As a rule, radicalized people who can find a powerful actor to act out violence on their behalf will invest in that powerful actor rather than commit the violence themselves. The Hindutva and the CCCP run governments, if you're partisan to their ideology you invest in them.
Meanwhile, there is no Islamist government equivalent among Sunni Islam (people point at Erdogan but so far he's more a cynical Turkish politician than a pan-Islamist militant populist). For this reason if you're an Islamist extremist you have to take matters into your own hands.
This false idea that Muslims are uniquely radicalizable and uniquely violent is an idea that is also popular among Arab autocrats who want the world to treat Muslims as especially dangerous, as part of a narrative to deny us political agency. These narratives are not innocent.
Consider that most people who wanted Trump to be cruel to immigrants and minorities didn't have to form terrorist networks - they could just vote for him, and he'll do it with the entire weight of the US government. Once he's out of power though, this is when you should worry.
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The root cause of violent extremism is not that an ideology exists. The question to ask is *why* someone would find that ideology convincing. The reasons for that are virtually always personal, not ideological. Pressured communities are full of potential customers.
Also, even in the lack of an ideology, potential customers can simply concoct their own ideology that answers their needs, of simply concoct an elaborate conspiracy theory that skips ideology altogether. Look at QAnon for example.
The "breeding grounds" of violent extremism are not ideologies - they're disenfranchisement, alienation, crises of identity & purpose, anger, feeling like you don't belong and don't matter, etc. Once someone feels like that, they'll seek out an ideology that suits them.
Hey @EmmanuelMacron, this Libyan activist made a video criticizing your sometime ally in Libya. She just got shot dead in cold blood. Wanna tell us about why we're in crisis, you neocolonialist piece of shit?
I honestly don't think the story is how Dems are underperforming or Trump is overperforming. The real story is how polarization has reached a point where each side sees this as existential. When people believe the stakes are this high, they close ranks and vote from fear.
This level of existential polarization kills normal democratic norms. When we're afraid, most of us become more appreciative of order, more accepting of authority, and less likely to care about what's "moral". This is basic human psychology.
Earlier thread today about race and democracy, with some high quality replies. Generally, people agree that ethnic tribalism underlies democracy; it does so even more at times of deep polarization.
Don't come at me but I believe a significant proportion of violence extremism (if not the majority of it) is rooted one way or another in unresolved trauma on both the individual and collective levels. Unfortunately the response to it has been to create even more mass trauma
By "collective trauma" I mean when entire communities are subjected to traumatizing events, often systematically and often intergenerationally, to the point where traumatized behavior and attitudes are normalized
When I say this a lot of people say "hey, you mean these terrorists are victims?" I think that's irrelevant, if someone is coming at me to hurt my family I will defend myself. If I have no choice but to hurt him, I will, regardless what mental state drove him to attack me
The more people feel targeted based on identity, the more they grab on to that identity. The more you make people aware of their identity, the more passionate they get about it. Forced assimilation (or, "combating separatism") accomplishes the opposite of what it sets out to do.
Group identity melts when it becomes painless, colorless, even boring. That's when it melts. It decides nothing in your life, so it becomes unimportant. But so long your group identity determines how your government will treat you, expect people to embrace it more.
Remember, identity is an extremely intimate matter; it's literally the answer to "who am I?" Can you think of a more profoundly existential question? If people don't have the answer to that, or don't have the freedom to search, it quickly climbs to the top of their life's agenda