Pressure Cooked Hatred

The pressure cookers used to make bombs in Boston have become a symbol for all-too-easily ignited, out-of-control youths and their unbridled hatred.

After the spectacular pursuit of the suspected Boston Marathon terrorists comes the scavenger hunt for clues as to motive. Since the weekend, we’ve witnessed the authorities and the public jump to conclusions after the release of the biographical data on the two men whose careers ended in a horrible act of violence in which three people died and 150 were injured. The motive for their act seems as impenetrable as the faces they sought to hide by pulling their baseball caps down so tightly. Now, the men’s social networking pages, their schools’ publications and their sport clubs are being combed for clues.

The focus is on whether the ethnic Chechen brothers committed their crime at the behest of radical Islamists or whether they did so out of some feeling that society was crumbling around them. It has become increasingly clear that both became entangled in the plot for the same strange reason.

“Borat” Fans

It’s fascinating and at the same time disturbing how such a monstrous act of violence can ignite a high-powered chain of information and interpretation. Information about the suspects, such as a report that one didn’t have many American friends, began to circulate before the pursuit of the brothers had even ended. Many of the puzzle pieces fit, but many were irrelevant. Take for example the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers were fans of the film “Borat,” a sophomoric and inconsequential Sacha Baron Cohen comedy that caused a minor political scandal when it was seen as an insult to the Republic of Kazakhstan — which nonetheless resulted in a small boom in tourism in the former Soviet Republic. The fact that the brothers liked the film was a supposedly significant piece of the puzzle that, along with many other pieces, revealed the identities of the bombers and clarified the motive behind their attack.

But their motive remains unexplained. Neither the absence of evidence pointing to a connection to organized terrorism nor the explanation that the brothers underwent a process of self-radicalization help the public understand why their focus changed from a single act of violence to a hunting expedition where they had no empathy for their victims. The organized radicalization theory poses even greater challenges to open society because the sudden short-circuit between a sense of rootless inferiority and becoming violent is nearly impossible to predict.

Young Men out of Control

But it does happen. Most experts aren’t surprised that youths from the North Caucasus region, where avoiding violence has hardly been possible since the Chechen war, might get involved in new acts of violence. And while there is no proven link between trauma and terrorism, it would be wrong to reject out of hand the idea that international terrorism draws a good deal of its destructive force from regional — often religiously connected — conflicts. As different as those conflicts may be, the exporting of terror to other countries is often accompanied by indications of serious identity problems among the young male populations. These young men, as resolute warriors, not only follow political or religious ideas but also suffer from delusions of omnipotence. The pressure cookers in Boston that were converted into bombs have become a symbol of the all-too-easily triggered hatred in out-of-control young men.

In this light, Barack Obama’s enlightened crisis management and his impressive talent in finding the right words at the right time indicate a statesmanlike reaction to the turbulent event. His warning against drawing conclusions too early is also an expression of awareness that opposing terrorism must consist of more than just attributing terrorist acts exclusively to foreigners. It appears possible that the Tsarnaev brothers don’t fit the definition of the much-feared “homegrown” terrorists who come to the U.S. and grow up in American society. What’s certain is that their actions have raised questions about the integration opportunities that were available to them.

There is a clear political signal that Obama has recognized the threat of an enduring latent force that needs to be addressed in order to maintain internal cohesion. It is worrying that the political chasm that seems to permanently divide American society may now become even wider.