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Status anxiety

The lesson of the young men fighting for Isis: evil is in all of us

I suspect more and more that Isis fighters are motivated more by bloodlust than by ideology

6 September 2014

9:00 AM

6 September 2014

9:00 AM

I had an interesting discussion with my friend Aidan Hartley earlier this week about whether the young men fighting for the so-called Islamic State are psychopaths. (This was before the news broke of Steven Sotloff’s beheading.) Aidan is better placed than most to answer this question, having worked as a war correspondent for many years and written a classic book on the subject called The Zanzibar Chest.

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Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.

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