What Are the 4 Stages of Radicalization? Why Extremists Act

Understanding the four stages of the radicalization process and the behavior of domestic or lone-wolf terrorists helps others to understand how to find solutions for preventing attacks.

Divided We Fall - The Radicalization of American Politics

“In some ways, polarization can be good,” says Dror Walter, assistant professor of communication. “For the functioning of a good democratic society, you need some kind of disagreement in order to keep the political process moving.” The problem, he says, comes when two sides go beyond simply disagreeing about political or cultural issues. “Affective polarization” refers to negative sentiment towards one’s political opponents, and it erodes our ability to cooperate and work together for the common good. An accumulation of antipathy can also lead to rule-breaking and even violence aimed at members of the other party.

How parents can spot the warning signs of radicalization in their kids

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with writer Joanna Schroeder about how parents can spot and intervene when their kids are exposed to extremist content online, which is often used as a recruitment tool.

How Radicalization Online Can (And Can’t) Be Stopped

In the wake of the El Paso, Texas, mass shooting, web-infrastructure company Cloudflare took down the online message board where the alleged shooter posted his manifesto. So-called deplatforming is a growing strategy to stem the rise of hate speech online, but does it work?

Isolation and Social Media Combine to Radicalize Violent Offenders

Social media is increasingly playing a role, especially among lone actors like the ones responsible for El Paso and Dayton shootings.

Radicalisation: the journey of a concept

The concept of radicalisation has led to the construction of Muslim populations as ‘suspect communities’, civil rights abuses and a damaging failure to understand the nature of the political conflicts governments are involved in.

Radicalization from a societal perspective

Studies on radicalization tend to focus on the dynamics of extremist groups and how they exploit grievances of vulnerable individuals. It is imperative, however, to also understand the societal factors that lead to such vulnerabilities and grievances. Our social environment plays a key role in how we view the world and shape our beliefs.

Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat

If the post-September 11th world has taught us anything, it is that the tools for conducting serious terrorist attacks are becoming easier to acquire. Therefore intention becomes an increasingly important factor in the formation of terrorist cells. This study is an attempt to look at how that intention forms, hardens and leads to an attack or attempted attack using real world case studies.

Radicalization to Terrorism: What Everyone Needs to Know

As experts in the psychology of radicalization, Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley propose twelve mechanisms that can move individuals, groups, and mass publics from political indifference to sympathy and support for terrorist violence.

Terrorism and the internet: How dangerous is online radicalization?

Online radicalization processes have been of major concern, not only in the area of terrorism, but in the wider field of grievance-based violence. In fact, recent work has introduced a comparative approach that builds on the commonalities between perpetrators of, for example, high school shootings, hate crimes, and terrorist attacks.

The New Radicalization of the Internet

Jihadists and right-wing extremists use remarkably similar social media strategies.

The radicalization of white Americans

I turned to experts on radicalization and terrorism for answers. One thing that surprised me: They consistently said that the processes of radicalization are similar across ideologies, whether the person is a jihadist, a white supremacist, or some other belief system.

What drives the radicalization of foreign terrorist recruits?

Thus the main implication of the study’s findings is that domestic socioeconomic policies have an impact on global security because disgruntled youth are susceptible to radicalization into violent extremism at home or abroad. Cross-border terrorism has turned security into a global public good, the provision of which requires policies coordinated at a multilateral level.

Why Some People Choose the Path of Violence

From the minds of Islamic radicals in French prisons to the role of the Internet in the global jihad, a stunning inquiry into the sources of terrorist violence.