The idea that poverty foments radical politics is frankly ridiculous, and should have been put to bed around 1917.

Even before then, the world had already seen the rise of radical German political movements based on the grievances, real and imagined, of a new class of educated, well-off young men who had reached the limits of the social mobility afforded them by the politics of the time. The leaders and participants were primarily engineers and other professionals (sound familiar?) who believed that internal and external violence was the only way to realize their own potential and their nation’s — in both cases, by toppling existing political and economic orders that had no path for integrating new entrants.

Sadly, I am not aware of any studies on the relationship between restricted social mobility, ultranationalism and terrorism. But the situation in many Middle Eastern countries today has powerful historical parallels.

Of course, those German movements culminated in Hitler. I don’t however believe that that is a necessary endpoint.

There are obvious and straightforward policy responses to this sort of grievance. First, encourage and allow immigration to societies with more open economic and political cultures. Second, make a point of not merely encouraging human rights and democracy in the abstract but of supporting the emergence of political and economic institutions that are open to new personnel. Semi-feudal kingdoms are generally not preferred.