Terrorists use sacred, utilitarian, and personal grievance justifications to disengage morally.
Evidence
A variety of justifications are moral disengagers for involvement in terroristic activities. In sacred justifications, terrorists view themselves as doing God’s bidding, willing to kill others and martyr themselves for rewards in the afterlife. Secular justifications rely heavily on consequentialism. Secularly oriented terrorists aim to dislodge oppressive social practices and topple tyrannical regimes, thereby improving peoples’ lives. Terrorists who espouse utilitarian justifications believe that the harm their terroristic acts cause is minor compared with the widespread social benefits they will usher in for the aggrieved. With idiosyncratic justifications as a basis for terrorism, personal grievances are the moral disinhibitors for vengeful, costly actions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2136
A variety of justifications are moral disengagers for involvement in terroristic activities. In sacred justifications, terrorists view themselves as doing God’s bidding, willing to kill others and martyr themselves for rewards in the afterlife. Secular justifications rely heavily on consequentialism. Secularly oriented terrorists aim to dislodge oppressive social practices and topple tyrannical regimes, thereby improving peoples’ lives. Terrorists who espouse utilitarian justifications believe that the harm their terroristic acts cause is minor compared with the widespread social benefits they will usher in for the aggrieved. With idiosyncratic justifications as a basis for terrorism, personal grievances are the moral disinhibitors for vengeful, costly actions. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2136
Categorization
- DEFINE: A three-part taxonomy of terrorist moral justifications — sacred, secular-utilitarian, idiosyncratic — that structures the rest of the reasoning.
- XREF: This taxonomy provides the comparative scaffold for judging Cooper’s social-conservatism and authoritarianism claims — which justification type do mass-policy supporters actually deploy?
- corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2136