AdamR1978,

The Basques are an ethnic group, who, like the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, and the Shia Muslim minority throughout the Middle East, see themselves as suppressed, and who believe that they have been deprived of the separate identity to which they are entitled. They have a separate language and identity, and a rather long history of being ruled by others.

A similar argument could be advanced for some ethnic minorities here in the U.S., at least until the Civil Rights legislation was enacted a few years ago.

I don’t offer this as a justification for killing innocents; I am merely trying to illuminate the context within which otherwise inexplicable behavior occurs.

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Eudaimonia