Monday, November 16, 2009

Pathology and Ideology: Major Nidal Malik Hasan and the Case of Leon Czolgosz

The History News Network has a post about the parallels between Nidal Hasan and Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist assassin of President William McKinley. See Pathology and Ideology: Major Nidal Malik Hasan and the Case of Leon Czolgosz.

A brief quote:

Whether Czolgosz was a member of an anarchist cell dedicated to assassination and terrorism is not in dispute. He was not. However, he was a self-identified anarchist who held a personal identification with the goals of anarchist ideology and a willingness to act based on those ideological assumptions. So was Czolgosz a terrorist? Most historians today agree that he was.

This brings me to Hasan. The intelligence community, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, informs the public there is no evidence that Hasan was assisted in his act nor that he was operating as part of a larger terrorist plot. However, in similarity to Czolgosz, he exhibited an affinity—if no direct affiliation—with a radical ideology that supports the murder of its opponents. Like Czolgosz, he committed a terrorist act promoted by pathology and ideology.



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