Page 111 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 5-6: Radicalization, Violent Extremism and Conflicting Diversity, eds. Mitja Sardoč and Tomaž Deželan
P. 111
s. dragoš ■ factors of radicalization
1. radicalism (as a general qualification) should be distinguished from
the concrete factors of this social phenomenon;
2. the factors of radicalisation are not typical of any single social sphere,
system or organisation; on the contrary, as a rule they can occur in
all dimensions of human (social and psychical) action;
3. radicalism is defined (in this article) as a combination of four factors:
cognitive, political, existential and temporal.
The first point involves the understanding of the factors of radi-
calism in terms of its conditions, or, as it were, in terms of its constituents
(in such cases when this phenomenon actually occurs in reality); which
means that no individual factor can be considered as the cause of radical-
ism.2 If, independently of the context, religion or socialisation, the media
or authoritarian leaders, deprivation or inequality, culture or values… are
declared the cause of radicalism, this is similar to saying that the cause of
radicalism is like water which is consumed, in one way or another, by all
radicalised people. A typical example of such erroneous reduction to a sin-
gle factor of the causal effect is the polemics about the causes of fascism in
American sociology (Bannister, 1992: pp. 174–176). A specific variation of
such overrating of an individual factor is its selective valuation, in which
only the obvious, expected or desired effects of a factor are considered, and
its opposite effects are ignored. An example of this variation is the quali-
fication of the theology of Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant
Reformation, in which the emancipatory effect of his radicalism on the re-
lation between the believer and God is often one-sidedly emphasised, and
this same radicalism’s effect on secular authorities is ignored, although it
was quite opposed to the first effect, because it strengthened the legitima-
cy of absolutism (Spruk, 2018).
The second point calls attention to the false assumption which in the
West has (again)3 escalated in the Islamophobic responses to the terrorism
2 An analogy with precipitation: water, condensation, droplet growth, temperature, pres-
sure, air flow etc., are the factors without which precipitation could not occur, although
none of them is the cause that in itself would explain this result.
3 Also in Slovenia, the same pattern of wrong responses has been traditionally present since
the late 19th century and is known as the “cultural fight”. This syntagm mistakenly qualifies
the history of radical social movements in the territory of Slovenia, the essence of which
is allegedly “culturally” conditioned due to the antagonism between the Catholic and
Communist social movements, which empirically cannot be sustained. The result of this
approach is – on one side – ignoring the historically important and very strong Christian-
socialist current that opposed the clericalists of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovenia (and
that during World War II recruited most of the partisans in the fight against fascism), and at
the same time – on the other side – this same approach blurred the difference between the
actors on the political left, where the dominant social-democratic current was equated with
the representatives of the Stalinist version of Marxism, although even in the early 1930 the
109
1. radicalism (as a general qualification) should be distinguished from
the concrete factors of this social phenomenon;
2. the factors of radicalisation are not typical of any single social sphere,
system or organisation; on the contrary, as a rule they can occur in
all dimensions of human (social and psychical) action;
3. radicalism is defined (in this article) as a combination of four factors:
cognitive, political, existential and temporal.
The first point involves the understanding of the factors of radi-
calism in terms of its conditions, or, as it were, in terms of its constituents
(in such cases when this phenomenon actually occurs in reality); which
means that no individual factor can be considered as the cause of radical-
ism.2 If, independently of the context, religion or socialisation, the media
or authoritarian leaders, deprivation or inequality, culture or values… are
declared the cause of radicalism, this is similar to saying that the cause of
radicalism is like water which is consumed, in one way or another, by all
radicalised people. A typical example of such erroneous reduction to a sin-
gle factor of the causal effect is the polemics about the causes of fascism in
American sociology (Bannister, 1992: pp. 174–176). A specific variation of
such overrating of an individual factor is its selective valuation, in which
only the obvious, expected or desired effects of a factor are considered, and
its opposite effects are ignored. An example of this variation is the quali-
fication of the theology of Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant
Reformation, in which the emancipatory effect of his radicalism on the re-
lation between the believer and God is often one-sidedly emphasised, and
this same radicalism’s effect on secular authorities is ignored, although it
was quite opposed to the first effect, because it strengthened the legitima-
cy of absolutism (Spruk, 2018).
The second point calls attention to the false assumption which in the
West has (again)3 escalated in the Islamophobic responses to the terrorism
2 An analogy with precipitation: water, condensation, droplet growth, temperature, pres-
sure, air flow etc., are the factors without which precipitation could not occur, although
none of them is the cause that in itself would explain this result.
3 Also in Slovenia, the same pattern of wrong responses has been traditionally present since
the late 19th century and is known as the “cultural fight”. This syntagm mistakenly qualifies
the history of radical social movements in the territory of Slovenia, the essence of which
is allegedly “culturally” conditioned due to the antagonism between the Catholic and
Communist social movements, which empirically cannot be sustained. The result of this
approach is – on one side – ignoring the historically important and very strong Christian-
socialist current that opposed the clericalists of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovenia (and
that during World War II recruited most of the partisans in the fight against fascism), and at
the same time – on the other side – this same approach blurred the difference between the
actors on the political left, where the dominant social-democratic current was equated with
the representatives of the Stalinist version of Marxism, although even in the early 1930 the
109
