Fascinating and horrifying

I recently read this interview with a terrorist recruiter in the UK Prospect. It’s quite long but worth reading. The recruiter is some unassimilated Pakistani Brit who seems quite terrifying in his certainty. It brought to mind two things.

1. It is uncanny how accurate Eric Hoffer was in describing this sort of person in The True Believer as rootless, no strong family, no national identity, no sense of self etc.
2. The current situation seems to be similar to the international(ist) unrest Trotsky had in mind before he was forced out by Stalin. That is to say; having active agents throughout the world with no strong connections to the center of the movement. The Global Guerillas blog calls this Open Source Warfare.

And now I see this article on the French deporting radical Muslim clerics. Hmm.