Why conventional wisdom on radicalization fails: the persistence of a failed discourse

Abstract

Politicians, the media, and some academics are getting it wrong about radicalization. Relying on simple narratives to explain how an individual departs from point a (‘a good Muslim boy’) to point b (‘a suicide bomber’), too many recent contributions to academia rely on assumptions and ‘conventional wisdom’ rather than testable and falsifiable empirical research and methods. Through specific cases, this article seeks to demonstrate how the over‐simplification of ‘conventional wisdom’ privileges convenient political narratives over the complex realities of such situations. In light of this failure to account for reality, this article seeks to challenge current thinking on radicalization by exposing its limitations, as currently being used, as a meaningful basis and departure point for rigorous social science research. The article concludes by showing how the current persistence of this ‘conventional wisdom’ approach to radicalization ultimately betrays the normative political assumptions of those who insist on using this term, and how this adherence to ‘conventional wisdom’ now deprives radicalization from being a relevant and useful academic or policy discourse. This is because radicalization as an area for study has been corrupted by its instrumental political application.

Understanding political radicalization: The two-pyramids model.

“…As the critics point out, seeing ideas as the threat leads to a war on ideas. Targeting ideas is likely to produce a backlash, as happened with U.S. Muslim groups rising to oppose the (now delayed) FBI website designed to help teachers and students identify individuals flirting with violent extremism (Goodstein, 2015). As several Milestone authors have recognized, government over-reaction to terrorist threat (collateral damage, escalated policing, jujitsu politics) can create new threats…”

Radicalization into Violent Extremism I: A Review of Social Science Theories

“…29 While the exact mechanisms and sequences of these changes is a matter of some debate, it is certainly clear that different pathways and mechanisms operate in different ways for different people. Operationally, it seems, with a more nuanced understanding of how this process operates both between and within groups, we may be able to develop more informed policies and practices to mitigate and prevent the propagation of violent extremism.…”

De-radicalisation interventions as technologies of the self: a Foucauldian analysis

“…The birth of the concept of radicalisation in the UK was precipitated by the existence of a "problem" emanating from the internal diaspora population, specifically, British citizens of Islamic faith, in the aftermath of the London bombings. The "crisis" was primarily characterised by two central narratives: the looming existential threat of violence posed by domestic militancy (NSC 2007;Croft and Cerwyn 2010;Githens-Mazer and Lambert 2010); and the social, cultural, and political incompatibility of the ideas and practices of the Muslim population, particularly certain trends and interpretations of Islam, with mainstream political, cultural, and social spaces. The logic of security, on the one hand, and that of community cohesion and identity on the other, intersected and came together in the concept of radicalisation (Coolsaet 2010, 869;HeathKelly 2013, 410).…”