They Want To Replace Us All

Jews will not replace us..

This was the chant white supremacists used during a rally in Charlottesville back in August. The right-wing nationalists used racist slurs for Jewish people and for African Americans as well. Commenting on the death of a leftist protestor, Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told a reporter that he was glad that them people got hit, and Im glad that girl died.

The terror any Jew must have felt when they saw videos of these rallies is the same terror Egyptians feel nowadays. Egyptians are still in state of shock after a terrorist attack targeted a mosque in northern Sinai, killing 311 innocent souls, among them 27 children, and wounding 128 others. A bomb ripped through Al-Rawdah mosque as Friday prayers were about to start, and when the worshipers tried to escape they were shot by 20-30 militants who stationed themselves at the mosques main doors. The magnitude of the massacre and every detail of it are horrible to digest.

The moment I heard about the attack, one question kept running through my mind How do those people commit such crimes and then sleep peacefully at night?. I remembered the interview with Christopher Cantwell , a speaker at the Unite the Right rally which took place in Charlottesville, calling leftist protesters animals and expected that more people are going to die since it is part of the reason they want ethno state.

The self-righteousness of Cantwell was similar to that of the terrorist who was involved in October's Wahat shootout in Egypt which left of 16 policemen dead and 13 wounded. The Libyan terrorist , Abdel Rahim Mohamed Abdullah Al-Mismary, adopted the Salafi Jihad ideology, participated in many raids on fellow Libyans after he joined the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna. When the veteran anchor Emad Adeeb asked him how did his conscious feel after killing people in Libya in the name of God, he was very calm and confident when he replied that it was Halal meaning permissible to kill them.

Althought this abomination happened in the name of God, it should not be connected to a certain religion, or nationality, but to a pattern of thinking. The Libyan terrorist wants to replace all people with those adopting his view of religion, and the American supremacist wants to replace Jews, African Americans and any other non-white ethnicity. Both believe they have the right to use violence to defend their beliefs.

Cantwell and Al-Mismary share what we group analysts call the "paranoid-schizoid" mentality. This mode of thinking is characterized by extreme splits (they are bad, we are good), explained Dr Mohamed Taha, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and a Group Therapist in Minia University Hospital in Egypt.

Dr Taha added: Both idealize their own beliefs and devalue these of others, they project their own badness onto others (who are always blamed and hated), and consequently scapegoating innocent people. Such personalities have inflated pride and craving for confirmation of their own dignity, they suffer from paranoia, envy, and the tendency to aggression, whether verbal or physical. This is a pathological and very dangerous way of perceiving reality and relating to self and others.

However, what is even more dangerous and alarming is that terrorists or violent supremacists enjoy a peaceful conscious, they believe they are doing the right thing for the society. There are two explanation for this behavior according to Dr Taha who co-chairs the Integrative Group Therapy Section in the Egyptian Association for Group Therapies and Processes (EAGT): First, a very important phenomenon in the psychology of groups; that is the creation of a group mind which swallows the group members' judgment. Second, group members give up their superego (conscience) to the group leader, letting him set their moral standards. In this way, terrorists do not feel guilty killing people, as their judgment is impaired on one side, and their moral standards are distorted on the other side. Adding a religious dimension to this can multiply the results by thousands.

Rehabilitation is still possible. Nowadays we can find many organizations that are working on preventing radicalization and violent extremism such as Life After Hate, a non-profit organization founded by a former white supremacist to help people leave hate groups. Also Aarhus,a small city in Denmark, adopted a policy to dissuade young people from joining terrorist groups and it is working.There are also efforts to fight the online radicalization machine , which recruits young people and convince them to embrace violent ideologies. Perhaps one of the most important steps in fight radicalization is to stop blaming The Other for our own problems, and start monitoring our own actions, and support the organizations combating racism and extremism.