The people from the west who want to join ISIS

The BBQ Pit
1

I realize there’s already an ISIS thread, this is different because it’s about people who aren’t part of ISIS yet, but want to be. It’s vastly different. This is not my most serious business pit thread of all time.

So anyway here’s this thing:

I understand why 9 year old Billy Ray Bob Todd Danny Frank Jr. hates black people. His father, Billy Ray Bob Todd Danny Frank, hates black people, and that’s how he raised his beautiful kind wonderful intelligent child full of potential, and turned him into another unrepentant piece of brain-dead shit just like himself, to grow up being afraid of government-supported flouride in the drinking water, and end up having a nice set of tooth by the time he’s fifteen just like his old man.

I get that. I understand that. This is how most of us ended up screwed up, it’s because our parents are real winners, and so, that winnage was passed onto you and me. And if you avoided that damage somehow by a freak miracle, you ended up better than the previous generation, and that’s how the ancestors of folks who wrote religious holy books ended up writing bad Star Trek fan fiction. It’s how humanity slowly improves itself through each passing generation sometimes. In rare instances.

What I don’t get is someone who grows up in a rich, prosperous, first world country, with secular public education, and access to clean drinking water, and somewhat edible food every fifteen feet for 99 cents, enough loose change to buy that burger between here and the store that sells the burger on the ground, with any kind of television show you could possibly conceive of having been tried at least three different times just to provide you with constant entertainment, and people who want for so little in this life that they spend most of their lives wondering what they should think about, and do with all their time not starving or fighting in a tribal conflict, a person from this background, thinking to themselves:

“I’d very much like to go someplace far away, and murder people I don’t know, and steal and rape and be hated by pretty much every person in the entire world, and fight a losing battle against a far superior much more heavily armed, infinitely financed enemy, who can literally sit in a room somewhere, and push a set of buttons to control a remotely operated flying death machine and pick me off from the sky without even having to step foot anywhere in range of my weapons, as if they were playing a video game, and I was a mook worth 200 points, so I can die for the just and noble cause of making certain that there will be an even larger war, where everyone can die, all across the world, everyone, men, women, children, and little puppy dogs, they can all die, and that will be the end of all civilization, because the secret bonus level after the end of the game is way, way, way sweeter than the actual game.”

I get how someone raised to understand only one thing, that there is a god, and he wants literally everyone to die, can have such a world view.

I don’t understand how Debbie from accounting, who went to a regular community college in fricking Delaware, who has a normal fucking life in the United States, can possibly have the thought cross her mind that she’d like to go to Iraq, and live in a land where no one speaks her language, and be one of the brides of a guy who wears a ski mask and cuts off the heads of women with a big knife on camera, brutally, while the victim is still alive, and thinks that women should be property, and have their clits forcibly removed, and if your wife is misbehaving, meh, why not kill her along with all the others.

I don’t understand that thought. That is a mystery to me.

This, to me, is as if Adolf Hitler made a video, showing himself literally gassing jews and setting the bodies ablaze afterward, and asked a group of young Jewish students if they wouldn’t mind terribly leaving their friends and families behind, moving to Germany, and helping him gas other Jews.

Sure, you’re raised in Germany and told your entire life that all your suffering is caused by Jews, you’re a fucking retard for believing it, but I can follow that very, very simple choo-choo train.

ISIS attempting to recruit non-brainwashed westerners and actually succeeding, ever, even once, blows my fucking mind. But it’s not just dumbass male jocks who think war is fucking glorious and awesome, nay nay, we have women who presumably have heard of the civil rights movement and the ability women have to vote and retain their clitorises, and a number of other good things the western lifestyle boasts, who decide, you know what? I deeply, deeply yearn to be enslaved fucking cattle.

I don’t understand you, Debbie.

But I do know this: When you go join ISIS, and you change your mind when you realize shit just got real, and you cry about your horrendously ill-advised choices, and your new Jihadi husband slits your throat, as horrible as that may be, I can’t help but think that this is what happens to really stupid people and it’s just a normal part of mother nature being kind of a bitch sometimes.

I am also morbidly curious about how *none *of the news stories about women just like you who ran off to join the rebellious and trendy new thing in the middle east suddenly realized it wasn’t a fairy tale after all, and decided to try to run away and they got fricking murdered, how none of that story ever reached your brain and made you think twice about your decision.

Again, all I’m picturing is a university professor in Seattle who happens to be black, gets a video sent to him from the Klan, and asks him to join the glorious South in a second uprising, and make absolutely certain black people don’t have any rights anymore, and that people can be owned as property, and anyone who says otherwise can be burned at the stake. And then, the guy thinks “Oh wow, they’re really speaking my language. I want to be a part of THIS!” and runs off to be the servant/life partner of an inbred racist white redneck who ironically, hates black people and gay people.

How does that happen?

I’m inclined to think the media is pulling a fast one on the masses, but I keep seeing this same story told over and over again about ISIS, about how they “appeal” to young westerners.

HOW?

WHAT IS THE APPEAL?

I realize that one out of every five people is fucking stupid, and will believe any shit you say to them, and that that group is made up of MENSA members compared to the least intelligent of any random sampling of five of *those *fuckheads, and the dumbest person you’ve ever met in your life is Stephen Hawking compared to the meat brains that join fringe groups like the Klan, or ISIS.

But you have got to be the absolute dumbest person on the planet if you were one of the fortunate few who didn’t grow up under a dictator, or a junta that forces children to fight in its ethnic cleansing civil war, or starving or dying of disease a few weeks after you’re born, and got every advantage in life, and weren’t force-fed mental diarrhea every single moment of your life, and you STILL decided that ISIS was a fucking grand idea.

Please, I beg of you, don’t reconsider joining ISIS. If you *want *to join, that makes a bold statement about what kind of person you are, and I sincerely hope you make it almost all of the way there, so that way you can rot in a Turkish prison without having harmed anyone, and frankly I don’t care what happens to you after that part.

2

teenagers are stupid and do idiotic shit in order to feel important. trying to understand why is a fruitless endeavor.

3

Medical and dental?

4

Are you expecting an answer that will make you say, “Ah, it all makes sense now!” There is no such answer. Young people deluded by ISIS recruiters are stupid, we should not be surprised if they do stupid things for stupid reasons. Trying to make sense out of stupidity is a fool’s errand.

5

In the West?
A desire to spill the blood of men, women & children.
Sociopathy.

6

Rage. Some people really are angry and the idea of hurting people appeals to them.

7

Wait, wait wait.

I fear I am gravely mistaken about our friends from ISIS. :eek:

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/24/3463683/no-isis-isnt-ordering-female-genital-mutilation-in-iraq/

I remembered that the clitoris cutting thing is a thing, in some places, but it’s also believed to be associated with islam and in the places it happens to be a thing are generally islamic places. But, not always the case. I am aware ISIS picks and chooses which parts of the Koran it “strictly” adheres to, so it would be just like them to think this is a thing they need to be doing, but I hear from my friend Google that this is not necessarily the case.

As the link states, they do a lot of other horrible shit, but haven’t begun ordering mass clitoral removal.

:smack:

Well, then it’s all jolly good then, sorry about tarnishing the reputation of ISIS. Fine upstanding chaps, those. Perfectly safe for men and women to go join, I suppose. False alarm, people.

Moral of the story: ISIS is just the bee’s knees.

Join today? :dubious:

8

Well, I’d say you don’t understand it because Debbie from accounting probably isn’t heading off to Iraq anytime soon, and if she is, she almost certainly isn’t assuming she’ll be subject to all those things you rather inaccurately describe.

When you think about it, of course half-baked kids who don’t know much about the area and have never known real hardship would be prime recruitment fodder. I could see the notion of joining ISIS, for certain people, being the equivalent of going off to Spain to fight the fascists in the late '30s. Not that ISIS is equivalent to the Republicans, or that these people necessarily are even aware of the events of the Spanish Civil War.

Nevertheless, I don’t find it all that difficult to understand, even if I think these people are hopelessly naive and, well, a bit dim.

9

No matter how illogical, dangerous, and generally fucked up an idea is, there will always be someone, somewhere, who thinks it is logical, safe, and just the ticket.

Think of it as the extreme end of the bell curve. The line approaches zero asymptotically.

10

It’s new! It’s happening! You get a fuckin’ MACHINE GUN, and the rules about using it are pretty damn loose. You get to blow stuff up, and wear what looks kinda like a superhero costume.

What’s not to love?

11

It’s a chance to make a real difference in the world. To be part of the political process in a very real and direct way.

12

Radicalism has always been a hobby of bored middle class bozos. Terrorists are generally educated, literate, and enjoy blowing shit up. I don’t know where people get this idea that pillaging murderers must only be desperate poor people with no hope in their lives. Desperate poor people ain’t got time for that shit.

13

The west is full of hypocrites. The government can’t be trusted.

“I am one of the chosen ones.”
“Even if I am killed I will continue my existence in paradise.”

14

I’ve actually wondered whether there are such stories in the media. Are there?

15

They’re either retards, or they’ve had their brains scrambled by religious bullshit, or they’re just flat-out psychos, or any combination of the three.

16

Don’t underestimate the appeal of civilizational self-confidence. The West regards its legacy as one of colonialism, racism, sexism, slavery, oppression, and injustice. ISIS regards itself as holy, godly, moral, upright, and infallibly correct in everything. To a bored, alienated young person, which world view has more appeal?

17

This isn’t exactly new. Affluent people often feel their lives are enjoyable, but lack higher purpose. People who are poor spend most of their effort and thought on how to get by. People who are affluent think about how to make the world a better place, especially if they feel guilty about their affluence, which some would say is how the affluent are supposed to feel. So don’t be surprised when that guilt leads them into thought processes that aren’t exactly productive.

18

Is there a Western conscience? I’m sure that many Western academics would agree with your statement – I’m not so sure about the average Western person. Most of them (us, I suppose) see their histories a positive contributions toward progress, and can blithely hand-wave away the negative stuff as unfortunate abberations.

19

Note that there are also Westerners who have headed off to the area to fight ISIS. Not for money. Not due to any cultural or religious connection. Not even necessarily people who were previously soldiers. Just…men who want to go kill the “bad guys”.

20

Well, at least that’s somewhat plausible.