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Terrorism and Political Violence
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Why Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation
Happened between Islamists and Anti-Islamists in Britain but Not in Norway
Sofia Lygren & Jacob Aasland Ravndal
To cite this article: Sofia Lygren & Jacob Aasland Ravndal (2021): Why Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation Happened between Islamists and Anti-Islamists in Britain but Not in Norway, Terrorism and Political Violence, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2021.1933957
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2021.1933957
© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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Why Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation Happened between Islamists and Anti-Islamists in Britain but Not in Norway
Sofia Lygren and Jacob Aasland Ravndal
Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
ABSTRACT
Between 2009 and 2015, both Islamist and anti-Islamist protest groups were active in Britain and Norway. However, while these opposing groups regularly clashed violently in the UK, such interactions never occurred in Norway. This paper seeks to explain why seemingly similar group dyads produced different outcomes in different cases. In doing so, we trace relevant causal mechanisms derived from social movement theory in a comparative case study design. The paper can also be read as a response to Busher and Macklin’s call for improving conceptual clarity in research on “cumulative extremism.” Part of our response is introducing an alternative concept: Reciprocal intergroup radicalisation (RIR).
Our analysis further shows that in Britain, RIR was fuelled by the presence of militant activists on both sides, a competent leadership, a central enemy image of the adversary, and a perception of unjust repression by security authorities.
Conversely, the absence of these factors contained RIR between the Norwegian groups. In conclusion, our paper cautions against exaggerating the threat from RIR as multiple conditions must combine for RIR to occur. Even in Britain, by many considered a hotbed for RIR, the combined presence of these conditions was short lived.
KEYWORDS Cumulative extremism;
reciprocal intergroup radicalization; Islamists;
anti-Islamists; political violence
Introduction
In May 2013 two militant Islamists assassinated the soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, Britain, declaring revenge against Western occupation in majority Muslim countries. One of the perpetrators, Michael Adebolajo, had ties to the militant Islamist group Al Muhajiroun. The group’s leader at the time, Anjem Choudary, described Adebolajo as a man of “impeccable character” in interviews with Channel 4 and the BBC.1 As a response, the English Defence League (EDL), an anti-Islamist group, rallied nationwide with numbers seldom seen before. Commentators warned of an irreversible spiral of violence between anti-Islamists and militant Islamists. For instance, the coordinator of Tell MAMA, a monitoring group supporting victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes, stated: “These things are cumu- lative and I do not see an end to this cycle of violence.”2
The term “cumulative extremism,” referring to a situation where two extremist animosities fuel each other, was introduced by Roger Eatwell in 2006, when warning against increasing hostilities between militant Islamists and anti-Islamists.3 Lee Rigby’s murder was seen by many as the violent culmination of a chain of events characterised by increasingly violent interactions between the two factions in Britain. This interaction began in 2009, when the EDL was established as a response to Al Muhajiroun’s protests against British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. Feldman argued that the two sides were turning Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations “into a self-fulfilling prophecy,”
with Anders Breivik being the “most violent voice in this process of cumulative extremism.”4 Similarly,
CONTACT Jacob Aasland Ravndal [email protected] Department of Political Science, Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX), University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2021.1933957
© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
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Ebner argues that areas with a strong Islamist extremist presence are more likely to breed far right extremists—and vice versa.5 Last, Tell MAMA echoed this cumulative extremism narrative when publishing an alarming report showing a 52 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the murder of Lee Rigby.6
However, some scholars warn against cumulative extremism becoming an all-encompassing term, which could lead to counterproductive policies. More specifically, Busher and Macklin call for sharper definitions of what and who are to be included when referring to cumulative extremism.7 For example, should cumulative extremism refer exclusively to actions, or also to radical thoughts? Are spikes of interactions equally important as a gradual accumulation? And what is the unit of analysis—indivi- duals, groups or the community at large?
Busher and Macklin also call for more comparative research designs, including both positive and negative cases.8 As a response to this call, this paper offers a comparative study of Britain and Norway.
While Britain experienced contentious interactions between Al Muhajiroun and the EDL between 2009 and 2015, their Norwegian counterparts, Profetens Ummah and the Norwegian Defence League, rarely if ever interacted. Comparing Britain and Norway thus offers a rare opportunity to follow Macklin and Busher’s advice as the two countries had groups that were similar on both sides, yet exhibited variation in the outcome: i.e. extremist interaction.
Drawing on social movement theory, our analysis suggests that three conditions in particular—one internal, one relational and one external—may help explain cross-case variation of reciprocal inter- group radicalisation (RIR). Our internal condition is organisational resources, showing how human resources and leadership strength impact violent capacity building. Our relational condition is enemy images, looking at how central enemy images activate a mechanism of mirroring, subsequently fuelling RIR, whereas peripheral enemy images lead to less intergroup hostility. Last, our external condition is repression, looking at how different forms of policing protest impact the propensity for violent interaction. Notably, these conditions are contingent on one another, affecting the level of RIR through a complex interaction process that we aim to disentangle. In doing so, we hope to provide a more precise analysis of the conditions under which RIR is more and less likely to occur, and the types of preventive measures that may be used to counter RIR most effectively.
The paper is structured into six sections. We begin by proposing “reciprocal intergroup radicalisa- tion” as a more suitable term than cumulative extremism for accurately describing the processes at play. The second section explains why certain conditions and causal mechanisms come across as more relevant than others for explaining variation of RIR across cases. In the third section we present our methods, including our case selection criteria, our data material and the empirical indicators used to trace the causal mechanisms derived from our theory discussion. The fourth section offers background information about the cases under investigation as well as an empirical overview of the level of interactions between these adversary groups. The fifth section presents findings from our process- tracing analysis. The final section concludes by discussing key theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
From cumulative extremism to reciprocal intergroup radicalisation
In their criticism of the term cumulative extremism (CE), Busher and Macklin raise four key issues, thereby suggesting that an alternative concept is warranted.9 First, those using the CE concept often fail to distinguish between extreme attitudes and actions. Social psychological research shows that attitudes do not translate easily into actions—especially when it comes to extreme attitudes and actions.10 However, when CE is invoked in public debates there is a tendency to conflate attitudes and actions and assume that one leads to the other. For instance, Feldman and Litter argue that CE occurred after the murder of Lee Rigby, with a 373 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims the following week.11 However, the authors do not distinguish between offline and online hate crimes, which is problematic as online incidents constituted the vast majority of the article’s reported upsurge.
A second issue concerns a lack of distinction between “spirals of violence” and wider processes of
“community polarisation.” Although these two processes may occasionally co-occur, anti-Muslim sentiments declined during the most contentious movement–countermovement period in Britain in 2013, suggesting that they represent different phenomena and should be treated separately.12
Third, there is a tendency to apply the CE concept too broadly by implicating actors that are not necessarily involved in cumulative forms of extremism.13 Should, for example, non-violent groups or lone actors with no affiliation to extremist groups be included? Feldman presents Breivik as the most violent voice of CE,14 but Breivik was never a member of any anti-Islamist organisation.15 Including actors who are not a part of or responsive to movement–countermovement dynamics potentially conflates extremism on one side of a spectrum and community polarisation on the other with CE.
Thus, identifying a conceptual boundary is crucial for analytical clarity.
Finally, by invoking the term “cumulative,” violent interactions that may be responsive but not necessarily cumulative, as in a continuous rise in volume, are excluded from the analysis. For example, although the murder of Lee Rigby sparked a period of violent retaliations, the intensity fell back to levels preceding the incident shortly afterwards, showing an irregular rather than a cumulative interaction.16 Nevertheless, such spikes may still be analytically interesting, especially if each spike indicates an increased commitment to violence.
Rather than using the term “cumulative extremism,” we might therefore benefit from using an alternative concept. Drawing on multiple studies covering similar processes and using a plethora of concepts to describe them—cumulative radicalisation,17 reciprocal radicalisation,18 tit-for-tat radicalisation,19 horizontal reciprocal radicalisation20—we adopt the term “reciprocal intergroup radicalisation” in this study. In the following, we present RIR’s three elements in reverse order to show how they are logically connected to the criticisms described above.
First, “extremism” is a rather static concept that includes a limited universe of actors, typically those rejecting democratic rules and demonstrating a willingness to use violence in pursuit of political goals.21 However, many events referred to as examples of CE involve actors that may be radical but not necessarily extreme in the sense that they are anti-democratic or violent. In addition, one can easily imagine interaction between opposing radical groups that transforms one or both into becoming both violent and extreme—a process we would certainly not want to exclude from our analysis. The so- called relational turn in social movement research emphasises how violence emerges through a gradual process of sustained interactions with allies and adversaries.22 Following that argument, to account for changing levels of interactions, the term radicalisation better captures this interactive process than extremism does, as non-violent groups have the propensity to become violent through such sustained interactions. Thus, replacing extremism with radicalisation allows us to reach a more dynamic understanding of the processes at play, as violence is both relational and emergent, enabling the inclusion of both radical and extremist groups.
Second, by including actors that do not associate with any specific group or movement, we risk conflating the CE concept with extremism more broadly and thereby missing out on the particular dynamics at play when opposing groups interact. To capture such dynamics, we propose narrowing the scope by investigating intergroup dynamics only, thereby distinguishing it more sharply from more general community polarisation. Drawing on the civil war literature, Stewart argues that a main cause of conflicts, ranging from riots to civil wars, is mobilisation along group identity lines, such as race, religion and ethnicity.23 Although group identities are to a certain extent fluid, they can become salient over time, mobilising group radicalisation. The term “intergroup” may thus cover actors who are either active members or clearly identify with a specific group or movement, and who act conten- tiously against another group or movement as result of this identification.
Third, to clarify types of violence and interactions to be included, “reciprocal” replaces “cumula- tive.” This enables the study of spikes of interactions, regardless of whether the violence eventually recedes. The term “reciprocal” also isolates the most relevant types of actions by emphasising reactions intended to spark a response from a specific adversary, regardless of whether the acts are of a lower level than previously. Using this definition, the 22 July attacks in Norway in 2011 would be excluded as
the targets were left-wing so-called “cultural Marxists” and not Islamists.24 Additionally, there was no retaliation for the attacks by militant Islamists.
Theoretical framework
Busher and Macklin consider social movement theory as particularly relevant for researching RIR.25 The so-called relational turn in social movement studies has facilitated comparative research on the far right, the far left and militant Islamism aimed at identifying underlying conditions and causal mechanisms that might help explain contentious activity, including violence.26 Traditionally, social movement scholars have identified structural conditions to explain protest strategies and violence, including political opportunities, discursive opportunities and economic strains.27 The relational turn criticises this approach for attempting to explain the behaviour of a few with conditions that affect populations at large.28 Scholars such as della Porta combine structure with agency, seeing violence as a gradual process that emerges through sustained interactions between adversaries and within allies.29 As such, rather than being a static outcome that is strictly conditioned by structural macro conditions, violence is seen as a relational component that emerges through interchanges between different actors.30 The relational approach bridges agency and structure with causal mechanisms that become activated under certain structural conditions.31
While social movement theory predominately focuses on explaining the actions of a social move- ment, we seek to understand the interactions between two adversary movements or groups. To accommodate this objective, we draw upon selected elements from social movement theory and have chosen three conditions regularly presented in social movement literature as crucial explanatory factors for violent radicalisation: (1) organisational resources; (2) enemy image; and (3) repression.
These three conditions and their corresponding causal mechanisms touch upon the internal, relational and external aspects of movement interactions.
Importantly, these conditions are contingent on a number of exogenous factors not explicitly included in the theoretical framework. Our framework is centred on meso-level mechanisms explain- ing inter-group dynamics, which in turn are connected to and impacted by the context in which they occur. For instance, external events such as terrorist attacks and foreign conflicts can impact both the groups’ mobilisation potential and their enemy images.
In the remaining part of this section, we present this theoretical framework, explaining how these conditions and corresponding mechanisms may fuel or inhibit RIR. A crucial point is that each condition is potentially necessary but insufficient and must be combined with other conditions for the outcome to occur.
Organisational resources
The resources available to a group largely influence its action repertoire. Several scholars have noted that limited material resources correlate with higher levels of violence.32 However, if we isolate militant groups only, the groups’ access to human resources is an exception to this rule, indicating instead an inverse relationship between volume and violence.33 Hewitt’s study of 3,000 predominately right-wing attacks in the U.S. shows that higher numbers of active militants correlate with higher levels of violence.34 Furthermore, group member profiles likely also matter. For instance, are the activists predominantly male? Do they have a history of violence? How old and risk averse are they? Besides activist profiles, even an “army” of young, militant men need capable leaders willing to encourage and prepare for violence. As such, we hypothesise that strong leaders who welcome violence are needed to unite and mobilise different strands of activists while also preventing intra-group conflict and splintering.35 Together with the human profile of the activists, this form of leadership will trigger a mechanism of violent capacity building.
However, attributes such as age, gender and leadership cannot alone explain whether a group engages in violence. The vast majority of organisations can commit violence but abstain from doing so.
Busher et al. identify both tactical and moral constraints as internal brakes on violence.36 Tactical constraints may be considerations of whether violence can be used effectively or if it will only lead to a loss of popular support.37 Moral constraints are rooted in the group’s ideological foundation and can include principles against using violence.38 However, moral foundations can also increase the pro- pensity for violence, as certain moral perspectives make violence, even terrorism, the right thing to do under certain circumstances.39 As such, the group’s moral framework can both inhibit or facilitate violence. Thus, we hypothesise that moral and tactical constraints within each group impact the type and extent of violence they are willing to use.
Enemy image
All social movements must frame their cause in a simplified and coherent manner to mobilise activists.
Framing can be understood as “dominant worldviews that guide the behaviour of social movement groups.”40 We are particularly interested in diagnostic framing, whereby movements identify societal problems and whom is to blame, and construct corresponding enemy images.41 How adversary groups speak of each other, for example as primary or secondary enemies, impacts whether they also mobilise against one another. We refer to the underlying mechanism behind this process as mirroring, understood as one movement imitating, inverting or subverting the language or symbols of a countermovement, or adapting its tactics.42 Such actions may in turn fuel the propensity for violent interactions. We hypothesise that mirroring leads to a heightened awareness of opposing movements and to more frequent counterdemonstrations, providing a fertile breeding ground for a spiralling of symbolic and physical violence.
We envisage three configurations of enemy images, each with a different impact on RIR. If both groups regard each other as peripheral to their enemy image, there is limited potential for RIR, and the mirroring mechanism will not be activated. If both groups perceive the adversary as its main enemy, RIR will increase through mirroring. If one movement is central to the enemy image of the other, but not vice versa, one side might engage in violent behaviour, but if not reciprocated, RIR should remain contained. Busher and Macklin refer to these outcomes as tight, loose and asymmetrical coupling.43
Repression
Actions taken by the security apparatus, including banning groups, limiting their free speech, or harsh repression during demonstrations, can raise the cost of acting contentiously, potentially curbing the movements’ activities. However, repression can also fuel injustice grievances among the activists, which in turn may increase their readiness to radicalise.44 Perceiving endured repression as unfair can enhance a sense of solidarity among the activists and may even encourage recruitment of potential sympathisers who initially were reluctant to take part. This injustice grievance may in turn legitimise use of violence.45 Thus, two opposing mechanisms are activated by the level of repression enforced by the security apparatus: moderation, or militarisation and isolation. With moderation, the groups move away from hardened tactics.46 With militarisation and isolation, the groups move to an underground arena to engage in more militant tactics.47
If the repression is perceived as just and relatively mild, injustice grievances are mitigated and there is no need to militarise/isolate nor moderate. In other words, the status quo is preferable. If the repression is perceived as too harsh, the groups have two options: moderate their claims to mitigate future repression or move underground and radicalise further. In the latter case, the group trades off broader popular support against a hardened core of militant activists, who, to circumvent the law, operate underground, far removed from police surveillance. Without outside influence from moderate parts of the movement, the group may, due to harsh state repression, legitimise and prepare for even more violent methods.48
Unlike our two initial conditions, repression only affects RIR indirectly, and the causal chain from repression to RIR is more complex. For instance, one group may endure harsh repression and
subsequently isolate and militarise, but their increasing use of violence may not be directed at the countermovement if they are considered peripheral to their enemy image. As such, we hypothesise that if both adversary movements militarise and have a central enemy image of one another, there is fertile ground for RIR. If only one group militarises whereas the other remains moderate, RIR will remain contained.
Methods
To investigate if and how our proposed conditions might impact on RIR, we opted for a qualitative research design, combining comparative analysis with process tracing. In doing so, we can trace the mechanisms at play while also cross-checking the findings by comparing cases.49 Process tracing is an inherently deductive method whereby theorised causal mechanisms are traced empirically by looking for their so-called observable implications—or empirical indicators. In doing so, the researcher typically gathers extensive amounts of qualitative information relating to the mechanisms to be traced in each case. Such information may range from newspaper articles, official documents and sources such as qualitative interviews and participatory observation.50
We began by selecting one positive and one negative case, based on their level of RIR. To determine varying levels of RIR, we developed a typology inspired by Caiani et al.’s action repertoire typology for the extreme right.51 We made certain modifications to cover intergroup dynamics only, for example by excluding in-group activities, as illustrated by Table 1. Importantly, although a group intensifies its action repertoire from non-violent to violent, these actions must be directed at and reciprocated by the adversary for it to be classified as RIR. As such, we have chosen to mark RIR as full score when there is reciprocated, heavy violence between the two groups. Conversely, we categorise RIR as low when there is marginal, or no forms of actions directed at or reciprocated by the adversary movement.
Militant Islamists and anti-Islamists were active on the streets in a number of European countries in the 2010s, including Germany, Denmark, France, Norway and Britain. Of these, the two latter cases exhibited the greatest variation in the level of RIR. These countries also share certain similarities enabling us to control for unmeasured conditions.52 Both countries have a long democratic tradition and a near equal Muslim population in proportion to the total population (5.7 percent in Norway vs.
6.3 percent in Britain).53 Furthermore, the Norwegian Defence League (NDL) is a direct offshoot of the EDL, while Profetens Ummah is greatly inspired by Al Muhajiroun. All four groups were active within the same time period. Accordingly, our analysis is centred on a six-year period from 2009 to 2015.
There are, however, important differences between Norway and Britain that cannot be controlled for. For instance, proportional representation in Norway lowers the bar for radical right parties to achieve electoral success compared with Britain’s first-past-the-post system. The presence or absence of such a party could impact the strength of an anti-Islamist movement. Furthermore, although all four groups were active within the same time period, Al Muhajiroun had been active since 1996. This variation in the level of maturity between the British and Norwegian militant Islamists could potentially impact their action repertoire and level of radicalisation, especially in relation to endured repression. Last, one could argue that the population size enables more violent interactions in Britain, where more activists are acting contentiously. While this is true for the anti-Islamist groups, with the EDL drawing in vastly more supporters than the NDL, the member size of the militant Islamists in
Table 1. Action repertoire typology.
Forms of action Examples of types of activity Heavy violence Murder, terrorism, arson Light violence Brawls at demonstrations
Symbolic violence Burning the Quran, the Poppy or flags Confrontational Picketing, confrontational demonstrations Demonstrative Demonstrations, marches
Conventional Stands, handing out flyers
Britain and Norway were quite similar, with neither of the groups constituting more than 40 members.54 It is thus imperative to remain cognisant of these differences and their potential impact on our findings.55
Having selected our cases, the next step was to apply process tracing to investigate whether the causal conditions and mechanisms proposed in our theoretical framework did indeed affect our outcome of interest. Table 2 illustrates our three causal conditions with their corresponding causal mechanisms and empirical indicators—or observable implications.
To score out the empirical indicators listed in Table 2, we carried out an extensive document analysis of newspaper articles combined with a selection of other key documents and websites relating to the four groups under investigation. To identify relevant news sources, we used Retriever, a database that monitors Norwegian news outlets, and Factiva, the international equivalent for British news articles. We included all newspapers in Norway because reporting on the NDL and Profetens Ummah is limited. In contrast, we delimited the search to a set number for British news- papers, including the three top tabloid outlets (Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Mirror), the BBC, and the two top non-tabloid outlets (The Guardian and The Telegraph). Additionally, we included local newspapers for the three areas in Britain with the highest reported levels of RIR: Luton (Luton Today), Birmingham (Birmingham Mail) and Yorkshire (Yorkshire Post).
In total, we analysed 207 independent sources for the UK and 192 independent sources for Norway.
All sources are listed in Appendix 1. The majority of our sources cover one group rather than interactions between two. To obtain data more directly related to RIR, we also conducted semi- structured interviews with four experts with extensive knowledge about these groups and their interactions—one journalist and three scholars.56
Finally, we assume that none of the mechanisms listed in Table 2 explains RIR alone. Some may be more consequential than others, but they are typically necessary although insufficient unless being combined with other mechanisms. Additionally, there may be different paths to the outcome in different cases. Untangling this form of complex causation, also known as equifinality and conjunc- tural causation, is one of the strengths of process tracing.57
Background
This section provides a brief introduction to the groups analysed in this study: Al Muhajiroun and EDL in Britain, and Profetens Ummah and NDL in Norway. We also describe the level and frequency of RIR in each country using the typology introduced above.
Table 2. Conditions, mechanisms and indicators.
Condition Mechanism Indicators
Repression Isolation
Moderation
Police response to protests
● Banning specific protests
● Restrictions at protests
● Violent interactions between police and social movement orga- nizations
Repression outside demonstrations
● Proscriptions
● Surveillance
Enemy image Mirroring ● Counterdemonstrations
● SMOs’ reference to adversaries
● Inverting adversary’s symbols and language Organisational and human
resources
Violent capacity building
Organisational resources
● Consistent leadership/frequent turnover in leadership
● Violent rhetoric/encouraging violence
● Paramilitary training Human resources
● Former ties to violence
● Demographic profile—age/gender
Al Muhajiroun
Al Muhajiroun and its offspring have been present in Britain since 1996 when the group was founded by Omar Bakri. The group adheres to radical Salafi ideology aiming to establish a Shariah state in Britain.58 The group and other radical Salafi groups deviate from Islamism in their belief that violence is legitimate to pursue their goals.59 Still, engaging in or supporting heavy violence has always been contested within Al Muhajiroun. Its leaders argue, at least publicly, that the organisation has made a covenant of security with Britain, delegitimising domestic terrorist attacks. However, adhering to the covenant of security is an individual choice, and Anjem Choudary, one of the network’s most prominent leaders, has argued that he understands why some of his activists perceive the covenant as illegitimate.60
Al Muhajiroun mainly recruited on the street at da’wah stalls and on university campuses. The activists were also encouraged to recruit among relatives and friends. Although the media has portrayed Al Muhajiroun as influential and large, the group constituted fewer than 40 activists between 2009 and 2015.61 Nonetheless, the organisation was an inspiration and connected to a larger, transnational network of radical Salafi groups throughout Europe, including Profetens Ummah in Norway.62
The English Defence League
The EDL was founded by Tommy Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) in 2009 as a countermovement to Al Muhajiroun and with a stated goal of countering militant Islamism.63 The group drew inspiration from the Eurabia conspiracy, accusing Islam and European elites of conspiring to “Islamise Europe.”64 In contrast to the militant Islamists, the EDL and the anti-Islamist movement is largely non-violent, regarding it as prestigious to act in accordance with the law.65 Despite these principles, the EDL has engaged in repeated violent interactions during protests.66
Since the EDL was founded, similar groups with overlapping goals and methods have come and gone. Some of these include Casuals United, Welsh Defence League, Britain First and PEGIDA.67 Nevertheless, the EDL remained the largest and most influential anti-Islamist organisation up until 2015. At its height, the EDL managed to draw in over 3,000 participants at the most successful rallies and inspired a number of offshoots throughout Europe, including the NDL.68
RIR in Britain
Between 2009 and 2015, Al Muhajiroun and the EDL clashed regularly at demonstrations, often resulting in arrests. During such clashes, the EDL showed more tactical restraint than Al Muhajiroun.69 Interactions between the two ranged from light symbolic violence to physical violence during the period under investigation. Both groups frequently showed up to counter-demonstrate at each other’s protests. In 2010, the newest spin-off group from Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, demon- strated at a homecoming parade for British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. The group held banners reading, “butchers return” while burning British and American flags. Across the street, the EDL protested by shouting slogans such as “Muslim bombers off our streets.”70
Both groups resorted to symbolic violence. Al Muhajiroun burned a British flag and Poppies on Armistice Day in November 2010. Poppies carry symbolic importance in Britain, commemorating fallen soldiers. In retaliation, the EDL painted a two-metre tall poppy on a Mosque affiliated with Al Muhajiroun activists.71 During protests, the EDL would occasionally burn a Quran.72 Following such symbolic violence, physical clashes occurred occasionally. For instance, on Armistice Day in 2010, the EDL broke through a police barricade after Al Muhajiroun set fire to poppies, resulting in a physical brawl. One police officer was hospitalised.73
There were also instances of lethal violence. Militant Islamists unaffiliated with the Al Muhajiroun network were arrested for a bomb plot targeting an EDL rally in June 2012. In court, the judge
characterised the plot as particularly harmful as it could have sparked “a spiral of tit-for-tat- violence.”74 Although the potentially lethal violence was not perpetrated by Al Muhajiroun, it does illustrate how the EDL was perceived by other militant Islamists in the UK as spearheads of the anti- Islamist movement and therefore legitimate targets.
Al Muhajiroun affiliates did also resort to lethal violence. In 2013, two former Al Muhajiroun activists murdered Lee Rigby on the streets of Woolwich.75 Although the murder was not directed at the EDL, it did elicit a response from the group. The EDL arranged large-scale demonstrations nationwide, and recruitment surged.76 After this 2013 spike, the EDL dissolved, following internal feuds and low turnout at protests, implying that the peak was short-lived.77 Simultaneously, Al Muhajiroun was severely diminished after key leadership figures were arrested and a number of activists travelled to Syria and Iraq as foreign fighters.78 In conclusion, interactions were contentious from the start, with brief periods where the two adversaries have a high RIR score. Importantly, RIR did not increase cumulatively, but is better described as spikes. Last, it is apparent that the EDL demonstrated tactical restraint while Al Muhajiroun was willing to engage in heavy violence.
The Norwegian Defence League
The NDL was established in 2010, attempting to emulate the success of the EDL. However, no militant Islamist groups were active in Norway at the time, and the NDL’s concern thus became Islamisation at large.79 Just like the EDL, the NDL adhered to the principle of non-violence. However, unlike the EDL, the NDL did in fact stay true to this principle, with no instances of violence during protests.80
From the NDL’s inception, turnout at its rallies was low, with its first demonstration attracting only ten activists.81 Furthermore, during its first years, the NDL changed its leadership four times.82 During its first years of existence, the NDL was considered as the most important anti-Islamist group in Norway and received widespread media attention. However, as turnout remained low, the media framing changed from being alarmist to ridiculing the group.
Profetens Ummah
Profetens Ummah was founded in 2011 and, unlike most Norwegian Islamist networks, had a multi- ethnic composition, consisting predominately of individuals with Norwegian citizenship.83 By trans- cending ethnicity, the new group was able to recruit more activists. Recruitment occurred predomi- nately through relatives and friends.84 Large Mosque communities recruited as well, especially in south-eastern cities such as Oslo and Larvik.85
Similar to Al Muhajiroun, Profetens Ummah adhered to a radical Salafi doctrine, and their stated goal was predominately centred on ending Western intervention in majority Muslim countries.86 From 2013 onwards, the Syrian civil war and the establishment of the so-called Islamic Caliphate caught their full attention. By 2015, several activists had travelled to Syria, and some of the central figures were killed in combat. The remaining leaders were imprisoned in Norway for recruitment to terrorism, and the group ceased to exist in 2015.87
Interactions
Although the NDL and Profetens Ummah were established around the same time in 2010, the two groups rarely interacted. Compared to their British counterparts, the NDL and Profetens Ummah operated in different spheres, seldom responding to their supposed adversary. As such, there were far fewer instances of reciprocal violence between the two.
During the two first years of the groups’ existence, neither of them attended the other’s protests.
The first interaction occurred in January 2012, when the NDL organised a counter-demonstration to Profetens Ummah’s demonstration against the war in Afghanistan.88 Importantly, there were no direct confrontations between the two groups.
A month later, Arfan Bhatti, a leading figure in Profetens Ummah, sent a threatening letter to the NDL leader at the time, Ronny Alte. Bhatti stated the letter was sent as a response to a web post about him on the NDL’s website, where Bhatti was referred to as a coward.89 Nevertheless, these interactions are more suitably characterised as personal strife.
In December 2012 the NDL held a demonstration at Grønland, a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in Oslo.
Profetens Ummah turned up to counter-demonstrate, but only as part of a larger demonstration hosted by anti-racist organisations, and their presence was not well received by the anti-racists. A few days prior to the rally, Profetens Ummah had warned on social media that the police should monitor NDL members for their own safety.90 Still, as had been the case for the previous demonstration, no confrontations erupted.
In sum, there is a marked difference in observed levels of RIR in Britain and Norway, with the Norwegian case receiving a low score of RIR throughout the whole time period. The next section explains why and how these supposedly similar adversary groups exhibited such different levels of RIR.
Analysis
In this section, we analyse the three causal conditions introduced in our theoretical framework—organisa- tional resources, enemy image, and repression—by tracing their corresponding causal mechanisms. In doing so, we aim to connect these three conditions to the different RIR outcomes in Britain and Norway.
Organisational resources
One crucial factor for explaining RIR in Britain is competent leadership on both sides who encour- aged, or at least facilitated, violent capacity building among their militant activists. By contrast, the NDL and Profetens Ummah lacked strong leaders, and although Profetens Ummah recruited activists who engaged in violent capacity building, this capacity was not unleashed on the streets. In Britain, both the EDL and Al Muhajiroun recruited young activists and individuals with experience in using violence. Those within the EDL who resorted to violence were predominately working class men with ties to and experience from football hooligan firms, a community known for violence.91 In addition, there were middle-aged men formerly socialised into violence through hooliganism in the 1980s.92 The Al Muhajiroun network recruited mainly men in their late teens and early twenties.93 Similar to the EDL veterans, Al Muhajiroun also hosted veterans in their 30s and late 20s who had been socialised into violence through years of confrontational interactions with adversaries.94
Crucially, both leadership ranks facilitated and partially encouraged use of violence among their activists. For the EDL, Tommy Robinson and his cousin Kevin Carroll functioned as leaders until their joint departure in 2013. During their leadership, the EDL became one of the largest street movements in Britain, with regional branches nationwide. Although the EDL leadership claimed to be non-violent, they would not condemn violence among the organisation’s activists. It is however important to distinguish between strategically building violence capacity and refraining from condemning it. The leadership style by Robinson and Carol can be better described as refraining from constraining violent escalatory behaviour among its activists. For instance, they would willingly recruit from football firms by planning their demonstrations to coincide with football matches.95 Furthermore, if violence did break out, they would not condemn it, arguing instead that it was “naïve to guarantee no violence” at demonstrations.96 By 2013, a number of regional branches splintered off and the EDL leaders left the organisation, unable to keep extreme right elements at bay. Following these developments, the EDL’s street presence quickly diminished and the organisation maintained predominately an online presence.
Similarly, Al Muhajiroun had a unifying leadership with low turnover. After Omar Bakri fled to Lebanon in 2006 to avoid arrest in Britain, his close confidant Anjem Choudary overtook the leadership while maintaining communicative channels with the former leader. The leadership was careful not to explicitly encourage violence or terrorism, referring instead to the covenant of security and how it was an individual choice to adhere to this.97 However, Choudary would not rule out violence in the future, arguing instead that “when the time comes you see and they are about to attack us then we will fight.”98 This line of
argument was clearly illustrated when neither Bakri nor Choudary condemned the killing of Lee Rigby, reiterating instead that the perpetrator had not fully committed to the network’s ideology.99 Furthermore, although veteran leaders such as Bakri would not personally engage in violence, they would not stop their militant activists from engaging in violent confrontations with the EDL, nor condemn them for doing so.100
While there are no reports in our material of the EDL using lethal weapons such as guns and knives, Al Muhajiroun affiliates used a machete in the killing of Lee Rigby in 2013. As such, both groups engaged in violent capacity building, but with different internal mechanisms for restraining the level of violence they would engage in. We can attribute this to both the tactical and moral constraints for both groups, which inhibited the EDL while facilitating Al Muhajiroun.
The conditions described above were starkly different in Norway between the NDL and Profetens Ummah. The NDL had four leaders during its first two years of existence.101 The NDL’s focus on solving internal strife came at the expense of building a successful street movement. Therefore, the NDL remained mainly an online phenomenon compared with the EDL, which had a sizeable street presence. Because of weak leadership, the NDL never established regional branches in other parts of Norway. In contrast, Profetens Ummah did have prominent leadership figures among its ranks, but internal strife was not absent. An illustrative example of this is how Ubaydullah Hussain, the group’s leader, had his leadership disputed when the media reported he was receiving welfare from the Norwegian government—something which is frowned upon in radical Salafi circles.102
The NDL never intended to engage in violent capacity building due to strong tactical and moral constraints. Unlike the EDL, the NDL would cancel protests if there was a chance that violence could erupt.103 This non-violent mentality reflected the type of activists who attended their demonstrations:
predominately middle-aged men and women with no experience of violence.104 As such, while British police would frequently target and arrest EDL activists during demonstrations, the NDL would have the police escorting them away after the demonstrations to avoid violent confrontations with anti-racist counter- protesters.105
Profetens Ummah did recruit militant activists, and its leadership did encourage violent capacity building. Several of Profetens Ummah’s core activists had a history of violent convictions and criminal gang affiliation.106 Similar to Al Muhajiroun, the Norwegian leadership frequently spouted violent rhetoric, celebrating terrorist attacks abroad and threatening that such attacks could occur in Norway.107 Activists and leaders attended hunting classes with the aim of acquiring weapons licences.108 In addition, a number of activists attained an enhanced status within the network after travelling to conflict zones to acquire operational capabilities and battle experience.109 However, this violent capacity building was never unleashed against anti-Islamists on the streets of Norway. One reason is how peripheral such groups were to their enemy image.
Enemy image
We hypothesised that if two opposing groups are central to each other’s enemy image, we should expect frequent counterdemonstrations and appropriation of the adversaries’ symbols and language.
In both Britain and Norway, anti-Islamists perceived militant Islamists as more central to their enemy image than vice versa. As such, the British and Norwegian cases exhibit asymmetric coupling configurations. However, there are important nuances between the two cases, which partly explains why we observe higher levels of RIR in Britain.
The EDL was founded as a response to Al Muhajiroun’s glorification of terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings, and their engagement in confrontational protests for years, with the picketing of returning British soldiers being the final catalyst.110 Although the EDL also perceived other groups as their enemies, including the Labour government and anti-fascist organisations, Al Muhajiroun remained the most central adversary during its first years.111 In 2012 the EDL partly shifted their attention to Islamification at large, following a sex grooming scandal perpetrated by nine Muslim men.112
In contrast, the EDL remained peripheral to Al Muhajiroun’s enemy image. For Al Muhajiroun, British involvement in the Afghan war and the implementation of a Sharia-governed regime in Britain
was their main focus. Those preventing these goals were central to their enemy image, including the British government, British soldiers and moderate Muslims and Kuffar (non-believers) actively opposing a Sharia state in Britain.113 In the latter case, Al Muhajiroun distinguished between passive non-believers and those actively opposing them, such as the EDL. From 2013, the Syrian civil war and the establishment of the so-called Caliphate became a focal point for Al Muhajiroun. In other words, whereas the EDL held Al Muhajiroun closest to its enemy image during its first years of existence, the EDL was only one enemy among many, and was never the top contender.
This asymmetric coupling pattern means that the mirroring mechanism was to a larger extent activated by the EDL with limited response from Al Muhajiroun. For instance, the EDL frequently appropriated Arabic terms such as Kuffar (non-believers) and extrapolated elements from Islamic theology, often citing the same parts of the Quran as Al Muhajiroun.114 These verses were in fact used by both sides to “prove”
that Islam is inherently violent and that non-Muslims should be killed.115 Al Muhajiroun, on the other hand, appropriated symbolism more associated with national issues such as the British flag and the poppy.116 The only instance of direct mirroring from Al Muhajiroun was when Anjem Choudary established the Islamic Emergency Defence with the provocative acronym IED referring to car bombs used against NATO forces in Afghanistan. IED’s stated aim was retaliating for and preventing anti-Muslim hate crimes, alluding to a similar vigilante group operating under the EDL banner.117
In Norway, the NDL and Profetens Ummah rarely interacted, partly because of how peripheral they were to each other’s enemy image. Although Al Muhajiroun was an inspiration for Profetens Ummah, they mobilised on different issues. While the Afghan war mobilised Al Muhajiroun activists, the caricature drawings of the Prophet played a crucial role in mobilising Norwegian activists.118 In addition, Profetens Ummah never aspired to establish a Caliphate inside Norway. Profetens Ummah did occa- sionally organise rallies against the war in Afghanistan, and one of its members was charged with threats against the royal family and the prime minister for engaging in the Afghan war.119 As with their British counterpart, Profetens Ummah shifted their attention to the Syrian civil war in 2013 and the establish- ment of the so-called Caliphate.120 As such, Profetens Ummah’s enemy image was more abstract and international, with less focus on local and national issues. This, in turn, manifested itself in the issues they demonstrated against, refraining from mocking symbols of patriotic and national importance.
Likewise, for several reasons the NDL did not perceive Profetens Ummah as central to their enemy image. First, there had never been a major terrorist attack perpetrated by militant Islamists in Norway, in contrast to Britain, which had experienced the 7/7 bombings. Consequentially, it was 9/11 and the violent reactions to the caricature drawings in 2006 that pulled a number of Norwegians into anti- Islamist activism.121 Although Profetens Ummah demonstrated against Norwegian involvement in the Afghan war, the war was less ingrained in the national consciousness than in Britain, and did not elicit a potent reaction from the NDL. Instead, the NDL perceived Muslims in general and the elites who facilitated Islamification of Western societies as their most central enemies. Therefore, their activism mainly targeted immigration policies.122
As a result of this peripheral enemy image, there are far fewer instances of both counter-demonstra- tions and mirroring. The groups only mentioned each other on their respective websites once, and there are no instances of Profetens Ummah mirroring the NDL. There is, however, an important caveat, namely the length of coexistence. While the EDL and Al Muhajiroun interacted from 2009, Profetens Ummah was established in 2012. Less than a year later, the Syrian civil war caught their full attention, shifting their enemy image to those preventing a so-called Caliphate. Hence, the time frame of coexistence was narrower, which could explain why neither group readjusted their enemy image towards the other. We also see with the British case that enemy images shifted over time, illustrating the dynamic character of enemy images and mirroring, and how exogenous events can alter a group’s focus.
Repression
Law enforcement in Britain and Norway approached these groups rather differently. In Britain, police and security authorities were more interventionist, which in turn activated the militarisation
mechanism among both EDL and Al Muhajiroun activists. Norwegian security authorities relied on a more conciliatory approach, which in turn had an inhibiting effect on RIR by providing the groups with space to operate. As such, injustice grievances were mitigated in Norway, whereas the rise of such grievances led indirectly to an escalation between the British adversary groups. That said, law enforcement’s response was, both in Britain and Norway, predominately reactive to the level of hostility displayed by the groups.
Al Muhajiroun endured the harshest level of repression. For years, British law enforcement played cat and mouse with the group, trying to curb their activism. Ad hoc responses such as restricting Choudary and other leaders’ appearances on TV only sparked the group to take creative adaptive measures.123 Each time the government banned Al Muhajiroun, they re-emerged under new names, ten in total, insisting that each new name was a different group.124 Over time, this repression caused a change in Al Muhajiroun’s organisational structure. By restructuring from a centralised to a decentralised network, they became less vulnerable to arrests and other repressive measures.125
Another unintended effect of repressing Al Muhajiroun was their isolation. Moving the network underground isolated it from the larger Islamic community.126 Without other groups acting as moderating forces, the network militarised further. It was only after the Home Office listed the so- called Islamic State as a terrorist organisation that they were able to charge Choudary and other leaders for encouraging support for a terrorist group and thereby curb the network.127 Yet, earlier examples of imprisoned Al Muhajiroun activists indicate that the majority do not deradicalise in prison but instead return to the network upon release with a higher standing.128
When the EDL emerged on the streets of Britain in 2009, the police were initially unable to curb violence during protests. The first years can be characterised as trial and error through tactics such as keeping the activists in lockdown during protests, restricting their ability to move from location A to B, or simply announcing that certain upcoming protests would be deemed illegal.129 Some of these repressive measures fuelled injustice grievances among EDL activists. For instance, they voiced criticism of the police for arresting EDL activists while allowing Al Muhajiroun to keep demonstrating during a protest in 2013.130 However, unlike Al Muhajiroun, the EDL was never proscribed nor labelled an “extremist organisation” by the Home Office.
In 2012, law enforcement adopted a more conciliatory approach against the EDL, and some of the tension dwindled.131 Rather than barring the EDL from protesting, the police shifted their focus to keeping the adversary groups apart, subsequently leading to far fewer arrests at EDL rallies. In other words, the case of the EDL is also an example of de-escalation—mitigating injustice grievances among the activists and thereby impacting the level of violent interactions between Al Muhajiroun and the EDL indirectly.
The Norwegian case displays a different picture. While British police banned Al Muhajiroun ten times, Norwegian law enforcement gave Profetens Ummah plenty of leeway. A more pressing concern for Norwegian security authorities was the handful of Profetens Ummah activists travelling abroad to military training camps, enhancing their capacity for violence and potentially posing a threat upon their return to Norway. With no legislation forbidding this type of activity, the authorities applied a zero-tolerance policy towards law violations, regardless of how minor the offence was.132 This did fuel injustice grievances among some of the activists.133
As Profetens Ummah shifted their focus from the streets to the so-called Caliphate, the Norwegian authorities took stronger legal action against the group, as affiliation with and support for the so-called Caliphate was deemed unlawful. As a result, Profetens Ummah moved underground to facilitate travel to the so-called Caliphate in Syria and Iraq.134
The NDL experienced no repressive measures by the security apparatus. The lack of violent capacity building among the NDL leadership and activists partly explains this lack of repressive measures by Norwegian law enforcement.135 Instead, the NDL had a cooperative relationship with law enforcement, and the activists frequently relied on the police to escort them away from the protests to avoid violent confrontations with anti-racist activists.136 This mitigated injustice grievances among
the NDL activists, and there was thus not a radicalisation of interactions between the police and the NDL.
Conclusion
This paper has offered a response to Busher and Macklin’s six proposals for improving conceptual clarity in research on so-called “cumulative extremism”—here rebranded as Reciprocal Intergroup Radicalisation (RIR). By focusing primarily on violent interactions between adversary groups in Britain and Norway, we distinguished clearly between extreme narratives and extreme forms of action (proposal one) and between spirals of violence and wider processes of community polarisation (proposal two). By applying an action repertoire typology specifically tailored to RIR, we were able to describe and compare the ebb and flow of interaction between opposing groups in our two cases (proposal three). By using a comparative case study design aimed at tracing multiple causal mechan- isms across cases, we attended to multiple pathways of movement–countermovement influences (proposal four). By integrating protest policing into our analysis while at the same time being cognisant of county-specific conditions with a potential impact on RIR, we examined how some environmental conditions shaped the movement–countermovement contest (proposal five). Finally, by investigating and comparing the groups’ enemy images, we examined how the coupling between our four groups impacted on RIR in our two cases.
By systematically comparing how relevant causal conditions and mechanisms derived from social movement theory impacted on RIR in Britain and Norway, our analysis explains why and how Al Muhajiroun and the EDL engaged in increasingly contentious interactions while two supposedly similar adversary groups in Norway, Profetens Ummah and the NDL, engaged in close to no interactions. In Britain, RIR was fuelled by the presence of militant activists on both sides, a leadership facilitating violent behaviour, a central enemy image of the adversary, and a perception of unjust repression by the security authorities. Conversely, the absence of these factors contained RIR between the Norwegian groups. Furthermore, the same conditions that helped fuel RIR in Britain contributed to a decrease in hostilities a few years later, namely changing leadership, altered enemy images and the security authorities changing their tactics. We showed how this development was not linear, but rather characterised by spikes throughout the time period, thereby demonstrating how the conditions and mechanisms involved are dynamic and constantly changing according to internal and external factors. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that one condition or mechanism is rarely sufficient to explain contentious interactions—but instead that the combination and interaction between them is key.
For those tasked to prevent extremism and violent radicalisation, our paper cautions against exaggerating the threat from RIR, or CE. Multiple conditions must be present simultaneously for RIR to occur, and even in Britain, which has been considered a hotbed for RIR, the simultaneous presence of these conditions was short lived. Some of these conditions may also be manipulated by governments, thereby offering ways of inhibiting RIR. For example, our analysis suggests that banning groups and severely diminishing their freedom to protest may have unintended counterproductive effects. Therefore, policymakers and practitioners should remain cognisant of the level of repression a group is able to endure before choosing to radicalise further.
While our paper emphasizes the meso-level of radicalisation, we also explored interaction effects of exogenous events. For instance, we showed how the emergence of the so-called Caliphate impacted the level of repression enforced by security authorities as well as an altered enemy image among the militant Islamists—in turn impacting RIR. We also noted how the absence of an Islamist terrorist attack in Norway impacted the enemy image for the Norwegian anti-Islamists and therefore also whom they rallied against. There are nevertheless contextual differences between the two countries that cannot be fully controlled for in a study like this, including the size of the countries and a narrower timeframe of co-existence in Norway, potentially impacting the relationship between the groups and law enforcement.
As our proposed theoretical framework builds on social movement theory aimed at explaining mobilisation at a more general level, it could very well be used to investigate RIR in other cases as well.
Investigating cases where some of the mechanisms are present but not all would give a better insight into the potential multiple pathways of RIR. How would Britain, who periodically retained a full RIR score, compare to a country where only two mechanisms were present? For instance, does RIR remain contained in a case where movement leaders encourage violence and the groups hold each other as their primary enemy, but the state refrains from repressive measures? Alternatively, applying the framework on different historical periods within the same country could also give valuable insights into the mechanisms driving RIR.
With an increasing body of similar case studies, we may at one point also be able to more precisely distinguish RIR-effects from non-RIR effects when trying to explain violent radicalisation. Such an exercise would arguably require more data and cases than we have been able to include here. We thus encourage future research to test our framework on other cases as well as other social movements with different ideological underpinnings. In doing so, a more stringent and empirically robust theory on reciprocal intergroup radicalisation may be developed, which, in turn, may generate more finely tuned policies and counter-measures.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributors
Jacob Aasland Ravndal is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX)/Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. Ravndal has published extensively on right-wing terrorism and militancy in Western Europe, with a particular focus on the Nordic countries.
Sofia Lygren completed her Master in Peace and Conflict studies at the University of Oslo in 2019. Between 2019 and 2020, she worked as Research Assistant at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo.
ORCID
Jacob Aasland Ravndal http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-5759
Notes
1. Jack Doyle and Arthur Martin, “Assassin-to-be at the Side a Ranting Cleric: Choudary Claims Picture Shows Arrested Islamic Fanatic, 28, at 2007 Demo,” Daily Mail, May 23, 2013, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/
article-2329582/Michael-Adebolajo-How-Woolwich-suspect-obsessed-Islam-schoolboy.html.
2. Matthew Taylor and Haroon Siddique, “Woolwich Murder: 200 Islamophobic Incidents Since Lee Rigby’s Killing,” The Guardian, 28 May 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/28/woolwich-murder-200- islamophobic-incidences.
3. Roger Eatwell, “Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in Contemporary Britain,” The Political Quarterly 77, no. 2 (2006): 204–16.
4. Matthew Feldman, “From Radical-Right Islamophobia to ‘Cumulative Extremism’: A Paper on the Shifting Focus of Hatred,” Faith Matters, 2012, https://www.tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/islamophobia.pdf.
5. Julia Ebner, The Rage: The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism (London: IB Tauris, 2017), 197.
6. “Tell MAMA Reporting 2013/14 Anti-Muslim Overview, Analysis and ‘Cumulative Extremism’,” Centre for Factist, Anti-Fascist and Post-Fascist Studies, 2014.
7. Joel Busher and Graham Macklin, “Interpreting ‘Cumulative Extremism’: Six Proposals for Enhancing Conceptual Clarity,” Terrorism and Political Violence 27, no. 5 (2015): 884–905.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Clark McCauley and Sophia Moskalenko, “Understanding Political Radicalization: The Two-Pyramids Model,”
American Psychologist 72, no. 3 (2017): 211.