This article examines Channel “de‐radicalization” interventions, which take place on individuals suspected of having the potential to commit terrorist crimes. Situated within critical security ...studies, the article explores the British Prevent programme by utilizing primary interviews with hard‐to‐reach Channel mentors and senior Prevent officials. Following the work of anticipatory risk‐governance scholarship, this research illuminates the three processes of risk‐visibilization (how an individual becomes sufficiently “seen” as harbouring risk that they are offered Channel mentorship), risk‐calculation (how practitioners negotiate supposed riskiness), and risk‐knowing (how practitioners “know” risks they observe). It demonstrates how the practice of preemptive counter‐terrorism is subsumed inherently by—even relies upon—subjectivity and human prejudice, and fundamental disagreements between practitioners. Through substantial empirical contribution on the phenomenon of Channel interventions, the discussion highlights ultimately that the algorithmic rationale of preemptive risk‐spotting normalizes the suspicion of banal and everyday behaviors, precisely because such interventions are ultimately deployed through worst‐case imaginations.
Radicalization is a major challenge of contemporary global security. It conjures up images of violent ideologies, “homegrown” terrorists and jihad in both the academic sphere and among security and ...defense experts. While the first instances of religious radicalization were initially limited to second-generation Muslim immigrants, significant changes are currently impacting this phenomenon. Technology is said to amplify the dissemination of radicalism, though there remains uncertainty as to the exact weight of technology on radical behaviors. Moreover, far from being restricted to young men of Muslim heritage suffering from a feeling of social relegation, radicalism concerns a significant number of converted Muslims, women and more heterogeneous profiles (social, academic and geographic), as well as individuals that give the appearance of being fully integrated in the host society. These new and striking dynamics require innovative conceptual lenses. Radicalization in Theory and Practice identifies the mechanisms that explicitly link radical religious beliefs and radical actions. It describes its nature, singles out the mechanisms that enable radicalism to produce its effects, and develops a conceptual architecture to help scholars and policy-makers to address and evaluate radicalism—or what often passes as such. A variety of empirical chapters fed by first-hand data probe the relevance of theoretical perspectives that shape radicalization studies. By giving a prominent role to first-hand empirical investigations, the authors create a new framework of analysis from the ground up. This book enhances the quality of theorizing in this area, consolidates the quality of methodological enquiries, and articulates security studies insights with broader theoretical debates in different fields including sociology, social psychology, economics, and religious studies.
What motivates those who commit violence in the name of political beliefs? Terrorism today is not solely the preserve of Islam, nor is it a new phenomenon. It emerges from social processes and ...conditions common to societies throughout modern history, and the story of its origins spans centuries, encompassing numerous radical and revolutionary movements.
Marc Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist and government counterterrorism consultant whose bestselling booksUnderstanding Terror NetworksandLeaderless Jihadprovide a detailed, damning corrective to commonplace yet simplistic notions of Islamist terrorism. In a comprehensive new book,Turning to Political Violence, Sageman examines the history and theory of political violence in the West. He excavates primary sources surrounding key instances of modern political violence, looking for patterns across a range of case studies spanning the French Revolution, through late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutionaries and anarchists in Russia and the United States, to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the start of World War I. In contrast to one-dimensional portraits of terrorist "monsters" offered by governments and media throughout history, these accounts offer complex and intricate portraits of individuals engaged in struggles with identity, injustice, and revenge who may be empowered by a sense of love and self-sacrifice.
Arguing against easy assumptions that attribute terrorism to extremist ideology, and counter to mainstream academic explanations such as rational choice theory, Sageman develops a theoretical model based on the concept of social identity. His analysis focuses on the complex dynamic between the state and disaffected citizens that leads some to disillusionment and moral outrage-and a few to mass murder. Sageman's account offers a paradigm-shifting perspective on terrorism that yields counterintuitive implications for the ways liberal democracies can and should confront political violence.
Radicalism, which is the main root of a person becoming a terrorist, is a fact that to fight the spread of radicalism, law enforcement is not enough. On the one hand, social conditions also ...significantly influence efforts to counteract radicalism. From these problems, the question of this research is how socio-culture works in counteracting radicalism. The method used in this study is Socio-legal-based legal study. Further, this study aims to understand and elaborate that socio-culture influences efforts to fight the spread of radical ideas and eradicate criminal acts of terrorism in Indonesia. The results of this study show that in society, there has been cultural radicalization cons through community activities, which have succeeded in countering the spread of radicalism. Keywords: radicalism; terrorism; radicalization cons.
The lethality of lone-wolf terrorism has reached an all-time high in the United States. Isolated individuals using firearms with high-capacity magazines are committing brutally efficient killings ...with the aim of terrorizing others, yet there is little consensus on what connects these crimes and the motivations behind them. InThe Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, terrorism experts Mark S. Hamm and Ramón Spaaij combine criminological theory with empirical and ethnographic research to map the pathways of lone-wolf radicalization, helping with the identification of suspected behaviors and recognizing patterns of indoctrination.Reviewing comprehensive data on these actors, including more than two hundred terrorist incidents, Hamm and Spaaij find that a combination of personal and political grievances lead lone wolves to befriend online sympathizers-whether jihadists, white supremacists, or other antigovernment extremists-and then announce their intent to commit terror when triggered. Hamm and Spaaij carefully distinguish between lone wolves and individuals radicalized within a group dynamic. This important difference is what makes this book such a significant manual for professionals seeking richer insight into the transformation of alienated individuals into armed warriors. Hamm and Spaaij conclude with an analysis of recent FBI sting operations designed to prevent lone-wolf terrorism in the United States, describing who gets targeted, strategies for luring suspects, and the ethics of arresting and prosecuting citizens.
Abstract
This Afterword is a response to Sergio Verdugo’s Foreword. It provides a defense of the notion of constituent power as a necessary element of the constitutional imaginary and ineradicable ...dimension of any credible account of democratic constitutionalism. It takes issue with what Verdugo identifies as the ‘conventional’ approach to constituent power, and argues that the collapse of constituent power into constituted power comes, philosophically and politically, at a significant cost. It concludes with a discussion of the recent irruption of constituent power in the constitutional situation in Chile.
Online platforms have become an increasingly prominent means of communication. Despite the obvious benefits to the expanded distribution of content, the last decade has resulted in disturbing toxic ...communication, such as cyberbullying and harassment. Nevertheless, detecting online toxicity is challenging due to its multi-dimensional, context sensitive nature. As exposure to online toxicity can have serious social consequences, reliable models and algorithms are required for detecting and analyzing such communication across the vast and growing space of social media. In this paper, we draw on psychological and social theory to define toxicity. Then, we provide an approach that identifies multiple dimensions of toxicity and incorporates explicit knowledge in a statistical learning algorithm to resolve ambiguity across such dimensions.
The present research examines the social cognitive processes underlying ideologically-based violence through the lens of the 3N model of radicalization. To test this theory, we introduce two new ...psychometric instruments-a social alienation and a support for political violence scale-developed in collaboration with 13 subject matter experts on terrorism. Using these instruments, we test the theory's hypotheses in four different cultural settings. In Study 1, Canadians reporting high levels of social alienation (Need) expressed greater support for political violence (Narrative), which in turn positively predicted wanting to join a radical group (Network), controlling for other measures related to political violence. Study 2a and 2b replicated these findings in Pakistan and in Spain, respectively. Using an experimental manipulation of social alienation, Study 3 extended these findings with an American sample and demonstrated that moral justification is one of the psychological mechanisms linking social alienation to supporting political violence. Implications and future directions for the psychology of terrorism are discussed.
Institutionalizing Violence offers a detailed focus on the two most influential Egyptian jihadi groups—al-Jama‘a al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad. From the killing of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in ...1981 to their partial association with al-Qaeda in the 1990s, the two groups illustrate the range of choices that jihadis make overtime including creating political parties. Jerome Drevon argues that these groups’ comparative trajectories show that jihadis embracing the same ideology can make very different strategic decisions in similar environments. Drevon’s analysis of these groups’ histories over the past four decades illustrates the evolution of jihadism in Egypt and beyond.
Institutionalizing Violence develops an institutional approach to radicalization to compare the two Egyptian groups’ trajectories based on ethnographic field research and hundreds of interviews with jihadi leaders and militants in Egypt. Drevon provides a unique perspective on how jihadi groups make and implement new strategic decisions in changing environments, as well as the evolution of their approaches to violence and non-violence.
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