0:03
The other complexity about radicalization is that there are many, many,
multiple, radicalization pathways.
The idea that there's only one type of human interaction or course is just wrong.
And for this slide, I'm pulling on the sources and, again,
you have in your readings from Clark McCauley, from his book called Friction.
And McCauley looks at numerous different
types of processes that might lead an individual to radicalize.
And he looks at both the individual group and the mass society level.
At the individual, individuals can radicalize and
there's been, he looks at many historical examples
due to something that's happened individually in their life.
Somebody that they know got killed or something bad happened to them.
So they have this personal grievance that they want to enact revenge and
that's what radicalizes them.
An individual could identify with a larger group in society.
So, he might say you latch on to this idea that you need to do something
in defense of all Muslims.
And that's what motivates your grievance.
It's this attachment to a larger group,
but it's something that happens to you as an individual.
1:29
The slippery slope can lead to radicalization.
So if you, let's say, join a gang and they first tell you, okay, well,
rob a bank, rob a convenience store.
And then, after that, you have to take more and more violent actions.
In some ways, if you've done one step to justify that you were okay doing that,
you feel like you can do something else.
And you move down this slippery slope, shows that that way, it's a slow,
gradual process towards a larger scale violence.
2:00
The idea of thrill seeking,
I know I mentioned earlier that the one thing we do know about this cohort of
individuals who do radicalize, it's more attractive to the young males.
And we see in society, young men wanting more action.
They want to seek out an adventurous lifestyle.
They're bored, they want to go off and try something extreme or different.
So they can then radicalize by just the desire to seek
out thrills in their life and that's how they get caught up in these groups.
A notion of love can radicalize an individual,
that you have this deep connection with someone else and
that someone else is pushing you towards these radical ideas.
So, even though they're not attracted to them,
they become part of the relationship that you have and that you want so
badly that you ultimately end up adopting the idea of the loved one.
And then there's this idea of unfreezing, that one point your living a normal life,
but somehow you become disconnected from a number of the anchors in your life.
And all of a sudden you don't have any other connections that are keeping
you anchored in that way.
And then you can drift to these more radical ideas, his notion of unfreezing.
He talks about three different types of ways groups can radicalize together.
So these would be people who have already connected with each other.
And McCauley looks at what he calls a small group dynamics as a psychological
process, to explain why the group together will take on more and more radical ideas.
The first is group polarization, that if you have a group together,
over time, the average person's radicalization level tends to increase.
And that's because of the dynamics within the group,
where you always have some people who are a little bit more extreme.
They tend to convince others that if they want to stay
with the group that their views have to move more towards theirs.
But then, to become the leader or to distinguish themselves,
they might become more and more radical.
So over time, the whole entire group keeps moving up the radicalization chain.
There's this idea of group competition,
if you have a number of different groups that are trying to attract support from
the same base of people that they too will become, they will compete with each other.
And they'll try to outdo each other by showing they are more willing to
engage in radical activity,
more willing to engage in violence in order to attract their base.
Then there finally the notion of group isolation, that if a group gets cut off
from other channels of society, that the bonds between them grow so
strong that they are willing to do, even sacrifice their life, for others.
A good example of this is how when our military, in order to promote group
cohesion, we try to cut the individuals off, we send them away to basic training.
We send them away from their loved ones, where they can bond with their group, and
build this comradery and strong affection, such that when they get into battle,
they're willing to do extraordinary things.
The same can have with a radical a group that gets isolated.
And their strong bonds for each other, because of their isolation,
pushes them to do things to promote their ideology.
5:47
Finally, McCauley talks about mass politics and how do mass
movements of people, large-scale groups of people, become radicalized.
The first he talks about, Jujitsu politics, his term.
But the idea that if a group is attacked,
they will together rally against the attacker and
they will bond together.
They are willing to do things that they weren't before.
And McCauley uses, as an example, American society were attacked during 9/11.
There's a big rally around the flag, patriotism is prevalent.
We then go and attack Al-Qaeda, which we weren't willing to do
prior to the time that we were attacked, and we'll look into that next week.
Indeed, there's some idea that this can be a tactic of the terrorist.
If they attack once, they want to instigate an attack on them,
which they believe in turn will mobilize their own base.
So, the back and forth between the different enemies
can basically escalate both sides of radicalization.
The notion of hatred of an enemy can radicalize.
As you are attacked by the enemy, your hatred of them, you despise them.
You begin to see them as non-human and the dehumanization of them
enables you to feel like you can do worse and worse activities towards them.
Use more and more and engage in violence.
So, hatred can actually mobilize a large population.
And finally, the notion of Martyrdom, groups will try to honor their martyrs,
revere them historically, to motivate others to follow in their paths.
And McCauley believes this can be a strong process
that can move an entire society towards more radical behavior.
So as you can see, with all of these different processes
working at the same time, it is a very complex concept.
And it's not as if individuals don't experience multiple ones
of these radicalization pathways during their radicalization experience.
You might have some individual and
one group type of experience that led you towards radicalized violence.
None of these are necessarily exclusive.
David SchanzerAssociate Professor of the Practice
