Maroon Weekly

How one pilot’s suicide mission shines a light on activism in general

By Ryan Stone

“Why is it that a handful of thugs can commit unthinkable atrocities…?” Joseph Stack asks questions like these and makes other ironic statements against the government in his suicide letter. His attack, which occurred around 10 a.m., was directed against an IRS building on Research Boulevard in Austin. “The political ‘representatives’ have endless time to sit around… It’s clear they see no crisis as long as dead people don’t get in the way…” Though he speaks as one that stands against what he sees as a catastrophe-causing minority, it is good that there was no irony to be had in his suicide mission. No one has been killed.

Putting aside the twisted logic of, “The government senselessly kills; therefore, I am going to senselessly kill,” there have been studies that may reveal the mental state of activists, not just the kind that fly planes into buildings, but those like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Paine, Emma Goldman, and many others that have seen the world in a light similar to Joseph Stack. Dr. Debra Mashek, a former fellow at George Mason stated in a Psychology Today interview that, “If I am a… protestor, then by standing up for what I think is right I’m helping the world, because the world is my community, and in so doing, I help myself.” Anne Becker of Psychology Today investigates this phenomenon by talking with a variety of specialists, Mashek included. She sees the more problematic argument as whether or not protest and activism are ultimately selfish endeavors.

Is there something wrong with helping people because you think it will benefit yourself? How can that turn into someone killing for what they think is a good cause? One of the more obvious forms of activism seems to be the act of joining the military. But, regardless of any sugar-coated ideas one may have about the correlation between patriotism and enlistment, Jorge Mariscal in The Making of an American Soldier: Why Young People Join the Military says, “The vast majority of young people wind up in the military for different reasons, ranging from economic pressure to the desire to escape a dead-end situation at home.” Then it would stand to reason that some sort of necessity also drives someone to become an activist. While lack of money or promise of a better future are certainly not motivators for someone to take up protesting and risk of jail time, psychological motivators could definitely play a part in whether or not you or any of your seemingly content friends one day decide that you’re mad as hell and simply not going to take it anymore.

Kathryn Smith in The Psychology of Activism talks about how the general population tends to, “blow off the realities, even when they are in our face…” She explains that, because people are afraid of seeming like conspiracy theorists, they shy away from learning certain truths, especially about the government. So, while it’s true that the government does not have logistical capacity to eavesdrop on every conversation everywhere, they do get away with some specific and terrible things because people feel powerless in their ability to act against what they know to be real problems.

Says Smith, “If we as activists rebut the commonly-held beliefs in peoples’ heads, we get them to think. And act.” But there is no rebuttal to be had when someone tries to kill for their beliefs. The world has had its fill of that. Flying a plane into a building wasn’t the smartest way for Stack to get his message across.