…very interesting article in CNN about an American  computer scientist, Zeeshan ul-hassan Usmani, who is trawling the web to figure what makes an ISIS fighter.

based on multiple data points, from various countries, he has coined a term – The Jillenial, the Jehadi who is a millennial.

Who are they and what are their key attributes? :

 

• In their 20s (GWU found the average age is 26)
• Predominately male (GWU found 86% are male)
• Usually middle or upper class (Usmani estimates 73% of recruits and likely radicals are middle class or wealthier).
• More likely to be 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants (Usmani finding. It is likely because they don’t feel “at home” in either culture).
• They don’t like selfies (In Europe, over half of Facebook users post selfies, but only 1% of potential recruits do, Usmani found).
• Far more likely to use Android (nearly 70% have Android devices, according to Brookings)
• More active on Twitter than average Twitter user (Brookings found 62% of ISIS supporters had tweeted within the past month versus just 13% of all Twitter users).
• Want to go abroad. (GWU found that about half attempt to travel abroad if they live in West).

If you take away their dogmatic, psychotic streak to murder those not like them, that profile list above, could be any millennial. Especially the intense news consuming, opinionated millennial, who has a massive chip on his shoulder about real or perceived slights by society at large.

About a 100 years ago, Emile Durkheim wrote his masterpiece “Suicide” – that looked at why people from certain communities or pockets (of Europe) had a greater propensity to commit suicide. And, he defines suicide as

Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.

And one of the key drivers of suicide is the sense of anomie – in layman’s terms the sense of not belonging. Having no social ties or concerns to ground you to the path of the straight and narrow. In modern terms, the sense of anomie and sociopaths behavior tend to go hand in hand. This is not just a killer. It is suicide preceded by mass murder. The person who is murdering, is clear that he will die

I am sure the same terms can be applied to young white men, who buy guns and shoot up schools and kill kids. But, for now, i find the term Jillenial fascinating. And, the question that policy makers, educationists, development specialists and  media practitioners, would need to work on is how do help build a world where this alienation that leads to people  turning mass murderers. How do you nip it at the bud. Post facto, you can do nothing. what can you do to prevent this from ever happening.