The ISIS Nazi

A peculiar event took place last week in Florida. Details are still scarce, but the incident reportedly occurred at an apartment that was being shared by four young men who shared neo-Nazi beliefs. The past tense not only refers to time, but also to the shared ideology. One of the roommates, 18-year-old Devon Arthurs recently converted to Islam. If we are to believe Arthurs’ account, his housemates unsurprisingly disapproved of the conversion of faith. He cites their ridicule as part of the reasoning for shooting two of them to death. Following the murders, he then went to a nearby tobacco shop and briefly held people hostage before submitting to the authorities. When the police arrived, Arthurs claimed he was disheartened by the US bombing of “his Muslim countries”. He also stated that he carried out the murders to prevent his roommates from committing planned acts of domestic terrorism.

The shocking nature of this story has somehow received little press so far, but more details are slowly finding the light of day. Devon did lead police to bomb-making equipment and materials in the apartment garage, therefore his claim about stopping terrorism may have merit. Arthurs’ only surviving roommate, Brandon, was found crying outside the crime scene and claimed to be the owner of the fuses and said that he’d also created the explosive, a white cake-like substance known as HMTD. He has since been taken into custody.

How does an 18-year-old find himself in this position? At such a young age, Arthurs joined a neo-Nazi group, then became an ISIS sympathiser, and eventually murdered two men. Extreme ideology is the most commonly blamed culprit, but this teenager proved to be vulnerable to multiple hate-based factions in his formative years. You can’t simply blame a single set of extreme beliefs in this instance. What’s known for sure is that there was a youth who was desperately seeking to belong to something. A world devoid of ISIS or Nazis probably wouldn’t have saved Arthurs. His roommates may have lived, but Arthurs proved that he wasn’t tied to a specific belief system. The obvious commonalities between the neo-Nazis and ISIS were that they have a propensity for violence and both offer a sense of belonging.



There won’t be an easy answer to keep similar tragedies from happening in the future, but what useful lesson can we take away from this? As it relates to ISIS, it should be a reminder that the group is a symptom of deeper problems rather than the cause. It began when a busted up faction of Iraqis coalesced years after Iraq war began. If their members, such as the ex-Iraqi army officers, hadn’t been disenfranchised from the new Iraqi government, ISIS wouldn’t exist.

Suppression or perceived injustices to a group causes them to form their own unit, essentially gangs. More often than not, the individuals who end up joining fringe gangs do so because they don’t see a place for themselves in the larger society. Ensuring that people on the margins of society have equal rights and a path to prosperity will go a long way towards reducing the influence of gangs on our youth. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s the hard and dull truth. The military response to ISIS and other threats is absolutely necessary, but it will remain fruitless unless steps are taken to prevent the next generation from stepping up to replenish their ranks.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2017.

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