At The Atlantic, Nick Danforth writes that although the rise of ISIS may seem sudden, it is not unparalleled in history. In the 1920s, Russian Baron Roman Fedorovich von Ungern-Sternberg used his nation’s civil war to radicalize Buddhism, a religion known today for its commitment to peace. “Civil war provided the context in which both ISIS’s leaders and Ungern-Sternberg came to rely on systematic and highly visible atrocities to consolidate their rule, at a moment when years of savage, disorganized violence had desensitized populations,” writes Danforth. “Like ISIS, Ungern-Sternberg harnessed this violence to establish a modicum of order.”