Il Combating Terrorism Center di West Point ha pubblicato un’interessantissima quanto approfondita ricerca sui processi di radicalizzazione. Ne consiglio vivamente la lettura.

Scott Helfstein pone grande rilievo alla inter-relazione tra ideologia e network sociali affermando “that the spread of violent extremism cannot be fully understood as an ideological or social phenomenon, but must be viewed as a process that integrates the two forces in a coevolutionary manner. […] The coevolutionary nature of the social and ideological spheres presents a unique challenge and is one of the reasons that rigorous efforts to identify a radical or terrorist profile have not yielded significant return. Efforts to develop an archetype often focuses on individual traits, but it may be that profiles based on social and ideological behavior need to be considered simultaneously in developing a theory that is actionable for counterterrorism practitioners. […]
The analysis of domestic terrorism data shows that, to date, there is little evidence of lone wolf jihadists. There are very few people who progress to violent action in isolation, and those that do so are often motivated by other forces such as mental health issues or other political grievances. Many radicals have a history of social contact or reaching out to develop relationships with like‐minded individuals. […] The growth of radical groups is a self‐organizing process driven by aggregation of individual behavior, where the entry catalyst into an extremist cell most likely takes the form of someone who recruits one, two or three other participants. This selforganization produces cells that have many close‐knit people, or can easily access others, meaning that such groups are well suited to facilitation and monitoring. By contrast, such cells are much less likely to have many gatekeepers or brokers who operate between cliques.“

Edges of Radicalization – Individuals Networks and Ideas in Violet Extremism