The more freedom we have, the more painful our loser status becomes.
By the time he came up with the idea of bombing a Taylor Swift concert, Beran Aliji’s young life had completely broken down. In July, amid a self-described mental crisis, the 19-year-old Austrian abruptly quit his job as a factory apprentice and isolated himself in his apartment, obsessing, as he later told police, about his own death.
With no money or prospects, and in lieu of close friendships, he began to immerse himself in a virtual world of violent videos and secret chatrooms devoted to the Islamic State…
Like the Austrian suspect, the man accused of ramming a vehicle through crowds of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street appears to have self-radicalized after a string of personal crises, including divorces, a job loss and financial insolvency…
“These are bitter, angry people,” said Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert and 30-year veteran of the CIA. “Here’s a classic case of someone who converted to Islam, had two failed marriages, serious financial problems, and he finds now a cause to justify his life and his rage,” he said, referring to Jabbar, who, in a videotaped message, contemplated killing his family before opting to carry out an Islamic State-style terrorist attack….
Intelligence officials are expressing alarm over rising cases of self-radicalization among teenagers who, like Aliji, are avid consumers of Islamic State videos and sometimes see terrorists as heroes and role models…
Aliji took multiple selfies with his phone camera, posing with knives and a machete he purchased online. He later told police that he took the photos because he “wanted to be cool and brag about it.”