Crises and Solutions

Crises

Ordinary problems lead to ordinary solutions. Extraordinary solutions are considered when facing a crisis perceived to be so massive that society may rise or fall depending on how it is resolved. As movements radicalize and advance on the spectrum of extremism, their negative attitudes toward out-groups grow more intense until the perceived conflict between in-group and out-group becomes so urgent that hostile action becomes mandatory. If the radicalization process continues unchecked, the nature of the proposed action becomes increasingly serious and eventually leads to violence.

As discussed in the previous chapter, once the existence of an out-group has been stipulated, it must be defined. To build the narrative of a crisis, real conflicts—such as political disputes or violent clashes between the in-group and out-group—are mixed with imagined or fabricated information. The proportion of truth to fiction varies for each extremist movement, but the mix is always present.

Extremist movements rely on several types of crisis narrative, which can be employed individually or combined. Extremist movements that survive for a significant amount of time can be expected to draw on multiple crisis narratives, concurrently or consecutively.

Normal political crises frequently appear within extremist narratives but are not typically sufficient to drive the development of an extremist ideology, because one of the primary functions of normal politics is to resolve conflicts expeditiously through bargaining and compromise.

Extremist movements do not seek to resolve conflicts through ordinary means, and they typically reject compromise. Extremist crises are predicated on the intrinsic identity of an out-group, so they cannot be solved without dominating or eliminating the out-group on a permanent basis.

Because of this deep connection between crisis and out-group identity, extremists cannot separate the need for hostile action from the success or survival of the in-group. Extremist crises are not relative or situational; they proceed implacably from the gap between in-group and out-group definitions.

The most common crisis narratives used by extremists include:

Impurity: Corruption of in-group beliefs, practices or traits, sometimes including the infiltration of out-group beliefs, practices and traits
Conspiracy: The belief that out-groups are engaged in secret actions to control in-group outcomes
Dystopia: The belief that out-groups have successfully oriented society to disadvantage the in-group
Existential threat: The belief that out-groups threaten the continued survival of the in-group
Apocalypse: The belief that out-groups will precipitate a comprehensive end to history in the not-too distant future.

In addition to these crises, most of which presume the in-group faces a current disadvantage, successful extremist groups may face a crisis of triumphalism (the belief that the in-group successes can only be maintained by escalating hostile acts targeting out-groups).

Impurity

In the context of extremism, purity is the measure of how well the current in-group conforms to the prototypical in-group identity described in an ideology, including beliefs, traits and practices. Assaults on purity are often interpreted as part of a broader crisis, as described in the narratives that follow. But in some cases, purity and impurity are at the root of a crisis.

Impurity becomes a crisis when the in-group deviates from the prototypical identity, reaching critical urgency if the in-group begins to resemble the out-group in its beliefs, traits and practices. The in-group can be corrupted by excessive friendly contact or intermarriage with the out-group, or the propagation of out-group identity elements within the in-group.

For racial extremists who strictly define the in-group by heredity, impurity is an existential threat absent all other complications. Mixed relationships between races produce offspring who are disqualified from the in-group definition, and these unions are perceived as taking place at the expense of same-race couplings. Thus, modern-day white nationalists refer to race mixing as “white genocide” because they argue it reduces the available population of “pure” white people.

For religious and ideological in-groups, purity may be more complicated because the corruption believed to result from contact with the out-group is mental or spiritual in nature. For these groups, impurity is typically a component of a larger crisis.

For example, in Islamist and jihadist extremist movements, the corruption of the “pure” religion of Islam ² is directly responsible for the suffering of Muslims, first by placing them in league with out-groups that seek to destroy them and second by encouraging bid’ah (religious innovation), which corrupts the purity of the in-group identity by “altering” the religion.³

Conspiracy

Occam’s razor is a principle of analysis that states “entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity,” essentially meaning that theories should be parsimonious, stipulating only as much as is necessary to explain an observation about the world. It is commonly paraphrased as “simpler explanations are more likely to be correct.”⁴

In contrast, extremists are Occam’s bricklayers. They gleefully multiply entities, gravitating over time toward ever-more complex theories to explain the world in general and the nature of out-groups in particular. Conspiracy theories argue that out-groups directly control, through secretive means, the success or survival of the in-group.

Conspiracy theories are among the most powerful and ubiquitous tools that extremist ideologues use to explain real or perceived problems afflicting the in-group, attributing them to secret machinations by a powerful cabal of elite out-group members. They transfer power from an in-group to an out-group using a dyad that relentlessly drives narratives toward extremism:

The in-group is full of merit but lacking in agency.
The out-group lacks merit but possesses extraordinary agency.

The wide gap between these two poles creates the perception of an acute crisis that cannot be solved except through extraordinary measures. The solution to this crisis requires the creation of a parallel subset of the in-group with the power to resist the out-group—the extremist in-group, which possesses high levels of both merit and agency. The gap between merit and agency is frequently found in extremist worldviews, and a conspiracy theory is perhaps the most effective way to depict it.⁵

Figure 2 The distribution of merit and agency in an extremist conspiracy theory

Research suggests that conspiracy theories usually arise from the desire to provide coherent explanations for complicated problems.⁶ The real world is messy, and while conspiracy theories are often arcane, they tend to be tidy. In the words of American historian Richard Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,”⁷ a conspiracy theory

is nothing if not coherent—in face, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes that it is up against an enemy who is as infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total confidence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreaching, consistent theory.⁸

Conspiracy theories are also cumulative, in the sense that someone who subscribes to one is likely to subscribe to more than one.⁹ After a conspiracy theory enters a movement’s ecosystem, more theories or more elaborations of existing theories are sure to follow. For these reasons, among others, conspiracy theories are among the most ubiquitous crisis narratives in extremist literature.

Conspiracy theories are transmitted information, as discussed in the previous chapter, but they often arise out of a desire to explain personal experiences. For instance, studies have shown that when racial in-group members directly experience a pattern of discrimination, they may be more likely to believe in conspiracy theories that explain those experiences.¹⁰ When members of an in-group experience a disruption of the status quo, they may turn to conspiracy theories in an effort to make sense of uncertainty.

But the substance of a conspiracy theory is always transmitted, because it seeks to attribute overt events to an unseen hand that must be exposed and described. As a result, conspiracy narratives are highly susceptible to manipulation.

This effect is magnified by the fact that conspiracy theories contain an inherent element of argumentation. They are not just stories but seek to convince an audience to reach a particular conclusion.¹¹ Extremist ideologues put conspiracy theories at the heart of a constructed out-group identity, embellishing the description of the out-group with proliferating detail. As Hofstadter astutely observes,

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. … The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic strivings for “evidence” to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. … [P]aranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can be justified to many non-paranoids but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.”¹²

Any identity group’s description naturally accrues detail as time passes, but a sudden proliferation of detail may correlate to a growing extremist current.

Radicalization is ultimately concerned with expanding the divide between in-group and out-groups. So while conspiracy theories are primarily concerned with explaining out-group behavior, they represent only half of the dyad. The maximum divide occurs when the in-group is characterized as meritorious but vulnerable. As the detail of each description increases, the divide between in-group and out-group grows, sometimes with remarkable speed.

Dystopia

Dystopia is a society that has been poisoned to its core. It is corrupt, misguided, ineffectual, immoral, tyrannical, uncontrollable, or all of the above. Few crises are more profound or disturbing, which makes dystopian narratives extremely valuable for extremist ideologues and propagandists.

Many extremist narratives are broadly dystopian, an especially useful theme for terrorist and revolutionary movements that seek to overturn society at its roots. The complete destruction of the existing social order is most easily justified when the system is wholly irreparable.

Fear of dystopia can be conveyed through selective reporting of true facts. Dystopian narratives can be welded to conspiracy theories or described in fiction. Although dystopian themes feature in a wide range of extremist movements, they have been particularly effective in right-wing and racist fiction over the last two centuries, including such books as Anticipations of the Future, a proslavery novel published in the United States prior to the Civil War, and The Camp of the Saints, a racist anti-immigrant novel published in France during the 1970s. Many lesser-known examples of the dystopian fiction genre are fevered racist nightmares,¹³ such as The Turner Diaries, a 1978 white nationalist novel in which minorities take over the United States and disarm white people. The book played a key role inspiring the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, and dozens of other murders from the year it was written until the present.

However, dystopian narratives are by no means exclusive to right-wing movements. Jack London’s 1908 socialist dystopian novel, The Iron Heel, advocates a violent revolution in the United States. The online hacker collective Anonymous adopted its iconic Guy Fawkes mask iconography from a 1982 to 1989 dystopian comic book series called V for Vendetta, which later was adapted as a movie.¹⁴

Dystopian stories, particularly in the form of fiction, are immersive and effective at capturing the imagination of readers. The dystopian genre has long been popular with mainstream audiences, making it attractive as an extremist recruitment and propaganda tool.¹⁵

In extremist dystopian narratives, the corrupt regime favors out-groups and disadvantages in-groups, often reflecting or fictionalizing conspiracy theories in a vivid format.¹⁶ They are also a vehicle for an extremist in-group to critique the eligible in-group. Dystopian narratives often blame in-group members for weakness and acquiescence. For example, The Turner Diaries devotes many pages to a critique of white Americans, blaming their passivity and lack of conviction for the emergence of the dystopian future described in the book.

Conversely, dystopian narratives, especially fictional stories set in the not-too-distant future, can be more empowering than conspiracy narratives alone because they often contain a strategy for preventing or reversing the corruption of society. When present in fiction, this can include protagonists whom extremist adherents may find relatable. In the case of The Turner Diaries and many of its imitators, the call for action is so specific that the novel doubles as an instructional manual.

Fiction is a particularly effective delivery mechanism for dystopian narratives, but it’s not the only vehicle. Mainstream and extremist political rhetoric alike invoke the specter of current despair or near-future catastrophe on a regular basis and in a variety of formats, including speeches, articles, nonfiction books, and videos.¹⁷

Existential Threat

Extremists often describe threats to the continued existence of the in-group. Existential threats are usually perceived to be imminent, and they can take many forms, including military, cultural or racial.

Anti-Muslim extremists such as Anders Breivik frequently stipulate that Muslims present an existential threat to Western culture, stoking fears that Muslim immigration and proselytization will result in the complete overthrow of democracy and its replacement with an imagined “shariah law” theocracy.

Muslim extremists, such as American al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Awlaki, have argued the reverse proposition, that the West seeks to commit a comprehensive genocide against Muslims and Arabs. In a 2002 speech, Awlaki warned that Americans and Europeans “are going to approach all of the Arabs who are living in their midst, and every Arab man and woman and child will be killed. They will all be exterminated. A holocaust.”¹⁸

The complete destruction of one’s in-group is an intoxicating fear and an effective way to mobilize in-group members. When an extremist group escalates from oppressive crisis narratives (such as conspiracy and dystopia) into existential narratives (such as imminent genocide), it may signal that extremist violence will soon follow. However, some movements move to violence on the basis of lesser threats, while others perceive an existential threat positioned at some point in the distant future, which does not necessarily require a violent response now.

Apocalypse

The most advanced form of crisis narrative is apocalyptic—foretelling disaster not just for the in-group but for the world as we know it. Apocalyptic crisis narratives describe the end of history, often but not always in religious terms.

There are two types of apocalyptic narrative. The first simply describes the end of human society. Members of the in-group are urged to take action to prevent this catastrophe by opposing the apocalyptic actions of the out-group. For instance, the 2011 eco-extremist manifesto Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet argues that an out-group defined as “industrial civilization” or “industrial society” is wreaking environmental havoc that will lead to the destruction of “every living being” unless adherents fight back against the industrial system using sabotage and even violence.¹⁹

The second type of apocalyptic narrative is more insidious and seductive. A millenarian belief holds that the current world will be replaced by a perfect utopian world very soon. Millenarian apocalyptic movements believe that the end of the current age of history is fast approaching, a narrative typically predicated on prophecy. This climax brings a cosmic wave of destruction, usually related to an apocalyptic war between a chosen in-group and a demonic out-group, after which a perfect and utopian society will emerge.

Millenarian thought originated with Christian expectations that after Armageddon (a climactic battle between the forces of good and evil), Jesus will return to institute a thousand-year divine reign. Only after this period of human perfection will the world end and the final judgment ensue. In a millenarian context, an apocalyptic war is not simply an act of wanton destruction. It clears away the detritus of a dystopian temporal world in preparation for a perfect, utopian world to come.

Apocalyptic movements, sometimes short-lived but often consequential, have existed for millennia. Like conspiracy theories, they may be a response to uncertainty. British historian Norman Cohn, in his landmark study of medieval millenarians, wrote that such movements emerged during periods of “rapid economic and social change.” The existence of static social roles created “a certain sense of security, a basic assurance which neither constant poverty nor occasional peril could destroy.” When “traditional social bonds were being weakened or shattered,” millenarian and apocalyptic movements were more likely to emerge.²⁰

Triumphalism

Although current discourse around extremism is often founded on ideas about grievances and disadvantages, extremism does not exist only in populations that face genuine threats. We normally think of a crisis in terms of catastrophe, but the English word’s root is derived from the Greek word krisis, “[the] act of separating, decision, judgment, event, outcome, turning point, sudden change.” In English, as well, the word crisis can refer to an inflection point, a moment during which momentous action may change the course of history.²¹

A noncatastrophic crisis can emerge when an in-group experiences sudden and revolutionary success, particularly if that success is tied to successful hostile actions that damage or defeat an out-group. For extremist movements, this manifests as triumphalist rhetoric. Under this formulation, the crisis is not a challenge but an opportunity that requires adherents to engage actively in its full realization.

Perhaps the most infamous manifestation of this effect is Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 Nazi propaganda epic filmed during an annual party rally, which showcases Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime with displays of military and economic power alongside pomp and pageantry. While Nazism emerged from a period of turmoil and setbacks for the German people, it flourished under the glow of triumphalism.

Other extremist groups, notably Islamic State, have employed triumphalism to great effect. Al Qaeda built its propaganda and ideological platform on the premise that it employed terrorism because the movement was too weak to fight and win wars. Starting as early as 2011, the Islamic State in Iraq (which later became Islamic State) began to flip that narrative, using its propaganda to boast of strength and catalog successes. When Islamic State seized Mosul and declared itself a caliphate in June 2014, this provided a vindication of its triumphalist rhetoric and spurred the rapid growth of the organization into a global threat.

A blizzard of propaganda followed, emphasizing the historic nature of the caliphate and the allure of participation in a successful utopian project. These extremely successful messages created the illusion of a fully realized millenarian society that was perpetrating acts of extraordinary violence against Islamic State’s many out-groups, especially Shia Muslims and Westerners.²²

Triumphalist narratives focus on the maximum exaltation of the in-group (in this world, at least), but this exaltation is typically depicted as fragile. Only continued hostile action against the out-group can ensure the in-group’s continued success. This out-group may or may not be referenced in triumphalist rhetoric, but its threat is never far from view.

Solutions

The existence of a crisis demands an urgent response, a solution to whatever challenge the crisis presents. Extremism’s crisis-solution construct posits that a crisis affecting the in-group has been caused by an out-group or -groups, and that the crisis can only be resolved by taking hostile action against the out-group. This construct is at the core of extremist ideology and propaganda, creating what Haroro J. Ingram, a leading scholar of nonstate violent actors’ propaganda, calls a “system of meaning”—an extremist in-group’s “alternative perspective of the world” that stands in contrast to the views of both out-groups and (in most cases) the eligible in-group.³²

This alternative view is constructed from the elements of extremist belief—identity, crisis, and solution—to justify extraordinary measures. To protect the eligible in-group from the crisis caused by the out-group, the extremist in-group proposes solutions that reflect the magnitude of the threat it has described, without necessarily being proportionate.

The most common solutions proposed by extremist movements are:

Harassment: Intentionally making out-groups unwelcome in the presence of the in-group
Discrimination: Denying out-group members benefits provided to in-group members
Segregation: Physical separation of the in-group from out-groups
Hate crimes: Nonsystematic violence against out-group members
Terrorism: Public violence targeting noncombatants to advance an extremist ideology
Oppression: Aggressive and systematic discrimination, up to and including systematic violence
War: Open lethal fighting between an in-group and an out-group
Genocide: Systematic slaughter of out-group members on a large scale.

Harassment

Harassment can include verbal abuse, intentional offense, or incursions into out-group personal or shared spaces that fall short of violence (such as vandalism). Harassment is one of the earliest and most common elements of extremist action, and it often forebodes greater radicalization. At minimum, harassment reinforces in-group cohesion and reinforces the low status of out-group members. At its worst, harassment can be used systematically to inflict psychological harm or intimidate out-groups and discourage them from participating in civic affairs or using public facilities. When harassment escalates in intensity, or becomes an element of in-group cohesion (for instance, when the use of a racial epithet becomes an in-group identity marker), violence may not be far behind.

Discrimination

Discrimination can be a product of nonideological hostility or systemic bias toward an out-group rather than a deliberate strategy. At an organic level, dislike, distrust, or legacy social and economic structures can lead to discriminatory behavior that excludes the out-group from the privileges or social circles of the in-group (for instance, in employment, education, and housing opportunities).

Discrimination can also be a deliberate strategy. Many Islamist movements explicitly deny certain rights to non-Muslims as part of their governing structure.³³ In other cases, discrimination may be intentional but covert. For example, U.S. President Richard Nixon reportedly pursued specific antidrug policies as a way to target African Americans without doing so explicitly.³⁴

The endorsement of intentionally discriminatory behavior qualifies a movement as extremist under the definition used in this book. Some forms of systemic discrimination arguably fall into a gray area, although at times they reflect the presence of extremist currents in society.

Systemic discrimination also can be a legacy of prior extremist policies that have been incompletely mitigated. For example, in addition to more current factors, generations of slavery, legal discrimination and disenfranchisement have created significant structural obstacles to the creation of wealth in African American communities.³⁵

Segregation

Segregation ranges from the creation of physical barriers between the in-group and out-group to the relocation of in-groups and out-groups into separate territories. Examples include the former Jim Crow laws in the United States and current white separatist movements such as the Northwest Territorial Imperative, which encourages whites to migrate to the Pacific Northwest and establish ethnic enclaves.³⁶ Segregation may be notionally voluntary, but it is rarely nonviolent in the long term because sooner or later it must be enforced.

Ethnic cleansing, the term for forcibly segregating a territory by expelling out-groups, is typically extremely violent. Minorities are usually incentivized to leave territories controlled by the in-group through massacres and violent intimidation, which is why ethnic cleansing campaigns are often rightly classified as genocide.

Hate Crimes

A hate crime—the targeting of people for violence or criminal harassment based on race, religion, gender, sexual identity, or other identity—can be one manifestation of ideological extremism. However, law enforcement and other public data on hate crimes is often inadequate to assess fully. Some so-called hate crimes are certainly driven by extremist beliefs, such as Dylann Roof’s 2015 murder of nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church and should properly be classified as terrorism because the goal was to send a political message. But not all extremists leave behind manifestos, as Roof did. Often, bigotry arises in people without a clearly defined extremist ideology, and that bigotry can lead to violence. Additional quantitative and qualitative research is urgently needed to help identify why people commit hate crimes and how many of those people have been exposed to an extremist ideology. But although some hate crimes may not be extremist, some certainly are, and hate crimes are one form of violent solution that extremist ideologies may endorse.³⁷

Terrorism

Because extremist movements are often small, some adopt the asymmetric tactic of terrorism, which allows relatively weak movements to have a disproportionate impact on large and powerful out-groups. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, rapid advances in technology boosted the capacity for cost-effective mass killing and social disruption by smaller groups and individuals, elevating the threat and frequency of terrorism accordingly.³⁸

Terrorism is defined here as “public violence targeting noncombatants, carried out by nongovernmental individuals or groups, in order to advance a political or ideological goal or amplify a political or ideological message.”³⁹ When carried out by a governmental actor, I would call similar public violence oppression (see the next section) rather than terrorism.

Terrorism serves multiple purposes for an extremist group, including the mobilization of supporters and sympathizers, as well as creating friction between an eligible in-group and an out-group, contributing to the radicalization of both groups.

Islamic State and its precursor group, al Qaeda in Iraq, have been particularly successful at using terrorism to radicalize all parties in a conflict. In 2006, al Qaeda in Iraq bombed a Shia mosque in Samarra, triggering a wave of sectarian reprisals between Shia and Sunni Muslims that left thousands dead. The attack set the stage for a much wider conflict by engaging more of the Sunni eligible in-group with the extremist in-group and encouraging the escalation of existing extremist currents among Iraq’s Shia population and politicians.⁴⁰ Subsequent iterations of the terrorist organization repeatedly struck against existing social fracture lines in an effort to reproduce this success.⁴¹

Extremist terrorism usually targets out-groups, but it can also target ineligible in-group members, or even eligible in-group members. One notable example of this was the 2011 Norway attack by Anders Breivik, who killed seventy-seven people in Norway, the vast majority of whom were Norwegians (his own in-group) at a youth summer camp, in order to send a message about the threat he constructed as emanating from Muslim out-groups.⁴² The primary purpose of terrorism is to spread an ideological message, and the identity of the victims may be secondary or tertiary to perpetrators. Although some ideologies prohibit violence against in-group members, targeting tactics tend to be very fluid, especially concerning ineligible in-group members who are seen as apostates, collaborators, or traitors.

Oppression

Oppression typically includes heightened forms of discrimination and segregation, such as racial slavery, internment camps, and other drastic curtailment of rights for members of out-groups. Oppression almost always includes an explicit legal framework mandating hostile action against an out-group. Examples include the Spanish Inquisition, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Islamic State’s enslavement of the Yazidi minority group, and more generally, the imprisonment of people on the basis of their identity group, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or sexual identity.

War and Insurgency

The history of humanity is littered with wars, some more closely related to extremism than others. As previously noted, conflict and war are not automatically extremist. But many wars and insurgencies (including both World War I and World War II) are tied closely to extremist actions and movements in one way or another (as noted in chapter 1). More recently, a number of wars in the post-9/11 era have been launched with the stated goal of defeating extremism, including the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead, these efforts have created conditions under which extremism can thrive, including jihadist insurgencies in both countries and related conflicts involving al Qaeda and Islamic State in Mali, Nigeria, the Philippines, Somalia, and Yemen. War and insurgency can empower extremist movements, even when the extremists cannot manage a clean win.

Genocide

Nazi documents of the 1940s euphemistically referred to the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” using bureaucratic language to describe the ugly concept of genocide.⁴³ This final solution is found at the conclusion of the radicalization process if it is carried through to its fullest realization. If an out-group is stipulated to represent an eternal and existential threat to the in-group and if the solution to that threat is inseparable from violence, then an extremist ideology can escalate until the only remaining solution is the complete and permanent annihilation of the out-group.

For most extremist groups, genocide remains largely notional. White nationalist readers of the novel The Turner Diaries, for instance, envision genocide as a long-term goal but their own direct actions as incremental. Adherents do not seek to implement genocide in real time but rather intend to spark a race war that will theoretically create the conditions for genocide at some future date.⁴⁴

But some extremist movements do attempt to implement total genocide in real time, and some succeed. As discussed in chapter 1, the Roman Catholic Church successfully exterminated the Cathar sect during the Albigensian crusade in the thirteenth century. A series of global genocides have nearly or totally wiped out indigenous peoples in the Americas, Australia, the Caucasus, Tasmania, and other regions.⁴⁵ Other genocides have been stopped before they could succeed in exterminating the out-group but still produced casualties ranging from thousands to millions. In addition to the genocide of 6 million Jews, the Nazis killed millions of other civilians on the basis of ethnicity, disability or sexual identity.⁴⁶

Genocide is the end of the road for radicalization into extremism, a process this book has defined as the escalation of an in-group’s extremist orientation in the form of increasingly negative views about an out-group or the endorsement of increasingly hostile or violent actions against an out-group. But not every extremist movement travels the entire way down the road to reach this final destination. Understanding the process by which groups and individuals do or do not radicalize can shed light on why extremism presents such an enduring problem in human history and how we can work to reduce its toll on society.

4 Crises and Solutions

Case Study: The Extremist Template