On 19 January 2016, the Swedish parliament organized an expert hearing on radicalization and recruitment to ‘violence-affirming’ extremism in online environments (Sveriges Riksdag 2016). Two government institutions displayed rather different approaches to the subject. The Centre for Asymmetric Threat and Terrorism Studies at the Swedish Defence University (SEDU) presented a paper on ISIS activity on the Internet . In principle, the talk centred on targeted recruitment , information campaigns , and encrypted information. The speaker framed a solution based on enhanced coordination between national counter-terrorism (CT) efforts. Another speaker from the SEDU focused mainly on the use of Facebook in Islamist extremist outreach. He outlined motives for positive engagement with extremist online media ranging from adherence to humanitarianism, religion , and ideology to attractions to martyrdom, adventure, violence , weapons, and/or community. This speaker concluded with a plea to the Swedish security service to share information more actively within and between central agencies and local authorities.
The Swedish Media Council (SMC) presented the outcome of a study on anti-democratic messages on the Internet aimed to incite young people to violence in the name of ideology (Statens Medieråd 2013). Left-wing, right-wing, and militant Islamist milieus were investigated, and the study concluded that, apart from differences in content, there are significant similarities in the ways various extremist groups frame problems and propose solutions. All of them uncritically adopt ‘a worldview where hate is a driving force and violence a legitimate resource’ (Statens Medieråd 2013: 2). SMC highlighted four overlapping components of extremist narratives: (1) a strong dualist perception of the world (‘us’ and ‘them’), (2) a rhetoric of self-defence (‘we are under attack’), (3) an explanation of the world through framing narratives of conspiracy, and (4) the idealization of direct action and contempt for discussion and compromise. As a counter-measure, SMC proposed raising young people’s critical faculties, analytical awareness, and general levels of media and information literacy.
For the speakers from the SEDU , tackling online radicalization calls largely for technical solutions and stronger national coordination and enforcement of CT measures such as information exchange between public agencies. Of course, for democratic state actors, coercive measures must primarily be security-oriented to avoid infringing upon basic rights of freedom of thought and expression. The SMC , on the other hand, demonstrated that countering online radicalization requires addressing its worldviews and framing narratives, mainly by enhancing public cognitive skills such as the competence to critically analyse media content.
The hearing in the Swedish parliament was quite representative of the contemporary discourse on radicalization, which seems trapped unproductively between two major positions: (1) the securitizational and behavioural focus of the SEDU and (2) the socio-cultural, cognitive, attitudinal, and contextual explanations of the SMC.1 Neumann makes a distinction between these two positions as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘European’, and develops their ideal features extensively (2013: 885–91). The current public and academic debate on extremism, terrorism, and political violence and their causes, prevention , and remedies against them oscillates between these two poles.
‘Radicalization’ as an analytical concept has emerged in the official, academic, and public discourse following the attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 (9/11) (Neumann 2013: 878; Neumann and Kleinmann 2013: 361–364). Radicalization has most commonly been presumed to be a unidirectional process, the ‘action pathway’ (Borum 2011a: 9) leading individuals ultimately to use lethal violence, particularly terrorism against civilians/non-combatants, to attain their political goals. Most recent policies and studies—and certainly the public view of radicalization—have focused on Jihadist/Salafist terror attacks on the West in response to conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) . Therefore, substantially more interest has been paid to inherent aspects of religious ideas and practices and (more contentiously) cultural or civilizational issues in those areas. We believe that such a limited view of radicalization is counter-productive to its explanatory potential. While some researchers argue for abandoning the term altogether because of its polysemous nature (Neumann 2013: 873; Schmid 2013: 7), we hold that a refined definition of radicalization has more potential to aid both our understanding of global conflict patterns in historical and contemporary settings and our ability to advice policy makers.
As the title indicates, Expressions of Radicalization shifts the focus from single-tracked modes of analysis and explanation (born out of the need for securitization ) to an understanding of the phenomenon as multi-faceted, dynamic, processual, and (to a certain extent) multi-dimensional. By extending the geographical scope of cases and contexts, as signalled by the subtitle ‘Global Politics, Processes, and Practices’, we aim also to demonstrate that the concept of radicalization is not confined to explaining the habits and actions of predominantly young male second- or third-generation immigrants in Western states. On the contrary: by putting different objects of investigation together on a global scale, we show that the underlying dynamics of radicalization are caused by interplay between the mainstream and the margins and that the process revolves around a set of beliefs we interpret as responses to global crises on multiple levels. With Della Porta and LaFree (2012: 5), we see a need to ‘locate radicalization/de-radicalization in its broader transnational and global context’.
In reviewing the approaches taken in the existing literature, we identified a gap between (1) an understanding of radicalization born out of securitization , with an over-belief in solutions located within the state-centred monopoly of (often punitive and repressive) violence and security , and (2) an understanding of radicalization arising from socio-cultural factors, resorting almost exclusively to economic or discursive explanations. The first approach focuses mainly on case-related and individual instances of behavioural radicalization ; second on structural deficiencies in societies, paired with cognitive and attitudinal transformations that push marginalized individuals to resort to or to endorse violence.2
One of the aims of this volume is to work to redress this deadlock by acknowledging the respective contributions of these (currently unproductively juxtaposed) positions and trying to establish common ground between them. Before we outline the trajectory of our approach, however, it is worthwhile to delve deeper into the concept of ‘radicalization’ and its history itself, which promises more precision when using this term analytically.
A securitization view of radicalization aims to detect, prevent, and avert a process through which individuals or groups are drawn into violence as means to address political grievances or to attain poli tical goals. But even ‘violence’ is a term that escapes clear definitions. Alex P. Schmid argues (2013: 13) that political violence occupies a large spectrum, ranging from legitimate or justifiable to illegitimate or unjustifiable, and it must be assessed in context. As in theories of ‘just war’, it is necessary to distinguish between the right to political violence under certain circumstances and the appropriate use of violence during political conflicts. In recent years, the outcome of radicalization (in Western countries) has been seen predominantly as the use of violence by non-state actors against non-combatants or ‘de-individuated murder where the victim matters mostly as a message generator’ (15). We will return to this semiotic reading of terrorist attacks as a medium later.
By studying the ostensibly unidirectional process or ‘action pathway’ (radicalization into violent extremism, or RVE), the securitization position represents the legitimate self-interests of states and societies to preserve stability and to deliver security as one of the principal and non-negotiable political goods (Borum 2011a, b; Schmid 2013: 12). It was formulated out of a concrete need for protection against terrorism at home or against (individual or group) recruitment to ‘insurgent’ troops or irregular combatants in war theatres abroad (Schmid 2013: 19). Naturally, the view of radicalization as a security issue originated from within the sphere of government agencies and experts in the security sector. These expert communities are more inclined to an interest in how radicalization can be profiled, detected, or averted in behavioural (or CT) terms in the short term than in why it occurs in cognitive terms (related to societal cohesion), which requires a long-term perspective (Neumann 2013: 880–881, 888).
Frequently the securitization position is described as only being concerned with surface issues, the crust of the pie rather the ‘deep pie of context’ (Neumann 2013: 892). One reason is that in open and liberal societies, the state primarily aims to protect its citizens from illegitimate violence but not to curtail ideas. The freedoms of expression and religion are particularly protected as both positive and negative rights, and ideological control is virtually absent. In such a setting, it is easier to restrict and punish outright criminal offences than ‘wrong’ ideas or attitudes. However, radicalization has blurred what were once apparently clear limits, since ideas evoke various levels of support and are reinforced by actions.
Socio-...