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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The 4m Way Of Combating Violent Extremism: An Analysis*, Kumar Ramakrishna
The 4m Way Of Combating Violent Extremism: An Analysis*, Kumar Ramakrishna
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article puts forth a “4M Way” of dealing with the threat of violent Islamist extremism in Southeast Asia. It argues that our narrative must be fundamentally more attractive to the target audience than the competing vision of the violent extremists. The memes that constitute our narrative in the social media space must be “stickier” than those of the violent extremists. The personal credibility of our messenger in the eyes of the target audience should exceed that of extremist ideologues vis-á-vis that same audience. The mechanisms that we employ to impart our messages to the target audience must be more …
The Apocalyptic Imagination And The Fundamentalist Mindset, Charles B. Strozier
The Apocalyptic Imagination And The Fundamentalist Mindset, Charles B. Strozier
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article explores the psychological meanings of the apocalyptic imagination in what I call a fundamentalist mindset. That mindset has its own long history but is newly relevant in the nuclear age. We no longer need God to bring about ultimate destruction. There are many facets of the fundamentalist mindset (for example, its intense literalism), but the focus in the article is on two: its kairotic sense of time and its rampant paranoia. These two facets interact synergistically around violence that is experienced by those who revel in it as moral in a totalistic sense. Killing becomes healing. The evil …
A Policy-Oriented Framework For Understanding Violent Extremism, Wael Haddara
A Policy-Oriented Framework For Understanding Violent Extremism, Wael Haddara
New England Journal of Public Policy
Violent extremism represents a serious challenge to open and democratic societies. This article presents a framework for understanding violent extremism in the context of “lone-wolf” attacks in Western societies. The framework combines social, political, and psychological factors and highlights the importance of integrating the available evidence from multiple disciplines to develop cogent, effective policy. Specifically, in addition to a broad survey of motivational factors, the article draws on terror management theory to provide insight into the interaction between religiosity and violence.
Counterextremism programs are most successful at mitigating the risk of violence when they are focused on behavior, rather than …
Understanding The Appeal Of Isis, Lydia Wilson
Understanding The Appeal Of Isis, Lydia Wilson
New England Journal of Public Policy
The Islamic State, or ISIS, has proven to be persistently successful in attracting people from all over the globe to join in its state-building and state-defending enterprise. This article explores the messages it has crafted, from the utopian to the militarily defensive, and the techniques it uses to propagate these messages (including on social media), which includes some historical comparisons to communism and Nazism. It goes on to provide initial research findings from the field to show how their message is working among (a small percentage of) the target audience, sketching the theory of identity fusion to argue that it …
The Growth Of Isis Extremism In Southeast Asia: Its Ideological And Cognitive Features—And Possible Policy Responses, Kumar Ramakrishna
The Growth Of Isis Extremism In Southeast Asia: Its Ideological And Cognitive Features—And Possible Policy Responses, Kumar Ramakrishna
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article examines the radicalization of young Southeast Asians into the violent extremism that characterizes the notorious Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). After situating ISIS within its wider and older Al Qaeda Islamist ideological milieu, the article sketches out the historical landscape of violent Islamist extremism in Southeast Asia. There it focuses on the Al Qaeda-affiliated, Indonesian-based but transnational Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) network, revealing how the emergence of ISIS has impacted JI’s evolutionary trajectory. The article surveys major explanations of how radicalization into violent extremism (RIVE) occurs, setting the stage for the ensuing discussion of two features of …
Suicide Terrorism: Performance Violence As Public Plunge, Gregory Saathoff
Suicide Terrorism: Performance Violence As Public Plunge, Gregory Saathoff
New England Journal of Public Policy
This article explores the relationship between the social psychology of the individual and the final abyss of suicide terrorism. The boy on the high dive is a metaphor for the fearful pause before the leap. For a young child, the dive is exciting and dangerous: the fearful pause is somewhat analogous to thoughts and feelings before the terrorist’s catastrophically destructive contemplated homicidal/suicidal behavior. If we think about the leap itself, there may be a better analogy. Is there any corollary to a specific group of suicide completers? What can be learned from others who have contemplated and undertaken perhaps the …