THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN RADICALISATION

This chapter seeks to examine the role of ideology in radicalisation into violent extremism, be it Islamist or far-right. The chapter first unpacks the concept of ideology, showing how it is inextricably linked with, and emerges from, the wider cultural context. It argues that while culture is unwritten and shared largely without mass conscious awareness, ideology is primarily a consciously held and relatively well-articulated set of beliefs. The chapter then examines how ideology is viewed by various scholars as functioning at the individual and group levels. In sum, while ideology at the individual level is seen as a ‘source of justification’ or a ‘rationalization for violence’, at the group level, it is seen as fostering group polarisation towards violent behaviour as well as ‘identity fusion’, where the individual identities of group members merge with those of the group as a whole. The final substantive section of the chapter then examines relatively recent and novel discussions about how ideology is said to function within globally dispersed violent extremist networks, viewed as complex, self-organising adaptive systems. Such systems are said to be composed of multiple actors interacting in numerous, unpredictable ways, displaying considerable autonomy and diversity of action, and yet – through the influence of a shared ideology – retaining a paradoxical overarching separate-yet-interconnected quality. In short, at the transnational, system level, ideology provides some degree of coherence among the myriad, often uncoordinated activities of a large number of disparate militant cells, lone actors, and followers of an amorphous transnational violent extremist network.