Lively and possibly cantankerous rhetorical criticism, research and musings about: Eric Hoffer, True Believers, Wingnuts, The Tea Party, President Obama, Rhetorical Theory, Fanatical Political movements, symbolic devils, Kenneth Burke, and identification by antithesis. Est. 2010.
Same true believer tactics, but different brotherhood and different target audience.
People join to be part of something - a brotherhood, fellowship - not because they necessarily feel passionate about the cause itself.
The lonely - the disaffected - the bored middle class young adult ----> true believers.
Easily persuaded to join a hate group, not necessarily because they HATE, but because they want to be part of a GROUP. and because they need a purpose for their lives.
See Hoffer, True Believers.
From the article:
What happened next tracks closely with the recommendations in a manual written by Al Qaeda in Iraq, the group that became the Islamic State, titled “A Course in the Art of Recruiting.” A copy was recovered by United States forces in Iraq in 2009.
The pamphlet advises spending as much time as possible with prospective recruits, keeping in regular touch. The recruiter should “listen to his conversation carefully” and “share his joys and sadness” in order to draw closer.
Then the recruiter should focus on instilling the basics of Islam, making sure not to mention jihad.
“Start with the religious rituals and concentrate on them,” says the manual, which was reviewed in the archive of the Conflict Records Research Centerat the National Defense University in Washington.
Hamad instructed Alex to download the “Islamic Hub” app on her iPhone. It sent her a daily “hadith,” or saying by the Prophet Muhammad.
She felt as if she finally had something to do. (emphasis mine)
. . .
By the last week of October, Alex was communicating with more than a dozen people who openly admired the Islamic State. Her life, which had mostly seemed like a blurred series of babysitting shifts and lonely weekends roaming the mall, was now filled with encouragement and tutorials from her online friends.
. . .
After dropping out of college, Alex worked for a year at a day-care center, only to resign after a disagreement with her manager. She quit a call-center training program after three weeks, she said, unable to handle angry calls from customers.
Her online conversations became a touchstone at a time when she was increasingly adrift.
"This network has been particularly active ever since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, and has adopted the rhetoric and vocabulary, and reasoning, of age-old white supremacy."
Exactly. They have been the mouthpiece of the Tea Party from the veyr beginning, too. This is not coincidence.
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