As we struggle to comprehend the growing evil of the terrorist group ISIS, we need to look no further than our own neighborhood bullies to understand key weaknesses within ISIS’s tactics in order to thwart them.
Terrorists aren’t the only villains who use violent acts to create fear in part by targeting innocent, non-combatants. Bullies do so every school day in America, causing more than 160,000 children to stay home and motivate others to take their life. Bullies also wed power to fear and target innocent classmates, except bullies do so to gain social status as terrorists strive to usurp political power.Both ISIS and schoolyard bullies endeavor to dominate a target’s psyche through addling fear, foreboding powerlessness, and threat of future cruelty. Both groups sneer at others with disdain and contempt, believing they are a kind of master race, destined to rule and superior to their targets who “deserve” to be treated with unspeakable cruelty.
Most of us have no opportunity to thwart terrorism. We rely upon our courageous men and women in uniform for that. But we can muster a more common courage to thwart terror from bullying in our schools
“Terrorism,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks, “is not an act of war but of taunting,” and taunting is among a bully’s sharpest knives.
A taunt is a battle cry intended to demoralize another and make a target abandon self-defense, such as the late Alex Moore of Jemison, Ala., who in May, 2010 took her life in part due to taunts from classmates who called her “fat bitch,” among other slurs for more than two years.
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