Terrorist groups and religious cults both regulate members’ sexuality to enforce control.

Evidence

A similarity between terrorist organizations and religious cults underscores the group’s dominance over individual members and the collective drive toward totalistic control. Both types of groups strictly regulate the sexual relations of their members. In some groups sexual contact with outsiders is banned. In others, such as the Weather Underground, monogamy is discouraged. Some exceedingly puritanical groups, such as the People’s Will, encourage celibacy and asexual comradeship. It is impossible to know the meaning of these restrictions, beyond their implication of total control by the group. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4140 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

While “going Muslim” operates as an explanation for violence, in both cases, a root cause is identified as an additional explanation. In Lindh’s case, it is implicitly suggested that his liberal education is to blame for his involvement with terrorism. It was too open, too tolerant, too lax; it was a liberal education gone very wrong. In the case of Landon, it was symbolic castration that inspired him to look for an ideology that would legitimize his retaliation against female sexual rejection. Both the news and TV drama narratives contain a critique of liberal values and an enduring focus on sexuality. Sexual explanations, in other words, stand in for political explanations. The vast realm of political violence, whose complexity is already diminished through the use of the term terrorism, is now further depoliticized and portrayed as a mere cover for sexual problems. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1043 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Theweleit’s book is a study of letters written home by young men serving in the German Freikorps after World War I. The Freikorps was an elite military unit, many of whose members subsequently became leading supporters of the Nazi party. Theweleit is concerned to show, through a close “Freudian” reading of these texts, how the emotional roots of racism and fascism can be traced to the way male psychology is organized by and into a military machine. He takes a leaf out of Reich’s Mass Psychology of Fascism to argue that rituals of militarism wrap the body up in a physical and emotional straightjacket and provide an institutionalized defense against disturbing sexual desires, by giving them a perverse sadistic organization. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1371 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Gay rights were co-opted to legitimize the war on terror; Terrorist groups and cults both strictly regulate members’ sexual relations — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4140; Authoritarians regulate sexuality and even thought through religious sin — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 157 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Terrorist groups and cults both strictly regulate members’ sexual relations #corroborates (1.00) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4140
• Sexual explanations substitute for political explanations of terrorism. #complicates (0.75) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 1043
• Militarist ritual organizes male psychology into a defense against disturbing sexual desires. #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1371