Terrorists must justify violence primarily to themselves, not just to win public support

Evidence

Whether it is the “anarchic” type embracing revolutionary rhetoric, or the “nationalistic” type seeking redress of long-standing grievances and an independent state; whether it is left wing or right wing; and whatever the sociopolitical context might be, secular terrorists face the same moral predicaments. They have to justify the morality of their violent means to win public support for their cause. But even more important, they have to justify it to themselves so that they can remove the restraint of moral self-sanction to inflict death and suffering without being haunted by guilt. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2209

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEEPTHINKING: The self-justification-to-remove-guilt point is the core of Bandura’s moral disengagement thesis applied to terrorism — the mechanism by which conscience is silenced — and reframes the common assumption that terrorists’ rationales are mere public relations.

Related

• Perpetrators must justify violence to themselves to lift self-sanction restraints (similarity 0.91)
• Terrorists morally justify violence by framing themselves as selfless freedom fighters (similarity 0.85)
• Terrorists claim responsibility where conventional wrongdoers deny it (similarity 0.85)
• Perpetrators of political violence vindicate their acts through heroic self-conception rather than denial (similarity 0.84)
• Terrorists use sacred, utilitarian, and personal grievance justifications to disengage morally. (similarity 0.84)
• Terrorists engage morality to justify their mission while disengaging it for lethal acts (similarity 0.84)
• States must morally justify war to mobilize public support and troops (similarity 0.84)
• Terrorists claim responsibility and rejoice in harm instead of denying it. (similarity 0.83)
• Secular terrorists justify violence by results while sacred terrorists justify it by divine obedience (similarity 0.83)
• Terror groups must calibrate violence to retain sympathizer support (similarity 0.82)
• Terrorists magnify harm while ordinary wrongdoers deny it (similarity 0.82)
• Terrorists justify massacring civilians through moral justifications and euphemistic labels. (similarity 0.82)
• Counterterrorist states must apply moral disengagement just as terrorists do (similarity 0.81)
• Religious terrorism does not differ in method from secular terrorism (similarity 0.81)
• Indiscriminate terrorism requires trained moral disengagement that targeted violence does not (similarity 0.81)