ABSTRACT
True Believers are the perpetrators who completely dedicate and subdue themselves to an ideology, religion, belief, movement or leader, providing them with a cause, direction and purpose. They feel like misfits, and the often-all-encompassing ideology or mass movement fills a void and provides them with hope. They crave for change and fight for a better and – in their eyes – more righteous world. Many of them fear freedom and responsibility and want to be part of something bigger: let their individual identities be subsumed under a collective identity. Life, in their eyes, is a struggle of good versus evil and in this struggle, they see themselves and the movement they are part of as the good and superior, the crusaders, saviours and heroes. The illustrative case studies include Hitler's followers in Nazi Germany, the extreme right in the United States and zooms in on Timothy McVeigh, the probably best-known American right-wing terrorist who committed a terror attack in Oklahoma, killing 168 people in 1995. They all share a typical mindset in which there is little room for other ideas, for diversity or tolerance.
