Historical Threat and the Priming of Tribal Violence

Abstract

Humans are naturally tribal and protective of the tribe. But our evolutionary genetics to protect and defend are especially acute and strengthened when real threats surround us. For Americans this was the attack on the World Trade Center, as well as ongoing gun violence in urban areas, mass casualty events, and increasing school shootings. For fundamentalist Muslims it is a sense that the West, and indeed more liberal Muslims, seek to undermine and destroy their way of life. For Russia, it has been a history of invading enemies from Napoleon to Nazi Germany. For Israel it is the sense that a history of persecution and a Holocaust must never occur again, and that they can only depend on themselves for their own defense. Similarly, a once safe-feeling Europe has experienced repeated terrorist attacks across France and in London. For Palestinians, what they call “the Nakba” (“the catastrophe”) is their story of Israel’s takeover of their land and the ongoing struggle of the Israeli Occupation.

Some peoples emerge from historical violence with a sense of strength and resilience in their tribal narrative. The successful emergence from such profound loss—the hinge of transformation to tribal resilience—occurs when their history becomes incorporated into a loss narrative that is accompanied by a phoenix-like rebirth. But others, especially when historical violence has been mixed with shame and dishonor, as was the case of pre-Nazi Germany and the experience of many Jihadists, become hate-based aggressors who may even become demonic in their violent lashing out.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle… (Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons on the 4th of June 1940 [1])