Part of the background noise of the current conflict between Jihadi extremism and Western Civilization is the unspeakable sadism of the Jihadis. Our MSM does their best to blur the distinction between the "tortures" committed by a group of Sadistic American guards at abu Graib prison and the systematic and far worse torture perpetrated on a regular basis by the Jihadis. I suspect there are several reasons for this blurring, some of them conscious and some unconscious. The result of such blurring is that the true depth of depravity of our enemies is denied and the psycho-sexual dimensions of the war are minimized.
Jihadi sadism is overt and noted in the typical MSM phrases, "signs of torture" or "safe houses with torture chambers", that appear when describing successful Allied operations against the various groups waging Jihad against us. These phrases do not do justice to the actual practices of our enemies. Recently an al Qaeda torture manual appeared on the internet and was underwhelmingly reported on by the major media centers. For those with a strong constitution, the instructional drawings offering the proper technique for drilling hands and severing limbs, eye removal, suspension and application of blow torches, suspending and whipping or the inventive use of an iron, among other atrocities, are barely adequate to convey the sadism of the Jihadi. Such sadistic practices can not be performed by a person whose psychological make-up falls within the very large range of what we might consider "normal"; the absence of MSM outrage at such atrocities has been and remains remarkable.
Sadism is a troubling trait that most people have to negotiate as part of their childhood development. Children can rather easily inflict pain and often gain some pleasure out of the pain of others. This is no less troubling for being near universal. Sadism derives from our most primitive oral and anal states in relationship to our primary care takers. When children are disciplined and frustrated in early life, fury is often part of the normal response to such limit setting. Fantasies of revenge and inflicting pain on the oppressive authority figures are ubiquitous. Yet such fantasies are tempered by our complete dependency on our "tormentor" and our love for our parents, who, after all, are doing their best to civilize an inherently wild animal. When a culture exacerbates the sadistic tendencies (by sanctioning child abuse, which can include Oedipal and post-Oedipal age circumcision in males and female genital mutilation in girls) and then, during their recrudescence during adolescence, offers cultural and religious sanction to such sadistic impulses, while concureently preventing the establishment of more textured and mature realtionships with the opposite sex, a larger than usual cohort of individuals who are empathy-impaired is created who are fodder for involvement in activities that liberate the worst sadistic impulses.
It is worth noting that Jihadi sadism is expressed in many other ways, some equally heinous, though not quite as directly sadistic. It requires a fair amount of sadism to kidnap a person and not offer even a shred of evidence for the victim's condition. Hezbollah, along with their overt violations of international law and the Geneva Conventions, kidnapped Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser across a recognized international boundary one year ago, sparking the Lebanon War last summer. They have not allowed any news of the pair to escape to the families of these two men. Along with being evil, this is sadism, inflicting pain gratuitously and taking pleasure in the pain of others. Hamas has behaved in a very similar vein with Gilad Shalit, finally letting some news escape when it suited their political agenda. Of note, Jihadis in Iraq have made it a practice to kidnap several unfortunate American servicemen and boast of the pain they inflict by not allowing their loved ones to know their fate. Keith Maupin has still not been found. Furthermore, the desecration of infidel, especially the upwardly displaced castration [HT: Bookworm] so popular among Jihadis, is a well described and ongoing element of Jihadi sadism; its sadistic nature is revealed by its use to afford vicarious thrills to the Jihadi followers and an extra measure of pain for the familes of the victims.
Jihadi cruelty is not restricted to adults or enemy soldiers. Michael Yon recently wrote of how al Qaeda in Iraq baked an 11 year old boy and served him to his family in order to encourage them to do their bidding. Hamas, having taken over the Gaza strip, murdered Fatah members in front of their wives and children for maximum pain to the families. Islamists in southern Thailand have beheaded innocent school girls and murdered teachers in front of their classrooms. And, lest we forget, Beslan was in a class of its own.
Yet as evil as the sadism of the Jihadis is the relative silence of the MSM. While they have a well rationalized doctrine against publicizing news that could inflame the sensibilities of their readers and viewers (except when it comes to inflaming sensibilities against the American government and military), they actively harm our war effort by minimizing the depravity of the Jihadis.
Part of this certainly stems from the damaged cognition that occurs when one subscribes to post-modernism and multi-culturalism and their attendant moral equivalence, part stems from an inability to name anything as depraved or perverse for fear of offending part of their constituency. After all, if you describe Jihadi torture as evil, you are treading dangerously close to making a moral judgement about sadism, which would offend all the proponents of polymorphous perversity in the Narcissistic dream states of the West.
In addition, by highlighting the Jihadi's cruelty and sadism, the MSM would make it very difficult for them to obfuscate the causal connections between their reporting and the facilitation of the evil their bias helps support.
Both left and right in this country have agreed that the most important aspect of the war against Islamic extremism is the information component; ie, the ideology of radical Islam must be discredited and humiliated. Just as the focus on abu Graib was rationalized by the MSM as necessary to elicit a response from the military (though, in fact, the military was already investigating abu Graib well before the MSM discovered there were pictures which allowed the MSM to exhibit violence and humiliation porn at the same time they decried it, a win-win as far as they were concerned) publicizing the sadistic core of Jihad would shame those who have been tacitly and passively supportive of its ends if not its means. The Moderate Muslim, thought to be a mythical construct at this point by a growing number of people, would then receive less cover; the magnifying lens of the MSM, detailing the evil in a more visceral way, would sharpen the stakes in the ideological battle.
Unfortunately most of our MSM continue to see the war as not concerning them. They remain disinterested observers who maintain a willful blindness to the routine depravity of our enemies and an exquisite sensitivity to the most minimal deviations from perfection of those who protect them and their way of life.
When one facilitates the enactment of sadistic fantasies by another, it is usually the case that one is enabling unconscious fantasies of one's own. This fits with my thesis, discussed in Leveraging Suppressed Aggression, that part of our struggle is with those among us who unconsciously need to express their own aggression and sadism through disavowed projections and projective identifications.
The MSM and politicians who are so eager to surrender Iraq to the tender ministrations of the Jihadi Sadists are guaranteeing that Jihadi Sadism will grow and prosper.
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