A trusted friend’s offer of belonging can initiate the radicalization pathway

Evidence

Soccer, paintball, camping, hiking, rafting, body building, martial arts training, and other forms of physically stimulating and intimate group action create a small cultural niche: a bunch of buddies who become a “band of brothers” in a glorious cause (Atran 2010). It usually suffices that one or a few of these action buddies come to believe in the cause, truly and uncompromisingly, and for the rest to follow even unto death. This is in contrast to exaggerated notions of “command and control” organizations sending recruiters to “brainwash” unwitting minds into joining well-structured organizations. Standard counterterrorism notions of “cells” and “recruitment”—and to some degree even “leadership”—often reflect more the psychology and organization of people analyzing terrorist groups than terrorist groups themselves. — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 63 (#expands, via linked claim)

The wily solitary is already homo œconomicus, for whom all reasonable things are alike: hence the Odyssey is already a Robinsonade. Both Odysseus and Crusoe, the two shipwrecked mariners, make their weakness (that of the individual who parts from the collectivity) their social strength. Delivered up to the mercy of the waves, helplessly isolated, their very isolation forces them recklessly to pursue an atomistic interest. They embody the principle of capitalist economy, even before they have recourse to a servant; but what they preserve materially from the past for the furthering of their new enterprise is evidence for the contention that the entrepreneur has always gone about his competitive business with more initial capital than his mere physicial capacity. Their impotence in regard to nature already acts as an ideology to advance their social hegemony. Odysseus’ defenselessness against the breakers is of the same stamp as the traveler’s justification of his enrichment at the expense of the aboriginal savage. This was to be confirmed later on by bourgeois economics in the form of the concept of risk: the possibility of failure becomes the postulate of a moral excuse for profit. From the standpoint of the developed exchange society and its individuals, the adventures of Odysseus are an exact representation of the risks which mark out the road to success. Odysseus lives by the original constitutive principle of civil society: one had the choice between deceit or failure. Deception was the mark of the ratio which betrayed its particularity. Hence universal socialization, as outlined in the narratives of the world traveler Odysseus and the solo manufacturer Crusoe, from the start included the absolute solitude which emerged so clearly at the end of the bourgeois era. Radical socialization means radical alienation. Odysseus and Crusoe are both concerned with totality: the former measures whereas the latter produces it. Both realize totality only in complete alienation from all other men, who meet the two protagonists only in an alienated form—as enemies or as points of support, but always as tools, as things. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 67 (#complicates, via linked claim)

We observed this phenomenon in four Islamic extremist cases and seven white supremacist cases. Across many of these instances, the striking resemblance was that of a precipitating event and emotional reaction and then a new outlook or direction that made room for extremist ideology or participation. For one former Islamic extremist, a gun-possession charge served as a stimulating event and led him to “start looking around to try to better himself or try to improve his life and his lifestyle.” His answer was a conversion to Islam and then a turn toward radicalization and violence. Another converted and then radicalized after a suicide attempt. Another former Islamic extremist reported that his life came “crashing down before [his] eyes” when a relative caught him hosting a rowdy house party. “I’m humiliated, I’m embarrassed, I have been shamed and guilt-tripped into thinking that I have done something so heinous,” he observed. “I panicked psychologically, and looked back into my cultural experience, and think to myself, the only way that I’m going to fix this is to get religious.” — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America, 327 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Members stay in extremist groups because status there outweighs real-world misery — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 377; Militant solidarity grows from intimate action-buddy bonds, not top-down recruitment — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor: Unconditional…, 63; Personal crises precede and open receptivity to religious radicalization — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 327 (+3 more)

Related

• Militant solidarity grows from intimate action-buddy bonds, not top-down recruitment (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Militant solidarity grows from intimate action-buddy bonds, not top-down recruitment #expands (0.78) — Scott Atran, The Devoted Actor, 63
• Radical socialization through exchange produces absolute solitude and alienation #complicates (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 67
• Personal crises precede and open receptivity to religious radicalization #qualifies (0.72) — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America, 327