Terrorist role models retain prestige even after their campaigns fail completely

Evidence

Another way the group facilitates terrorism is by creating an appropriate context for social learning. Bandura (1973) has argued that aggressive patterns of behavior are learned from observation or experience, rather than emerging from instinctual drives or frustration. His theory underscores the argument that participation in violent acts desensitizes the individual to guilt. Not only do individuals learn from their experiences in the organization, but they also are exposed to powerful external role models, whom they are encouraged to imitate. The narrow band of communication from the outside world, filtered through the perceptions of leaders, emphasizes the dramatic exploits of other terrorist groups. Terrorism, a symbolic action, is highly memorable; for this reason, as well as the ease with which it can be implemented, terrorism is almost ideally imitable (Bandura, 1973, p. 213; Midlarsky, Crenshaw, & Fumihiko, 1980). The terrorist subculture forms an environment in which violence is valued, and models such as the Tupamaros of Uruguay may be endowed with great prestige. The power of such models is not diluted by their objective failures. The 1960s revolutionary campaign of the Tupamaros, for example, culminated in a military dictatorship. The mass media, especially television, are often thought to be critical to the communication of information about models, but their actual influence remains undocumented. If members of terrorist groups receive most of their information from other sources in the group or from an underground press, the popular news media would not be a primary determinant of the social contagion of terrorism. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4159

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to social-learning theory and the literature on modeling failing exemplars; also resonates with how revolutionary icons persist despite defeat.
• SEED: Angle: why failing terror campaigns (Tupamaros, various ideological movements) still attract imitators, and what this implies about media-contagion assumptions.