[GuB-42]

> If the terrorists were very smart, they'd realize that...

There are a lot of very smart people joining cults, including people who just wanted to study them and were fully aware that what they believed in was nonsense. Terrorist groups are cults.

Just because you consider yourself smart because you have a PhD, high IQ, built a successful company or practice some intellectual activity and are good at it doesn't mean you are immune to the manipulation tactics used by cults. Once sufficiently brainwashed, your judgment will get clouded, but it doesn't mean you will lose your technical skills, which you will put to the service of the cult.

Think about Nazi Germany. Germans weren't idiots, the simple fact that most of the world had to turn against them to defeat them is proof enough. But they still managed to get manipulated into committing the worst crimes.

The reason it worked is not stupidity, it is misery. They were at their lowest following WW1, and Hitler promised them better. Same idea for terrorist groups and other cults, people who are experiencing hardships are the easiest to indoctrinate, and there is no shortage of such people in Nigeria.

[archonis]

Well said. As mentioned in another post, it's not about intelligence, it's about vulnerability. One particular type of misery is mourning, and the western world does a pretty good job of creating mourners in a number of places where terrorist groups flourish.