Make of this what you will.
(1) The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, never adjusted to life in the US. “I don’t have a single American friend,” he said. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had an understanding of US teen hood / SWPL culture. He was a 9/11 “truther.” That’s from the Twitter account. That said, he wasn’t too down with America either.
Idk why it's hard for many of you to accept that 9/11 was an inside job, I mean I guess fuck the facts y'all are some real #patriots #gethip—
Jahar (@J_tsar) September 02, 2012
a decade in america already, i want out—
Jahar (@J_tsar) March 14, 2012
(2) I’m not sure if beta male rage had anything to do with this. On the one hand, he does not seem to have been a social recluse. He wrestled. He is darkly handsome, and he has the self-assured gaze of a confident man on his photos. And most tellingly, and to his credit, he went down with guns blazing. On the other hand:
All this talk about the world ending triggered a zombie apocalypse dream last night, weak part was only gettin to 1st base before worlds end—
Jahar (@J_tsar) December 21, 2012
(3) Dzhokhar was a Chechen patriot, but not a raving/rabid one.
chechen dudes holding down russia with all of their gold medals—
Jahar (@J_tsar) August 03, 2012
how i miss my home land #dagestan #chechnya—
Jahar (@J_tsar) April 05, 2012
Tamerlan’s Amazon wish list included a Chechen phrasebook, “The Lone Wolf And the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule,” and “Allah’s Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya, New Edition.”
Obviously, they did not like Russian domination of Chechnya and wanted it to be truly independent, but their lives do not seem to have been dominated by it.
(4) Dzhokhar says he knows English, Russia, and Chechen on his Vkontakte page. In reality, considering that even his older brother had a Chechen dictionary on his to-buy list, it’s unlikely that he knew it to any significant extent. His Russian was fluent in speech, but not in writing (he makes basic spelling errors):
(5) He has a sense of humor (mixed with bitterness). From his Vkontakte page:
“In school they give us a puzzle. There is a car. In the car there is a Dagestani, a Chechen, and an Ingush. Question – who’s driving the car? Maga answers: A policeman.“
(6) He was into Islam (he listed it as his “worldview” on Vkontakte), supported Palestine, etc., but it seems to have a fairly liberal variety. His last entry on Twitter was an RT of a kumbaya-type mufti who now lives in Zimbabwe:
Attitude can take away your beauty no matter how good looking you are or it could enhance your beauty, making you adorable.—
Mufti Ismail Menk (@muftimenk) April 17, 2013
But he definitely was religious, and visited the mosque.
I meet the most amazing people, spent the day with this Jamaican Muslim convert who shared his whole story with me, my religion is the truth—
Jahar (@J_tsar) December 31, 2012
Brothers at the mosque either think I'm a convert or that I'm from Algeria or Syria, just the other day a guy asked me how I came to Islam—
Jahar (@J_tsar) December 25, 2012
His brother seems to have been a much more hardcore Islamist. His YouTube account was divided between “Islam” and “Terrorism,” and Russian rap songs.
(7) There’s a few references and hints at trouble sleeping. A sign of mild to moderate depression?
I really don't like it when I have one ear pressed against the pillow and I start to hear my heart beat, who can sleep with all that noise—
Jahar (@J_tsar) April 07, 2013
I can't seem to drift away into the land of dreams #ditty—
Jahar (@J_tsar) January 21, 2013
And when he did fall asleep, the dreams seem to be violent (see also the zombie apocalypse one above) and tortured.
I had the scariest dream last night man when I woke up I was so relieved that it was only a dream—
Jahar (@J_tsar) December 12, 2012
I killed Abe Lincoln during my two hour nap #intensedream—
Jahar (@J_tsar) February 13, 2013
(8) It also emerges that the FBI had interviewed the older brother at the bequest of an unspecific foreign government – almost certainly Russia. Tamerlan had visited it for 6 months in 2011. I wonder if he established links with some of the Caucasus Emirate Wahhabi types while there – and if so, whether US suspicions about Russia’s “assaults” on human rights in Chechnya made them drop their guard on a man who, it is now clear, was by then fast becoming an Islamist radical.