Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The Path to Radicalisation

Radicalisation: getting yourself thoroughly hot and cross is all part of it 

This post on PZ Myers blog has proved worthy of adding to the VNP record: Myers quotes various researchers who have studied the process of radicalization. Myers' post is, in fact, a very useful source of incisive commentary and well worth reading. Some quotes:

…he [Scott Atran] argues, young people adrift in a globalized world find their own way to ISIS, looking to don a social identity that gives their lives significance

Sarah Lyons-Padilla writes:

Researchers have long studied the motivations of terrorists, with psychologist Arie Kruglanski proposing a particularly compelling theory: people become terrorists to restore a sense of significance in their lives, a feeling that they matter. Extremist organizations like Isis are experts at giving their recruits that sense of purpose, through status, recognition, and the promise of eternal rewards in the afterlife.
My own survey work supports Kruglanski’s theory. I find that American Muslims who feel a lack of significance in their lives are more likely to support fundamentalist groups and extreme ideologies.
What we really need to know now is, what sets people on this path? How do people lose their sense of purpose?
My research reveals one answer: the more my survey respondents felt they or other Muslims had been discriminated against, the more they reported feeling a lack of meaning in their lives. Respondents who felt culturally homeless – not really American, but also not really a part of their own cultural community – were particularly jarred by messages that they don’t belong. Yet Muslim Americans who felt well integrated in both their American and Muslim communities were more resilient in the face of discrimination.
My results are not surprising to many social scientists, who know that we humans derive a great deal of self-worth from the groups we belong to. Our groups tell us who we are and make us feel good about ourselves. But feeling like we don’t belong to any group can really rattle our sense of self.

Abi Wilkinson identifies the drift toward the extreme right as form of radicalisation:

No, not the bit you’re thinking of. Somewhere far worse. That loose network of blogs, forums, subreddits and alternative media publications colloquially known as the “manosphere”. An online subculture centred around hatred, anger and resentment of feminism specifically, and women more broadly. It’s grimly fascinating and now troubling relevant.

In modern parlance, this is part of the phenomenon known as the “alt-right”. More sympathetic commentators portray it as “a backlash to PC culture” and critics call it out as neofascism. Over the past year, it has been strange to see the disturbing internet subculture I’ve followed for so long enter the mainstream. The executive chairman of one of its most popular media outlets, Breitbart, has just been appointed Donald Trump’s chief of strategy, and their UK bureau chief was among the first Brits to have a meeting with the president-elect. Their figurehead – Milo Yiannopoulos – toured the country stumping for him during the campaign on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. These people are now part of the political landscape.

None of the above is a surprise at VNP (See links below); the search for meaning, purpose, fulfillment, a feeling of worth and a tribal sense of belonging & community are all deep human motivations.  Add to this the hankering to replace flaky & "faith"** based epistemic heuristics with authoritarian certainties and you've got a mix of emotions which readily finds fulfillment in the group think of fundamentalist communities of one kind or another. Myers is unlikely to admit it, but atheism, although not necessarily a problem in and of itself, is part of the pyschological complex: As I've said before, atheism is less a world-view than it is an absence of a world view. So unless liberal atheism can somehow construct purposes and meanings sufficient to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, atheism is liable to leave a nihilistic vacuum which may by slow degrees be filled with some form of fundamentalist certainty. 

PZ Myers himself gives an example of that nihilistic hole being filled with tribal certainties:


Speaking of introspection and examining ourselves, here’s someone else who was radicalized by a social movement — in this case, the dark side of atheism. Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Thunderf00t, Christopher Hitchens…these guys are gateways to the normalization of hatred.

Myers goes on to quote Lyons-Padilla:


I was curious as to the motives of leave voters. Surely they were not all racist, bigoted or hateful? I watched some debates on YouTube. Obvious points of concern about terrorism were brought up. A leaver cited Sam Harris as a source. I looked him up: this “intellectual, free-thinker” was very critical of Islam. Naturally my liberal kneejerk reaction was to be shocked, but I listened to his concerns and some of his debates.

This, I think, is where YouTube’s “suggested videos” can lead you down a rabbit hole. Moving on from Harris, I unlocked the Pandora’s box of “It’s not racist to criticise Islam!” content. Eventually I was introduced, by YouTube algorithms, to Milo Yiannopoulos and various “anti-SJW” videos (SJW, or social justice warrior, is a pejorative directed at progressives). They were shocking at first, but always presented as innocuous criticism from people claiming to be liberals themselves, or centrists, sometimes “just a regular conservative” – but never, ever identifying as the dreaded “alt-right”.


For three months I watched this stuff grow steadily more fearful of Islam. “Not Muslims,” they would usually say, “individual Muslims are fine.” But Islam was presented as a “threat to western civilisation”. Fear-mongering content was presented in a compelling way by charismatic people who would distance themselves from the very movement of which they were a part.

Atheism has inherent problems in satiatiing the hunger for meaning: Within an atheist framework from whence comes that meaning? And who arbitrates it? If atheists try to fill in these gaps they are plagued by the same dilemma as religious fundamentalists; namely, the gap between practical heuristic epistemologies and the aspiration for authoritative, comprehensive and definitive answers.

Some relevant links:
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/power-heroic-purpose-and-community.html

Footnote
** I understand "faith" in the very general sense of believing that our world has a basic epistemic integrity which means that by and large it's evidential signals are not misleading. e,g, The signals from distant objects in space and time, such as fossils and star light, are evidence of real objects.