Homogeneous closed communities preceded and intensified political radicalization into terrorism in West Germany.

Evidence

In West Germany the communal life from which terrorist groups emerged was extraordinarily homogeneous; it formed a counterculture dominated by leaders with extreme political views. Almost three quarters of the terrorists in Schmidtchen’s (1981) sample lived in a commune or residential cooperative before their involvement in terrorism. Many were also individuals whose break with family and society and whose rejection of bourgeois culture and values preceded the politicization of their discontent and was intensified by association with like-minded individuals in closed communities (see Jäger, 1981, pp. 147–150). To many individuals the group substituted for family and filled needs for recognition, acceptance, warmth, and solidarity. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4108

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s work on how homogeneous closed trading groups lower monitoring costs — here the same closed-community structure intensifies radicalization instead of sustaining trade. — connects to: A single lecture ban launched the Free University’s radicalization into West Germany’s Berkeley — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2608; West Germany’s 1972 radical ban spread into uncontrolled exclusion practices. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2753