muslims your not the right Muslim faith, join or die or hopefully be a refugee.
8/22/2017, 1:32 am Link to this post PM katie5445 Blog
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


quote:

katie5445 wrote:

It's far more than that. These terrorists are sweeping through Muslim countries and killing Muslims by what hundreds of thousands millions? Look at Mosul and what ISIS had done to those who are poor, raping, chopping off their kids heads in front of them, starving them, refusing medical care, using them for human shields. You cannot possibly be only angry at the US and then give a pass of those sweeping through the ME due to power, control and not being the proper Muslim faith. Why would anyone support and give a pass to what is happening in the ME and to their own people! The are exactly like white supremacists telling other Muslims your not the right Muslim faith, join or die or hopefully be a refugee.



Nonsense.
There is a long standing conflict between the Sunni and Shia, but the main terrorists are the US, and the unemployed and desperate people like ISIS that the US created.
Assad, Saddam, Qaddafi, Morsi, and the Taliban were not terrorists.
The US tried to overthrow them all in order to create terrorism.
Absolutely no one else deserves any blame at all except the US.
If the US had stayed out, no one would have died.
Saudi Arabia may also be guilty as well, but likely they would not have been involved if not for the US involvement.
8/22/2017, 6:55 am Link to this post PM Rigby5
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


That is a stretch BEYOND any stretch I have ever noted here.

To relate a radical Islamic group bent of the destruction of the entire west as to those descendants of the south that live within the US is way beneath you shiftless. I feel ashamed to be in your company at this point for this.
8/22/2017, 10:29 am Link to this post PM cooter50 Blog
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


Sorry mate but it's not 1850 (or even 1950) any more.
8/22/2017, 10:38 am Link to this post PM shiftless2 Blog
 
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Re: The radical ties that bind Barcelona and Charlottesville


quote:

cooter50 wrote:

That is a stretch BEYOND any stretch I have ever noted here.

To relate a radical Islamic group bent of the destruction of the entire west as to those descendants of the south that live within the US is way beneath you shiftless. I feel ashamed to be in your company at this point for this.



I see no reason to believe there is any radical Islamic group bent on the destruction of anything except illegal foreign occupation of their homelands.

We did not force or attempt to force regime change in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Syria, etc., because we were defending against radical Islamists. Radical Islamists did not even exist until we committed those criminal acts fairly recently, with the oldest going back to 1953.
8/23/2017, 4:18 am Link to this post PM Rigby5
 


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