I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth.
ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to the emirs."
When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence. Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
Finally, is there anywhere to find the original article by Piketty in English? The linked version is in French.
Things don't have a single cause. "ISIS grew out of staggeringly unequal distribution of Mideast oil wealth" and "ISIS is motivated by extreme interpretations of Islam" are able to coexist perfectly well.
Do you have any examples of "the same people" being inconsistent here? Because usually when people complain about inconsistency like this, it's actually different people being mentally categorized together, not actually the same people.
Last sentence is an excellent point. This is a group of groups of groups. Acting like ISIS is one entity with one set of attributes is like claiming the same for the workforce of a city. They're one thing in one way with similar goals, direction, and activities but substantially different in other ways.
> And I get downvoted for saying something nice? Some
HN (and possibly its rules) frowns on "+1" or "I agree" style posts that don't add additional content to a discussion, and people will sometimes downvote you accordingly.
I find Daesh far scarier than other Islamic fundamentalist movements because their techniques are more sophisticated and their aim is much higher. The "they're killing us!" argument is so silly... terror attacks are to stir western nations into violent action, not to actually significantly injure us. And it works - far too many Americans and Europeans live and act politically in abject terror of very low-impact, unlikely events.
What scares me about Daesh, though, is that I think they're trying to goad outside powers into massive wars with each other! This is why they've attacked everyone - the US, France, Russia, and all the major Arab nations. Everyone is off fighting in Syria, and not as a unified front, but a bunch of independent powers making independent alliances and jockeying for position.
During a recent presidential debate, Rand Paul wisely asked the question, "Are you ready to shoot down Russian planes?" (note: I'm not a Rand Paul supporter. I just thought he was spot-on with this.) If the US creates a no-fly zone while Russia wants to do bombing runs in it, we could have a situation where American and Russian planes are in direct combat. There's a non-zero chance that this could lead to nuclear war and the destruction of the West as we know it. And we've already had the first taste of it, with NATO member Turkey shooting down a Russian plane.
If I wanted to destroy the West, that's exactly what I'd do - provoke a war between the US and Russia with those giant Cold War nuclear arsenals.
And that makes me think Daesh is by far the most sophisticated and dangerous enemy we've seen since the Nazis.
I'm not really sure how you can read the history of the organization and come up with that. al-Tawid was founded at around the same time as al Qaeda (within a few years), and they merged to become al Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS/ISIL.
In some ways the person I was responding to was right because, between Osama and al Zarqawi, Osama was definitely the moderate. But you're talking about wanting to kill everyone who isn't a muslim vs. everyone who isn't sunni muslim.
The idea that ISIS is something fundamentally different is driven by the media. It's sort of how DARE tries to scare parents by saying "This generation is smoking some really crazy stuff you're not familiar with!"
Pretty different from what? Afghanistan in the 70s/80s was almost exactly this: a destabilized national government, insurgent forces taking and holding territory, global powers being dragged into it. The only differences are the rhetoric.
Since you kind of elided it, their stated reason for killing is more or less "because you're not Muslim". We could take it at face value, but there's nothing useful you can do with that information.
What would be useful is to know how so many people get to that place. What are the conditions that radicalized thousands to the point where they are willing to kill others just for being less Muslim than they see themselves?
I think the Post's use of the word 'blame' is meant to be provocative. Western powers obviously aren't scheming to create ISIS with wealth inequality, and improved wealth distribution obviously won't inspire ISIS to lay down their weapons. But if that inequality really is a cause, it's worth trying to fix it if you want to head off the next manifestation of ISIS.
> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
I do. I think the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to a combination of mental illness and lack of education. I don't think it really matters which crazy ideology you pick, you can use it to justify your actions. And if the crazy, uneducated, people weren't shooting up a Planned Parenthood, they would be shooting up a theater, or a school, or any number of other places. The solution is to educate kids and to treat the mentally ill.
Why does this tiny group of Muslims commit hate crimes, while the vast majority do not? Piketty thinks it's income inequality, what's your explanation?
> If it's income inequality, then why are most terrorists highly educated and relatively well off?
As I understand it, Middle Eastern terrorists are disproportionately from the thin and relatively insecure middle class, neither the oligarchs nor the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
I don't think this is at all inconsistent with income inequality being a major contributing factor, though its not as simple as personal poverty being a driving factor.
At the very least that data does not really fit the theory. At some point you have to consider that when the facts do not fit the theory perhaps the theory is wrong, rather than to try to spin the facts in such a way that they fit the theory in a weird way. I think some people are too attached to a particular theory being true, rather than finding out the right theory.
> At the very least that data does not really fit the theory.
What theory? It certainly fits a theory: that insecurity (and, thus, plenty of downward mobility), limited upward mobility, and a steep drop to the bottom combine to provide a condition in which members of the middle class become more prone to reject the existing social order and adopt extreme alternatives that are offered.
You see, that's precisely what's twisting the facts to fit the theory is like. If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor. And that's why they go on suicide terrorist attacks?!
If it was the poor who did the attacks then it would confirm the theory, but if it is not then that would also confirm the theory...
Lets bring in some new facts: terrorists are disproportionately college educated. The 9/11 bombers were all college educated and some had PhD's from western universities. How will these facts be made to fit this theory?
I'm sorry if I sound disparaging, but I've had this debate 50 times before, and the mental gymnastics to keep an incorrect theory alive are virtually impossible to penetrate to the point that I'm not even sure if there are any conceivable facts that would falsify that theory in the minds of those who believe in it.
> You see, that's precisely what's twisting the facts to fit the theory is like. If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor.
The insecurities of the middle class and the direction they push hardest being a key factor in both revolutionary violence and support for tyrannical government (depending on whether the fear of the continuation of the current or the fear of its collapse dominates, which can vary for different members of the same middle class) isn't exactly a novel theory, even outside the specific case of middle eastern terrorism (in fact, the first time I seem to remember it is in the context of the 19th Century European revolutions.)
> If you have a theory that it's all because of income inequality, and then the facts are that it's not the poor who are terrorists, now you have to amend your theory
No, you don't, because the theory that "income inequality" is a contributing factor does not imply that the actors are "the poor".
If you have a theory that their own poverty is the reason that individual terrorists become terrorists, you'd have to revise the theory, but that's not what the theory was to start with.
> that it's actually the moderately rich who are afraid of becoming poor. And that's why they go on suicide terrorist attacks?!
No, that economic insecurity combined with lack of upward mobility in the middle class leads to disillusionment with the existing order, desperation, and susceptibility to alternative worldviews to those supporting the existing order.
Now, where on top of the economic conditions, you also have a situation where, due to a variety of factors (including attempts to repress alternative views to preserve the power and privilege of the existing elites) there aren't non-violent, non-radical groups that provide something that feels like a plausible alternative, those susceptible to alternative views are going to be, more than in other circumstances, drawn to violent, radical groups.
> I'm sorry if I sound disparaging, but I've had this debate 50 times before, and the mental gymnastics to keep an incorrect theory alive are virtually impossible to penetrate to the point that I'm not even sure if there are any conceivable facts that would falsify that theory in the minds of those who believe in it.
Facts that would falsify a theory of economic inequality contributing to terrorism would be statistics showing that, controlling for other factors that demonstrably contribute to terrorism, economic inequality has no correlation, or a negative correlation, to terrorism.
The things you offer are facts that would falsify particular models of how economic inequality contributes to terrorism, but those particular models seem to be strawmen.
"Ah, gee, I really hate Planned Parenthood, and it's a good thing they exist, because if they didn't I'd have just as much reason to shoot up a theater instead."
Maybe crazy, uneducated people are shooting up places, but the places they shoot up are disproportionately the target of religious shaming, an activity with little rational basis or utility other than the spawning insular communities who willfully shun education and moderation.
"I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth."
Because they're proven masters at propaganda and messaging. To take prop at face value is the definition of naive.
"ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia."
That's their justification for their actions, not the reason. Come on.
Recruiting for ISIS pays $5000 - $10000 per successful recruit.
If their true motivation is purely religious, if religion is the INCENTIVE, then why incentivize people with lump sumps larger than yearly income from honest work?
ISIS represents a way out of poverty, at least, that's how they sell it in recruiting.
"When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence."
We call that quid pro quo, and yes, it's intentional. If Islam itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority, then it stands to reason that Christianity itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority. So long as conservatives blame Islam in general for ISIS, we will blame Christianity in general for Westboro Baptist, for Clinic Terrorists, for Jehovah Witness child negligence murder, etc.
"Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?"
We do, often, we bemoan the war against education (ignorance as pride) and growing wealth inequality for social tension and violence both here in America and worldwide.
> We call that quid pro quo, and yes, it's intentional. If Islam itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority, then it stands to reason that Christianity itself is responsible for the actions of a minority of a minority. So long as conservatives blame Islam in general for ISIS, we will blame Christianity in general for Westboro Baptist, for Clinic Terrorists, for Jehovah Witness child negligence murder, etc.
You are mimicking the rhetoric of the worst, most extreme segment of your opposition, which brings you (and this conversation) down to their level.
"You are mimicking the rhetoric of the worst, most extreme segment of your opposition,"
No, we're not mimicking the rhetoric of the "worst, most extreme".
To suggest that is hyperbolic, and ironically itself represents the exact rhetoric you're trying to accuse me of engaging in.
The worst and most extreme segment of the opposition says "lets use violence to terrorize those who disagree". This level of violent discourse is far worse and more extreme than the rhetoric we mimick.
We're not engaging in that rhetoric, rather we're engaging in the mainstream popular rhetoric of people who don't agree with those extremists.
"Whoever fights with monsters..."
Honestly, the hypocrisy of you engaging in unfettered hyperbolic bullshit for the sole purpose of demonizing me as a monster is hard to overstate. Talk about monsterous, you should be teaching me how to distort words and demonize others, as you clearly are my superior in this area!
No doubt that for some the motivation is financial, but do you think that the motivation for the 1000+ people who left from Europe to join IS in Syria the motivation is financial? Do you think that for the guy who drives a bomb truck in Syria the motivation is financial?
This is not about putting blame anywhere, but about acknowledging an essential piece of the puzzle so that the problem can be solved. Note that I used to think as you do but a couple of months ago I started to do some research into what actually motivates terrorists and groups like ISIS and I came to the conclusion that a huge part of it is religious. That theory simply fits the facts much better than any other.
Ah. People are in poverty and to get out of poverty they blow themselves up in a public place such that they can murder a bunch of innocent civilians in the process. Got it. Good to know.
First, it's extremely complicated. Second, yeah, it's probably a mixed bag, some probably sincerely believe in their ideology and think that blowing themselves up is a good deed, others are in it for money or other reasons. What has been proven (pretty strongly at this point) is that it's the M.O. of many terrorist organizations to recruit men from poor households... and they tell them after they're dead from the suicide bombings, they'll sustain their families monetarily. To the would-be suicide bombers, this seems like a good rational choice within the reality of their situation: struggling families, living in desolate conditions with not much hope in sight.
The matter of the fact is, a lot of these poor families that are approached by recruits would tell the recruiters to fuck off if they were not in such hopeless conditions.
If your country was destroyed, there was no jobs, you had no money, no food, your home was crumbling, your siblings starving, your parents helpless... and you were 17 and powerless, and someone offered you $10,000 to do it... would you? Would you do something terrible to ensure that your family got a huge payday that would put food on their table for potentially years?
You seem to think everyone's decency has a price, especially poor people. Pretty depressing thought but thankfully not true. Otherwise people would be blowing themselves up all over the world, including the US. Instead it is almost entirely the members of one death cult.
No. No I would not murder dozens of innocent people. There's a lot of poverty in the world and the vast majority of the impoverished do not commit such atrocities.
I guess it was too much to ask you to walk a mile in their shoes, because we internet dwelling rich folk literally cannot comprehend poverty on this level, of watching your family die before your eyes as a teenager.
"vast majority of the impoverished do not commit such atrocities."
The vast majority don't have a years pay untaxed offered, never have to make the choice. Easy to say they won't do something when they have no option to do it.
Then again, with how INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL ISIS has been at recruiting perhaps you need to reevaluate your opinion of how the impoverished of the world behave when given opportunity.
Many impoverished will loot during riots or engage in widespread gang violence in cities, they'll overthrow secular governments in favor of Islamic ones in the Arab Spring, they'll take the money and kill for ISIS.
I think people need to be more honest and realize that true destitution means they don't have to play within the bounds of economic and moral systems. We're controlled by our jobs and our money, and if we have neither, we will do whatever is necessary to provide for ourselves and our families, including hurting people "from other tribes".
It is possible for me to walk two miles and still conclude that no I would not purposefully murder dozens of innocent civilians. It's possible I've even thought about this before.
But it's cool that you think there's only one logical outcome and anyone who disagrees is just too unempathetic to see why your view is the only correct view.
ISIS is a fundamentalist millenarian dead cult making up some thousands of people, the question and the issue is why they haven't been run out of the areas where they operate by the ordinary people that live there, and their existing power groups. It is completely uncontroversial that ISIS are substantially tapping into existing and real sectarian grievances in the area. In Syria, that is down to a lack of development in rural Sunnis areas, and human rights abuses by the Shia-led regime. In Iraq, it is down to the loss of power of Sunni groups after the fall of Saddam, and the transition in power and patronage towards the Shia majority. Just saying over and over again that ISIS is evil is just repeating an obvious truth, the question is how do explain their success, and how do you undercut their power base, and a substantial part of that is to do with the allocation of money and power for the Sunni areas in Syria and Iraq.
2) Usually when someone is upset, they're very bad at articulating the actual thing that is upsetting them. Often when someone is upset, they'll say (and think) it's about something that is actually unrelated but happened to come right before the outburst of pent up frustration. To me, Islamism is a suspiciously rational explanation for completely irrational violence. Islam's pretty old, the book hasn't changed, but we're seeing a big spike in coordinated terror against civilians in the last couple years.
This is over a short period and doesn't count stuff like the Sudanese "civil war" muslim raids on Southern villages, which would have made that graph look like a rounding error.
If there is one thing I've learned in life, it's that people don't know why they do many (or even any) of the things they do. They do them for reasons unknown to themselves, and then afterward, supposing there is demand, they fabricate reasons. Not lies necessarily, more like their "best guess" as to why they did it.
When the judge asks the teenager why he microwaved a live hamster and the teenager says "I don't know" he's not only being honest but actually insightful. And because society demands reasons for every action, most children soon learn that "I don't know" is an unacceptable answer.
So no, I don't believe what comes out of ISIS's mouth(s) regarding why they do these things.
I'm not sure why you do either, and it's a fact that neither do you.
It's not a case of believing what's coming out of ISIS' mouth - most people, even on the Left you decry, do. The question is why, when they utter this stuff, do so many people listen?
The mistake you're making in your analogy is comparing a group of people to a single person. ISIS is not one united front, and most of the people who actually fight -- not the leaders making videos, but the people doing the killing -- do so for much less grandiose reasons.
Casting the rise of ISIS as a black-and-white, good-vs.-evil struggle allows some very clever politicians to have their way: torture some folks, spy on citizens. But if we look deeper at the situation, we'll see that motivations are more complex. In doing so, however, we (the West) must confront our role in the situation.
"For the first time since he came into the room he smiles—in surprise—and finally tells us what really motivated him, without any prompting. He knows there is an American in the room, and can perhaps guess, from his demeanor and his questions, that this American is ex-military, and directs his “question,” in the form of an enraged statement, straight at him. “The Americans came,” he said. “They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn’t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn’t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.” [0]
The left claims ISIS happened because of geopolitical bullying that the West did in that area for about a century now. The right claims ISIS happened because they are religious nutjobs fundamentally opposed to western values.
I think it's not either / or. I think it's a messy situation with a complicated causal web. It's more like all of the above.
You get Picot / Sykes after WWI to stir up trouble in the region. And the creation of an artificial state after WWII in the region, which the West keeps sponsoring so that they dominate the area militarily. And things like the CIA coup to remove Mosaddegh from office in Iran, who ended up being replaced with a theocracy. And the relentless pressure and meddling from the West, for the purpose of maintaining an oil supply.
And then you get a bunch of religious nutjobs ruling various places in the area. And a religion which seems to have a particularly "robust" attitude towards "holy wars". And then throw in the mix some climate shifts that knock out harvests and upset the price of food staples. And maybe the economists are right, too, and vast inequalities of all sorts in the area just made everything else worse.
If any one of the factors mentioned above was acting in isolation, nothing would have happened. But the stack, as you see, is pretty thick, and I guess something broke somewhere. It's all of the above. It's not one single, isolated reason.
Maybe because the Planned Parenthood shooter specifically mentioned "no more baby parts"? And Planned Parenthood has been HEAVILY featured in the media this last year, falsely painted by the christian right as a baby-killing organization?
> I don't understand why we shouldn't believe what's coming straight out of ISIS' mouth.
Accepting it doesn't really answer much.
> ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia.
Yes, and if we accept this, we are faced with the question of what makes particular people in particular times and places likely to accept and act on messages like this, and what circumstances enable them to be successful when they do. Daesh isn't the only group to promote an ideology like this based on interpretation of some ancient religious text (nor is the phenomenon of groups trying, or even succeeding, in doing that limited to the Middle East, or the Islamic world, nor are the Quran the only text which has been used in this role.)
Nor, for that matter, was Daesh (though it had a different name!) new to this when they first started achieving real success -- they had similar goals and interpretation of Islam before they became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, when they were known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, and when they rejected their affiliation with al-Qaeda to style themselves first as "the Islamic State in Iraq", then "the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant", and finally "the Islamic State".
> When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence.
Women's health clinic attacks by violent religious extremists with an overt religious motivation are a recurring pattern in the US; assuming that another such attack is part of that pattern rather than breaking with it is not exactly a giant leap. In any case, the ideology behind the attack and the conditions which made the attacker susceptible to adopting that ideology are distinct issues.
> Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
Actually, lots of people on the left -- the only people who generally acknowledge the overt ideological motivation of violence of Christian religious extremists -- point to social factors like income inequality and persistent poverty as among the factors that make people susceptible to that extremism (as well as pointing to deliberate acts by certain political elites to fan that extremism and channel it for political ends as contributing to the uptake of the extremism.) These positions are complementary, rather than incompatible.
There's a difference between the stated motive of ISIS and what enables them to exist and grow. I have a hard time believing that they can be so effective in their recruitment efforts with a message based entirely on an interpretation of an old book. It is more plausible to me that they prey on desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected people to join their cause.
Wait, you have a hard time believing they can be so recruitment with a message based on an interpretation of an old book?
More than 2000 years of human history and religion shows that an awful lot of things (both positive and negative for the world) have come from religion, based almost entirely on old books and interpretations. The supposed word of a supposedly all knowing/powerful deity is enough inspiration for an awful lot of people.
Being educated does not mean you're above believing in bullshit. There are a lot of highly educated people with a college education or a PhD who believe him ghosts, crop circles, bigfoot, alien abductions, the 'dangers' of GM food, conspiracy theories or think that vaccines cause autism.
That doesn't make those beliefs more plausible, regardless of if a certain amount of smart people believe in them. Similarly, it doesn't shield people from religious extremism, or any other form of extreme view for that matter. People are irrational, some lack critical thinking skills (and everyone forgets to use them at least some of time). You don't become a Vulcan the minute you get through college.
Exactly. This is not about desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected people, but about people who sincerely think that the best thing for this world is to implement the Qur'an to the last letter. You can be a rocket scientist and a religious idiot at the same time.
Highly educated people cannot possibly be desperate, mentally unwell, or disaffected? That's also "simply false" and you say so yourself: "You can be a rocket scientist and a religious idiot at the same time". You can be highly educated and a lot of things at the same time (which one would know from reading HN on a regular basis), but perhaps only the traits that fit your narrative are allowed.
Being a religious idiot is not the same thing as being desperate, mentally unwell, and disaffected. The point is that the picture that is being sketched is in-congruent with reality. If we want to have any chance to solve this issue the first step needs to be a honest examination of the causes, not academics taking their pet topics and trying to fit terrorism and ISIS into that.
What causes a successful college student who has just gotten a job as an architect to decide that the best use of his life is to fly a plane into a building? What causes a person in their twenties in Europe to decide that the best use of their life is to go to Syria to join the Islamic State? Or to go to Paris and shoot up a theater?
Let's back up a bit. What causes a person to decide to go to planned parenthood to shoot up a bunch of doctors? Is it because of income inequality? Climate change? Russian foreign policy? Or maybe it is because he is sincerely convinced that the metaphysics of this world work as follows. At the time of conception the soul enters the embryo. In order for this soul to enter heaven the baby needs to be baptized. If this doesn't happen then their soul either goes to burn in eternal hell or to limbo. Now, there is a clinic next door where people are literally killing babies before they are baptized (i.e. abortion). The doctors are evil maniacs who are putting thousands of babies in hell. Maybe we should do something to defend those babies? God wants us to do something to save His babies! If we don't save His babies we are evil and he will put us in hell!
You see, the problem is that in this worldview shooting up doctors at planned parenthood is a most moral action.
Now imagine that you sincerely believe in the following metaphysics. We are living in the Matrix, but this Matrix is a bit different than the one in the movie in that to leave it you don't pick up a telephone, but you have to die. This Matrix has been set up by the Creator to test you. If you obey his commands you will get eternal bliss in heaven when you exit the Matrix, and otherwise you get eternal suffering in hell. What are the Creator's wishes? He hates the Infidels. He hates that they publish cartoons to make fun of Him. He hates their societies are filled with sex, personal enrichment, and lack of devotion to Him. He hates that they occupy Jerusalem, His holy city. He hates that there is no worldwide Caliphate. He has written in his book that to ensure a place in heaven you can kill infidels. You get 72 virgins in heaven, and you get to pick a dozen people from your family who will also get a place in heaven. So what is this guy thinking while shooting up random people in a theater in Paris? He is counting the kills, and the Creator is counting with him. The number of people he kills will determine how much the Creator will love him. When he has killed enough he presses the button on his suicide vest to teleport into heaven, and start selecting family members to ensure their place in heaven when they die.
This Jihadist suicide cult worldview is the #1 problem, and people keep writing articles about income inequality, climate change, foreign policy, etc. No doubt these are contributing factors, but when are we going to address the elephant in the room? This is not something that only the mentally ill can believe in. This is a mind virus that can spread. It has spread. Polls show that about 10% of Muslims worldwide support ISIS, that is 160 million people. We need to stop it from spreading, for instance by encouraging competing pacifist mind viruses of moderate Muslims, empowering people who have a personal stake against this mind virus (women, gays, intellectuals, etc), educating people about different religions and atheism, stopping people who are spreading this mind virus (there are many Salafist and Wahhabist organizations that openly operate in Europe), and stopping their money streams coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, provide intense personal support to refugees and immigrants to make sure they integrate into the societies in Europe and the US and to make sure they learn the language, get European and American friends, don't live in closed parallel societies, etc.
You articulated your argument well (upvote!) and I don't disagree with a lot of it, but here is where we differ: why is it that this particular "mind-virus" is so much more transmittable than others? This is where I believe the other factors come into play. You basically agree with me when you start listing potential solutions to defeating the "mind-virus" in your last paragraph. The things you list are addressing the "other" factors. Education and support, for example, are things that help to close the inequality gap.
Indeed, there are factors that influence the susceptibility to this mind virus, but to understand the factors that influence it you first need to acknowledge that it is a religious mind virus. None of the articles that analyze this have acknowledged this (at least not the ones that I have read). That's partly because for atheists and moderates it's hard to imagine that somebody really believes that stuff, and partly because of political correctness.
An example why it's important to understand this is that the data shows that education in general does not work. Many terrorists are highly educated; a lot of them even have college degrees. So raising the general level of education is probably not effective. Education about religion might be.
Other important factors are tribal us-vs-them mentality, and (perceived) grievances.
You ask why this mind virus spreads so easily. That question is not very hard to answer: people are susceptible because they already believe that the Qur'an is the infallible word of God, and the things that ISIS does are sadly a plausible interpretation of the Qur'an. Such a belief in the infallibility is in itself dangerous, and I don't think we will have long term peace until the majority no longer believes that. Christians used to believe that about the Bible but the majority no longer does. Hopefully Islam can make a similar change, but I'm not very optimistic.
You are miss understanding what he meant. I don't think he meant to explain the reasoning used by the attackers, he is however trying to understand what caused all these people to start killing in the first place. ISIS surely feeds on religion, but the root cause of the problem is not only religion, just as the root cause of the Crusades wasn't.
To address your analogy, proponents of Planned Parenthood aren't killing pro-lifers en mass using robots and tacitly supporting the most extreme pro-lifers to address a third enemy. The analogy doesn't work at all.
There is no reason why both Piketty's and ISIS' rationale can't both be true. ISIS's eschatological religious propaganda wouldn't have nearly the resonance and recruiting power it does if it weren't for the current state of political and economic inequality in the middle east.
Also, while the Planned Parenthood shootings are tragic, they are not widespread and frequent enough to be attributed to an aggregate measure such as income inequality.
Edit: removed my comment about how we'd have to have Christian armies rising in the US to have a situation comparable to ISIS. Apparently that rubbed some the wrong way.
ISIS has said they're killing us because of their interpretation of a book written in the first millennia. They say this every time they attack us. Yet (mostly on the left) we keep coming up with reasons why this isn't the case. "No, actually, you're not attacking us for that reason, really it's our fault because we gave the oil to the emirs."
When someone shoots up a Planned Parenthood, however, he doesn't even have to make a public statement and the same people are quick to blame Christian beliefs or rhetoric and immediately accept the ideological reason for the violence. Why don't we say that gunmen attack Planned Parenthoods because of income inequality in the United States?
Finally, is there anywhere to find the original article by Piketty in English? The linked version is in French.