Terrorists magnify harm while ordinary wrongdoers deny it

Evidence

The perpetrators of most inhumanities go to extraordinary lengths to deny that they cause harm and suffering. There is no need for self-censure or to change one’s ways if one is doing no harm. Harm management takes an entirely different form in terrorism. As we have seen, terrorists usually magnify the harm they cause. The purpose of terrorist violence is to cause wide-scale destruction to compel access to an international forum to air the groups’ grievances, justify the desperateness of the extreme means, and stress the need to redress the inhumane and humiliating maltreatment of those victimized by oppressive social systems. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2169

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradigm-reversing observation: the classic moral-disengagement template of minimizing harm is inverted in terrorism, where destruction is amplified as the whole point — forcing one to re-examine what disengagement means when the harm is the stated product.