Fascist aspirants: Fascist Forge and ideological learning in the extreme-right online milieu

Online risk signals of offline terrorist offending

“…We do not dispute that ideological beliefs can motivate an individual to perpetrate an actor of terror 71 , however, our results indicate that the expression of these beliefs does not provide a sufficient signal to indicate that future action is likely. As such, while it remains useful to analyse hate speech and ideological content to understand why an individual might identify with a specific extremist group and begin expressing views that align with that of the group (i.e., to understand radicalization processes) 72 , our findings support Sageman's assertion that "many people say very violent things, but very few follow up with violent actions" and bolster Borum's argument that greater consideration is needed in separating extremist ideology from extremist action 29,73 .…”

Newcomers Learning Religious Ritual

“…Interaction with more experienced community members constitutes one important facet of the learning process, and hands-on experimentation with the practice another. Similar elements have also been found to play a part in new comers' integration into radical religious groups (Kenney 2017;Knott and Lee 2022). In one Islamist activist network, for ex ample, beginners learn by accompanying and observing more experienced members at their work, by getting involved in the activities early on, by participating in discussion groups, and by developing relationships with peers and mentors (Kenney 2017).…”

“…7 The concept of community of practice has been highly influential in late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century research on informal and workplace learning and adult education (Hughes, Jewson and Unwin 2007, 1-2). It has also been applied to investigating learning in a variety of religious and spiritual contexts: ritual magic users (Cejvan 2023;Merriam, Courteney and Baumgartner 2003), parish organs and small groups (Otero and Cottrell 2013;Anderson 2018;Regan 2016;Robinson, Cranley and O'Connell 2023), medieval monasteries (Long 2017;Long and Vanderputten 2019;Snijders 2019), extremist religious groups (Kenney 2017;Knott and Lee 2022), and faith-based collective housing (Murphy 2018), as well as among Jesus's disciples (Csinos 2010;Courduff 2018), meditation practitioners (Lomas et al 2016), Jain ritualists (Stausberg 2001), and Muslim commu nities (Olson 2017;Shanneik 2018). Only a minority of the studies target newcomers' experiences.…”

Religion and Spirituality as Sites of Learning

“…Wenger's inventory (1998) included four components: learning as belonging (community), learning as doing (practice), learning as experience (meaning) and learning as becoming (identity), with the "community of practice" being the means to integrate these components. A number of scholars of religion have drawn on Lave and Wenger's work to explore how newcomers, established practitioners and even religious leavers learn and unlearn the beliefs, practices, traditions and experiences appropriate to their stage in the spiritual lifecycle (see, e.g., Lee and Knott 2018, 34-54;Lee and Knott 2021). In this special issue the conception of learning in communities of practice and the broader understanding of social learning has provided a theoretical framework for many of the authors.…”