Why was he so "popular"? I think it was his smile.
Bin Laden always smiled. This was his unique selling point. Most photos of extremists show either a hateful scowl, emotionless resolve, or at best a forced, unfriendly smile.
Bin Laden smiled, but it wasn't an evil smile. It looked perfectly genuine. He wasn't smiling because he'd just killed lots of enemies. He was just calm and content with being a killer. At peace. His videos illustrate this most dramatically. He was collected, quiet, almost shy. I've seen more passionate performances by college chemistry lecturers.
That was surely his appeal. No-one joins a movement like Al Qaeda unless they're angry, but Bin Laden seemed to be living proof that you didn't have to stay angry to stay a member. Al Qaeda was the way out of that. Al Qaeda could bring you inner peace. Whether Bin Laden was really like that, I have no idea. He might have been tormented by inner doubts, and just good at acting for the cameras. The point is, it doesn't matter. The images were out there, and that was the message.
His calm was also the reason why he was hated and feared more than the other members of his organization, including the ones who had a more direct role in 9/11. Osama was the one man to whom the image of the ranting, delusional extremist couldn't apply. Someone who planned terrorist attacks out of insane rage: that would be bad enough, but at least it would be understandable. That someone could do it with an agreeable smile on their face, was something else.
Given which, it's no surprise that the U.S. reported that Osama died a coward, hiding behind his wife. Nothing could have shattered the Osama image better than that. He wasn't beyond human emotion after all, he was scared just like anyone else. Again, whether or not that actually happened, is not the point. It's the message that went out, and I suspect that's the message that will stick.
10 comments:
I am no psychiatrist, but to me they can put his image next to the definition of a psychopath.
Total lack of empathy, a defect normative system and outwards an affable personality. And a religious fanatic to boot which in itself is already a sign of insanity.
To me the smile looks like a smile of guy with a fucked up attachment system. It's not a smile of inner peace and happiness.
I think there are way too many confounding variables to be able to make a solid profile of Osama, i.e. I wouldn't jump to conclusions him being a psychopath or a guy who was neglected by his parents.
However, I like where Neuroskeptic is going with this. In my opinion, this callous yet very calm look is a monosygotic twin of Hannibal Lector. "Silence of the lambs" with oriental touch.
What made Osama become this image, will remain unknown (many official documents destroyed, real events turned into biased folk stories). One could speculate that he was a psychopath, the other would ponder whether he was a victim of a war crime that lead him become tormented and the only hope in face of a vengeance. One way or another, his smile served his mission, because you do not win public by rage, but by love and promissing (no matter how twisted) future...
Yeah I've no idea why he turned out this way. From what I know of his biography I don't think he was subject to any trauma, at least not until he arrived in Afghanistan in the 80s to fight the Soviets, but he went there of his own free will.
I guess he was a bit like the socialists who went to Spain to fight in the Civil War. Young and idealistic.
But whereas the socialists lost in Spain, and became disillusioned (with the USSR in particular, which claimed to be on their side, but was happy to kill other socialists if they didn't obey their orders), Bin Laden never had that kind of sobering experience because they beat the Soviets. So it must have been easy for them to say - who's next? And the answer was the USA.
They helped America during the Cold War, recruited by the CIA. He then went on to build schools, orphanages, roads, infrastructure in places like Sudan decades ago. 9/11 - helped America again. Al Qaeda weren't the only ones engaging in militia warfare. Where were the WMDs? He died 5? years ago from ill health. If you want to see a psychopath we should look at ourselves and our own backyard. WE let them feed us lies. Bravo to Obama for speaking the truth.. he's dead.
At least in the picture provided in this blogpost, i can't see any crow's-feet, suggesting that it's a fake smile. I took a look at his videos but the resolution isn't good enough for judging how "real" his smile is.
Another aspect of his success might simply be that he probably was kind of intelligent.
I think the eyes on Neuroskeptic's brain show more lovin' kindness!
Psychopath?
I would have thought that killing your enemies is a perfectly natural human capability. Killing your neighbours or random people for weird or no reasons make you a psychopath.
OBL was executing a reasonably well thought out purposeful plan that had the benefit of God's approval or so he believed. Even though we are obsessed with the terrorist activities, killing westerners was was only an incidental part of the overall plan to establish a trans-Arab Islamic nation. If the West had left the Middle East the attacks would not have been required.
He might have been slightly pissed that despite a number of spectacularly successful attacks on the West he was no closer to the main goal, but then, this was a long term Holy goal.
He expected to killed or was happy to go if it happened so one common human quandry was solved for him. Moreover, as a Muslim, he expected to go to Heaven when it was over.
He was tall, smart, and very good looking. He grew up in a wealthy powerful family. He was respected in his own society.
If he treated his own people like he treated the West he might be a psychopath but he had in fact selflessly devoted his life to improving the welfare of Arabs (as he imagined it.)
Jim: But he did treat Muslims like he treated the West. Well, I don't know if he personally did, but Al Qaeda had no compunction about killing and/or torturing Muslims, in Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
Of course they would say that these guys weren't true Muslims because they were collaborating with the West. And the women and children were unavoidable collatoral damage.
That doesn't necessarily make him a psychopath but I think it puts him well beyond the level of someone who fights purely to protect the immediate interests of his own people.
Rather it puts him of the level of someone who thinks he knows the true ultimate interests of his own people and if any of them disagrees or gets in the way, they're part of the problem. That kind of ideological hard-headedness is rare. Most people would be willing to kill foreigners who were clearly the enemy, in a war situation. But most of them would never kill their own civilians, purely because of the idea that it might be all for the best in the long term...
I guess I always thought that smile was his heroin talking.
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