We were discussing this over lunch at the office on Friday, given that it's a local news story. We've got four kids, all from the same high school, all with different backgrounds, all being brought in to this fold of radicalized terrorism. And of course the big questions are why and how. In the end, if you really stop and think about it, the how seems rather obvious. It's because they're young. Teenagers, even those who come from relatively stable backgrounds, can go through very intense periods of angst, depression, anger during those years. It really makes them easy pickings for any kind of cult, any racist group, or any terrorist group to get a hold of them and subvert their thinking. You see it all the time with white supremacy groups. Youth are, just by virtue of being youth, disenfranchised. They hold no power so anyone, no matter how radical their views, that makes them feel powerful, has a fair chance of winning them over.
The other big question around the lunchroom was why of course. Why here, it's a quiet place, it's not like Toronto, etc, etc. But I think maybe that's the point. What we have here in London is a fairly decent size population, more to pick from, and yet it's not really the kind of place that jumps to mind when one thinks of radicalized terrorism. Personally I think we'll likely see more stories like this emerging, not from our largest urban centres like Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, but from some of our smaller ones.