Journal for Deradicalization
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QAnon Conspiracy Theory: Examining its Evolution and Mechanisms of Radicalization
Get PDFThis report demonstrates the overarching need for additional exploration and intervention of conspiracy-based radicalization as the QAnon conspiracy theory continues to grow. Strong pillars of belief among the QAnon movement, coupled with the spread of disinformation online, has exacerbated the familiarity and willingness to accept the rhetoric within mainstream media and culture. This report examines the evolution, ideologies, and paradigms associated with supporters of QAnon to better understand the most influential mechanisms of modern conspiracy-based radicalization. Utilizing a France-based digital disinformation platform known as Storyzy, the authors hypothesize that disinformation campaigns, coupled with the Internet and social media, has greatly enabled the unprecedented global effect of QAnon. The authors explored the potential of several survey methods to seek insights from QAnon followers on Gab and Telegram. Additionally, the authors discerned various implications of QAnon in regard to the limitations placed upon P/CVE efforts. Editoral Note:After critique against this article has been voiced publicly, an editorial review together with the authors was conducted. No factual errors were found. However, some need for clarifications of potentially misleading sentence formulations was identified and minor post-publication revisions were conducted, which are detailed in the supporting material file
Research Methods Brief: Attrition Happens (and What to Do About It)
Get PDFAttrition (participant "dropout") is the loss of participants from a program/initiative or longitudinal (e.g., pre/post) data collection. If participants dropout for non-random, systematic reasons, those factors bias the sample and limit the study or evaluation’s generalizability. The importance of statistically diagnosing participant attrition can scarcely be overstated, given that P/CVE research and evaluations are commonly concerned, not merely with the results from a given sample of participants, but whether, how, or to what extent the results might generalize to other, perhaps much broader samples. Therefore, the threat to generalizability, posed by non-random participant attrition, threatens the very reason for conducting many, if not most, P/CVE-related research and evaluations.Non-random attrition prevents research and evaluations from making valid claims or inferences about their target populations, and to know whether attrition likely threatens the validity of a project’s findings, one must test for it. The present article includes step-by-step guidance on how to diagnose participant attrition, including discussion of the implications: implications that potentially can salvage a P/CVE-related program from seemingly problematic participant attrition
Useful Victims: Symbolic Rage and Racist Violence on the Global Extreme-Right
Get PDFThe extreme-right has long relied on false claims of anti-White violence and racialized victimhood narratives in order to promote violence and advance their ideology. By carefully curating a ‘siege mentality’ among adherents, extremist writers and ‘philosophers’ have positioned whiteness as something under attack, and mobilized the ideas of demographic peril and endangered whiteness in order to justify rhetorical and physical violence against people of color and minority communities. This mythology has been a constant feature of the publications and propaganda of far-right groups around the world, and has been used to further the constructed image of extremist racist organizations as protectors of both whiteness and womanhood. This rhetoric has been used to radicalize individuals to the point at which they see violence as acceptable and necessary – an oft-repeated process which reached its most recent tragic conclusion in 2016 when a white man murdered 9 worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, saying to one victim; “you rape our women… you have to go”. This article analyzes the ways in which extremist right-wing groups in South Africa, the United Kingdom and United States have historically constructed the threat of anti-White violence and mobilized it in order to spread hate and radicalize individuals towards violent action. I argue that the extreme-right has consistently perpetuated a mythology surrounding race and sexuality in order to justify continued rhetorical and physical violence against communities of color, LGBTQ people, and the Jewish community
Neo-Nazi environmentalism: The linguistic construction of ecofascism in a Nordic Resistance Movement manifesto
Get PDFHarmony with nature, pristine countryside, organic farming, a vegan diet, renewable energy, sustainable development. This imagery tends to be associated with ‘green liberal’ environmentalist movements and more broadly, left-wing political ideologies. However, concern for the environment and warnings about the imminent climate crisis are gaining traction within far-right and white supremacist movements. This article focuses on the revival of white supremacist environmentalism based on a qualitative text analysis of an English-language manifesto published by the violent extremist neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement. Drawing on the concept of axiological cosmologies from Legitimation Code Theory and the Appraisal framework from Systemic Functional Linguistics, this paper shows how an ecofascist ideology is built up through clusters of meanings that reinforce neo-Nazi grievances such as ‘global Zionism’, ‘mass immigration’ and multiculturalism. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of what the promotion of eco-fascist ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis could mean for climate justice from a human rights perspective and preventing violent extremism from an educational perspective
What role do French society and its education system play in promoting violent radicalization processes?
Get PDFRadicalization is a complicated phenomenon, which is caused by multiple factors, including poor housing, low education, and unemployment, according to a study by the French Institute of International Relations (Hecker, 2018; Macaluso, 2016). France has a high number of radicalized terrorists, most of whom are homegrown, often with strong cultural ties to former French colonial countries in North Africa (IFRI, 2018). This paper aims to illustrate how social exclusion and marginalization created and perpetuated by the inequalities in the French society and education system (Bourdieu, 1971; Croizet et al, 2019; Goodman 2019; Jetten et al., 2020; Vanten, 2016), may be contributing to the radicalization of many young French citizens. This push factor could be a key precondition for radicalization in many Western societies (Ghosh et al., 2016). While critiquing the French education system, this study insists that schools can and must create a sense of connection with their students and construct resilient and inclusive communities (da Silva, 2017, Ghosh et al., 2017; OECD, 2012). Finally, some pedagogical approaches, especially care in education, are suggested for educational institutions and school agents to effectively build a sense of belonging among young students that would enhance their resilience against radicalization
Politics by Other Means in the Italian ‘Years of Lead’: Armed Groups, Ideology and Patterns of Violence
Get PDFThough many studies have analysed the variations in the use of violence by armed groups, an overall understanding of the phenomenon remains challenging. Building on the work addressing the role of institutions and ideology in armed group behaviour, this paper proposes a greater understanding of the role of the programmatic content of an ideology in shaping patterns of violence, specifically in terms of targeting and repertoire. The starting point of this analysis is to provide a new perspective on the meaning of political violence and address the organisational role of ideology in influencing the institutions of an armed group. To account for this, the paper does not consider the presence of an ideology but rather its strength, as a useful lens of analysis. I argue that if an ideology matters in defining a group, then the use of violence should be reflexive of its organisation. This theoretical framework is used for a micro-comparative, most-similar case study analysis of the Red Brigades and New Order militant organisations in Italy during the so-called ‘Years of Lead’. The case studies both share the presence of a strong ideological underpinning, with similar end goals and in the same context but present variations in their patterns of violence. The scope condition of the case studies is to examine whether the different patterns of violence can be explained by the variations in the programmatic nature of the ideology. Through the analysis of qualitative sources and quantitative evidence, the paper highlights the causal nexus between ideology and observed patterns of violence whereby the use of violence by armed groups represents an information and identification mechanism ideologically defined
From Conversion to Violent Extremism: Empirical Analysis of Three Canadian Muslim Converts to Islam
Get PDFThe scholarship on radicalization to violence often treats born Muslims and converts interchangeably; far too little research is focused on understanding the factors and processes driving converts in particular. This is a problem given that there is overwhelming evidence demonstrating that Muslim converts are overrepresented among Western foreign fighters. Data from Canada corroborates this larger point: converts are highly representative in attempted and successful domestic terrorist attacks. Our article explores conversion to Islam and political violence as it relates to recent trends in Canadian Jihadist militancy. We distill the theoretical literature on conversion and radicalization to seven explanatory factors, including ideology; social networks; charismatic authority; political grievances; psychology; socio-economic and criminal circumstance; and enabling environments. We then build original empirical case studies – based on expert interviews and open-sourced documents – of three Canadian converts who engaged in terrorism, including John Maguire, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, and Damian Clairmont. Using these case studies, we contextualize, analyze, and expand our collective understanding of conversion to violence, providing lessons for theory and methodology
Storytelling against extremism: How fiction could increase the persuasive impact of counter- and alternative narratives in P/CVE
Get PDFThe past decade has seen an increase in research on narratives in extremist communication and their role in radicalization processes as well as on both counter- and alternative narratives as tools to prevent or counter radicalization processes. Conspicuously absent from the P/CVE literature so far, however, is a discussion on fictional narratives and the potential of stories not based on ‘realistic’ presentations of life. This article is an exploratory contribution to the discourse suggesting how fictional narratives, low in external realism but eliciting a high degree of transportation and identification in audiences, may be useful tools for P/CVE campaigns built on narratives and storytelling. It discusses the importance of transportation, identification, and perceived realism for narrative persuasion as well as the possibility to use fictional utopian narratives in P/CVE campaigns
The French (non)Connection: A Closer Look at the Role of Secularism and Socio-Educational Disparities on Domestic Islamist Radicalization in France.
Get PDFAlong with the US, France remains among the most impacted Western countries by Islamist terrorism. To explain radicalization in the French context, researchers have emphasized the country’s specificities such as colonialism and secularism (i.e. “Laïcité”) as risk factors. This “French connection” thesis (FCT) proposes that France experiences abnormally high radicalization rates among its Muslim population due to a radical form of State secularism, specific approach to colonialism (“assimilationist”), and the socio-educational disparities affecting French Muslims. For the first time, we propose to closely examine FCT in light of current empirical research on the determinants of radicalization. First, we demonstrate that FCT relies on a flawed premise: domestic radicalization in France is average relative to comparable liberal democracies. We then show that FCT is not in line with current social-psychological knowledge of the determinants of radicalization (e.g. education, socio-economic disparities) and relies on conflations between confounded societal risk factors (e.g. “radical” secularism as a correlate of far-right ideology). As an alternative to FCT, we conclude that structural discrimination and the recent surge in far-right and Islamist ideologies better account for domestic radicalization in France. We also propose that French historical secularism and colorblind values may actually constitute protective factors to be further investigated
Conference Note: The Challenges of Researching Extremism Today
Get PDFOn June 22, 2021, the DRIVE (Determining multilevel-led causes and testing intervention designs to Reduce radicalisation, extremIsm and political Violence in North-Western Europe through social inclusion) Horizon 2020 launch event was the occasion for five scholars who specialise in violent extremism and political violence to address the challenges of researching extremism today, both online and offline. The panellists discussed the need for a more inclusive and intersectional research landscape. Theories and methods for researching extremism were discussed alongside the responsibilities of researchers, including how to avoid the pitfalls of securitization and stigmatization. This conference note sums up the key takeaways discussed by the panellists.
Editorial Note: A minor correction was requested by the author post publication and the revised version was published November 18, 2021.