After 9/11, it seemed it might become easier to analyze political events from this perspective. Paul Berman (2003) compared the suicidal violence of Islamic terrorism with the violence of political movements in the 20th century, observing, for example, that the Nazis were victimizers, but also the “boldest, greatest and most sublime of death’s victims” (I noted that an estimated 8 million Germans died in the Second World War).

Still—even in the face of suicide bombings—discourse was dominated as it always has been by the “realist” point of view—that insists there must be a “rational” explanation for everything that occurs in the world. The suicide bombers, Berman says, produced a philosophical crisis among everyone “who wanted to believe that a ‘rational’ logic governs the world.”

Insistence that the world is governed by rationality went along with a refusal to consider the possibility that political movements may reflect or manifest forms of psychopathology. People everywhere, Berman says, rushed to suggest “ways in which apparent pathologies were anything but pathologies:”

It was an unwillingness, sometimes an outright refusal, to accept that from time to time, mass political movements do get drunk on the idea of slaughter. It was a belief that, around the world, people are bound to behave in more or less reasonable ways in pursuit of normal and identifiable interests. It was a belief that the world is, by and large, a rational place.

Suicidal terrorism opens a vast can of worms. For if we can conceive of suicide bombings as irrational, self-destructive and pathological—what about the major political events of the 20th century—that were characterized by massive destruction and self-destruction?

What about World War I when nations asked young men—for four years—to get out of trenches and to run into machine-gun fire? Why do we hesitate to characterize the behavior of nations, leaders and soldiers in the First World War as suicidal and pathological? Why do people have no problem saying that what occurred at Jonestown represented a “psychotic fantasy of masochistic group death”—yet hesitate to describe the First World War in these terms?

Looking at radical Islamic terrorism within the context of the suicidal destructiveness of political movements in the 20th Century (e.g., Leninism, Stalinism, Nazism and Maoism), Berman parodies the thinking of those who struggle to maintain a “rationalist” interpretation of political events—in the face of irrational self-destructiveness:

Is the world truly a place where mass movements bedeck themselves in shrouds and march to the cemetery? This seemed unthinkable. And, all over the world, the temptation became great, became irresistible, to conclude that, no, the world remains a rational place, and pathological movements do not exist, and slanderers are weaving lies on behalf of narrow material interests. No, suicide terror must be—it has to be, perhaps in ways invisible to the naked eye—a rational response to real-life conditions.

For it is very odd to think that millions or tens of millions of people, relying on their own best judgments, might end up joining a pathological political movement. Individual madmen might step forward—yes, that is unquestionable. But, surely, millions of people are not going to choose death, and the Jonestowns of this world are not going to take over entire societies.

Well, what better way to describe many of the significant political events that occurred in the 20th century, for example the First World War, than as an occasion when millions of human beings “marched to the cemetery;” when millions of people “chose death.” Why do we resist the conclusion that during the First World War something like “Jonestown” had taken over entire societies?

People who see the world through the lens of rationality, Berman says, might think that it is “odd” to think that tens of millions of people might end up joining a pathological political movement. Surely millions of people are not going to “choose death” and the “Jonestowns of this world are not going to take over entire societies.”

Well, in the 20th century millions of human beings—did participate in pathological political movements; they did choose death. The Jonestowns of the world did take over entire societies.

I propose a concept of collective psychopathology—a form of pathology that is contained within ordinary political ideologies and structures. We need not shy away from the conclusion that many forms of political and social behavior may be profoundly pathological in spite of the fact that they are common.