A terrorist’s psychic denial shaped the specific method of his violence

Evidence

Knutson (1981) also analyzed a single case in depth, that of Zvonko Busic, the Croatian hijacker of an American airliner to Paris in 1975, who in addition had placed a bomb in Grand Central Station that killed one policeman and injured three others. Busic had chosen hijacking precisely because he considered it “humane” violence, involving as it did the use of fake bombs. His attitude toward violence was conflicted; he looked forward not to frightening his hostages but to their relief, acceptance, and forgiveness when he exposed the reality that there were no explosive devices. He was unable to accept his own anger, felt remorse when he did have to face it, and thus denied it in order to preserve personality integration. Being unable to recognize or accept his own violent impulses, he separated the violent act from his own control and responsibility. Therefore, the bomb that Busic left at Grand Central was accompanied by instructions on how to dismantle it; Busic did not consciously mean to cause deaths. Someone else had to be blamed: in this case the police. A trace of sadism is also revealed in Busic’s direction of violence toward “safe” targets—airline passengers—who were unable to respond in kind. Knutson’s analysis leads us to suspect that psychological motives may influence the particular form that terrorism takes (for example, seizure of hostages as opposed to assassination) as much as the decision to become a terrorist. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4095

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Janis-like motif of self-deception and splitting — parallels moral-disengagement theory and the denial patterns in Milgrom’s reputation-material about separating act from responsibility.
• SEED: A profile piece on how ‘humane’ violence rationalizations (‘just scare them’, ‘nobody gets hurt’) let people commit atrocities — Busic is a concrete case study.