Psychopaths and the Need for Grandiose Ideology

On the heels of the arrest of the nutjob sending hoax bombs to Democrats, we now have outrage pouring out about how political ideology is fueling violence and terrorism. While we are in a period of terrible political unrest in our country with much hostility between people of varying viewpoints, it is wrongheaded to conflate psychopathics and their bizarre criminal behaviors as a representation of a larger group of people.

Grandiosity is one of the major traits of a psychopath. They like to think of themselves as someone bigger and more important than they are. Failures in life who do indeed view themselves as the losers, they attempt to erase that label from their own egotisitical minds by making something of themselves, making themselves a hero who is saving society (when they commit a what appears to be a politically motivated crime) or an antihero who is getting back at society for treating him poorly (a mass murderer offing the bullies at school or the serial killer picking off one offending person and another, mocking the failure of society to figure out it is him). A psychopath loves the idea that while society thinks of him as a wimpy Clark Kent, ha ha, he is really Superman!! You thought I was a weak loner? Bang! Bang! Bang! You thought I was unable to get a date! I got you now, ladies! Thought I couldn’t get anyone to listen to me? Let me send these scary hoaxes to important political people and just see how much media attention I get!

Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City Bombing was a mass murderer, not a terrorist. He did not represent any political group or cohesive ideology. He was a loser who wanted his day in the sun and he read a really cool fiction book that gave him the blueprint for carrying out a spectacular attack. Nidal Hasan of Fort Hood infamy wasn’t a Muslim terrorist. He was a loser who went postal on his workmates because he felt he had been passed over in his employment. That he wanted to pretend to be a hero for a cause has everything to do with him being a psychopath and a mass murderer, not that he was a true soldier for any political faction that sent him on a mission. This mail bomb hoax perpetrator and the perpetrator of the recent ricin hoax mailings were on different sides of the political divide but neither really represented any faction...they are just psychopaths being “heroes” for a cause they picked. Either one could easily have decided to “represent” the other side. Psychopaths do not have true political aims; they use politics or religion or whatever ideology as an excuse to make themselves important.

Now, it is true that real terrorist organizations use psychopaths to carry out their slaughters because they can GIVE them that hero status, something the psychopath craves. But, what makes it a terrorist attack is not the individual but the organization behind him who is using defective humans to do its will. A true terrorist attack is the result of planning and coordination by a specific group to change the political climate, whether a domestic group or a foreign group. They will continue to commit terrorists acts in an attempt to beat down their political opponent which may be their government, someone else’s government or an aspect of a culture or religion or laws they disagree with. ISIS is a terrorist organization and if they send out a person or person to murder people, they are committing a terrorist attack. Lashkar e Taiba carried out the 2008 horrific terrorist attack in Mumbai, India and they have committed many other attacks and will continue to do so as they strive to get Kashmir out from under Indian control. If a domestic organization in the US (like the KKK or Antifa or an antiabortion group or a proabortion group, etc) threatens or carries out a brutal attack on a specific group of people, than this is a true example of domestic terrorism.

Don’t confuse lone psychopaths committing mass murders with lone terrorists carrying out a terrorist attack on behalf of a terrorist group. These are two different kinds of crime and need to be handled differently, both in prevention and investigation. Just because both are terrifying and terrorizing crimes this  doesn’t mean they are the same kind of crime. Using the term “terrorist” haphazardly is not beneficial to understanding the issues. Oftentimes, the use of the terms “terrorist” and “terrorist attack” is an attempt to inspire outrage against the perpetrator’s motive, whatever people decide it must be, in order to push political agenda.

Sometimes the label we give an offender says more about us than it does about him.

Criminal Profiler