Fatalism, Islam, Innovation and Modernity

This also ties into the myth of the Islamic Golden Age:

"The Islamic view of the relative insignificance of everything we see with our own eyes is that this world is merely a way station. While martyrdom is the extreme reaction, it is not the only reaction to this view of the world. The question arises: Why bother, if our sights are trained not on this life but on the afterlife? I believe that Islam’s afterlife fixation tends to erode the intellectual and moral incentives that are essential for “making it” in the modern world.

As a translator for other Somalis who had arrived in Holland, I saw this phenomenon in various forms. One was simply the clash of cultures when immigrant Muslims and native-born Dutch lived in close proximity to one another. In apartment complexes, the Dutch were generally meticulous about keeping common spaces free of any litter. The immigrants, however, would throw down wrappers, empty Coca-Cola cans, and cigarette butts, or spit out the remnants of their chewed qat. The Dutch residents would grow incensed at this, just as they would grow incensed by the groups of children who would run about, wild and unsupervised, at all hours. It was easy for one family to have many children. (If a man can marry up to four wives and have multiple children with each of them, the numbers grow quickly.) The Dutch would shake their heads, and in reply the veiled mothers would simply shrug their shoulders and say that it was “God’s will.” Trash on the ground became “God’s will,” children racing around in the dark became “God’s will.” Allah has willed it to be this way; it is there because Allah has willed it. And if Allah has willed it, Allah will provide. It is an unbreakable ring of circular logic.

There is a fatalism that creeps into one’s worldview when this life is seen as transitory and the next is the only one that matters. Why pick up trash, why discipline your children, when none of those acts is stored up for any type of reward? Those are not the behaviors that mark good Muslims; they have nothing to do with praying or proselytizing.

This, too, helps explain the notorious underrepresentation of Muslims as scientific and technological innovators. To be sure, the medieval Arabic world gave us its numerals and preserved classical knowledge that might otherwise have been lost when Rome was overrun by the barbarian tribes. In the ninth century, the Muslim rulers of Córdoba in Spain built a library large enough to house 600,000 books. Córdoba then had paved streets, streetlamps, and some three hundred public baths, at a time when London was little more than a collection of mud huts, lined with straw, where all manner of waste was thrown into the street and there was not a single light on the public thoroughfares. Yet, as Albert Hourani points out, Western scientific discoveries from the Renaissance on produced “no echo” in the Islamic world. Copernicus, who in the early 1500s determined that the earth was not the center of the universe but rather revolved around the sun, did not appear in Ottoman writings until the late 1600s, and then only briefly. There was no Muslim Industrial Revolution. Today, there is no Islamic equivalent of Silicon Valley. It simply is not convincing to blame this stagnation on Western imperialism; after all, the Islamic world had empires of its own, the Mughal as well as the Ottoman and Safavid. Though it is unfashionable to say so, Islam’s fatalism is a more plausible explanation for the Muslim world’s failure to innovate.

Significantly, the very word for innovation in Islamic texts, bid’a, refers to practices that are not mentioned in the Qur’an or the sunnah. One hadith translated into English declares that every novelty is an innovation, and every innovation takes one down a misguided path toward hell. Others warn against general innovations as things spread by Jewish and Christian influences and by all those who are ruled by misguided and dangerous passions. Those who innovate should be isolated and physically punished and their ideas should be condemned by the ulema. It was precisely this mentality that killed off astronomical research in sixteenth-century Istanbul and ensured that the printing press did not reach the Ottoman Empire until more than two centuries after its spread throughout Europe.

Zakir Naik, an Indian-born and -trained doctor who has become a very popular imam, has argued that, while Muslim nations can welcome experts from the West to teach science and technology, when it comes to religion, it is Muslims who are “the experts.” Hence, no other religions can or should be preached in Muslim nations, because those religions are false. But look more closely at his point: Naik is implicitly acknowledging the success of the West in this world. All Muslim nations have to offer, he concedes, is a near-total expertise on the subject of the next world."

--- Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now / Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Fukuyama on Man's Search for Meaning

This explains the "myth" of the slippery slope, can explain Dawkins' observation that the retreat of Christianity has opened the way to worse (as he himself has found out more than once), and illustrates how "late capitalism" is when life is too good, so people make problems up:

"The decline of community life suggests that in the future, we risk becoming secure and self-absorbed last men, devoid of thymotic striving for higher goals in our pursuit of private comforts. But the opposite danger exists as well, namely, that we will return to being first men engaged in bloody and pointless prestige battles, only this time with modern weapons. Indeed, the two problems are related to one another, for the absence of regular and constructive outlets for megalothymia may simply lead to its later resurgence in an extreme and pathological form...

Supposing that the world has become "filled up," so to speak, with liberal democracies, such that there exist no tyranny and oppression worthy of the name against which to struggle? Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom : for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.

Such a psychology could be seen at work behind outbreaks like the French événements of 1968. Those students who temporarily took over Paris and brought down General de Gaulle had no "rational" reason to rebel, for they were for the most part pampered offspring of one of the freest and most prosperous societies on earth. But it was precisely the absence of struggle and sacrifice in their middle-class lives that led them to take to the streets and confront the police. While many were infatuated with unworkable fragments of ideas like Maoism, they had no particularly coherent vision of a better society. The substance of their protest, however, was a matter of indifference; what they rejected was life in a society in which ideals had somehow become impossible.

Boredom with peace and prosperity has had far graver consequences in the past. Take, for example, the First World War. The origins of this conflict remain to this day complex, much studied, and controversial... many European publics simply wanted war because they were fed up with the dullness and lack of community in civilian life. Most accounts of the decision making leading up to war concentrate on the rational strategic calculus, and fail to take into account the enormous popular enthusiasm which served to push all countries toward mobilization. Austria-Hungary's harsh ultimatum to Serbia following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo was greeted in Berlin with frenzied public demonstrations in support of Austria-Hungary, despite the fact that Germany had no direct stake in the quarrel. For seven critical days at the end of July 1914, and the beginning of August, there were huge nationalistic demonstrations before the Foreign Office and the Kaiser's residence; when the latter returned to Berlin from Potsdam on July 31, his motorcade was swamped by crowds clamoring for war. It was in that atmosphere that critical decisions leading to war were taken. These scenes were repeated that week in Paris, Petrograd, London, and Vienna. And much of the exuberance of those crowds reflected the feeling that war meant national unity and citizenship at long last, an overcoming of the divisions between capitalist and proletariat, Protestant and Catholic, farmer and worker, that characterized civil society. As one witness described the feeling among the crowds in Berlin, "No one knows anybody else. But all are seized by one earnest emotion: War, war, and a sense of togetherness."

In 1914, Europe had experienced a hundred years of peace since the last major, continent-wide conflict had been settled by the Congress of Vienna. That century had seen the flowering of modern technological civilization as Europe industrialized, bring ing in its train extraordinary material prosperity and the emergence of a middle class society. The pro-war demonstrations that took place in the different capitals of Europe in August 1914 can be seen in some measure as rebellions against that middle-class civilization, with its security, prosperity, and lack of challenge. The growing isothymia of everyday life no longer seemed sufficient. On a mass scale, megalothymia reappeared : not the megalothymia of individual princes, but of entire nations that sought recognition of their worth and dignity.

In Germany, above all, the war was seen by many as a revolt against the materialism of the commercial world created by France and that archetype of bourgeois societies, Britain. Germany of course had many specific grievances against the existing order in Europe, from colonial and naval policy to the threat of Russian economic expansion. But in reading German justifications for the war, one is struck by a consistent emphasis on the need for a kind of objectless struggle, a struggle that would have purifying moral effects quite independently of whether Germany gained colonies or won freedom of the seas. The comments of a young German law student on his way to the front in September 1914 were typical : while denouncing war as "dreadful, unworthy of human be ings, stupid, outmoded, and in every sense destructive," he nonetheless came to the Nietzschean conclusion that "the decisive issue is surely always one's readiness to sacrifice and not the object of sacrifice." Pflicht, or duty, was not understood as a matter of enlightened self-interest or contractual obligation; it was an abso lute moral value that demonstrated one's inner strength and su periority to materialism and natural determination. It was the beginning of freedom and creativity.

Modern thought raises no barriers to a future nihilistic war against liberal democracy on the part of those brought up in its bosom. Relativism-the doctrine that maintains that all values are merely relative and which attacks all "privileged perspectives" must ultimately end up undermining democratic and tolerant values as well. Relativism is not a weapon that can be aimed selectively at the enemies one chooses. It fires indiscriminately, shooting out the legs of not only the "absolutisms," dogmas, and certainties of the Western tradition, but that tradition's emphasis on tolerance, diversity, and freedom of thought as well. If nothing can be true absolutely, if all values are culturally determined, then cherished principles like human equality have to go by the wayside as well...

The modern liberal project attempted to shift the basis of human societies from thymos to the more secure ground of desire. Liberal democracy "solved" the problem of megalothymia by constraining and sublimating it through a complex series of institutional arrangements-the principle of popular sovereignty, the establishment of rights, the rule of law, separation of powers, and the like. Liberalism also made possible the modern economic world by liberating desire from all constraints on acquisitiveness, and allying it to reason in the form of modern natural science. A new, dynamic, and infinitely rich field of endeavor was suddenlyopened up to man. According to the Anglo-Saxon theorists of liberalism, idle masters were to be persuaded to give up their vainglory, and to make their home in this economic world instead. Thymos was to be subordinated to desire and reason, that is, desire guided by reason...

Looking backward, we who live in the old age of mankind might come to the following conclusion. No regime-no "socioeconomic system"-is able to satisfy all men in all places. This includes liberal democracy. This is not a matter of the incomplete ness of the democratic revolution, that is, because the blessings of liberty and equality have not been extended to all people. Rather, the dissatisfaction arises precisely where democracy has triumphed most completely: it is a dissatisfaction with liberty and equality. Thus those who remain dissatisfied will always have the potential to restart history.

Moreover, it appears to be the case that rational recognition is not self-sustaining, but must rely on pre-modern, non-universal forms of recognition to function properly. Stable democracy requires a sometimes irrational democratic culture, and a spontaneous civil society growing out of pre-liberal traditions. Capitalist prosperity is best promoted by a strong work ethic, which in turn depends on the ghosts of dead religious beliefs, if not those beliefs themselves, or else an irrational commitment to nation or race. Group rather than universal recognition can be a better support for both economic activity and community life, and even if it is ultimately irrational, that irrationality can take a very long time before it undermines the societies that practice it. Thus, not only is universal recognition not universally satisfying, but the ability of liberal democratic societies to establish and sustain themselves on a rational basis over the long term is open to some doubt.

Aristotle believed that history would be cyclical rather than secular because all regimes were imperfect in some way, and those imperfections would constantly lead people to want to change the regime they lived under into something different. For all of the reasons just enumerated, could we not say the same of modern democracy? Following Aristotle, we might postulate that a society of last men composed entirely of desire and reason would give way to one of bestial first men seeking recognition alone, and vice versa, in an unending oscillation.

And yet, the two legs of this dyad are hardly equal... This century has taught us the horrendous consequences of the effort to resurrect unbridled megalothymia, for in it we have, in a sense, already experienced some of the "immense wars" foretold by Nietzsche...

If it is true that the historical process rests on the twin pillars of rational desire and rational recognition, and that modern liberal democracy is the political system that best satisfies the two in some kind of balance, then it would seem that the chief threat to democracy would be our own confusion about what is really at stake. For while modern societies have evolved toward democracy, modern thought has arrived at an impasse, unable to come to a consensus on what constitutes man and his specific dignity, and consequently unable to define the rights of man. This opens the way to a hyperintensified demand for the recognition of equal rights, on the one hand, and for the re-liberation of megalothymia on the other. This confusion in thought can occur despite the fact that history is being driven in a coherent direction by rational desire and rational recognition, and despite the fact that liberal democracy in reality constitutes the best possible solution to the human problem...

Many of the developments of the past century-the decline of the moral self-confidence of European civilization, the rise of the Third World, and the emergence of new ideologies-tended to reinforce belief in relativism. But if, over time, more and more societies with diverse cultures and histories exhibit similar long-term patterns of development; if there is a continuing convergence in the types of institutions governing most advanced societies; and if the homogenization of mankind continues as a result of economic development, then the idea of relativism may seem much stranger than it does now."

--- Immense Wars of the Spirit in The End of History and the Last Man / Francis Fukuyama

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Projection

"In some senses, its author(s), men from an international aristocracy increasingly alarmed at the advances of liberal constitutional governments over the course of the 19th century, produced a classic work of cognitive egocentrism: The Jews thought as they did. Those who embrace the dominating imperative as a political axiom assume others do, as well.

(No better incident illustrates this point than the first visit of the Japanese delegation to Hebrew University in 1978. They brought as their gift-crucial and carefully thought out in a gift culture-a beautifully bound translation of the Protocols into Japanese. This was so perfect a story, so deeply cutting and dark a joke, it seems like a perfect candidate for urban legend. But it is not.)*...

In a sense, the Protocols expresses their understanding of the anomalous present. Democracy is a prelude to horror. Someone is secretly planning its overthrow. Who else, but a people smart enough to con Gentile commoners into overthrowing their own aristocracies? Even some pathetic aristocrats become "infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, are willing to yield some of their power." Hence, free press, free thinking, Darwin, and Nietzsche are all pawns of the Jewish conspiracy. "Jews must know what we know," reasons the conspiracist, "and they must be planning what we would plan were we in their position."

If this psychological projection underlies the composition of the Protocols and appealed to some of its readership, the prophetic nature of the text, the extraordinary accuracy of its predictive powers over the early decades of the 20th century, provided it with a much wider and more frightened audience. Above all, it was disturbingly accurate in its reading of egalitarian ideologues.

Whenever the egalitarian zealots managed to pull off a revolution, whether in France in 1789 or in Russia in 1917, no sooner did they acquire power than they turned to terror to rule. All the fair promises that lured the commoners to support the leadership ended in mob rule and bloodthirsty demagogues. Given that the Protocols came out little more than a decade before the Russian Revolution and that by the time Marsden translated it into English, in 1922, the Bolsheviks had begun their purges and mass arrests, the work seemed utterly prophetic...

As [Hitler] plotted his own war of conquest to enslave the world's races, he projected precisely that intention on the Jews. "In reading ... the Protocols, one has the feeling that one is reading descriptions of Hitler's own ... plans. Page after page, all one needs to do is substitute the words 'Hitler will ... whenever the Protocols say 'the Jews [sic] will ... ""

And the same phenomenon repeats in the 21st century among the most zealous believers in the Protocols, the Islamists who plan to do what they accuse the Jews of doing. Here a Turkish Muslim working for the imposition of Sharia on Turkey outlines the plan of action:

You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers ... until the conditions are ripe, they [Muslim followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria [Hama] ... like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it. ... You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey .... Until that time, any step taken would be too early-like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all-in confidence ... trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here-[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here.

It sounds precisely like what the Protocols imagined-long, slow, patient infiltration, using democracy to gain power, biding one's time until the proper moment to strike, the need for secrecy lest people who, were they to learn of the plans, would immediately and effectively terminate the conspiracy. The Project, a Muslim Brotherhood plan to bring Europe under Sharia rule first uncovered in Switzerland in 2001, resembles the Protocols so strikingly that readers-especially Jewish readers, who know how terrible it is to be accused of such awful plans -- initially recoiled at even entertaining the possibility that such things are true.

*Confirmed to me in conversation and e-mail by Menahem Milson, head of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the time, who received the gift from the delegation."

--- The Melian Dialogue, the Protocols, and the Paranoid Imperative / Richard Landes

American Culture

From Building Bridges: A Peace Corps Classroom Guide to Cross-Cultural Understanding by Coverdell World Wise Schools:

Worksheet #4: Explanatory Notes for “Americans”

Directions: Below are reasons some cultural anthropologists have offered to explain why Americans may come across the way they do to people from other cultures. As you are reading each explanation, think about whether or not you agree with it. Is the explanation true of all Americans, some Americans, or no Americans?

1. Americans are always in such a hurry to get things done!
Americans often seem this way because of their tendency to use achievements and accomplishments as a measure of a person’s worth. They’re in a hurry to get things done because it’s only then that they feel they have proven their worth to other people. The more Americans accomplish, the more they feel they are respected.

2. Americans insist on treating everyone the same.
Americans do this because of our cultural roots as a free nation (e.g., “All men are created equal”). Americans have a deep cultural instinct toward social equality and not having a class system. This is a reaction to the European class system as well as the feudal system that existed in Europe. In cultures where inequality between social classes is more accepted, American insistence on egalitarianism, or social equality, may be annoying.

3. Americans always have to say what they’re thinking!
Americans believe that being direct is the most efficient way to communicate. It’s important to “tell it like it is” and “speak your mind”—to say what you mean and mean what you say. Being direct is often valued over “beating around the bush.” Americans value assertiveness and being open and direct about one’s thoughts and feelings. Not all cultures have this same value. In some cultures, the normal way to disagree or to say no is to say nothing or be very indirect.

4. Americans always want to change things.
Americans think things can always be better, and that progress is inevitable. The United States is a little more than 200 years old, and American culture tends to be an optimistic one. Older cultures are more skeptical because they have been around longer, have experienced more, and have been in situations in which progress was not always made. In American businesses, being open to change is a strong value, because things really do change quickly, and it is necessary to adapt. Many Americans believe it is “good” to initiate change and “bad” to resist it.

5. Americans don’t show very much respect for their elders.
Americans believe people must earn by their actions whatever regard or respect they are given. Merely attaining a certain age or holding a certain position does not in itself signify achievement.

6. Americans always think things are going to get better. They are so optimistic!
America, because of its resources and successes, has always had a culture of optimism. Americans believe that they are in control of their own destinies, rather than being victims of fate. Many Americans tend to believe that “the American dream” can be achieved by anyone who is willing to work hard enough. Many Americans believe that the only obstacle to things getting better is “not trying hard enough.” Americans also believe that a personal lack of determination or effort can be fixed. Other cultures may believe more in fate (“what will be will be”). When something bad happens, some members of these cultures believe it was fated to happen, must be accepted, and cannot be changed.

7. Americans are so impatient!
Americans believe that if things take a long time to do, they won’t be able to do enough of them. Many Americans believe that more and faster is better. They do not like to stand in line and wait, and they originated fast food. Americans believe that getting things done (and doing them quickly) may be more important than other things. Many other cultures believe that slower is better and that building and maintaining relationships takes priority over getting things done at the expense of relationships.

On why Deporting Mahmoud Khalil is Legal

In which Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952), Turner v. Williams (1904), Trump v. Hawaii (2018) and Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) are cited in affirming that deporting non-citizens for their views does not violate the First Amendment or otherwise violate their rights (not to mention how even if he were a citizen, he would still not be in the clear):

Mahmoud KHALIL v William P. JOYCE, in his official capacity as Acting Field Office Director of New York, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al., BRIEF OF AMICUS CURIAE THE NATIONAL JEWISH ADVOCACY CENTER IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS

"Petitioner Mahmoud Khalil acted as a lead negotiator and spokesperson for Columbia University-based student groups that espoused support for Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization (“FTO”). Petitioner facilitated and advocated on behalf of students who took over buildings and committed extensive violent acts, including destruction of property, criminal possession of a weapon, false imprisonment, and others. Petitioner has advocated for “resistance by any means necessary,” a euphemism for engaging in violence against innocent civilians to achieve a political objective—namely, the destruction of the State of Israel...

Petitioner’s deportation is amply supported by the law.

First, the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”) supports petitioner’s deportation and does not contain a First Amendment exception. Because noncitizens do not enjoy the same First Amendment rights as citizens, Petitioner’s First Amendment claims are subject to only the “facially legitimate and bona fide” standard of review, a highly deferential standard deeming that courts may not look behind the exercise of that discretion, nor test it by balancing its justification’ against the asserted constitutional interests of U.S. citizens.

Second, even if strict scrutiny applies, the Government amply satisfies that standard because the INA’s speech restrictions are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest in national security. The INA’s speech restrictions constitute content-based restrictions, not viewpoint-based restrictions. The INA’s limitations on speech supporting terrorist organizations satisfies a compelling government interest.

Third, the INA was designed to ensure that individuals like Petitioner could not reap the benefits of American residency while subverting important foreign policy and other values. Espousing support for terrorist organizations and leading groups of students who violated a slew of laws constitutes impermissible conduct for citizens and noncitizens alike. Petitioner’s conduct violated the Anti-Terrorism Act, a provision that would apply to him whether he was a citizen or not...

The Government cites 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C)(i) as its basis for removing Petitioner. See Resp. Opp. to Motion for P.I. (ECF No. 156 at 4). This provision gives the Secretary of State the power to order the deportation of an alien if “the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe [that Petitioner’s presence or activities in the United States] would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences. . . .” 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C)(i). This section incorporates by reference the exception found in Section 1182(a)(3)(C)(iii), which ordinarily governs exclusion of aliens outside the United States and makes it equally applicable to deportations under Section 1227.

The exception in Section 1182 (sometimes referred to in part as the “Foreign Policy Bar”) prevents the Government from refusing entry or deporting an alien “because of [an] alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”... Since the Government relies upon the Secretary’s determination for its action, the 1182 exception is simply inapplicable...

It is well-established that citizens and noncitizens do not enjoy legal parity.

Under our law, the alien in several respects stands on an equal footing with citizens, but in others has never been conceded legal parity with the citizen. Most importantly, to protract this ambiguous status within the country is not his right but is a matter of permission and tolerance. The Government’s power to terminate its hospitality has been asserted and sustained by this Court since the question first arose.

Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U.S. 580, 586-87 (1952); see also Trump v. Hawaii, 585 U.S. 667, 702 (2018) (recognizing the inherent power of the “Government’s political departments” to admit or exclude foreign nationals, because these types of questions are “largely immune from judicial control.”...

Speech restrictions are no exception to this rule. The fact that Petitioner is subject to heightened speech restrictions as compared to a naturalized U.S. citizen has been continually recognized by the courts in varying context for more than 100 years. The Supreme Court has long acknowledged that U.S. residents with varying immigration statuses can be subject to varying degrees of First Amendment protection to serve compelling government interests. See, e.g., Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 420-22 (2010)...

Turner is a particularly informative case. In Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279, 293 (1904), the Supreme Court affirmed that the First Amendment is no bar to the deportation of an alien. The Court in Turner considered whether the government could deport alien John Turner because of his anarchist beliefs and advocacy for the violent overthrow of government...

The principles elucidated in Turner have stood the test of time. In Trump v. Hawaii, the Court again explored the reach of the Executive’s power in matters relating to national security and immigration...

Mandel—as overwhelmingly approved of in Hawaii—articulated the sweeping power of the executive as applicable to both denials of entry and deportations. Mandel, 408 U.S. 766 (relying on the deportation case Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 531-33 (1954)) (“Policies pertaining to the entry of aliens and their right to remain here are peculiarly concerned with the political conduct of government. . . . [T]he formulation of these policies is entrusted to Congress has become about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government. . . .”))...

Furthermore, the language of Hawaii itself targets its holding to immigration law more broadly, not simply entry, when citing approvingly multiple cases that either address or make reference to the broad power of either Congress or the Executive (i.e. the political branches) to deport aliens...

Finally, the construction of the INA itself incorporates the statutory reasons for denying entry as suitable reasons for deportation...

The Secretary of State, in his discretion, determined that Petitioner remining in the United States was adverse to American foreign policy interests. This Court cannot, therefore, “look behind” the Government’s decision to exercise its discretion to remove Petitioner, which is based on facially legitimate and bona fide foreign policy concerns. This court, therefore, may not weigh the Government’s justification for removing Petitioner against any First Amendment concerns.

As such, the fact that Petitioner is subject to more stringent speech restrictions than a U.S. citizen does not raise, and has never raised, a serious First Amendment issue. Petitioner’s removal is constitutional.

Even if the Court were to apply the same standard that it would to a U.S. citizen, requiring a strict scrutiny analysis, the INA’s speech prohibitions would still be constitutional because they are supported by a compelling government interest.

The INA rules in question survive strict scrutiny because they are narrowly tailored to achieve the government’s compelling interest in national security. The INA permits deportation of an alien based on his endorsement, espousal, or persuasion of others to endorse or espouse terrorist activities or support a terrorist organization, or his role as a representative or spokesperson for an organization that endorses or espouses terrorist activity...

The INA considers support for any terrorist organization as grounds for deportation or exclusion, with no consideration of what the terrorist group believes, endorses, or seeks to accomplish...

To survive strict scrutiny, a regulation must be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Unlike the anarchist views held by Mr. Turner, see supra at 7, no speculation is required as to what the impact of Petitioner’s speech or political beliefs might be. Petitioner’s actions have already proven dangerous to the well-being of the American public by leading a radical, pro-terrorist movement that has committed unlawful actions on college campuses throughout the United States, provoking a nationwide swell of support within the U.S. for the terrorist acts committed by Hamas on October 7, and creating a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia University and elsewhere.

Notably, the protests and encampments at Columbia University acted as the model for many other college campuses. The Columbia protests were organized by at least two terror- supporting groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) and Columbia University Apartheid Divest (“CUAD”). Petitioner was a self-described leader of these groups and the lead negotiator for the groups and their “demands” during the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment (“Encampment”). (ECF No. 162 at ¶ 1). His actions during the Encampment and its subsequent impacts put the dangers of Petitioner’s presence in the United States on full display. See, e.g., infra at Section II. If the Government has a compelling governmental interest in removing aliens like Mr. Turner, who generally oppose all organized government, it certainly has a much greater interest in removing Petitioner, who has led and represented groups that endorse and espouse terrorism and played a central role in persuading members of the American public to endorse and espouse the same, while also calling for the “total eradication of Western civilization.”...

As it relates to the government’s invocation of 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C)(i) as its basis for removing Petitioner, it is hard to imagine a greater foreign policy interest than not allowing an organization literally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department to gain a solid foothold in our country. But Petitioner’s speech would be unlawful even if he were a citizen.

Even if Petitioner were a citizen, his speech would still violate the law. The First Amendment is not absolute, and all residents of the United States–including naturalized citizens– are subject to speech restrictions. For example, even a citizen who engages in advocacy in coordination with or provides material support to terrorist organizations can be subject to criminal penalties. See generally, Holder, 561 U.S. at 45; see also 18 U.S.C. § 2339B(a)-(b) (creates civil and criminal penalties for providing “material support” to terrorist organizations). There is also compelling reason to believe that Petitioner and the student groups he led, collaborated directly with Hamas, knowingly participated in Hamas’ global propaganda campaign, and had advance knowledge of Hamas’ plans to commit mass murder on October 7. See generally, Haggai et al v. Kiswani et al, 25-02400 (S.D.N.Y. filed March 24, 2025), Complaint (ECF No. 1) (alleging Columbia SJP, CUAD, and affiliated groups coordinated with Hamas and its affiliates prior to October 7 and take direct instructions from Hamas regarding the spread of pro-Hamas and pro- terror propaganda in the United States in furtherance of Hamas’ stated goals). If true, these allegations likely violate the Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2333(d)(2), which provides grounds for imprisonment of up to 20 years (or life, in some cases) and fines of up to $250,000. Therefore, Petitioner’s speech would not be constitutionally protected even if he were a naturalized citizen. Petitioner’s actions are exactly the sort that the INA seeks to restrict...

Aside from making their support for Hamas abundantly clear with chants of “Hamas we love you,” “we are all Hamas,” and “long live Hamas,” the coalition of student groups obstructed campus operations, and engaged in all manner of illegal activity, including trespass, assault, vandalism, robbery, destruction of property, arson, criminal possession of a weapon, burglary, false imprisonment and intimidation. Petitioner was one of their leaders and acted as their representative and spokesperson. Dozens of his followers were arrested for committing crimes...

In addition to universities and the UNRWA, Hamas has successfully gained influence in some corners of the non-profit world and news media, such as the Washington State-based “news” service known as the Palestine Chronicle. As detailed in a lawsuit brought by three former hostages of the October 7 attack, an employee of the Palestine Chronicle (employed since 2019) is alleged to have personally held at least three hostages during this time, worked directly with Hamas, and published pro-Hamas propaganda through the Palestine Chronicle while actively coordinating with his affiliates in the media and on college campuses... One of the freed hostages has reported that during his captivity Hamas would brag to him about their operatives on American campuses.

Petitioner’s employment by UNRWA is not a benign indicator of his desire to provide aid to struggling Palestinian civilians. Rather, it is an indicator of his long-term relationship and comfort with Hamas and its terroristic ideologies, which undoubtedly endanger national security and the fabric of American civil society...

Petitioner, through his leadership of CUAD and full-throated support for the “Palestinian resistance” by “any means necessary” has openly endorsed terrorist activity and sought to persuade others to do the same. When SJP published a letter affirming their ardent support of the October 7th attack, Petitioner was one of their leaders. When members of the Encampment shouted, “we are Hamas,” “Hamas we love you,” “burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” and shouted at their Jewish classmates, “the 7th of October will be every day for you,” Petitioner was their spokesperson. There is no question that Petitioner’s speech and conduct render him removable under 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182 and 1227."

AIDS as a Social Construct

"Modernism meant the whole modern show—including the Enlightenment, empirical science, and rational thought—and postmodernism, which was sometimes called post- structuralism, was its refutation and replacement.

If the old dispensation was the age of reason, the new one was the age of unreason. That would explain why Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization was one of the touchstone texts always lurking in the background. It didn’t matter that its author rejected the postmodern label, because postmodernists like Foucault rejected all fixed meanings. That was the whole point.

There was no truth in this new world, only “truth”—sometimes called “knowledge”—which lived inside quotation marks whether you noticed them or not. Truth wasn’t established with empirical evidence but talked into existence with a kind of rhetorical magic called “discourse” that made something so because of how you expressed it.

Truth was the “product” of discourse, not the other way around. It was manufactured like a salami in a metaphorical meaning factory operated by unseen systems of authority whose interests it ultimately served and whose only purpose was maintaining power. Accordingly, the madness in Madness and Civilization wasn’t a medical diagnosis but a “social construct,” devised in the seventeenth century to enforce the rule of reason by demonizing anyone who strayed beyond the boundaries of convention. “Madness” turned nonconformists into “the other” so they could be locked away. Like madness, invented to serve as reason’s defining opposite, the asylum was the indispensable foil of freedom, making forced confinement not just the dark side of the Enlightenment but its raison d’être.

Foucault’s true theme was power, the only thing that was really real. There was something seductive about seeing everything in terms of its secret relationship to power, and the critic as someone trained to unmask it. It made the intellectual a kind of superhero, freeing people from the structures of oppression embedded inside institutions, social systems, and works of art. The suffering of people imprisoned by a poem might not be great, but the person exposing it was a liberator. And wasn’t I trying to liberate myself, at least a little, from false

constructions, so I could live inside the story of my own unfolding? The beauty of postmodernism was that it erased the world with one hand while rewriting it with the other, allowing you to inherit the authority you discredited like a spoil of war. But there was something arbitrary about it, too, that left me feeling falsified in ways I lacked the clarity to put my finger on. Foucault’s obsession with hidden power engendered a low-level paranoia that took the place of thought while making you feel smart.

The hyperrational aspects of the Enlightenment did have a dark underside, and those with power were constantly drawing arbitrary lines they pushed the powerless across, but did the Enlightenment really destroy an age of freedom and use reason only to suppress its enemies? Having banished medical causes, all that remained to explain madness in Madness and Civilization was a social construct creating a supply of demonized “others” leading to a demand for asylums that in turn increased the supply of madmen in a widening spiral of expanding categories and segregating spaces culminating in “the great confinement.”

Foucault even considered AIDS a social construct, waving away the warning he received from the writer Edmund White in the early 1980s when he was teaching at Berkeley. “You American puritans, you’re always inventing diseases,” Foucault told White, though people were already dying of AIDS, most conspicuously gay men like Foucault himself, who had plunged into San Francisco’s bathhouse scene in the orgiastic seventies and remained passionately devoted to anonymous drug-fueled sadomasochistic sex. Still, he preferred to see the disease, which killed him the year before I got to graduate school, as an imaginary disorder, “and one that singles out blacks, drug users and gays—how perfect!”"

--- The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions / Jonathan Rosen

The Effectiveness of Killing Terrorist Leaders

Left wingers like to claim that there is no point killing terrorist leaders because it either doesn't affect the organisation or makes them even stronger as it pisses off members (and the populace from which they draw their support). Naturally the supposed solution is to give in to the terrorists' demands.

But when you look into the literature, you find support for the claim that killing terrorist leaders can be effective:

 

"Very few groups have radicalized after a crisis in leadership. Indeed, of the thirty-one cases of leadership crisis that we examined, only one group became more radical. In that case, the radicalization occurred after the arrest of the group’s leader. This finding differs from what we expected. Our second hypothesis was that assassinations would most likely lead groups to become more radical. Making a martyr out of a leader, we assumed, would lead to a strengthening of resolve and the subsequent radicalization of the group. Our findings provide no evidence to suggest that our hypothesis is correct. In fact, a group appears much more likely to disband or become less radical after the assassination of a leader. This suggests that the psychological impact of the assassination of a leader is not sufficient to spark a radical transformation in a group’s ideology. An additional explanation for our finding is that the assassination of a leader might often be accompanied by widespread attacks on the movement that disrupt much more than the top leadership, precipitating the failure of the group. Another possibility is that the assassination of a leader often greatly disrupts the movement, possibly causing a loss of funding, internecine fighting, and/or the loss of the leader’s unifying and charismatic personality.

A related finding is that the assassination of a leader is more likely to cause a group to fail or disband than is an arrest of the leader. This may be because a group is more likely to remain intact if members believe that their leader will eventually return to power. Alternatively, as in the case of Action Directe in France, leaders may be communicating with active members of the group from their prison cells, thereby perpetuating their influence (Dartnell 1995).

Table 2 also reveals that the natural death of a leader normally results in “no change” to the movement... However, since we have only two cases of natural death in our sample set, it is difficult to draw general conclusions from these cases.

Looking at the aggregate indicators, our analysis suggests that about half of the movements (slightly more than fifty percent) continue with “business as usual” after a crisis in leadership. At first glance, this suggests that something other than the leader is critical for group cohesion... the results might also reflect a tendency among leaders to make arrangements in case they might be incapacitated. If a group is highly institutionalized and has clear lines of succession, then the loss of a leader would presumably be less likely to cause major changes in its direction...

The arrest of a spiritual leader, like Rizal, contrasted with the arrest of a logistical leader, like those who dominated the PKI, might be more likely to induce a group to become more radical...

A group that experiences internal disputes is likely to split into factions immediately following a crisis, but will also be more likely to survive it. This type of group may not reunite in its pre-schism form, but its strongest faction or factions will be able to continue the movement in coexistence with competing organizations...

Groups that factionalize but lack experience with dispute resolution are ill-equipped to deal with factionalization successfully. However, groups that have allowed some level of debate and dissent are inherently more adaptable in the face of internal challenges and are thus more likely to emerge from a schism. This type of group may not reunite in its pre-schism form, but its strongest faction or factions will be able to continue the movement in coexistence with competing organizations...

Organizations with a hierarchical command structure might be better suited to deal with setbacks than groups with a more decentralized command structure...

Our findings also reflect the importance of religious ideology in a group’s evolution... Their membership may have decreased in number and moderated, but a clearly defined membership still existed... Religious beliefs may be among the strongest sources of cohesive attachment for a group. While certain doctrines may change, the fundamental claims inherent in religion tend to persist in the face of obstacles that may stymie other ideologically-based, but non-religious, movements, such as Marxist and nationalist movements...

We also found that groups that rely highly or exclusively on a leader’s teachings for their doctrine display a universal trend toward survival...

Our first hypothesis—that a group that fails to fulfill a stated goal will suffer internal disputes but ultimately survive under a revised objective—is largely supported by the data. Only one out of four cases of failure to achieve an important goal ended in the failure of the group. Each of the three that survived had a complex, institutionalized, hierarchical group structure; the one that failed had a more decentralized and informal structure. Thus, groups with more centralized, hierarchical structures may be better equipped to deal with operational failure than informally structured groups.

Furthermore, the data confirmed that groups that radicalize as they develop but subsequently face a crisis (either of leadership or of goal failure) tend to continue under a revised objective. Specifically, the movements with these characteristics in our sample tended to revert to a condition more closely resembling their original, relatively moderate state.

Our second hypothesis—that when the leader of a group is killed by an external force the group will become radicalized—was invalidated by the evidence. In twelve of the eighteen relevant cases, the group continued with little change or actually deradicalized after the killing of a leader; in the other six, the group disbanded. Not a single case emerged where a group radicalized after its leader was killed, suggesting that the psychological impact of a killing does not in and of itself incite a radical transformation in a group’s ideology. Historically, it is also common for the killing of a leader to be accompanied by broader attacks on the movement that disturb the rest of the membership, making the group’s failure more likely.

Our third hypothesis—that the arrest of the leader will not significantly alter the ideology or operations of the group in the long term—was confirmed by our study. Seven out of eleven movements that lost a leader permanently or temporarily to arrest were able to continue without great change. This confirmation implies that an arrest has a different impact on a group than a killing. As an imprisoned leader is still alive, the group may hold onto the hope that the leader will one day be freed and will return to the movement. Thus the group may be less motivated to generate great change. Some leaders have been able to communicate with their groups from prison, via coded messages or lawyers, thereby providing their group with a feeling of continuity and security that would diminish the likelihood of the group undertaking radical change.

Finally, our fourth hypothesis—that the death of a leader from natural causes will not have much of an impact on the group—was supported by the data. We found only two cases in which the leader died of natural causes, but both of those groups experienced smooth transitions and no major changes of direction after the deaths. Importantly, the deaths of the leaders of both groups were anticipated due to their sickness and old age. While it is difficult to draw general conclusions from a sample of two cases, we speculate that groups that have prior knowledge of an impending natural death would tend to take steps to prepare for the death and construct a clear line of succession...

One important finding is that the way in which a leader is neutralized matters. Our research suggests that a movement will react differently during a crisis of leadership depending on whether the leader is killed, arrested, or dies of natural causes. As noted earlier, movements that witness the killing of a leader appear to be more likely to fail than movements in which the leader is arrested. In addition, movements in which the leader dies of natural causes appear to be the most resilient to a crisis in leadership."

--- TARGETING THE LEADERSHIP OF TERRORIST AND INSURGENT MOVEMENTS: HISTORICAL LESSONS FOR CONTEMPORARY POLICY MAKERS (2004) / Lisa Langdon, Alexander J. Sarapu, and Matthew Wells (Journal of Public and International Affairs) 

 

"Some scholars argue that targeting the group's leadership reduces its operational capability by eliminating its most highly skilled members and forcing the group to divert valuable time and limited resources to protect its leaders. Decapitation tactics are also intended to disrupt the terrorist group's organizational routine and deter others from assuming power. Scholars have credited these tactics with creating intra-organizational turmoil and even organizational collapse, most notably, the demise of the Kurdistan People's Party and the Shining Path following the arrests of their leaders...

I argue that leadership decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, even after controlling for other factors. Using an original database - the largest and most comprehensive of its kind - I analyzed the effects of leadership decapitation on the mortality rate of 207 terrorist groups from 1970 to 2008. The analysis differs from previous quantitative studies because it evaluates the effects of decapitation on the duration of terrorist groups as opposed to the number, frequency, or lethality of attacks after a group experiences leadership decapitation...

I then use concepts from leadership studies, organizational ecology, and terrorism to provide a theoretical explanation for why terrorist groups are particularly susceptible to decapitation tactics. I argue that terrorist groups have unique organizational characteristics that amplify the importance of their top leaders and make leadership succession more difficult...

Although several scholars have evaluated the effectiveness of decapitation tactics, few have done so systematically. The vast majority of analyses rely on case studies to support a specific conclusion. Others examine the effectiveness of decapitation tactics within a particular country, of which Israel seems to be the most popular. Although these country- and region-specific case studies help policymakers and scholars understand more about this controversial tactic, the findings from these studies cannot be generalized across all terrorist groups.

Three primary works, however, have tried to systematically test decapitation's effectiveness across multiple groups and over longer periods of time, but all focus solely on the relatively short-term effects of this tactic or feature small-n datasets. Lisa Langdon and her colleagues examined nineteen guerrilla, terrorist, religious, and revolutionary groups from 1750 to 2004 that each boasted more than 100 members. They concluded that "the leadership of a group can generally change or be seriously challenged without threatening the group's survival." Langdon and her team, however, based their findings on an extremely small sample that was ill-suited to deriving statistically significant results. Moreover, their study attempted to explain variation in the effectiveness of decapitation across several types of organizations with little in common over a period of more than 250 years.

Aaron Mannes found mixed results in his study. In analyzing the change in the frequency of attacks before and after a terrorist leader was killed or captured, Mannes also relied on a small sample. The study, which examined terrorist groups with more than 100 members, contained only seventy-one groups and sixty decapitation strikes.22 Additionally, most of Mannes's results were not statistically significant.

Jenna Jordan has made by far the most comprehensive attempt to test the effectiveness of leadership decapitation.23 Jordan concluded that decapitation strategies not only are ineffective but may be counterproductive. She found that instead of causing organizational collapse, leadership decapitation often extends the survival of groups that would have otherwise dissolved. Jordan's dependent variable was whether or not the group survived more than two years after experiencing decapitation. Although I agree that organizational survival is a better metric than the number, frequency, or lethality of attacks, Jordan set the standard for evaluating counterterrorism policies too high. A time horizon of two years is a reasonable period to evaluate public policy, but imposing arbitrary time horizons when trying to accurately evaluate leadership decapitation and its effects on terrorist groups may not be useful, especially if the effects persist beyond two years.25 In addition, given the near unanimous agreement in the field that no "silver bullet" solutions exist in counterterrorism, I argue that scholars should not rely on "silver bullet" metrics - for example, whether a group experiences organizational collapse within two years after leadership decapitation - to evaluate counterterrorism policies. Examining the short-term effects of these policies is important, but policymakers should consider their long-term effects as well. Imagine if doctors and patients disregarded chemotherapy and radiation treatments, two of the most popular and successful regimens for treating many types of cancer, because of their painfully debilitating side effects in the short term. This article is an attempt to fill the void by providing a long-range analysis for policymakers to consider when making decisions concerning counterterrorism policy.

For leadership decapitation to be an effective counterterrorism policy, two conditions must be met. First, terrorist group leaders need to be important to the overall success of the organization. If they are not, there is no reason to expect that organizational performance will suffer in their absence. Second, leadership succession must be difficult. If leaders are easy to replace, the benefits of targeting high-ranking leaders may not be worth the costs.

Several scholars have concluded that targeted assassinations are ineffective for ending insurgencies, disbanding drug cartels, and changing state behavior. The conclusions from these analyses cast doubt on the likelihood that leadership decapitation can work against terrorist groups. I argue, however, that terrorist groups are different: they have unique organizational characteristics that increase the influence of their leaders and exacerbate the difficulties associated with leadership succession.

The conventional wisdom suggests that leaders significantly affect organizational performance, but finding quantifiable proof of this causal relationship is surprisingly difficult. When evidence of a causal link exists, it is often weaker than expected...

The selection bias that makes evaluating leadership influence in economic firms difficult is not a factor in analyzing terrorist group leaders.

Second, the institutional constraints that limit the influence of leaders in economic firms and legitimate political organizations do not affect terrorist leaders... Unless the group is state sponsored, terrorist leaders do not answer to a superior or a board of directors. They are not as worried about perceptions of legitimacy or morality from those other than the populations from which they recruit or are trying to influence.

Third, scholars argue that leaders of economic firms can typically affect only a few of the variables that determine organizational performance. Terrorist leaders, however, can wield enormous power and influence over all aspects of their organizations, from their structure and identity to the pace and scale of group activities...

Replacing terrorist group leaders is more difficult than replacing leaders in other organizations... I argue that leadership succession is especially difficult for terrorist groups because they are violent, clandestine, and values-based organizations...

The clandestine nature of terrorist groups also increases their dependency on leaders; complicates leadership succession; and negatively affects organizational learning, performance, culture, and decisionmaking. To maintain operational security and avoid detection from outsiders, leaders of terrorist organizations have a disincentive to institutionalize their operations, making leadership succession difficult. There are two distinct logics behind this disinclination. First, leaders in terrorist organizations do not want to codify how they operate, because doing so makes them more susceptible to state infiltration. Bureaucratization may enhance organizational learning, performance, and efficiency, but it may also provide the state with the knowledge necessary to destroy the organization. Some terrorist groups do have formal hierarchies, but not all members are likely to understand them. Individual cells often maintain independence from one another so that captured individuals or even cells cannot compromise the entire group. This lack of formalization and institutionalization increases the level of uncertainty, which in turn complicates leadership succession and produces organizational instability. This characteristic holds true for all organizations, including legitimate organizations such as state governments following the assassination of the head of state, but its consequences are more significant for terrorist groups.

The second reason terrorist leaders are disinclined to institutionalize their organizations may be more selfish and more personal. Not only do terrorist leaders fear being captured or killed by the state or rival groups, but they also worry about being removed from power by their own group. Similar to leadership succession in other illicit, violent, and clandestine organizations, replacing terrorist group leaders often relies on Hobbesian principles rather than on institutionalized processes. It is common for terrorist leaders to suffer from paranoia, a personality disorder worsened by a clandestine existence that can produce "burn syndrome," or a "pervasive fear that other people know what they're doing." For example, believing that his group was plotting against him, Sabri al-Banna (aka Abu Nidal), head of the Abu Nidal Organization, ordered the murder on a single night of 170 followers whom he suspected were traitors. Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path in Peru, was so paranoid about being ousted in a coup that he "surrounded himself with female lieutenants but readied none to command in his absence." Because terrorist leaders know that they live and die by the sword, they hesitate to provide subordinates with the knowledge and skills to run the organization in their place. This disinclination to institutionalize not only centralizes power in the hands of the terrorist group's leader, but it injects an air of uncertainty when a top leader is removed, complicating the ability of a successor to understand and run the organization effectively...

Values-based organizations such as religious cults, social clubs, and terrorist groups have greater difficulty replacing their leaders than do profit-based organizations, including drug cartels. Three reasons explain why. First, values-based organizations require their leaders to possess unique skill sets that not every leader has, namely, the ability to provide transformational leadership. Finding successors with these requisite skill sets is not easy. Second, leadership succession is less difficult in profit-based organizations because the monetary incentives of holding power are usually sufficient to attract a steady stream of successors, even when leading involves tremendous risk. The incentives for holding power in values-based organizations can be more complex and more abstract. Third, articulating the vision, mission, and strategy of values-based organizations can be especially difficult when these elements are created from scratch and are hard to conceptualize.

Leaders of terrorist groups must possess a unique set of skills to attract and maintain membership. In his seminal work on leadership, James Burns draws a distinction between transactional and transformational leadership... Transformational leadership... goes beyond personal self-interest by appealing to the values and emotions of followers. Transformational leaders, therefore, seek to create significant change in the behavior and belief systems of their followers, often encouraging personal sacrifice to achieve goals that benefit the team, group, or organization...

My dataset consists of 207 terrorist groups from sixty-five countries active from 1970 to 2008. Among quantitative analyses that have leadership decapitation and terrorist groups, it is the largest dataset It includes 204 observations in which the leader or leaders were either killed or captured. Additionally, I recorded 95 other incidents in which the leader or leaders (1) were expelled from their group, (2) died of natural causes or in an accident, (3) voluntarily resigned from their leadership position, or (4) accepted a cease-fire agreement with the government and formally entered the political process. In total, the dataset contains 299 observations of leadership change...

Previous analyses of leadership decapitation, almost all of which focus on short-term consequences, present a bleak picture of the effectiveness of this counterterrorism tactic. The findings from this study tell a different story...

Regardless of how I conceptualized the effect of decapitation, terrorist groups that experienced the loss of a leader had higher mortality rates than those that did not. Depending on how I modeled the effect of decapitation, terrorist groups were 3.6 to 6.7 times more likely to end than those that did not experience decapitation.

The variables representing group size, state regime type, and organizational structure were statistically insignificant. The results also show that ideology did not affect the group's mortality rate. Right-wing groups were more than four times as likely to end following leadership decapitation when compared to nationalist/separatist groups, but this becomes less interesting when one considers that there were only six right-wing groups in the dataset, four of which ended following decapitation. Terrorist groups with allies are up to 52 percent less likely to end than groups without them, and 39 percent less likely to end if they are competing with rival terrorist groups. The one state-level control that was highly statistically significant throughout all of the models was GDP per capita, a proxy for state counterterrorism capacity. An increase in the log of GDP per capita resulted in a 47 to 53 percent increase in the mortality rates for terrorist groups...

The more time a state requires to remove a terrorist leader, the less impact leadership decapitation will have on the group's mortality rate. As figure 3 shows, the effect of decapitation on a terrorist group's survival rate is cut approximately in half after ten years. At approximately twenty years, decapitation may have no effect at all. The most important finding from this graph, however, is that time matters when decapitating a terrorist group leader.

I estimated three models to determine how group size affected terrorist group mortality rates. Earlier I hypothesized that smaller groups should have higher mortality rates than larger groups following decapitation, because larger groups have more resources and thus more capacity to endure. The findings from the size models, however, show otherwise...

In all three models, size is not an important variable in explaining organizational decline in terrorist groups...

I employed a similar progression to determine how groups with different ideologies affect terrorist group mortality rates...

Unlike the base model, where right-wing groups were the only ideological type to be statistically different from nationalist groups, the religious groups in model 9 are statistically different from their nationalist-group counterparts. Compared to nationalist groups, religious groups are almost 77 percent less likely to suffer organizational death. When a religious group suffers the loss of its leader, however, it is almost five times more likely to end than are nationalist groups. Of the fifty-three religious groups in the dataset, nineteen have ended, including sixteen that ended after the government killed or captured their leaders. Of the thirty-four religious groups still active, twenty have experienced decapitation...

I examined the effect of the method of decapitation on the mortality rate of terrorist groups in three separate Cox models. The results show that all three methods I identify-killing the leader, capturing the leader, and capturing then killing the leader-significantly increased the terrorist group mortality rate...

Some scholars may argue that instead of measuring the effect of leadership decapitation on terrorist group mortality, the main explanatory variable, Exp. Decap, measures "bad" groups or "bad" leaders that needlessly put themselves in jeopardy. In other words, "bad" groups and "bad" leaders get selected out of the system, but this is not necessarily evidence to suggest that decapitation is to blame for the group's demise. To control for this potential endogeneity problem, I included a dummy variable for groups whose leaders die while in command for reasons having nothing to do with state efforts. These include leaders who have died of natural causes or who were killed in some other random way, such as in a car or plane accident. If the hazard ratio for this variable is statistically significant and greater than "1," then this reduces the chances that my analysis suffers from an omitted variable bias or an endogeneity problem.

In model 15, the variable for natural causes drops out because the effect of decapitation is "turned on" only for the year in which decapitation occurred and because there are no instances in which a group ended in the same year as a result of this form of leadership turnover (16 observations). In model 17, however, I changed the specification for the effect of decapitation so that the effect is "left on" for the duration of the terrorist group's life cycle. Here the variable for natural causes is statistically significant at the 10 percent level (p-value = 0.07) and greater than "1," indicating that groups that lose their leaders from an illness or an accident are 2.5 times likelier to end than groups that do not lose their leaders in a similar fashion. Given that several of these cases include leaders who lost long battles with chronic diseases such as cancer (i.e., cases that allowed the group to diligently prepare and plan for the day when their leader died), this is an impressive finding. Because transportation accidents and illnesses are random events, are unassociated with leadership, and could conceivably affect any group, this finding suggests the absence of an endogeneity problem...

Contrary to findings in other studies, I found that religious terrorist groups were less resilient and easier to destroy than nationalist groups following leadership decapitation. Although religious groups appear to be 80 percent less likely to end than nationalist groups based on ideology alone, they were almost five times as likely to end than nationalist groups after experiencing leadership decapitation. I believe this is because of the important role leaders of religious terrorist groups play in framing and interpreting organizational goals and strategies."

--- Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Counterterrorism (2012) / Bryan C. Price (International Security) 

 

Yeo (2019) qualitatively examines the cases of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Abu Sayyaf Group and Jemaah Islamiyah and it seems that pure decapitation (killing the leader) has mixed effectiveness, but killing multiple leaders is rather effective.

The Atomic Bombs and Japan's Surrender in World War II

Amazingly, some people claim that the dropping of the two atomic bombs did not contribute to Japan's surrender in World War II, and that it was only the USSR's declaration of war that got them to give up.

One even proclaimed that "Despite all of that anti-American propaganda they produced, they still surrendered to us, specifically and unconditionally, and they would have done so without Little Boy or Fat Man getting loaded onto a bomber. You might say thats hindsight 20/20, but there is no argument against the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared during the firebombing campaigns that ravaged virtually every Japanese city, and they just so happened to he the most nukeable cities from a devastation/observation standpoint. That level of premeditation isnt military strategy, its showmanship." (this person also claimed that the invasion of the main Japanese islands would not have been bloody; the Battle of Okinawa only saw so many deaths because of the geography of the island, ignoring the fact that Japanese civilians were training to resist the upcoming invasion; and that the Kyūjō incident was not unique and happened because people did not want to lose power)

All this seems to be motivated by anti-American sentiment - if one can reframe the dropping of the atomic bombs as just a way to intimidate the Soviet Union, rather than a way to end the war sooner, the US can be painted as evil.

While historians might disagree over the relative importance of both factors, the overwhelming majority seem to agree that the atomic bomb played at least some role:

"There is no doubt that the double shock of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria were both very important in prompting Japan to surrender...

Robert Butow... argued in 1954 that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war created “that unusual atmosphere in which the theretofore static factor of the Emperor could be made active in such an extraordinary way as to work what was virtually a political miracle.”... [Sadao] Asada emphasizes the shock of the atomic bombs on the military’s confidence...

In the end, the reasons for Japan’s failure to respond the Potsdam Proclamation were twofold: first, because Stalin had not signed the Allied ultimatum, Foreign Minister Togo wanted to ascertain the Soviet response to Tokyo’s request for mediation before Japan replied; and second, the overwhelming majority of Japanese military officers, especially in the army, were still in favor of fighting to the bitter end, and the Suzuki cabinet was unable to prevail over their resistance.

Therefore, in the opinion of Emperor Hirohito, Kido, and the peace faction, there was no doubt that the combination of two catastrophic events —the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9; and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on August 9— provided the final impetus for Japan’s decision to end the war...

With regard to the question of which had more effect on Japan’s surrender decision, the atomic bombs or Soviet entry into the war, Kido’s postwar statements were fairly consistent. When the investigative team from the US Strategic Bombing Survey asked Kido this very question on November 10, 1945, Kido answered that it was hard to tell exactly which had more impact. During his interview with Japanese historian Oi Atsushi at Sugamo Prison in April 1950, Kido stated...

'I think that the atomic bombs alone could have allowed us to terminate the war.'...

Kawabe [Torashiro] wrote in his memoir, “I felt the atomic bomb struck me hard on one cheek, and immediately afterwards the Soviet declaration of war hit me with full force on the other cheek.” Perhaps, historians will never be able to agree on the exact weight to assign to these two extraordinary events. The recollections of Japanese eyewitnesses suggest that the bombings and Soviet declaration of war happened so close together that it was humanly impossible to separate their psychological impacts...

According to Togo’s memoir, during the morning of August 8, Togo met with the emperor and reported that an atomic bomb had been used against Hiroshima. Togo proposed, “This should be used as an opportunity to decide for the earliest possible termination of the war.” The emperor agreed with the foreign minister and said, “Now that this sort of weapon has been used, it is becoming increasingly impossible to continue the war. I do not think it is a good idea to miss an opportunity to end the war by attempting to secure advantageous conditions. Besides, even if we try to discuss terms, I am afraid we won’t be able to come to an agreement. Therefore, I hope you will take measures that will conclude the war as soon as possible.”

Thus, emphasizing the need to end the war at the earliest possible opportunity, the emperor asked Foreign Minister Togo to convey his opinion to Prime Minister Suzuki. Togo immediately contacted Kido and the prime minister and requested that they convene a meeting of the Supreme War Leadership Council."

--- Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War / Noriko Kawamura

Corporate Profits: Perception & Reality

"2-2d Capital and Its Earnings

After deducting the small sliver of income that goes to the owners of land and natural resources, the rest of national income mainly accrues to the owners of capital—the machines and buildings that make up the nation’s industrial plants.

The total market value of these business assets—a tough number to estimate—is believed to be in the neighborhood of $40 trillion. Because that capital earns an aver- age rate of return of about 10 percent before taxes, total earnings of capital—including corporate profits, interest, and all the rest—come to about $4 trillion. (These are very rough numbers.)

Public opinion polls routinely show that Americans have a distorted view of the level of business profits in our society. The man and woman on the street believe that corporate profits after tax account for about 36 percent of the price of a typical product. (See the box “Public Opinion on Corporate Profits” on the next page.) The correct number is closer to 7 percent.

"Public Opinion on Corporate Profits
What people think is a "reasonable" corporate profit - 26%
What people estimate corporate profit is - 36%
Actual corporate profit - 7%"
SOURCES: “Public Opinion Survey,” Reason-Rupe Public Opinion Survey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Survey Research Associates International, May 2013. The older poll was: “Public Attitudes toward Corporate Profits,” Public Opinion Index (Princeton, NJ: Opinion Research Corporation, June 1986)

A 2013 public opinion poll found that the average American thought that corporate profits after taxes amounted to 36 percent of sales for the typical manufacturing company. At the time, the actual profit share was closer to 7 percent! Interestingly, when a poll years earlier asked how much profit was “reasonable,” the mean response was 26 cents on every dollar of sales—more than six times as large as profits actually were at that time"

--- Macroeconomics: Principles & Policy, Fourteenth Edition / William J. Baumol, Alan S. BLinder, John L. Solow (2020)

On Activists

"What strikes one about the activist young is their lack of zest. Their obscenities are wooden, their insolence without a sparkle, and even their violence is trancelike. They dissipate without pleasure and are vain without a purpose. The revolution of the young is not against regimentation but against effort, against growth and, above all, against apprenticeship. They want to teach before they learn, want to retire before they work, want to rot before they ripen. They equate freedom with effortlessness and power with instant satisfaction.

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults. A society that takes its solemn adolescents seriously is headed for serious trouble. How humorless and laughable the solemn young! One realizes that one of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does. There is a link between seriousness and dehumanization. Is there anything more serious than a cow grazing in the pasture? The nonhuman cosmos is immersed in an ocean of seriousness. Man alone can smile and laugh.

The hope is often expressed that student activism may eventually lead to genuine educational reform, provided an exasperated public does not lose patience and over-react. Is such a hope justified? I remember how in 1964 when Savio and his Free Speech Movement pals started their revolution on the Berkeley campus. I had the feeling that I was witnessing the Latin-Americanization of an American university. The politicization of universities has been for decades a fact of life below the Rio Grande. But I have still to hear anyone maintain that education and academic performance in Latin America have attained some sort of excellence not found in institutions of learning untouched by a student revolution.

We are also told that the young have a special talent for diagnosing the ills of our age. I doubt whether this is true. The young have a genius for discovering imagined grievances. It goes without saying that imagined grievances cannot be cured, but they enable the young to evade those aspects of reality which do not minister to their self- importance. "The imagined ills," says Laurens Van Der Post, "enable them to avoid the proper burden that life lays on all of us."

It is true that present-day young are idealistic. But theirs is the easy idealism that condemns abuses and pushes aside any thought that would reveal the difficulties and complexities inherent in righting wrongs. They are not willing to do the hard work by which alone the world can be improved. Hearing what they say and seeing what they do, one suspects that one of the main functions of the young's idealism is finding good reasons for doing bad things.

One has the impression that the young do not want to, or perhaps cannot, grow up. Our campuses have become dour, playless nurseries echoing with a doctrinaire baby talk. You see six-foot babies clamoring for power and protesting against universities not having adequate arrangements for child care.

Here in San Francisco, as I watch the young with their bedrolls hitching rides and see them sprawled on the grimy sidewalks of Market Street and Haight-Ashbury, I am reminded strongly of the Great Depression. That the great affluence of the 1960s should have produced a phenomenon so similar to that produced by the Great Depression, only substituting juveniles for grownups, is one more striking absurdity of an absurd age.

Never has youth been face to face with more breath-taking opportunities and more deadly influences, and never before has character been so decisive a factor in the survival of the young. Nowadays a ten-year-old must be possessed of a strong character in order not to get irrevocably flawed and blemished. The road from boyhood to manhood has become sievelike: those without the right size of character slip into pitfalls and traps. The society of the young is at present almost as subject to the laws of sheer survival as any animal society. In the Bay Area you can see the young preyed upon by dope pushers, pimps, perverts and thugs. The supposedly most sheltered generation is actually the most exposed.

The present-day young do not seem to go anywhere yet they are impatient. They cannot bide their time because it is not the time of their growth. It seems doubtful whether a generation that clamors for instant fulfillment and instant solutions is capable of creating anything of enduring value. Instantness is a characteristic of the animal world, where action follows perception with the swiftness of a chemical reaction. In man, because of his rudimentary instincts, there is a pause of faltering and groping, and this pause is the seedbed of images, longings, forebodings and irritations which are the warp and woof of the creative process. Peter Ulich, in The Human Career, underlines the social significance of the pause: "Rarely is anything more important for the rise of civilization than the human capacity to put an interval between stimulus and action. For within this interval grow deliberation, perspective, objectivity-all the higher achievements of the reflective mind."

The creative flow is predicated on an inner gradient, on the damming-up of impulses and cravings. It is of singular import that a measure of self-denial should be a factor not only in ethics but also in the creative process, and that, as suggested in Chapter 3, a free affluent society must become a creative society if it is to keep stable and orderly. Yet one wonders how acceptable such insights are to a generation indoctrinated with the belief that suppression of appetities is dangerous both psychologically and politically.

One also suspects that the young's exaggerated faith in spontaneity and inspiration is a characteristic of unstretched minds. Creative people believe in hard work. At the core of every genuine talent there is an awareness of the effort and difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. It needs great effort to make an achievement seem effortless."

--- First things, last things / Eric Hoffer (1972)

Plus ça change...

On Tolkien's Elves being Fair

In a group, some people claimed to not understand this meme :

"Elves in 2001 *White Elves in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings*
Elves in 2024 *Black Elves in the Rings of Power*"

A few left wingers (besides the usual insults and insinuations) claimed that Tolkien never described his Elves as white.

The oddest cope I got (from two people) about blackwashing Elves is that "fair" could be referring to things other than skin colour (e.g. “impartial and just, without favoritism or discrimination”), and one of them tried to sealion.

So I went to my archives and dug up the relevant bits:

"Elves has been used to translate both Quendi, ‘the speakers’, the High-elven name of all their kind, and Eldar, the name of the Three Kindreds that sought for the Undying Realm and came there at the beginning of Days (save the Sindar only)... They were a race high and beautiful, the older Children of the world, and among them the Eldar were as kings, who now are gone: the People of the Great Journey, the People of the Stars. They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin"

--- The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F: On Translation

"Vanyar thus comes from an adjectival derivative *wanjā from the stem *WAN. Its primary sense seems to have been very similar to English (modern) use of 'fair' with reference to hair and complexion; though its actual development was the reverse of the English: it meant 'pale, light-coloured, not brown or dark', and its implication of beauty was secondary. In English the meaning 'beautiful' is primary. From the same stem was derived the name given in Quenya to the Valië Vána wife of Oromë."

--- The War of the Jewels

“Glorfindel was tall and straight; his hair was of shining gold, his face fair and young and fearless and full of joy"

―The Fellowship of the Ring

"their sister was Aredhel the White. She was younger in the years of the Eldar than her brothers; and when she was grown to full stature and beauty she was tall and strong, and loved much to ride and hunt in the forests. There she was often in the company of the sons of Fëanor, her kin; but to none was her heart’s love given. Ar-Feiniel she was called, the White Lady of the Noldor, for she was pale, though her hair was dark, and she was never arrayed but in silver and white"

"As Maeglin grew to full stature he resembled in face and form rather his kindred of the Noldor, but in mood and mind he was the son of his father... He was tall and black-haired; his eyes were dark, yet bright and keen as the eyes of the Noldor, and his skin was white"

--- The Silmarillion

Naturally, the left wing troll came back with these marvelous rejoinders:

"you should like...dig up JRR Tolkien, and complain to his carcass about how the Wokes made your fairytale inclusive."

"I'm fine with diverse elves. It kinda seems like you're the one that needs to cope with the change."

As usual, they ruin existing properties and mock those who object, because their objective is to destroy the past.

Because anything goes in fiction it doesn't matter if Professor Charles Xavier tells Harry Potter to use the Force.

Also see: heated seats, reposted below:

"You can accept dragons, elves and talking trees, but you can't accept a 2021 BMW 5 Series 530i with optional heated seating. Why are you so bigoted? *Battle of Pelennor Fields*"

Of course, good luck if you have white Wakandans. Left wingers hate the idea of "diversity" in Wakanda.

Libyan Muslim Women in 1953

So much for the myth that before Wahhabism, Muslim women were very free.

From 1953:

The Queen of Libya
by Nel Slis, Associated Press correspondent, who became the first western journalist to be received by the queen in her palace

-Benghazi, Libya (Ass.Press) ---- Fatima-al-Sjifa, queen of Libya, is one of the most elegant queens, but perhaps the least known. She is married to Idris, the first king of Libya, who is 20 years older and a first cousin of hers. Both belong to the tribe of the Senoessi, a religious sect which has followers in every country in North Africa.

The 43-year-old Queen Fatima was brought up in Arabic-speaking countries, mostly in Egypt. She does not speak any foreign languages, but understands a little English.

Before her marriage, she had a role dealing informally with men, and scores of British officers remember how she played tennis in shorts. Since she became queen of Libya, however, she has led the life of the typical Libyan woman, strictly separated from all men.

"It will be a slow and gradual process before the Libyan women attain emancipation", she told me, "But the Libyan girls are very much longing to learn and to win their freedom."

Queen Fatima, small and elegant in her black clothes, which were made for her by Christian Dior, spoke Arabic, which was translated by her lady-in-waiting, the beautiful 24-year-old Mrs Selma Dajani, a Palestinian, whose husband was one of King Idris' advisors.

Queen Fatima spends the greatest part of her time in the small palace just outside the war-battered city of Benghazi, and one of the two capitals of Libya. King Idris, who himself comes from the province of Cyrenica, prefers to live here than in the more cosmopolitan co- capital, Tripoli.

Queen Fatima, who was receiving a journalist from the west for the first time, said she was pleased that there was interest abroad for her poor country, which had suffered so much from the war.

It is hard for one to imagine that the elegant queen, who would attract attention in any society and would command respect, is a descendant of raw (sic) Arabs who, like the forefathers of her consort, whose fourth spouse she is, were in the habit of roaming through the desert.

Tranquil and smiling, Queen Fatima told via her lady-in-waiting of the journey she had recently made through Europe and during which she visited Germany, France and Spain. Her eyes began to shine when she spoke of her visit to southern Spain, Andalusia, where she found the Arab influence very striking.

She spoke of the future possibilities for the emancipation of Libyan women. Instead of playing tennis in shorts, she is currently obliged by her royal rank to go back many centuries and live the life of seclusion ... of 99 percent of Libyan women.

The women of Libya live a more concealed life than their sisters in other Arab countries. They are dressed in the barracan, a hand-woven wool or silk cloth - the material depends on their circumstances - in which they wrap themselves up in such a way that only one eye is visible.

Only if she goes abroad does the queen live like a western woman, dressed in European clothes, and then a visit to a fashion show or to the Folies Bergère in Paris - where she has indeed been - fascinates her just as much as any other woman in the world.

Having to dress in the barracan is perhaps harder for her than for all her Libyan sisters, in view of the fact that she knows the freedom of the west.

The wife of the leading statesman in Libya, premier Mahmoed Moentasser, for example, never comes in contact with the world.

But this is simply the Mohammeden law, which in its most orthodox form forbids the woman to be seen by a man other than her husband, and concerning the husband - the woman sees him for the first time after the elaborate marriage ceremony, which lasts a week.

Queen Fatima however believes that Libyan women will make important progress in a subsequent generation on the road to freedom. They will be able to study and go abroad.

While a Sudanese, dressed like a European butler, served exquisite, sweet and creamy cakes, she said "we have many good American friends and one of my greatest wishes is to visit the U.S. one day".

"If I were to go to the United States", Queen Fatima went on, "I would dearly like to fly, but" - as she added here - "the king won't fly".

King Idris does not like either flying or sailing, but he has still accepted an official invitation to himself and the queen to make a visit to Turkey this spring, a country with which Libya is linked by many historic, religious and emotional bonds."

As quoted in:

Hellcat of The Hague: The Nel Slis Story / Caroline Studdert