Dr William Allchorn, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Richmond, the American International University in London, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Policing Institute Eastern Region, Anglia Ruskin University, and Dr Elisa Orofino, Senior Research Fellow and Academic Lead for Extremism and Counter-Terrorism at the Policing Institute Eastern Region, Anglia Ruskin University.
One of the primary debates raging in the field of terrorism studies at this present time is the extent to which ideological extremism leads to radicalization to violent or non-violent actions.
Among the most influential models (or pathways) explaining the shift from non-violent to violent extremism feature Moghadam’s “staircase” to terrorism, McCauley and Moskalenko’s “pyramid” to terrorism, and Baran’s “conveyor belt” to terrorism. All these models see non-violent extremism as the beginning of a path leading to violence.
However, this is not always the case: there are many who become radicalized and engage in extremism (opposing the system) and yet “do not become foreign fighters, engage in terrorism, or even reach the frontline.”[1] The assumption that all extremists will become terrorists might prevent scholars from studying the challenge facing national governments put forth by those groups whose pressure is not exercised through violence but through the power of ideas.
In this article, we provide an overview of the five key misconceptions that have been holding back the scholarly and public debate on non-violent extremism as well as solutions to these. These misconceptions are fully explored in our new Routledge Handbook on Non-violent Extremism,[2] which stands as the first comprehensive scholarly contribution on non-violent expressions of extremism across different ideological milieus.
Misconception One: Non-Violent Extremism Is Simply A ‘Conveyor Belt’ to Violent Extremism
In the handbook, many of the groups studied remain radicalized and engage in extremism without resorting to violence. Whether it’s left-wing, feminist, or environmental forms of extremism, none of the case studies on these forms of progressive (or what is termed here as “post-modern”) extremisms rise to the criminal threshold of terrorism.
Whilst (mainly in the cases of environmental groups) they might engage in spontaneous acts of political violence, their modus operandi and attack planning cycles are not directed against people, are based on principled forms of non-violence and tend to be mainly spontaneous rather than premeditated. Indeed, in some cases (particularly when it comes to forms of feminism radicalism), such movements have actively protested against forms of state violence that take place against a persecuted or underrepresented society group.
Misconception Two: Non-Violent Extremism Is Just A Western, Home-Grown Jihadist Phenomenon
One of the key innovations and contributions of the handbook is its focus on a plurality of non-violent extremisms. For a long-time now, terrorism and extremism studies have been overshadowed by violent and jihadist extremism. To some extent, this is understandable in the post-9/11 era. Jihadist perpetrators have come to dominate the threat environment, and this has led to prioritizing counter measures among policy elites that overwhelmingly focused on violent and non-violent elements of the Islamist cause and Muslim diaspora.
More recently, however, we know that — both in terms of the frequency of attacks and death count — it is the far right that is accounting for a growing number of terror attacks, with a 320% rise in the five years preceding 2019, according to the Global Terrorism Index.
New times, therefore, call for a new focus and this handbook provides fresh perspectives and modalities of extremism that fill scholarly and practitioner needs to come to grips with this new threat environment. Moving beyond Islamist groups, this handbook has documented the rise of far right and Buddhist non-violent extremism, new manifestations of feminist, left-wing and environmental radicalism, with groups that simply were not in existence two decades ago and geographies that have been previously overlooked as sites of extremism in the literature.
A key aspect of this has been to kick start a scholarly conversation about non-violent extremism as a substantive focus of research in itself as well as removing the assumption that non-violent extremism necessarily leads to terrorism in the final instance.
Misconception Three: Non-Violent Extremists Are Less Influential Than So-Called Violent Extremists
Within the volume, we saw many non-violent extremist movements applying the brakes to radicalization towards full scale terrorism or political violence. In the case of a chapter in the handbook by Jan Ali Tabligh Jama’at, for example, it is a more moral form of non-violence associated with a vision of global constructive and wholesome social transformation through religious adherence.
In the case of a chapter by William Allchorn on the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), for example, it is a more strategic form of non-violence associated with tactical adherence to peaceful vigils and set-piece protests.
In the case of a chapter in the handbook by Giray Gerim on the Nationalist Movement Party in Turkey, it was organizational developments (i.e. the increase in competition and instability of its core electorate) that lead it away from non-violent means to non-violence.
The volume, therefore, steps beyond the violent-non-violent dichotomy by suggesting that blurred lines exist within groups themselves about whether violence or non-violence exist depending on their individual developmental pathways and organizational trajectories.
Misconception Four: Violence Is More Inevitable Under Non-Violent Extremist Groups With Regressive Causes Versus Progressive Ones
Strategic forms of non-violence, and what Alex Schmid terms “not-violence”, have shown to be more prevalent among irredentist or regressive forms of extremism — namely of a religious or far-right extremist nature. Whether it is the Buddhist extremist currents in Myanmar or Sri Lanka or the Identitarian and far right movements in Europe and Turkey, such non-violent movements have seen radicalization towards violence through crisis rhetoric that has enraged action against minority religious and racial groups — either directly or indirectly — in the form of organized political violence and even terrorism.
This is not to say that all regressive non-violent extremist movements in this volume have seen such a transition. In the case of anti-Islamic protest movements in Europe (as expressed in chapters DFLA and PEGIDA Germany within the handbook by William Allchorn, Sabine Volk and Manès Weisskircher), ascriptions to non-violence have been a key form of “impression management” among movements that seek to maintain legitimacy and political relevance.[3]
Moreover, in the religious extremist case, some groups (particularly as expressed in chapters in the handbook on Tabligh Jama’at, al-Nour Party in Egypt and Kuwait’s the Islamic Salafi Alliance (ISA) in Kuwait by Jan Ali, Zana Gulmohamad and Kira Jumet) have incorporated non-violence and participation within mainstream political institutions as a foundational part of their methodology and mode of practice — participating in the electoral process and fielding parliamentary candidates in order to maintain the place of Islam in society and the legal system.
In contradistinction, others, as expressed in a chapter by Orofino and Çobanoğlu Hizb ut-Tahrir, have chosen to work outside the existing democratic order — not engaging in terrorism and political violence themselves but using so-called “inspirational texts” in order to embolden others to violent action whilst stopping at the cusp of violent action themselves.
Misconception Five: All Non-Violent Extremist Organisations Are Strictly Hierarchical And Well Defined
A final lesson learnt from the handbook concerns the nature of non-violent extremist movement organizations themselves. Picked up upon in early cross-sectional chapters in the volume, many non-violent extremist groups nowadays are what we call post-organizational — relying on micro-donations of time, financial aid and online activism in order to sustain such movements.
So-called post-organizational non-violent extremist movements, therefore, stretch out imagination of what constitutes a political organization and what it means to become a member of one when there are no official structures or codified membership lists or rosters to speak of.
Giving the example of Sovereign Citizens (SC) movements and QAnon, for example, Daniel Baldino and Michael Balnaves in their contribution find that within the former movement fluid identities and a varied demographic base align within the SC worldview (such as the government is a corrupt and illegitimate corporate entity) in the online space.
Moreover, Milo Comerford, Jakub Grühl and Jacob Davey in their contribution show how communities of right-wing extremists are coordinating and organizing in a looser fashion, often defined by adherence to key tactical, cultural and ideological tropes rather than membership of particular groups.
More concretely, they show how categorizations of violence and non-violence get blurred in this post-organisational moment — with the propagation of crisis conspiracy theories and disinformation about population statistics by small right-wing extremist social movements (for example, the European Identitarian Movement) emboldening others across the other side of the world to commit terrorist attacks and atrocities (e.g., the Christchurch Mosque Shootings).
Conclusion
To conclude, the question, therefore, arises whether such post-organizational movements — of which there are many not just in the anti-government or far-right extremist space — provide an antechamber to paths of extremist violence or at least provide subcultures in which the dehumanizing ideas exist that can in turn lead to political violence.
The answer, between activism and violence, is complicated by this, and whilst no direct correlation occurs, the leaderless and organizationally fragmented nature of such organizations does force one to wonder whether formal, hierarchical structures put a “cap on violence”[4] — something which the handbook explores at great lengths.
European Eye on Radicalization aims to publish a diversity of perspectives and as such does not endorse the opinions expressed by contributors. The views expressed in this article represent the author alone.
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References
[1] Chassman, 2016, p. 213; see also Orofino, 2020.
[2] Orofino, E., & Allchorn, W. (Eds.). (2023). Routledge Handbook of Non-violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives and New Debates. Taylor & Francis.
[3] Goffman,E. (1969). Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
[4] Busher, J., Macklin, G., and Holbrook, D. (2019). The Internal Brakes on Violent Escalation: A Typology. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. 11(1): 3-25. DOI: 10.1080/19434472.2018.1551918.
Additional references include:
- Ali, J. (2023). The Tabligh Jama’at and its Non-violent Resoluteness. Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives and New Debates.
- Allchorn, W. (2023). Barriers to Violence Activism on the UK Far Right. Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives and New Debates.
- Baldino, D., & Balnaves, M. (2023). Sticky Ideologies and Non-violent Heterodox Politics. Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives and New Debates.
- Baran, Z. (2005). Fighting the War of Ideas. Foreign Affairs, 84(6), 68–78. doi:10.2307/20031777.
- Busher, J., Macklin, G., and Holbrook, D. (2019). The Internal Brakes on Violent Escalation: A Typology. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression. 11(1): 3-25. DOI: 10.1080/19434472.2018.1551918.
- Chassman, A. (2016). Islamic State, Identity, and the Global Jihadist Movement: How is Islamic State Successful at Recruiting ‘Ordinary’ People? Journal for Deradicalization, Winter(9), 205-259.
- Comerford, M., Davey, J., & Guhl, J. “Screw Your Optics”: The Ambivalent Role of Violence in Islamist and Far-Right Extremism. In Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism (pp. 34-50). Routledge.
- Gerim, G. Far-Right Nationalist Politics in Turkey: Division of the Nationalist Camp Between the MHP and the Good Party. In Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism (pp. 273-287). Routledge.
- Global Terrorism Index (2019). Global Terrorism Index 2019 Briefing: Measuring the Impact of Terrorism. Sydney, Australia: Institute for Economics and Peace. Available here.
- Goffman,E. (1969). Strategic Interaction. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Gulmohamad, Z., & Jumet, K. Non-violent Salafist Political Engagement: Comparing Egypt’s Al-Nour Party with Kuwait’s Islamic Salafi Alliance. In Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism (pp. 166-178). Routledge.
- McCauley, C., & Moskalenko, S. (2008). Mechanisms of Political Radicalization: Pathways Toward Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence, 20(3), 415–433. doi:10.1080/09546550802073367.
- Moghaddam, F. M. (2005). The Staircase to Terrorism: A Psychological Exploration. American Psychologist, 60(2), 161–169 doi:10.1037/0003–066X.60.2.161
- Orofino, E., & Çobanoğlu, Y. When Ideology Is All that Matters!: Exploring Non-violent Islamism Through Fetullah Gülen and Taqiuddin An-Nabhani. In Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism (pp. 69-84). Routledge.
- Schmid, A. (May 2014). Violent and Non-Violent Extremism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?. The Hague: ICCT. Available here.
