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:
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.
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.
