True, the POV is more prevalent among elites, especially academics, than among the general population. But young people are exposed to it in school, and I believe it enhances the appeal of alternatives like ISIS which never apologize and offer pride instead of guilt.
That answer is obvious: Chicks in burkas. Guys want 'em. Other chicks want to be 'em.
If professors had any brains, they’d demonstrate pride in Western civilization. Slavery, imperialism, prejudice, repression, were not unique to Western civilization. What was unique about Western civilization was the concept that these things were wrong. That should be a point of pride. ISIS is all about the 7th century moral values: pro-rape, pro-slavery, pro-torture, imperialistic…
Upon second thought, I have no idea why this is so amazing to the OP. ISIS is essentially just one more set of crazy religious beliefs among thousands of them. And the vast majority of everybody belives in some religion that is arguably just as crazy as the ISIS set.
One in a million crazy/stupid is wayyyyy fucking out there on the crazy/stupid spectrum/bell curve.
In a country with 300 million people that gives you 300 candidates easy peasy.
Hell, I can’t comprehend the thought processes (nor stand them) of the lowly one in a 100 to 1000 crazy/stupid people.
Ones a thousand times worse than that ? My brain would explode trying.
I just want to point out that this isn’t only a US thing.
Who’s to blame for ISIS? Liberals, of course.
The concept that “slavery, imperialism, prejudice, repression,” are wrong is called “liberalism,” by the way.
The search for meaning is the key. Hitler did the same thing. He didn’t offer Germany a better standard of living. He offered them adventure, the chance to remake the world. It’s not like Debbie from accounting is running off to marry an ISIS guy. It’s someone who is radically alienated from day to day life, who can’t see the purpose of regular life. Some of these people run off to India to listen to some Guru. Some take off into the wilderness with a backpack. Some head off to Africa to preach the gospel. Some decide that fighting for God in a holy war on the other side of the planet is just what they need to clear away a bad case of the Mondays.
Young men, at least. To a degree. Not women, not murdered, but disillusioned.
Yes, it is the Daily Fail, but it’s not The Onion.
I remember being a teen some 30 years ago. I remember the feeling of invincibility, the nothing can happen to me feeling and all that. I may have fantasized about being in military (not cut out for it) instead of college first, but I didn’t want to shoot anyone. So, let’s go for that rock star fantasy instead. 
Teens are fed info from a variety of places. I can see how some can be full-on against animal testing, whale killing, toxins in our food, even against organic food processing and fracking. These are things that are here in this country that they can change if they feel like it.
Where they get the idea that fighting for ISIS is a good thing, stick it to the man, yadda yadda, I have no fucking clue. The middle east, to me, is a third world planet, stuck in the past, refuses to progress at anything. It’s nothing but a laughable attempt at civilization because ISIS is just another terror regime with the same solution for getting close to another phony god-- murder. And this is njot a new thing, it’s pretty much all that’s done there.
I will never believe western kids actually and coherently want to go fight for these scum-sucking assholes. I’d love to hear an explanation of how, if given the chance, they come up against their own family and friends and are willing to murder them, what do they think they get in return? Another camel burger? More comfy dirt to sleep on? An actual bandage on the stump of a missing arm lost through gangrene?
My solution is if they can coherently explain why they think this is a good thing, let 'em go. Why not? If they want to return, fine. Life in prison, no parole. Why no parole, dumb-ass 19-year-old? Because very recently, you vowed to kill me. Me and any other American/European. And your recently coherent explanation for wanting to murder seems to make no sense to you now? Well, use those terror skills in gen-pop, kiddo.
Why did young men from poor farming families sign up to fight for rich, slaveholders during the American Civil War? Why do women from middle-class families now join groups like the Quiverfull Movement or Mormon splinter groups with restrictive practices toward women? Sometimes there’s no zeal like the convert. They believe they doing what their concept of god or the Platonic idea of what the world should be requires them to do. That’s a very hard mind set for logic to break through especially if like many young people they haven’t been taught to think critically. Furthermore some young woman have a fantasy about being taken cared of rather than being responsible for their own lives and livelihood. Let’s face it a live-action Cinderella movie is raking it in at the box offices here for dog’s sake. ISIS delivers a message that they can be house wives and mommies and this seems seductive to some women raised on the Western concept of marriage and completely not comprehending what house-keeping is like areas with fewer modern conveniences.
It’s like Counter-Strike in real life, except with no respawns.
Seems like it would be very appealing to complete sociopaths.
Who probably make up the bulk of the foreigners coming in to help them.
Drones OP.
And it beats delivering pizzas for a living.
These kids are from Muslim families. Their parents are secular Muslims and they grew up in a secular society – which society Muslim kids might have various legitimate reasons to resent. A kid with any religious feeling might come around to thinking his secularized parents are not “real” Muslims and look for something purer. That’s not an unusual phenomenon, it’s the same reason some Christian kids join “Christian” cults.
I think a certain sense of adventure appeals to young people who join ISIS. Perhaps they’re bored with their comfortable, predictable, secure, dull Western life. They want to do something radical, exciting, different and dangerous, and it’s too bad that they think that joining a terrorist group is the way to get their thrills.
Not all young Westerners joining ISIS think this way, I’m sure, but I would think that some do.
It’s a mistake to generalize. Kids going from the UK are different from those going from Tunisia, and they are different from individual to individual.
But MI5 rejects the profile you paint here. They say the more religious the young man, the less likely he is to become radicalized. The search for identity tends and latching onto radical Islam tends to precede the religious sentiment.
Richard Ramirez had women lining up to spend time with him, including one of his former jurors; he married one of them. Carol Anne Boone married Ted Bundy. Star Burton wants to marry Charlie Manson (ok, maybe). Westboro Baptist has some 40 members. There might be as many as 100,000 practicing Scientologists in the world.
I don’t pretend to understand any of them, really. People do weird, fucked-up stuff sometimes.
There are close to 800 million people in Europe. Almost a billion in the Americas. That some infinitesimal fraction of that number would seek to join Daesh does not surprise me. Why? Because people do weird, fucked-up stuff sometimes.