IS and the Attraction of Evil - Baffled by Brutality?

It is now clear that the horrific Germanwings air crash was caused by the mentally ill co-pilot, not by terrorists, as some had at first suspected. In no sense can this be considered a "relief", but, given the recent catalogue of horrors perpetrated by Islamic State (ISIS) and its friends, it is something approaching a welcome change. I sometimes wonder if  ISIS are watching our response to their vile atrocities - it would be surprising if they weren't. If so, what are their strategic goals? Before trying to answer that question, it's worth reminding ourselves of the ugly nature of ISIS. They have:
1. Massacred Iraqi prisoners, Yazidis, Shia Muslims and Christians.
2. Women from minorities they hate have been enslaved and sexually abused.
3. They have introduced slavery into their areas of control.
4. Homosexuals are executed by being thrown from high buildings.
5. British and American hostages (and many others) have been beheaded - on film.
6. A Jordanian pilot was burned to death by ISIS after crashing in ISIS-controlled territory.
7. Their sympathisers, which include the murderous Boko Haram in Nigeria, have attacked targets as far apart as a synagogue in Belgium and a museum in Tunisia.
I could go on, but it would be more of the same. Listing these crimes is very bland, so it's worth remembering the terror and the horror experienced by the victims of ISIS. Last October, the Guardian ran a story about refugees who had fled ISIS to the comparative safety of Kobani, near the Turkish border. This was the story of just one such refugee:
"Kader fled 10 days ago, leaving his village, which lies 16km from Kobani centre, in the small hours of the morning. He and his wife took their five-year-old, their toddler and what little else they could carry.
His uncle planned to join them but at the last minute changed his mind, unable to leave a village that had been his home for more than eight decades. The militants beheaded him, refugees arriving later told Kader.
"He was 85 – he could not even lift a weapon," said the young father, baffled by the brutality. Even more haunting were stories from his wife's village, where the fleeing family found the bodies of her sister and an eight-year-old niece lying in pools of blood."
I am sure that the vast majority of people, learning of these appalling events and also baffled by the brutality, will have asked themselves the inevitable question: "How can anyone do such things?". Now, we ask this question a lot, usually after learning of the senseless murder of an innocent individual. This is a key question here, and I would like to attempt an answer, despite not being a criminologist. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said:
"Men can only commit great acts of evil when they believe they are doing good".
I do not believe this applies to every member of ISIS, but it certainly appears to apply to similar ideological criminals of the past. For instance, Einsatzgruppen commanders, who led heinous atrocities against Jews and others in Poland, the Baltic States and German occupied Russia during WW2, saw themselves as waging a racial war for the glory of greater Germany. Even when brought to trial and sentenced to death, they expressed no remorse - because they believed they had done the right thing. The conduct of Stalin's torturers and jailers can also be explained to some degree in this way; they believed they were building a socialist state by eliminating or enslaving ideological deviants. Being convinced of the rectitude of your cause, sadly, seems to be able to override your deepest moral reservations - assuming, of course,that you had such reservations in the first place.
But does it end there? I don't think so. Some people like to blame religion - in this case Islam - for the problem with ISIS, and for war in general. This is a facile point, and invalid. It fails to allow for the fact that religious issues frequently combine, or run concurrently, with political issues. It also fails to recognise that violence and war exist in the human condition anyway, and exists where there is no religious dimension.
Another, admittedly broad, explanation for mass murder, is one that is suggested by the execution videos that ISIS make ( which Hitler's and Stalin's thugs never made). Anyone watching the hideous "Jihadi John" beheadings will have been struck by one thing:  Mohammed Emwazi, (Jihadi John) was enjoying what he did. From other ISIS videos I have seen, this is the attitude of most ISIS members. To be fair, many become sickened by such actions. ISIS executes such "deviants" if they speak out, or get caught trying to escape. But it seems an inescapable fact that committing atrocities is as readily acceptable to ISIS as it was to Hitler or Stalin. When your humanitarian compass is replaced by an ideology that legitimises evil acts, there is no crime you are unable to commit, especially if you believe you are doing the will of Allah.
Yet this is nothing new. We all remember the inter-ethnic strife that erupted after the break-up of the state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. What is forgotten is the fact that atrocities in the Balkans and Middle East were happening before WW1. At that time, the Edwardian Tory satirist, "Saki" (H.H.Munro), wrote:
“In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another, no one seems to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours now and then.”
The "I was only obeying orders" excuse should not be allowed for ISIS volunteers, any more than it should for the Nazis and Stalin's merry men. The known facts, together with reports of ISIS crimes against humanity preclude such a cop-out.
This leads to my final point. We all remember the fuss over the flight to Syria via Turkey by three East End schoolgirls.These girls, like many others, are pitied by many as victims of "grooming" by Jihadi militants. But do they deserve to be regarded as "victims"? And at what age do they lose their victimhood? The fact is, those three girls, and others, were fully aware of the nature of the ISIS state and the atrocities committed - so are they innocent dupes, or simply attracted by evil? No-one talks about this much, but it is certainly true that some individuals - many highly intelligent - seem to feel a fascination for evildoers.The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, for example, regularly received what can only be described as fan letters, mostly from women. Neo-Nazis, religious cults such as the Moonies, outlaw cults such as the Hell's Angels, and now ISIS, all attract admirers who blithely ignore the darker side of these organisations.
Finally, let's return to the question I raised first of all - what is the strategy of ISIS that drives their foul brutality? Well, as Lenin reportedly said, the object of terror is to terrify. This worked for ISIS with their initial military successes, when whole Iraqi Army units fled before them, and ISIS indulged their blood lust, confident their enemies would continue to be routed and run. A similar situation happened after the October Revolution when the Bolshevik Army invaded Poland in 1920. The Bolshevik advance was initially successful, like that of ISIS. Again like ISIS, the Bolshevik onslaught brought comparable atrocities against Polish prisoners. However, these atrocities did not daunt the Poles, who fought back all the harder, and were victorious. I have no doubt that ISIS atrocities will produce a similar effect. In the case of the Kurds, this has already happened. Perhaps, one day in the future, we will be debating how we should treat returning, defeated, ISIS volunteers.