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Radicalization as a Complex Process

Course video 35 of 55

This week we’ll examine how individuals become radicalized. We’ll see that there are multiple paths to radicalization where opportunity and chance play a significant role. Thus, radicalization is a complex process that defies simple explanation. We’ll conclude with a conversation with Peter Neumann, Professor of Security Studies at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization.

This course will explore the forces that led to the 9/11 attacks and the policies the United States adopted in response. We will examine the phenomenon of modern terrorism, the development of the al Qai'da ideology, and the process by which individuals radicalize towards violence.

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Unterrichtet von

David Schanzer
Associate Professor of the Practice

Skript

So, I'm much more supportive of looking at radicalization as a very

complex psychological process, rather than this rigid uniform one.

And I think I'd like to use this diagram to help understand a little bit what I'm

talking about here.

In this diagram, we look at the green, the yellow, and

orange areas as individuals.

First of all, the first group and the most populated group,

are those who are not activists.

They're not politically motivated.

They're pretty neutral towards these ideas.

The second is a smaller group.

As you can see, it becomes narrower as you go to the top of.

Maybe people who have adopted the ideas, they sympathize with them,

but they haven't really gotten very engaged in doing anything about it.

And then the smaller group up top, the justifiers,

this would be individuals who now are taking

part in maybe trying to promote the ideas.

And the red is people who are then moved to violence to actually try to

put the ideas into action, using violence to try to perpetuate them.

And I think, first of all it's important to understand

that there can be a very hard line between individuals who

have different depths of commitment to the ideology and

then crossing that line to actually engage in violence.

Some of them though, as they move up, they reach that red area.

But what I like about this diagram too,

is that unlike the NYPD notion of four rigid stages,

it's very possible, although rare, that you can have someone

moving to being a neutral, non-activist into that red zone.

Likewise with the sympathizers, maybe a little bit more likely that

you would go straight to violence from being a sympathizer, and

then some of course will move up the process and into that red zone.

The other thing I like about this chart is that it shows that

not only do people move up the radicalization chain,

as they get more active they can become more radical, but

it also gives the possibility of individuals de-radicalizing.

And indeed that might very well be be why we see such low levels of violence,

is because individuals enter in and out of this process.

They might take on some of these ideas,

but then they don't like them, they don't believe in them.

Or, they're pushed to engage in activities that they don't like, and

they're not well introduced, such as violence, and they de-radicalize.

So individuals throughout their lifetime might move up and

down through different levels.

But I think the fact that there might be just as much de-radicalisation

going on as radicalization, is an important concept, and

can help explain why so few people ultimately make it into this red zone.

The other concept I think is very helpful,

is understanding that there's a difference between the illegal and legal activities.

And that brings us back to that first ACOU slot.

So here we're showing the illegal activity as anyone that is in the red zone,

that is engaging in violence in furtherance of their ideology,

and then also some of the justifiers,

probably most of the justifiers and some of the sympathizers.

And they might be doing things like raising money, helping with logistics,

what we call providing material support, maybe training and equipment.

So that would be illegal activity, it would fall short of violence,

but it would still be illegal.

But it also shows that on this chart many of the individuals who either have

some radical ideas or even are still not activated yet, this is totally legal

activity that cannot be interfered with in the United States under our Constitution.

And in most societies it is something that the government

is not allowed to look into.

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