Exploring the “radicalisation-alienation nexus”: Experience and perception of discrimination as a causal factor of support for, and willingness to engage in, violent
protest
MSc Political Science: International Relations
Master's Thesis
Guy Richard Ian Tokley
g.richard.tokley@gmail.com
Student number 11210036
Supervisor: Dr Seiki Tanaka
Second Reader: Dr Ursula Daxecker
Total word count: 23101
Minus bibliography, title, and contents page: 21507 31/08/2017
Abstract:
This paper examines perceived discrimination as a causal factor of sympathy for and willingness to engage in radical violence, building on existing literature on radicalisation and alienation. Using a mixed-methods methodology of a survey and anonymous interviews, the study demonstrates a correlation and inferred causal link between perceived discrimination and support for radical violence, supporting earlier literature. Anomalously, this link only appears to exist for women and not other genders. Support for radical violence is also correlated with willingness to engage in radical violence and past experience in performing radical violence, however, perception of discrimination is not directly correlated with the latter of these two outcomes. These results both seemingly corroborate existing literature and signpost further investigation into these anomalies.
Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Literature review 3. Theoretical framework 4. Hypotheses 5. Methodology 6. Analysis 7. Conclusion
1. Introduction
The concept of radicalisation1 has become an important cornerstone of security policies in
countries including the United Kingdom and the United States of America; this is despite the relative lack of theoretical agreement of what drives radicalisation, or, in some cases, what radicalisation, radical violence, or radical politics even are or represent. This paper builds on previous literature in the study of radicalisation and discrimination, and examines a specific causal pathway to radicalisation through discrimination. Using a mixed methods methodology, it supports -though far from definitively - that discrimination, or the perception thereof, is a likely causal factor of radicalisation.
Given recent history, it seems an understatement at best to suggest that radical political violence, whether conceptualised as violent mass demonstrations, riots, sabotage, or the increasingly catch-all term of “terrorism”, presents problems to the establishment, preservation, and growth of society. In 2017, “terrorism was regarded as the most pressing global humanitarian challenge by two-thirds of those surveyed in Britain.” (The Guardian, 2017) These problems are experienced by societies regardless of whether they are mono- or multi- cultural, democratic or authoritarian, have command economies or free markets, embrace liberalism, wealth redistribution, or any other political or economic model. However, variation does clearly occur in the rate and severity of instances of terrorism both
between varying territories and inter-temporally, implying causal factors to its prevalence and distribution, as opposed to merely random occurrence.
While some portion of radical violence may be performed by agents external to the society in which violence occurs, and/or by individuals who have been raised since childhood into holding radical views, the problem of individuals who previously appeared to be integrated into non-violent and non-radical systems within their host states, experiencing increasing support and willingness to engage in violent activities with the aim to change the political status quo over time is not merely theoretical. Radicalisation has, rightfully, emerged as a topic of importance within security studies, and in a broader sense, the security policies of governments.
Radicalisation is important not only as a source of potential violent radicals, but also as it presents extra challenges and costs to western societies in addition to those already posed by instances of 1 While radicalisation is sometimes considered to be the process by which individuals may become more sympathetic
to, supportive of, or willing to engage in terrorism, or involved in radical islamism, such forms do not encompass the entire scope of radicalisation studies. Radicalisation studies encompasses the study of all forms of transition between peaceful integration towards involvement with or support of anti-system violence. Moreover, like many other key terms of security studies, there are a broad range of competing definitions of “radicalisation”, with few that experience much extent of common agreement. In particular, there has been an off-shoot of the radicalisation literature looking at the role of radicalisation in the behaviour of perpetrators in violent events such as mass shootings – which are sometimes treated as apolitical, but upon closer analysis often appear to have many
politically-motivated aspects. These issues are discussed further and in greater depth later in the introduction, and in the literature review of this paper.
radical violence as performed by non-nationals and external agents. Instances of violence as performed by radicalised nationals may pose greater risks to security, as they may possess privileges that non-nationals do not, such as reduced scrutiny when passing through security checkpoints such as borders - such as the reduced scrutiny that EEA citizens have travelling within the EU, and especially the Schengen Zone (UK Border Control n.d., Migration and Home Affairs - European Commission, n.d.), or enhanced access to critical infrastructure, allowing greater access to sabotage and espionage.
When radical violence is performed by those who had previously been considered “insiders” to a society, this can present challenges to social integration and community harmony. (Asthana and Walker, 2016) An oft-noted consequence of instances of political violence is tension created between the group that perceives itself as the victims of violence (often the hegemonic group in society), and the group perceived to be responsible, or associated with the responsible group by virtue of ethnicity, religion, or other identifying feature. This is, in itself, a social phenomenon perhaps as old as human history, from the scrutiny placed on the Jewish community during the Roman occupation, scrutiny placed on the Catholic Church during the reformation (Morris 1998), to recent backlashes against Muslim communities following Islamist attacks (or, even, in some instances, what have merely been perceived to be Islamist attacks). (Gould & Klor 2017)
In the aftermath of attacks by radicalised citizens, there is often rampant speculation as to the cause of their radicalisation; questions of “who” radicalised them2, “why” it happened3, or even
when or where4. This often catches the public's attention, with breathless column inches devoted to
speculation over details of the lives of perpetrators; from the role of video games and the media in desensitising the Columbine shooters to violence (Ward 2001), to Anders Behring Breivik's time spent online and the extensive extremist manifesto he wrote (The Telegraph 2011) to supposed workplace frustration resulting in seemingly radical violence, to Khalid Masood's time in prison (or perhaps, notably in the case of this paper, his experiences with racial discrimination). (Mendick and Allen 2017) Much of this amounts to little more than tabloid sensationalism, and a sceptical – and scientific – eye is needed to discern patterns and causation away from what are merely curious features of the lives of these individuals, with little relevance to their actions.
It may seem redundant to point out that radical violence poses costs to society, but given the extent to which states spend and in invest in radical violence measures - such as anti-radicalisation programmes, counter-terrorism, policing, and even intervention in foreign conflicts
2 With fingers often pointed towards radical preachers , networks of recruiters (Weinberg et al 2003), or even social media networks
3 This paper focuses on one specific cause; other causes, besides disenfranchisement in society that are posited include: religious fervour, personal ambition, such as the promises of material rewards from the radical groups that they assist, and the belief that engaging in radical violence will be rewarded with social capital (Pisoiu 2011). 4 Such as time spent abroad or in prison.
ostensibly to protect domestic interests from radical violence - that the claims of the potential dangers of radical violence – should at least be be stated, rather than taken from granted. The particular merits of these claims will not be strongly evaluated in this paper, but are presented in order to frame the importance of this topic.
While not a leading cause of death, compared to famine, disease, or traffic accidents, forms of political violence still contribute a not-insignificant sum towards global deaths - with global figures for deaths by terrorism, a specific form of radical violence, exceeding 10,000 per annum in every year of the period 2006-2016, and a peak of over 32,000 deaths in this period (Statista 2017). These figures do not reflect the deaths from other forms of radical violence – such as the civil war still raging in Syria, which has claimed around half a million lives to date(Reuters Staff 2017), nor non-fatalities, property damage, and the like caused by other instances of radical violence, but needless to say, the effects of these instances are not merely an academic curiosity, but a substantial burden on society.
Similarly, the costs of radical violence are not limited merely to ongoing civil wars, or major western powers – with terrorist incidents, violent protests, and other events of radical . From the Sarin Gas attacks of the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan (Osaki 2015), to violent protests in Venezuala this year (Mogollon and Kraul 2017), radical violence, as a broad category of violence, occurs globally, and the effects thereof can be felt almost universally.
In particular, the use of terror as a weapon of radical politics is intended to inflict knock-on effects disproportionate to the actual instance of violence; the potential destabilisation often eclipsing the initial damage. These effects include a high rate of Americans identifying so-called Islamic State as a significant threat to US security (despite the geographical removal of most of IS's forces from the US) (Picardo 2016), and impacts on the economy – such as stock market confidence, insurance losses, and increased premiums – potentially totalling billions of dollars (Johnston and Nedelescu 2005). These demonstrate the effectiveness in the use of terror tactics in having knock-on effects far in excess of the initial impact of violence, creating what is effectively a “multiplier effect” of terror.
So too as we recognise radical violence as a costly experience to society, we must also recognise that treating instances of radical violence themselves is akin to treating the symptoms of a disease; radical violence is – at least for a portion of instances – produced as a result of radicalisation, and radicalisation itself does not appear to be a process that strikes at individuals at random. Treating the process of radicalisation, and preventing individuals from becoming involved in the supply of radical violence, could be a much more effective means of preventing this radical violence than trying to stop individual acts of violence as they occur, or trying to identify would-be plots of radical
violence as they are plotted, and intervening at those occasions.
As mentioned, governments assign portions of spending to anti-radicalisation methods - with “the War on Terror”, a specific attempt to combat global terrorism and radicalisation, estimated to cost $21 trillion to date (Amadeo 2017). Sometimes this takes the form of specific, named
anti-radicalisation programmes, such as the UK's Prevent program.
However, not all attempts at preventing radicalisation are necessarily effective, and poorly-implemented or considered attempts in anti-radicalisation policy may, in many instances, further drive exactly what it was implemented to prevent, an accusation levelled against the UK's “Prevent” strategy (Hirsch 2015). To better guide policy and action to prevent radicalisation, and thereby help reduce instances of radical violence, a stronger – and more nuanced – understanding of radicalisation as a process, and the causes of it, can provide valuable inferences, with
potentially real-world consequences. This paper aims to contribute towards the existing literature in this topic, and while not aiming to provide concrete suggestions for enhancements to existing policy, or novel contributions to target radicalisation, it is hoped that a more nuanced account of the process may help improve such attempts to combat radicalisation.
This paper
This paper proceeds in seven key sections; this introduction, a literature review, a section outlining the theoretical framework used for the rest of the paper, a brief account of hypotheses, a section detailing the research methodology, an analysis of collected data, and finally, a conclusion. Included as supplementary materials is an appendix of additional statistical inferences aside from the main hypotheses and a bibliography.5
In the literature section, this paper takes a relatively novel approach by examining why violence as a tool of political change is relatively rare in consolidated liberal democracies; this is used as a starting point to examine the support for, and use of, radical violence in such contexts. This is used as a starting point to establish the theoretical framework in the rest of the thesis, establishing a micro-foundational approach to radicalisation, including a number of models establishing causal pathways through discrimination towards an individual becoming radicalised. From these models, a number of hypotheses are proposed as to the relationship between an individual's perception of discrimination, and the likelihood – and extent – to which they will support radical violence, be willing to engage in radical violence in future, and have taken part in radical violence in the past. A discussion of the methods used in the study, focusing on the use of surveys and semi-structured 5 Not included in these supplementary materials is the survey or interview format, complete dataset, detailed coding
notes for the dataset for statistical analysis, SPSS output, or interview transcripts; these are all available upon request.
interviews is given; of particular note is the choice to use a randomised response technique as part of the survey in order to infer information about a potentially sensitive issue (i.e. an individual's willingness to take part in radical violence, or their past involvement in such).
Finally, a number of semi-structured interviews were conducted to support the findings of the survey. Consistent with previous literature in radicalisation and related fields, it was found that perception of discrimination was a significant correlative factor of support for radical violence, which was inferred to be causal. However, when this was controlled by gender, it was found that there was no correlation between perception of discrimination and support for radical violence for men, while that correlation remained for women. The paper concludes that this requires further investigation.
Radicalisation may present an important mediating factor between independent causal factors and outcomes such as social cohesion. Outcomes such as the occurrence of violence is also likely to be mediated through factors such as policing and intelligence strategy, legal structures such as the ability to purchase and acquire weapons or the supplies to construct explosives.
This paper examines “radicalisation” on a micro-level; it examines what are the likely factors that lead to the radicalisation of individuals. Accordingly, the theoretical framework conceptualises causal processes as ocurring on the level of individuals and associations constructed of discrete individuals. This may prove complementary to studies that investigate causal features of
radicalisation on a macro scale.
Organised and political violence is likely to occur as a result of conflict; this is in a sense
tautological - as far as “conflict” is often synonymous with “violence” - but in this statement uses “conflict” in a more overarching sense to describe disagreements between individuals, elites, groups, or other actors, and in the context of politics, often about distributions of resources, or the form or structure of legal arrangements. This paper aims to link a specific form of violence – that of radical political violence – to a specific form of conflict, discrimination.
Also of note is this paper's rejection of the focus on radicalisation as solely tied to Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, or terrorism. As Pisoiu (2011:10-11) notes “[the] underlying trend… is the focus on Islamist radicalisation rather than radicalisation in general. The somewhat misleading yet understandable implication of this has been a preoccupation with the role of Islam and Islamist movements… this is an important issue to consider since it not only artificially isolates Islamist radicalisation from other types of engagement in political violence and political protest, but also has the potential of stigmatising certain groups in society as harbouring specific features which would make them more prone to radicalise” . By widening this focus, this paper aims to undo some of the harm of years of academic tunnel-vision.
Key terms
There are many competing definitions for the key terms of this paper; no one, universally accepted definition for terms such as “violence”, “radical”, “radicalisation”. Pisoiu (2011:10) refers to this lack of agreement, saying: “Islamist radication in current academic literature seems to enjoy the same status as pornography in the 1960s ‘we know it when we see it’ (Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964).”
This paper does not aim to uncontroversially define what radicalisation is; instead a working definition will be adopted for this paper. In the literature section, some of the academic debate over what constitutes terrorism will be further explored, but this will be in isolation from the above discussions on the differing operational definitions of radicalisation as used by governments shown above. However, a working definition will be adopted for the terms “radicalism”, “radical” and “radicalisation” for the purposes of this paper. In particular, “radicalism” will be considered to be any one of a set of ideologies that have significant and/or systemic change of a society or society in general as an aim; this builds on the definition used in Waldmann (2010), stating that “a person with radical goals questions the status quo of the socio-political order with a view to replacing it with another - either a revolutionary or an extremely reactionary one”. In particular, these ideologies might prescribe the use of unorthodox methods to achieve these ends, which is to say, those not considered acceptable or part of the ordinary methods of conducting political life; some of these means may not necessarily be illegal, but would at least be considered “unusual” - and not a means that society at large might expect to be used by anyone on a regular basis. In elective democratic societies, these methods would be those outside of the normal methods of voting, lobbying, and petitioning to influence the democratic process, and may include extreme methods, such as violence, as suggested by Jensen (2006:61,) stating that “radicalisation [...] is understood as a process during which people gradually adopt views and ideas which might lead to the legitimisation of political violence”. The definition by Korteweg et al (2010:31) does not necessarily necessitate the use of force, however - “the quest to drastically alter society, possibly through the use of unorthodox means, which can result in a threat to the democratic structures and institutions”.6
“Radical” will be used as an adjective to describe those things that pertain to any ideologies that form “radicalism”. Radicalisation will be the process by which individuals, who previously did not internalise such, adopt radical views over time, and may either support, or actively engage in the unorthodox activities of a radical ideology. Radicalisation will not be considered a binary state, but 6 For contrast, compare with the definition used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who state that it is "the
process by which individuals—usually young people—are introduced to an overtly ideological message and belief system that encourages movement from moderate, mainstream beliefs towards extreme views. While radical thinking is by no means problematic in itself, it becomes a threat to national security when Canadian citizens or residents espouse or engage in violence or direct action as a means of promoting political, ideological or religious extremism. Sometimes referred to as “homegrown terrorism,” this process of radicalization is more correctly referred to as domestic radicalization leading to terrorist violence.” (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2009)
rather a process of intensifying acceptance of radical views and values, especially the use of unorthodox methods.
In particular, these definitions are isolated from any direct relationship to the concept of “terrorism”, which is not to say that terrorism is excluded from the set of things that is considered radical; rather, compared to some of the definitions used above by governments and governmental agencies, it expands the universe of what can be considered part of radicalism. In addition, these definitions, while often suggesting the use of violence as a method of radical activities, do not exclude non-violence, nor a commitment to non-violence, from the set of things which can be considered “radical”.7 For this reason, this paper will use the term “radical violence” to describe a
range of actions and activities that can be considered at a more extreme end of the spectrum of radicalism from non-violent radicalism. Because of the greater impact that radical violence has on society, much of this paper will focus on violent radicalisation over any non-violent forms, and for this reason, a precise definition of what constitutes “violence” is also necessary.
As terms like “radical” and “terrorism” are likely to be emotive terms – as suggested by Khalil (2014) in stating that “terrorism is a pejorative term, regularly utilized to vilify opponents”, this study avoids the use of such terms in surveys and interviews, though these terms will be used in the analysis of such surveys and interviews. Instead, subsets of radical violence - in particular, violent protest, divided into violence against property, the state, and civilians – are used to conceptualise a broad range of radical violence. These three categories are used as proxies for radical violence in the form of sabotage, anti-state violence, and terrorism. The use of “violent protest” as as a proxy for radical violence in general is assumed to be an effective means of overcoming the taboo that may discourage individuals from answering honestly. Even then, violent protest is an illegal activity, and likely to represent a taboo subject for subjects in the study. How effective this is as a proxy depends, in part, on the subjective perception of how close a proxy they are to each of the categories. Certainly, while the description of “violent protest against civilians” would meet the definition of “terrorism” by many counts, including that in Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code § 2656f, which defines it as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents", it may not necessarily meet all definitions of terrorism.
Galtung (1969:168)defines violence to be actions that create harm, especially physical or emotional to persons, saying that the result thereof is that an individual's “actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations”. By contrast, this paper will be more specific in its definition thereof, and exclude many instances of which would be considered
violence in this definition. From here on, “violence” will be considered to be any intentional actions 7 Causal features of non-violent radicalism may be of research interest; this paper, however, does not focus on this
involved in a causal chain culminating in a physical action inflicting physical harm or damage (such as injury, death, or destruction of property), where those actions have been harm of some kind as a goal or aim. Intentionality is important here, as this excludes incidents such as the accidental or negligent application of harm8. Similarly, the point about the causal chain is significant, as it makes
the commissioning of direct acts of violence, as well as engaging in other actions placed between the commissioning and the final action in the causal chain, also acts of violence. Therefore, those individuals who willingly and deliberately facilitate the performance of the final act of harm by others have also committed an act of violence.
The successful application of harm here is also potentially significant in some contexts, as those actions that attempt to inflict harm, have a causal chain that has the infliction of harm as at least one possible outcome but in fact fail to inflict harm of any sort should not be considered acts of violence, only as “attempted violence”. However, as much of this study focuses only on support for and willingness to perform violence, the difference between attempted violence and acts of
violence will not be examined in detail here, nor the implications thereof.
It may be worth noting that no equivalence is required between the form of the harm intended and that which was inflicted; for instance, a vehicle ramming attack intended to cause death but only resulting in property damage and a bombing intending to damage only property but inadvertently resulting in deaths are equally acts of violence as those that cause damage of the sort that was intended.
What may be controversial in this regard is the exclusion of certain “non-physical” forms of violence from the definition of what constitutes violence. Often, aspects such as “structural violence” - such as persistent low-level discrimination resulting in unemployment or social exclusion - is discussed as being causal factors for an individual’s perception of discrimination. However, the difficulty of defining and isolating particular acts of “non-physical violence”. Arguably, the use of word “violence” in these phrases is less about defining any inherent equivalence in the act or process itself, but instead used emotively to suggest the impact that these elements have on those affected can be as pervasive, damaging, and distinctive as actions of physical violence; in such use, it can prove a powerful emotive tool by activists and academics alike to highlight the importance of an oft-neglected 9
What is – perhaps controversially – excluded here is a feature alluded to in the previous definition
8 This does not exclude where the extent of the harm is accidental or negligent but harm itself was intentional. For instance, where the extent of the harm is disproportionate with the original intent, this would still be considered violence.
9 This is not to disregard other forms of violence, such as structural and emotional violence as forms of violence in the general case; however, for the purposes of violence in the context of radicalism, the performance of acts of violence seems to be intuitively understood as physical acts resulting in physical harm.
from the US penal code; that being, the aspect of prior planning and premeditation inherent in some definitions of radical action and terrorism. While premeditation is investigated further to a small extent in the interview portion of the study, at no point in this paper is it considered a necessary feature of radical violence; for these purposes, an instance of violence can be considered to be radical even if it is spontaneous or reactionary.
2. Literature review
Much of the conflict studies literature typically frames violence as the result of conflict; parties resort to the use of violence to resolve the conflict in a manner that they find more satisfactory to themselves than negotiation. However, conflict is a persistent and regular feature of society, while violence itself is relatively rare; not all conflicts become violent conflicts.10 As Meluch et al (2016)
notes, violence is most likely to arise from conflicts that can be considered “intractable”; that is, those conflicts where parties experience great difficulty in mutually agreeing to new arrangements that result in a status quo improvement, to such extent that it appears impossible or unresolvable. In a conflict that seemingly has no such consensual resolutions between parties, a party may attempt to unilaterally enact a resolution, through the use of coercion, of which violence is one form.11
Arendt (1970) notes that the use of violence is typically the form of coercion used by groups that lack access to power; to her understanding, the use of violence in fact displays a lack of power. A party turns to the use of violence because it lacks access to other forms of coercion, or means to influence the behaviour of other parties, or to influence other outcomes. This may explain the relative rarity of the use of radical violence; the parties who, by some dint of necessity, are forced to use it are those who have less access to the other means of power, such as wealth or political influence; they are therefore also more vulnerable and prone to the repercussions of violence should it be employed. Those who already possess power regularly have means other than the employment of violence to; moreover, the hegemonic groups in society – those that are most likely to possess this power – are likely to be those who have already established the status quo in their favour, and therefore have the least incentive to enact revolutionary change, which may either reduce their power in society, or make conditions less favourable to their interests (or both).
In some regards the question of radical political violence raises the question of why the use of violence to achieve political ends should ever be considered radical at all. In much contemporary fiction, violence is not only an acceptable way to institute significant political change, including those of regimes, but often implied to be the default. The ubiquity of this in fiction is perhaps even more apparent in the use of radical violence as a tool of political change and succession in fantasy
10 In social science terms, “conflict” can perhaps be better understood as a disagreement between two or more parties about features such as a distribution of resources, or a social arrangement or structure, rather than a more plain English understanding where it may be synonymous with violence itself).
11 The performance of competitive, sporting violence - where the employment of violence is entirely consensual by both parties - can still be considered a form of conflict, as the competitors may fundamentally disagree over which party is the superior fighter, and/or should receive any prizes from the competition, such as monies, trophies, or titles. Indeed, this definition of violence appears to be comprehensive, as the only instances of “violence” without some form of core disagreement between belligerent parties may be the demonstrative show of martial abilities for solely the purpose of entertainment – such as action sequences in films. However, these demonstrations go to great lengths to prevent the feature of “harm” that has been previously considered definitional of violence in this instance; for this definition of violence, it also excludes intentionality, as any harm caused in such martial displays is almost always accidental.
and science fiction literature12. These all perhaps show the ubiquity of violence as a tool of political
change in the public consciousness, to an extent that makes its use seem almost banal. However, we should acknowledge that by its nature, fiction seeks to highlight the most exceptional and fringe instances of experience for the purposes of entertainment. Human psychology gravitates the attention toward such events – even in history - distorting their significance. Similarly, work like Taleb (2007)'s writing on black swan theory reflect this bias in human psychology - the belief that rare, significant events shape human social history, and therefore their importance shadows the day-to-day affairs which numerically dominate human history.
None of this is to say that the study of political violence is necessarily overstated as a cause of human suffering. But it is worth highlighting the bias created in the social consciousness of such events being almost common place, while in fact, the reverse should be highlighted – such forms of violence are incredibly rare, and the majority of people go through their entire lives without engaging in radical violence. For this reason, to understand radical violence, it may be important to understand why political violence itself is a (relatively) rare phenomenon.
To answer the question of why political violence is rare, many political philosophers, such as Hobbes (1969), came to grapple with the concept of a state of affairs whereby the resolution of all allocations of economic and political resources by the unfettered use of violence by individuals would be considered the default. Without a system of governance or policing to punish them for doing so, all individuals would be able to use violence to acquire resources from other individuals; to such a extent that life would become “nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes 1969). Such a system can be understood as being truly anarchistic, as, in principle, no rule of law would exist. Calling such an arrangement the “state of nature”, they supposed it not only to be theoretical, but also to be the (not merely “a”) state of all humans before the institution of society, the state, and
governance.
Without established rules of conduct between people, nor the means or method to enforce or establish any such rules, individuals would be free to settle all conflicts only by the use of force. Such a state of affairs would be hampering to any efforts to co-operate, as there would be no consistent security against attempts to use such violence to alter the status quo.13
12 An example of this is in Star Wars where, notably, the character Palpatine in this series repeatedly engineers and uses radical violence as a tool increase his power base and promote significant internal change in both the Republic and the Empire to serve his interests; even the protagonists of Episodes IV through VI - the Rebellion - instigate attacks on government facilities and institutions to promote a galaxy-wide political reform. (Star Wars 1977, 1980, 1983, 1999, 2002, 2005)
13 Much of this idea of pre-society life being characterised by such interactions, and the prolific use of violence, does not seem to be well supported by archaeological evidence, nor modern anthropological understandings of
communities isolated from broader society (cite here). Meanwhile, in the context of anarchy within the international system, Wendt (1992) argues against the interpretation that violence and a state of warfare is a necessary outcome of anarchy, famously stating that “Anarchy is what [one] make[s] of it”. It is difficult to understand whether this is intrinsically a criticism of Hobbes, or whether this “pre-social” stage of anarchy is to be understood as metaphorical rather than literal.
We might understand the use of violence in the state of nature to comprise “political violence”, but it may fail to be categorised as “radical”; as the political system - as it exists - does not have codified rules against the use of violence. Rather, the de facto state of affairs is that political interactions are largely those that are comprised of violent actions. As such, while there are no de jure actions that form the lexicon of political interaction, in practice, violent actions make up the entirety of such a language.
The regular practice of violence in this context reduces the capability of individuals to engage in associations - voluntary or otherwise - with one another, as the trust required to engage in such interactions is eroded by the very real risk of theft, injury, or death, when allowing other persons this form of proximity. As such, the state of violent anarchy is self-perpetuating, and no one individual is capable of taking unilateral action to avoid taking part in, or being of a victim of, it.
Social contract theory provides a solution to the problem of how individuals move from a state of nature and vicious anarchy towards a peaceful society; this posits that individuals would willingly give up the right to exercise violence legitimately to the nascent state, in return for the protection that the state offers from violence in turn. The state would retain the sole legitimate exerciser of violence in society, in order to protect citizens from the illegitimate use of violence (Hobbes 1969).14
While such social contract theory establishes under which circumstances individuals may consent to trade their autonomy and freedom to practice violence for the enhanced security that being governed and protected by the state brings, it does not answer the question of what should protect citizens from the states themselves. To Hobbes, this is an irrelevant question - to him, the state of nature is so detestable that any individual would always prefer living under abject tyranny to that of the state of anarchy (Hobbes 1969). Rosseau disagrees on this point - to him, states have certain responsibilities to their citizens, summed up as part of the social contract, which obliges them to not only provide security to citizens but creates other responsibilities between the state and citizens. In such a sense, citizens are not only accountable to the state - and accordingly to be punished for their lack of compliance when they fail to do so - but states are accountable to their citizens, and should held to such account when they fail in their responsibilities. (Rosseau, 1968)
By contrast with Hobbes, Rosseau supposed that a predisposition towards violence would be the state of humans after society was taken away, not before it emerged in the first place. While he imagines humans in the state of nature as “undeveloped” and “ignorant”, he imagines the state of 14 The state would also possess the means to enforce other laws, such as the right to own property and enforce
contracts, allowing the development of modern society as we know it; such features of the state - and perhaps, especially, the liberal state, which creates an often arbitrary-seeming divide between personal and political life - may enable the practices of discrimination and exclusion that this paper posits may help fuel the practice of political violence.
nature more idyllically, perhaps explaining his more demanding regard for a would-be sovereign. In keeping with Rosseau’s idea that a legitimate state and sovereign must do more than merely prevent the state of anarchy, we might infer that the social contract can be violated by the state – at which point, citizens may infer that they are (re-) legitimised in the use of violence to pursue their ends and to radically reshape society.
Supporting this, protestors and voters regularly make claims to the accountability of governments to their populaces (Hayoun 2017, Rappler 2017, Maimane 2016), and calls for this accountability to be enforced - often in the form of impeachment, conviction, and other personal sanctions -
regularly form a large part of discourse. When considered as such, this presents a clear motivation for the practice of radical violence within established states by citizens; violence is used to hold states to account by dissatisfied citizens for a perceived failure to self-regulate from these failings and to govern in the interests of citizens rather than solely in the interests of the governing elites. This is supported by the findings of Daxecker (2017) - that repressive counterterrorism tactics by governments only succeed in increasing the radicalisation of a populace, and increasing the number of terrorist attacks.
However, such attempts at violence are still relatively rare. Certainly, we might expect higher rates of violence than we observe at present should even minor extents of dissatisfaction with states be sufficient to motivate violence.
Depictions in the media and press of violent radicals - such as terrorists - frequently depicts them as “crazy”, “insane”,or in other ways irrational15. Attempts to frame the actions of terrorists and
other violent radicals in terms of a psychological “other”, such as insanity, might be explicable in terms of a social defence mechanism; the ability for individuals to interact in society at large, in processes that implicitly require trust that other parties - and themselves - will not engage in violence at “any time”. This may be touched upon in the Okkervil River song “The War Criminal Rises and Speaks”, where, after an impassioned and humanising speech by the war criminal of the song’s title, the narrator of the song attempts to calm his partner by intoning to her that the title criminal is an inexplicable monster and his actions are unrelated to the processes that determine their own behaviour: “Your heart’s warm and kind. Your mind is your own./Our blood-spattered criminal is inscrutable; don’t worry, he won’t/Rise up behind your eyes and take wild control./He’s not of this time, he fell out of a hole.” (Okkervil River 2003)
However, the existing radicalisation literature does not support such assertions. Instead, it is generally found that terrorists are generally psychologically normal – Taylor and Quayle (1994:14) find that they are “essentially unremarkable people, in psychological terms disturbingly similar to their 15 Simple Google searches for “crazy terrorist” and “insane terrorist” on 31/08/20217 returned over 41,000 and 17,000
victims”. From this, we can likely infer that any attempts to pathologise radicalism in a
psychological framework will not provide useful inferences to a broader understanding of the phenomenon of radicalisation and radical violence. Indeed, this can be viewed as part of a pattern of confirmation bias and in all instances of violence involving individuals with mental health
problems. Despite common beliefs to the contrary, individuals with mental health problems are not, in general, likely to be the perpetrators of violence (Hammond 2015).
While it is anecdotally easy to point to mentally-ill individuals who had committed acts of large-scale radical violence – such as Anders Behring Breivik - this seems to create a confirmation bias. There is one trait, however, of the mentally ill who commit acts of terrorism and other mass
violence; they make up a disproportionately large number of those who engage in so-called “lone wolf” terrorism (that is, acts of terrorism committed by only one perpetrator). By contrast with Taylor & Quayle's findings on terrorists overall, Gill et al (2017) find that 41% of US solo mass murders had a diagnosed mental health disorder.
Even within the context of lone wolf terror, it is easy to overstate the extent to which the perpetrators of this violence are truly isolated. Berntzen & Sandberg (2014)discuss how lone wolves, such as Anders Behring Breivik, may act alone, but are “embedded” in broader social networks of extremist ideology. Their association - and participation - in these broader social networks reflects how these extreme and fringe ideologies, as held by lone wolves, and which appear to be a significant motivating factor to acts of violence, do not exist in a vacuum, nor are solely a product of an isolated, pathological mind.
Moreover, we can infer that radicalisation, the performance of radical acts, and “radical lifestyles” are not sui generis instances of a normal outcome of unique and perverse processes that have no impact on the population at large (Pisoiu 2011), but rather the perverse outcomes of normal processes that guide the decision-making and lifestyle-selection processes of the vast majority of individuals throughout society. In such a case, it may prove more fruitful for us to identify such normal processes and probe the parameters under which they can be expected to produce such perverse outcomes.
When understood as a category of non-pathological behaviour, radical political violence should perhaps also be understood as a subcategory of regular violence; much of the modern literature on the social phenomenon of violence identifies a sense of shame and loss of social standing as a particular cause of violence. Wilkinson & Pickettdescribe the causal processes that lead to violence in their work (2010:133) “Sometimes the incidents that led to violence seemed incredibly trivial, but they all evoked shame”; Gilligan (1996) agrees with this assessment, referring to sources that said they had “yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of
feeling shamed and humiliated… and that did not represent the attempt to… undo this “loss of face”.” (Gilligan 1996:110) Both sources agree that the performance of violence bears significantly to the social standing of individuals who perceive their standing to be eroded, and attempt to mitigate or undo this with the performance of violence.
Wilkinson & Pickett (2010) then dig deeper into this sense of shame, looking at the causes of what this would be among young men, suggesting that it is the deprivation of “all markers of status”, and pointing to “American high-school massacres… show[ing] us the significance of bullying as a trigger to violence”. In particular, these factors align closely with what other authors have described as social exclusion; Percy-Smith (2000:3)described social exclusion as “disadvantage in relation to certain norms of social, economic or political activity pertaining to individuals, households, spatial areas or population groups”, while Burchard et al (1999:230) state that “an individual is socially excluded if (a) he or she is geographically resident in a society and (b) he or she does not participate in the normal activities of citizens in that society.”
The Commission of the European Communities (1993:1, cited in Percy-Smith 2000:3) specifically link social exclusion to discrimination, saying “it affects individuals and groups… who are in some way subject to discrimination or segregation” .
These papers do not necessarily define strict causal mechanisms as to how discrimination, segregation, social exclusion, or material deprivation translate into radicalisation. More recent studies bridge some of this causal gap; Walsh et al (2017) draw a causal process from the perception of discrimination, as opposed to the actual existence thereof to one negative social outcome (in this instance, alcohol use among immigrant adolescents). Their study uses “emotional alienation” as a mediating factor to explain . Implicit in this study is that the perception of
discrimination is a causal or probabilistic outcome of discrimination itself, i.e. that subjects are more likely to perceive discrimination where discrimination actually exists against them.1617
A 1997 report by the social exclusion unit links social exclusion to several negative outcomes “including crime, drugs, unemployment, community breakdown, and bad schools etc.” (Social Exclusion Unit 1997:2)
Similarly, a psychology study by Caldwell et al (2004) linked racial discrimination as a risk factor for violent behaviour amongst African American young adults. These insights from multiple fields
16 While this assumption may seem intuitive, it may be difficult to operationalise “discrimination” itself and successfully test a causal connection between the existence of discrimination and the perception thereof.
17
Alienation is a term used over much of the literature referred to in this paper; however, it is not clear that the “alienation” referred to by modern authors such as Walsh resembles either each other or the term alienation as used by Marx.appear to confirm the intuition that at least one causal pathway towards negative social behaviours, including violence, is society-wide discrimination.
Pisoiu is critical of considering radicalisation to be a distinct process – mockingly suggesting that “selective incentives motivating involvement are usually depicted as specific to jihadis, as if regular people would not look for group belonging or standing” (Pisoiu 2011:53), and instead compares the process by which individuals choose and adopt radical lifestyles as akin to the processes which produce ordinary career selection decisions in society more broadly, saying that “the appellative Islamist radical or terrorist seemed rather a label for the effects of a type of behaviour, not the account or explanation of the behaviour itself” which is “a variation of a more general process of occupational change, which, under certain conditions, results in a radical, activist, and, in this case, Islamist occupation” (Pisoiu 2011:54).
A study by Gambetta & Hertog (2009)alsoplaces the decision to adopt a radical lifestyle in a framework similar to that of career selection. By looking at a selection of prisoners held (though not necessarily convicted) for terrorism and terrorism-related offences, they found that these
individuals were likely to have a higher level of qualifications than the average for their countries of origin when these countries had, in particular, with a disproportionate number holding degrees in medicine or engineering. From this, the authors inferred that individuals were more likely to radicalise and take to violent radical lifestyles as their level of qualification increased and the disparity between their actual incomes and their expected incomes in their vocation of choice also increased. This places such a choice in a quasi-rational choice and quasi-financial framework; individuals are framed as more likely to choose a radical lifestyle when the opportunity costs framed in (especially in a financial context) are lower. In this regard, highly qualified individuals in these regions have more to gain from radical violence as well, as they may expect higher incomes should their goals be achieved.
Many of these approaches to radical violence should be taken with a pinch of salt, especially as regards their propensity to be affected by sampling biases. These biases can be seen in trying to infer general conclusions about terrorism from individuals who successfully return from war zones, such as that by (name a couple), or those restricting their samples solely to Muslims, such as Bakker & Grol (2015), or Bhui et al (2014). This affects perhaps most notably statistical approaches, where correlations may be detected between features only common among the sample, and not the broader universe of radicalised individuals.
The Gambetta & Hertog (2009) study is affected by the sampling bias of selecting from prisoners; this pre-disposes the selection to those individuals who had committed crimes or were suspected of committing crimes, were successfully captured, and more importantly, those who survived such attempts to capture them. This may create significant biases in supposedly independent variables,
such as that tested as a causal variable - level of education. Radicals with lower levels of education, and therefore less scarce skills, are more likely to be deployed by radical groups in roles with a greater risk of death. (If, instead, the study had focused the selection on individuals who had been directly involved in the performance of violence, or suicide violence, it seems more likely that they would not have observed the same correlation between level of education and the dependent variable.)
Similarly, studies that rely on interview-based methodologies rely on the willingness of subjects to engage in interviews. Individuals who agree to partake in interviews may be those less implicated in activities that are criminal, and therefore less likely to face legal repercussions for divulging information as to their radical activities18. Alternatively, they may be more radicalised than average,
and keen to use the platform of an interview to espouse their radical views.
The study by Sheikh (2016) selected a sample not only on the basis of this who were imprisoned at the time, but also those who were willing to take part in interviews. As such, the previous two biases compound one another; not only are the participants of the study volunteers, but also represent the biased sample of prisoners, neither of which may be representative of the whole universe of radicalised individuals. It is may also be part of a decision-making process by
individuals held as prisoners to consent to, and engage in , to appear co-operative and therefore be perceived as behaving well and be offered early release or other preferential treatment.
Additionally, this study investigated individuals who had returned to their home country after volunteering for an insurgent group overseas; this selects to individuals who survived their time spent in a warzone, and those who were able to return - both possessing the means to, and either choosing to return, or being forced to. This may represent individuals who were sent back -
perhaps for a specific task, such as the performance of an act of terrorism, or to recruit further radicals - or otherwise were removed from the group, or chose to leave the group, perhaps because of their inability to perform adequately tasks assigned to them by the group; therefore, these individuals are unlikely to be representative of the entire universe of those radicalised.
The use of any form of violence to achieve a political end - as opposed to merely upholding the rule of law - should be considered “radical” within the framework of a liberal democracy. Where they exist, constitutions of liberal societies regularly give citizens guarantees of reasonable extents of non-interference from the state. In this regard, there can be considered no context in which violence is used to achieve a political end that is not radical.
While “radicalism”, “radical”, and “radicalisation” are terms often used in normal discourse, this is
neither a particularly common English term, nor one with an easy intuitive understanding with clear implications. This paper will infer a general understanding of what radicalisation and radical
behaviour are from the following sources; no claim will be made that this understanding is comprehensive of the broader usage of the term.
Bhui et al (2016) suggest that individuals can be uncontroversially considered to have been radicalised without adopting extremist or violent behaviour, stating that “all definitions are explicit that radicalisation can exist without violence and extremist behaviour” (2016:483). Implicitly, this suggests that there are least two categories of behaviour that are part of radicalism; those that are violent and/or extremist, and those that merely support the radical restructuring of society. This view is backed up by the account of Korteweg et al (2010), describing radicalism as only “the quest to drastically alter society, possibly through the use of unorthodox means, which can result in a threat to the democratic structures and institutions”. While “unorthodox means” may imply forms of violence, this seems in general to refer to means of influencing the structure of society outside of the means normally accepted to do so. In this regard, one may infer that voting, lobbying, and petitioning can be regarded as “non-radical” actions, while forms of protest, including those which are violent, as well as the most extreme measures, such as lethal violence, assassination, and civil wars. Waldmann’s assessment of the aims of radicalised individuals appears to confirm the
commonality of significant social change as an aim of radicalised individuals, without necessarily including violence as an intrinsic aspect, stating that “a person with radical goals questions the status quo of the socio-political order with a view to replacing it” (Waldmann 2010), but similarly implies extreme and violent methods in doing so, adding “with another - either a revolutionary one or an extremely reactionary one”.
All of these assessments agree that radical action and views hinge on achieving significant, even systemic change within society, and accepting or embracing the use of methods outside of the norm for achieving such change, such as those that may be seen as “extreme”, or involve violence. Radicalisation, therefore, can be considered the process by which individuals who did not
previously hold such views or engage in such actions, increasingly see these actions as
acceptable, necessary, or even desirable - either by themselves or others - and, perhaps, at the far end of this scale – something that they either desire to or believe is necessary to engage in
themselves.
This paper aims to build on a school of thought in the literature that may be best described as the “radicalisation-alienation nexus”; in short, this is the theory that an individual’s sense of alienation from their host society may lead to ever-increasing extents of sympathy for, engagement with, and activity in radical politics and actions. This is a micro theory, though also has macro implications, which may be the subject of investigation.
While seemingly using the term “alienation” to refer to a different concept from that within the more recent radicalisation literature, Marx - and subsequent scholars of Marx, such as Byron, discussed later in this section - have referred to the alienation of the working class being a primary cause of their hypothesised moves towards social revolution - a move that can, of course, be understood as a form of radicalisation, as individuals seek to effect massive political change through the use of extraordinary measures, most principally violence.
To Marx (1987), a worker’s alienation is the way in which capitalism and the methods of mass production alienate the worker from the products of their own labour; no longer do they have direct access to the revenue of their labour (this is estranged from through through the medium of a wage, as opposed to the profit derived by the capitalist class from their labour); likewise, the satisfaction of a completed task – as the task is divided into piecemeal tasks through the nature of an assembly line and automated machinery. Alternatively, this is represented as the estrangement of an individual from their own essential qualities as human beings. For Marx, such alienation is a necessary outcome of such economic and production processes – particularly capitalism – as dictated by the nature of both humans and capitalism. This bears notable parallels with Rosseau's theories on violence in anarchy being a by-product of human relations in society, not in a pre-social state. The extent to which Marx's alienation resembles the form of alienation discussed in more contemporary literature is unclear, but both bear clear similarities as resulting as a result of
modern society, and being a cause of drive of certain individuals towards demanding radical reform – potentially through the use of violence.
Critics have debated whether Marx’s understanding of alienation - and the way in which it ties into human nature - can be understood as particularly culturally bounded, or in some sense
“transhistorical” (Byron 2016). Should human nature and alienation be culturally bounded, then the causes of such, the effects thereof, and perhaps even the ability to experience alienation at all, may vary between groups depending on aspects such as geography, culture, and other
ethnographic features. However, if human nature (and the consequences thereof) are transhistorical, then all individuals in all contexts will experience alienation and the same propensity towards radicalisation, regardless of their experience of culture or their historical context, something that Byron (2016)argues for.
Understanding that in a broader, non-Marxist framework of radical political violence, we can further infer that should human nature - or at least, those aspects thereof that are pertinent to the
experience of alienation - are transhistorical, then an individual’s culture does not create or prevent their ability to perceive alienation; however, this does not foreclose that culture itself is a context-specific aspect that may be causal of radicalisation, but rather that there is no one culture that has
particular ability (or not!) to be causal of radicalisation in all contexts, more or less than any other culture or other ethnographic trait.
Synthesising these insights together with insights from the radicalisation-alienation literature, we may infer that all individuals have the propensity to become radicalised as a result of their inherent human nature, however, the ability to experience alienation - and therefore to become radicalised - is at its greatest when aspects of the host society, such as culture, legal structures, or - and
perhaps most importantly to Marxist theorists - economic structures increase the extent to which individuals experience a lack of synchronicity between the pursuit of their self-interests and their ability to achieve such.
Broadly speaking, much of the literature relating to the motivating factors towards political violence have been conflicted between identity and interest based approaches, where authors suppose either that elites or all individuals are coldly rational, and engage in political violence only to serve their own interests, or that they respond to conditions according to clashes between their personal identities and host societies. However, such a harsh dichotomy need not exist; it is not antithetical to a rational-choice process to say that identity forms a role in preference formation, nor to say that, in identity-based approaches, there is no role for rationality to play a role in decision-making.
Radical violence will often fail to meet the criteria for war, as the number of fatalities of
“combatants” may be below the cut-off criteria for a formal definition of “war”; this may be because the violence directed against persons is non-lethal (such as in the UK's 2015 student protests (Coughlan, 2015)), because the fatalities are directed against non-combatants, or the violence is not directed against persons at all. Despite this, useful insights might be made from the literature on war and civil war.
In particular, Fearon’s (1995) rationalist explanations for war may provide useful insights as to the phenomenon of radical violence.Fearon notes that war (and, implicitly in this context, all violence) is costly - often to both sides involved in conflict. As such, models for the causal systems of violent conflicts must either be based around the assumption that leaders or individuals involved in violent conflicts are, at least some of the time, irrational in their behaviour, that there is a rational incentive for engaging in conflict that outweighs the costs of war (and, potentially, failure in warfare).
In its furthest extreme, the lack of agreeable settlements may be because of a deep commitment to mutually incompatible social structures between different parties. Conflicts including the major communist revolutions represent an intense disagreement between parties as to mutually
conflicting economic models; between a free-market structure, and a command economy structure, there is little conceivable compromise between these two ends. The civil wars in autocratic regimes
also represent this form of conflict - as there is no accepted bargaining position between the governance of one group of elites and another group of elites (power sharing may be considered to be a worse outcome than the absolute victory of either party), or for governing elites to make way for a democratic assembly.
Literature on radicalisation, foreign fighters, terrorists, and other violent radicals often point to alienation as a key cause. In the ICCT's report (Ginkel & Entenmann 2016), alienation is twice mentioned as a “push factor” for would-be foreign fighters leaving Europe: “alienation and social exclusion felt in Europe” and “EU national integration policies allegedly alienating Muslim groups”. Similarly,low levels of integration and a sense of alienation is regularly linked to an experience or perception of discrimination - “lower levels of integration are associated with perceptions of individual or group discrimination” (Heath & Demireva 2014:161).
Some of the radicalisation-alienation literature breaks down the process of radicalisation into multiple, potentially overlapping stages, each defined by processes that are relatively distinct from one another. None of which is to declare that all individuals who experience radicalisation go through exactly the same stages, nor that the extent of radicalisation is defined by which of these “stages” an individual has gone through.
That said, the conceptual use of ordinal, yet overlapping stages can help to clarify the system of radicalisation as a process, as opposed to a “once and done” affair. One of these stages discussed is the process by which alienation creates in-group/out-group dichotomies; as individuals feel alienated from the “in-group”, and identify themselves as excluded, this shift in self-perception creates a greater emphasis on forming new, ever-stronger social links with those that they identify as being part of the same “out-group”, with group lines likely identified on the basis on kinship, or ethnicity; as put by Madanipour et al (1998:9) “In some places, ethnicity and race form fundamental dividing lines in socio-spatial structures. In other places, cultural and kinship networks are more significant.”.19
At this point, processes become self-re-enforcing, as individuals are socialised by their new peers. Radical, anti-society concepts are not only transmitted around this social circles quickly due to their relatively small size and tight-knit nature, but are adopted quickly as resonate with the feelings of alienation already held by individuals in the group. When new individuals join these social networks that are already dominated by radical ideologies, their ability to deny the radical logics of these
19
Although much of the literature focuses on Arab ethnicity as a significant factor in these instances, the existence of radical white nationalist groups, such as the Nationalist Socialist party of Germany historically, and modern groups like the Alt-Right (cite)) suggest that any ethnicity could play this grouping role for alienated individuals. Similarly, experiences with non-ethnically aligned ideological revolutions, such as those of communism, show that kinship groups may form along lines other than those defined by ethnicity (cite). However, seemingly ideological revolutions can often possess splits along ethnic lines (cite), so it may be important not to dismiss either feature as potentially co-causal in such instances.groups may be diminished by their entrenched nature in the social network.
Much of radicalisation studies has suffered from a methodological blindspot in the selection of sample populations; while there are notable examples (Gill et al 2017)of studies that look at a broader universe of radicalisation, these studies are still in a relative minority compared to the number that focus solely on radicalisation within the context of radical islam. Many studies,
including those by Gambetta & Hertog (2009) and others previously mentioned restrict the universe of their samples to solely individuals of a Muslim background. Such restrictions may represent an Islamophobic bias, or an ahistorical overfixation on the relatively recent phenomenon of extensive international Islamic radical violence. According to el-Aswad (2013), “so-called Islamophobia, ha[s] portrayed Muslims in terms of global terrorism, Islamic jihadism, fanatic Islamism, fundamentalism, fascism, and Islamic authoritarianism.” Similarly, the ODIHR/OSCE (OSCE, n.d.) make the claim that “Muslims are often portrayed as a monolithic group, whose culture is incompatible with human rights and democracy.” These biases lend credence to the idea that the media and even academic have over-fixated on Islam as a cause of radicalisation, rather than looking to other causes, due to potential racial or cultural biases. In either case, there has been little-to-no theoretical justification in the literature for this fixation, nor much contending with the broader universe of radical violence.
While at times this focus on Islam and Muslim populations in the course of a single study may be appropriate for the purposes of a detailed, small-N, or qualitative case study, designed to prise out nuanced inferences by controlling for features that may confuse result; this is used to great effect in Pape's 2003 paper on the causal effects of suicide terrorism. However, the use of large-N, statistical methods on sample populations that have already been artificially reduced to a particular subset may conflate certain results as causal and limit the range of inferences that can be made.
Indeed, thinkers such as Foucault (Foucault & Parham 2005)have highlighted the similar role that radical ideologies such as Marxism have played in instigating radical violence in the past to the way that the relatively modern ideology of radical Islam plays in a modern context. This ties in with the concept that an individuals' ability to experience alienation – and thereby become radicalised – is transhistorical in nature, and not bounded by their cultural experiences or background. Other specific ideologies that have been associated with radical violence include Nationalist-Socialism in Germany, and the Aum Shinrikyo cult; more generally, ethno-nationalism of many kinds has led to radical violence in a broad variety of contexts, such as civil conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka, among many others. This demonstrates that radicalisation and radical violence are not peculiarly Islamic phenomena; moreover, individuals in any context could potnetially become radicalised when experiencing the relevant hardships.
state formation and democracy, seem to agree on a few broad points: that violence emerges largely from dissatisfaction with the status quo and an inability to successfully negotiate interests between competing groups, that identity – such as ethnicity – is often a salient factor in
determining an individuals' friend/foe distinctions, and that alienation – and the causes thereof, such as discrimination – forms a powerful basis for an individual's extent of dissatisfaction and their likelihood to turn to violence.
