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ISIS, but Buddhist
posted on February 3, 2016At 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.”