Bombistas Suicidas: Guerreiros da Classe Média

«We tend to imagine suicide bombers as hardened, bloodthirsty killers. But most people aren’t nearly as ready to commit violence as you think. It’s actually the quiet, docile members of the middle class who make the best human explosive devices. And that’s what makes this weapon of mass murder so hard to stop.

Danger close: Suicide bombers succeed precisely because we rarely see them coming.There’s a simple reason that since the 1980s the world has witnessed thousands of suicide bombings: It’s the most efficient form of violence at close range. The spread of this seemingly unstoppable technique has made political violence much more potent by enlisting an unlikely cadre of perpetrators—the middle class.

The fact that suicide bombers are usually mild-mannered members of the middle class seems counterintuitive. After all, the middle class tend to be well-educated, well-behaved, good family members—nothing like the bloodthirsty tough guys or criminals we imagine when we think of terrorists. They bear little resemblance to English football hooligans or rabble-rousers. No other form of violence has a higher proportion of females than suicide bombers, even though females are usually more conformist than males.

Why is this so? I suggest it is because suicide bombing is the easiest form of violence for conventional middle-class people to carry out, if they decide to commit violence at all.

To grasp the point, we need to first dismiss the myth that it is easy for someone to act violently. If someone has a sufficiently strong grievance, the thinking goes, all the person needs to do is get hold of a weapon and he or she will start killing people. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sociologists in World War II found that only 15 to 25 percent of frontline soldiers were actually firing their guns. Later training methods have raised the firing rate somewhat, but the shooting is almost always very inaccurate. Firing a gun on a range is quite different from shooting a person. My own research on milder forms of violence, with fists and feet and clubs, shows that most angry confrontations end in a standoff, where participants find an excuse to back down.

A second common myth is that violent people are violent, in part, because they grow up in a milieu that lacks social controls through family and school, and are exposed to groups which encourage a code of violence, whether for crime or self-respect. Again this assumes that when it gets to the sticking point, it is easy to be violent. But close studies of gang confrontations and holdups show that criminals are no more comfortable with violence than soldiers or cops; in fact, they are even worse at it. Statistically, the average gang member is rarely violent; gangsters spend most of their time talking tough. When they do pull the trigger, it is usually wildly, and if someone is hit, it is often an innocent bystander, not the target of their rage.

The pattern of evidence is clear: Humans are not good at face-to-face violence. We are good at expressing emotions and we can work up an extensive litany of our grievances, but it does not follow that the final step into violence is at all easy to take. The image of the human being on a hair trigger, awaiting only a motive to be violent, runs contrary to what we know about the microsociology of face-to-face interaction. Individuals get caught up in a common mood and rhythm; whether they like each other or not, they tend to conform to the conventions of the situation. It is more difficult to disagree with someone in conversation than to agree with someone. Cheering in crowds lasts longer than booing. This propensity to get along is probably hard-wired into our nervous and emotional systems—which explains why violent conflict is so difficult when the other person is standing in front of you.

For violence to be successful, it must find a pathway around these barriers. Three are most common. The first, and easiest, is to carry out violence from a distance, such as dropping bombs from planes or firing artillery over the horizon. This avoids the face of the enemy entirely (…) » continua aqui 

Randall Collins in Foreign Policy (Janeiro 2008)