Islamist Killers Overseas and U.S. Political Leaders Share Psychological Traits

According to behavioral scientists and mental health professionals, psychopathy is a personality disorder in which a sizable number of people use a mixture of good looks, charm, manipulation, intimidation, and occasionally violence to control others.

Their goal is to satisfy their own selfish needs whether it be monetary satisfaction, deviant sexual practices — including sado-masochistic brutality — or political victories such as the Islamic goal of a global caliphate.

Although the concept of psychopathy has been known for centuries, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioral Science Unit leads the world in the research effort to develop a series of assessment tools, to evaluate the personality traits and behaviors attributable to psychopaths, some of whom are part of what’s known as the global jihad.

While conducting their research, the BAU found that interpersonal traits include glibness, superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, and the manipulation of others. The affective traits include a lack of remorse and/or guilt, shallow affect, a lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility. The lifestyle behaviors include stimulation-seeking behavior, impulsivity, irresponsibility, parasitic orientation, and a lack of realistic life goals.

Research has demonstrated that radical Islamists who are psychopathic, have varying scores, ranging from a high degree of psychopathy to some measure of psychopathy. However, studies do point to the fact that not all violent offenders are psychopaths and not all psychopaths are violent offenders.

If violent offenders such as Muslim terrorists are psychopathic, they are able to assault, rape, and murder without concern for legal, moral, or social consequences. This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want.  Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders.

The relationship between psychopathy and Islamic terrorists is particularly interesting. All psychopaths do not become radical-religious murderers. Rather, serial murderers may possess some or many of the traits consistent with psychopathy. Psychopaths who commit serial murder do not value human life and are extremely callous in their interactions with their victims. This is particularly evident in sexually motivated serial killers who repeatedly target, stalk, assault, and kill without a sense of remorse. However, psychopathy alone does not explain the motivations of a serial killer nor those of Islamic terrorists or extremist political organizations such as the Antifa (Anti-Fascists) or Black Lives Matter (BLM).

What doesn’t go unnoticed is the fact that some of the character traits exhibited by serial killers, terrorists  or violent criminals may be observed in many within the political arena. While not exhibiting physical violence, many political leaders display varying degrees of anger, feigned outrage and other behaviors. They also lack what most consider a “shame” mechanism. Quite simply, most serial killers and many professional politicians must mimic what they believe, are appropriate responses to situations they face such as sadness, empathy, sympathy, and other human-emotion responses to outside stimuli.

Understanding psychopathy becomes particularly critical to law enforcement during a serial murder investigation and upon the arrest of a psychopathic serial killer. The crime scene behavior of psychopaths is likely to be distinct from other offenders. This distinct behavior can assist law enforcement in linking serial cases. Also, the use of psychological matrices helps to discover the identity of a Muslim terrorist organization such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hezbollah and others.

Psychopaths are not sensitive to altruistic interview themes, such as sympathy for their victims or remorse/guilt over their crimes. They do possess certain personality traits that can be exploited, particularly their inherent narcissism, selfishness, and vanity. Specific themes in past successful interviews of psychopathic serial killers focused on praising their intelligence, cleverness, and skill in evading capture.

Experts recognize that more research is needed concerning the links between serial murder and psychopathy, in order to understand the frequency and degree of psychopathy among serial murderers. This may assist law enforcement in understanding and identifying serial murderers.

Over the past twenty years, law enforcement and experts from a number of varying disciplines have attempted to identify specific motivations for serial murderers and to apply those motivations to different typologies developed for classifying serial murderers. These range from simple, definitive models to complex, multiple-category typologies that are laden with inclusion requirements. Most typologies are too cumbersome to be utilized by law enforcement during an active serial murder investigation, and they may not be helpful in identifying an offender.

As most homicides are committed by someone known to the victim, police focus on the relationships closest to the victim. This is a successful strategy for most murder investigations. The majority of serial murderers, however, are not acquainted with or involved in a consensual relationship with their victims.

For the most part, serial murder involves strangers with no visible relationship between the offender and the victim. This distinguishes a serial murder investigation as a more nebulous undertaking than that of other crimes. Since the investigations generally lack an obvious connection between the offender and the victim, investigators instead attempt to discern the motivations behind the murders, as a way to narrow their investigative focus.

Serial murder crime scenes can have bizarre features that may cloud the identification of a motive. The behavior of a serial murderer at crime scenes may evolve throughout the series of crimes and manifest different interactions between an offender and a victim. It is also extremely difficult to identify a single motivation when there is more than one offender involved in the series.

Identifying a homicide series is easier in rapidly-developing, high profile cases involving low risk victims. These cases are reported to law enforcement upon discovery of the crimes and draw immediate media attention.

In contrast, identifying a series involving high risk victims in multiple jurisdictions is much more difficult. This is primarily due to the high risk lifestyle and transitory nature of the victims. Additionally, the lack of communication between law enforcement agencies and differing records management systems impede the linkage of cases to a common offender.

While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government.

Jamie Glazov is a Russian-born Canadian columnist. He is the managing editor of FrontPage Magazine, the online publication founded by David Horowitz. He specializes in Soviet Studies, and US and Canadian foreign policy.

Glazov, who has a BA in Political Science and a PhD in History, has already made a study of Islamic terrorists. To prepare for the writing of Jihadist Psychopath, he also made a study of the most fascinating and deadliest element in the criminal life of societies: the psychopath. Human societies are bound together by empathy. Multiculturalism and diversity stretch and expand our sense of empathy to its limits. The psychopath plays on our sense of empathy despite lacking any empathy of his or her own.