Delwin Delwin:
Really interesting. I think it's important to try to understand the indoctrination of people like this who gravitate to the extremes of societal views.
I found this part to be insightful in that it seems pretty obvious that this is the way that things would happen but I never really sat down and considered it:
"With each layer of explanation, you're reducing the pool of potential candidates for who could become a terrorist. So it's like a funnel."
The notion that given a sample audience pool, a certain percentage will accept premise A, and of that a certain number will accept Premise B, until the "recruiter" is left with a pool of "candidates".
I think what is left out is that even with this pool of radical candidates very few would likely be willing to partake in the activities described in this case.
I think there is a further process whereby the person is forced to further question their belief system and accept concepts that are gradually more extreme in nature.
The idea that the ideology of a full fledged terrorists is x number of steps away from the radical, and that in the periods or times when one is in question of their identity, the willingness to accept something slightly more "extreme" increases because what they are doing right now seems to lack meaning.
He also spoke of how difficult it was to convince him that, that which he had already accepted, was not true. Now he may have accepted this, maybe not, it is irrelevant in my view of his current punishment, but the indoctrination towards one state of mind essentially needed to be effected in reverse to achieve the original state.(I'm not implying that this is what happened here.)
And so, for those who hold extremist views, the process whereby they had been lead to believe that which is untrue is the same process which needs to be used to move towards the truth.
Your last sentence isn't quite so simple though. Once a person has firmly accepted something as absolute truth, it's pretty hard to un-convince them, even when what they hold true is wrong and you show them solid evidence to prove it.
I can't remember the source of this quote but somebody once said, "When a person firmly believes that they are acting in the faithful service of their god, they can be capable of the most inhuman of acts".
Look at the hard right wing Christians and their problem with gay people. Look at the US states presenting and passing laws allowing business people to deny service to someone based solely on religious beliefs. Apparently all men are NOT created equal...again!
They say religion is the opiate of the masses. I say, for too many of them religion is a frontal lobotomy.
But that problem goes beyond religion. We see it in partisan political supporters, we see it in racists, we even see it among the masses concerning everyday ideas and matters of living like food(meat) and oil.
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