Psychological Assessment and Interventions for Individuals Linked to Radicalization and Lone Wolf Terrorism E-Book
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- Herausgeber: Bentham Science Publishers
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In recent times, the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism has been observed with the social assumption that a radicalized individual is only guided by personal, social, and ethnic reasons to commit an extremist act. Nevertheless, there is still much to understand about this phenomenon and improve the methods of investigation or psychiatric interventions. This handbook attempts to cover gaps in understanding the psychiatric aspects of radicalization and the phenomenon of lone-wolf terrorism. Edited by expert clinical psychologists, the contributors have taken both a qualitative and theoretical route to analyze the phenomenon, prompted by their clinical experience with mental health professionals, being in contact with radicalized people living in local towns and prisons.
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FOREWORD
The issue of radicalization and terrorism has never been more important than it is today. Everyone has an opinion, and the lack of a coherent and holistic approach potentially puts us all at risk. This book looks at this crucial topic in a systematic and structured way. It shines the light of psychiatry into its many dark and poorly understood recesses, and it is my honor to write the Foreword to this exciting book. The Introduction covers some useful definitions and sets the scene. Chapter 1 explores the social and cultural aspects of radicalization, which then provides a solid foundation for the rest of the book. There are two chapters that explore the role of psychiatry in much greater depth, including a psychiatric analysis of radicalization and, importantly, the role of other mental health professionals, two areas that have been very much neglected in this critical debate. In addition, although men have featured very prominently in discussions about radicalization, Chapter 2 very thoughtfully explores these issues in both women and children. Chapter 3 reviews the phenomenology of lone wolf radicalization and, in particular, digs deeper and helpfully into areas such as emotions, thoughts, and beliefs relevant to this discussion. The final chapter pulls together ideas for future research and makes some sensible suggestions for moving this whole area forward. This is a succinct and meticulous book that tackles this topic in a logical and well-thought-out way. I am also extremely pleased that the book is grounded in clinical psychiatry and seeks to understand the issue of radicalization through clinical analysis, research, and evidence-based data. The focus is very much on attempting to understand the lone wolf within their personal and social context, and this approach, in my view, is much more likely to be a productive way to find answers that help individuals, their families, and society more generally. The book brings together theory and practice and offers genuine solutions. The overall ‘feel’ of this book is one of expert knowledge within a holistic framework. The book will appeal to a wide readership, including professionals working in the field, clinicians, managers, and policymakers who want to refresh and update their knowledge as well as challenge their thinking about this subject.
PREFACE
The current book aims to cover a gap in understanding psychiatric aspects of radicalization and the lone wolf phenomenon. Since recently, literature and research have treated the topic under the social assumption that a radicalized individual is only guided by personal, social, and ethnic reasons to commit a radicalized act. We took a different route to analyze the phenomenon, prompted by our clinical experience of mental health professionals working in the territory, being in contact with radicalized people, and living in our towns and problematic suburbs or prison. We discovered that psychiatry and psychology could provide additional insight into individual radicalization, called the lone wolf phenomenon. As in any other country, our personnel and researchers are from different ethnic backgrounds, giving higher depth to radicalization analysis. We witnessed the multifold aspects that generate political, religious, social, and organizational radicalization in our lands. As experts in mental health, all the researchers who contributed to the current book had regional and international experience in radicalization and lone wolf terrorism. This strong background has allowed us to examine the psychology of radicalization and lone wolf in its multifold aspects, meeting individuals who were radicalized or potential victims of it. We extrapolated our findings to interpret them from the psychiatric perspective, when possible, and expand our observations and make inferences at a broader, interpersonal, social, regional, or global level.
The Introduction is a free exploration of the phenomenon of radicalization and lone wolf terrorism as linked to humankind’s history. As stated in the chapter, any act of perpetrating maltreatment to others with the simple aim of having victims recognized as adversaries of the own ideology or group should be scrutinized as signifying an act of radicalization.
Chapter 1 starts to give a broad social and cultural perspective of the phenomenon of radicalization and terrorism. We tried to break the traditional interpretations to observe individuals and society under different aspects. We used Delphi groups to interpret social events linked to radicalization. We could identify radicalization and lone wolf phenomena in any social endeavor liberating the definition from boundaries related to the war, conflicts, or inter-ethnic genocides. With a socio-psychiatric diagnosis, we could identify that radicalization is a way of behaving and believing that it is diffuse. Simultaneously, a radicalized act could have different presentations that are more distributed than those classically described in the literature.
Chapter 2 continues in the psychiatric analysis of radicalization and lone wolf terrorism, including children and women. We adopted an ethnographic approach of Internet sources to explore the topic and study how individuals become radicalized, the cognitive routes to accept terrorist ideas, and the impact of radicalization on children and women. How important is a leader in radicalizing the masses? How crucial are interventions of de-radicalization during child development? How do women become radicalized? We tried to answer these questions.
Chapter 3 explores the phenomenology and social psychology of lone wolf radicalization. We tried to identify emotions, behaviors, prejudicial thoughts, and beliefs that could indicate a process of radicalization in the individual.
Chapter 4 explores the instruments of the prevention of radicalization. Using an actuarial, social, psychiatric, and mathematical model, we aimed to deliver the information that some events linked to lone wolf radicalization could be explored by mathematical models and could be somehow prevented.
Chapter 5 represents a further exploration of the psychiatric analysis of lone wolf individuals. Mental-health professionals can help identify and prevent radicalization by robust assessment of people at risk of radicalization. Also, community mental-health practitioners are privileged to detect social signs that indicate a radicalized entourage that might favor potential victims of it, including children.
Chapter 6 explores the methodological basis for the use of psychology in research on radicalization and terrorism. It has a philosophical cut, although it has been created to provide the ground of the assumptions or truth delivered into the book. Besides, the chapter gives some indication of what grounds psychiatric research on radicalization was conducted.
The Appendices report the instrument frequently used by the authors during the assessment of lone-wolves or to guide Delphi-group discussions.
List of Contributors
General and Theoretical Perspectives on the Psychology of Radicalization and Lone Wolf Terrorism
Carlo Lazzari1,*,Abdul Nusair2,Marco Rabottini1Abstract
Radicalization is a global event affecting different countries and is present in different historical contexts. A social and psychological account could only reduce the impact of terrorism considering a historical fact. Nevertheless, there are elements of radicalization in the dark history of humanity that still today bear consequences on casualties and their progenies. The victims of political extremism, the modern persecution of children in conflict areas, and the mass murders in a zone of interethnic conflicts are examples of how radicalization and terrorism continue to decimate victims worldwide. The knowledge of historical and political aspects interpreted with a psychological lecture can probably highly the seeds of radicalization and hopefully reduce or stop its diffusion.
introduction
In recent years, there has been growing attention in studying a terrorist who acts alone and is called Lone Wolf (LW). As these individuals do not belong to specific radical groups, the research intended to find or reject the evidence of mental health disorders. The literature has been generous in studies that tackle the problem from different perspectives. Nevertheless, the underlying assumptions have linked radicalization to a selective process of violent terrorism and the use of weapons and bombing. More subtle forms of radicalization and violence have escaped from social analysis, which seems more focused on events that have media impact and less on homemade terrorism, radicalization, prejudices, and cognitive biases that also lead to extremist or quasi-extremist acts with an equal number of victims. In the current book, the authors have explored radicalization
and terrorism forms by using a comprehensive approach not limited to directing the attention to facts of mediatic impact.
Group dynamics appear to be constant in the origins of terrorism, with imbalances between in-group and out-group ideologies. It can be an idea or belief linked to war and conflicts or merely an illicit activity in debatable unauthorized organizations. In both cases, radicalization and terrorism can be found, for instance, in war zones, street riots, authoritarian governments, powerful corporations, and so on. The result is an increase in casualties taken by a bomb blast or by the questionable conduct of an organized group, organization, institution, government. When a subject experiences a deficit in being a member of a specific group, he or she believes that the in-group values and ideals are more truthful than any out-group; this last is expected to menace the very existence of the in-group hence justifying an aggressive attitude of the subject against it [1]. A process of progressive accretion of grievance and feelings of revenge will drive the mind of vulnerable persons or mentally ill individuals to pursue fairness, whereas injustice is identified.
In general, a lone wolf is described as a person who wishes to operate, proceed, or live alone (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2020) [2]. Lone wolf terrorism refers to radical acts carried out by an individual with no connection with organized terrorist groups [3]. One interesting study from Corner & Gill tried to evidence possible mental illness in the lone wolf arriving at several conclusions, such as having a mental illness and a partner with strong ideological affiliations, social isolation, being fixated upon a specific target deemed responsible for his/her grievance, and past violent behaviors [4]. Nonetheless, the radicalization of vulnerable individuals such as children and women cannot use the justification of mental illness, although promoting an explanation according to other psychological and psychiatric categories, such as personality disorders, developmental disorders, and others. The program Prevent in the UK is alerting educators and health care workers to assess the risk of radicalization in children, including their support of extremist groups [5]. In an extensive study of 119 lone wolf terrorists, a prevalence of mental illnesses was found compared to group terrorists [6]. Other studies found a slight preponderance of schizophrenia with violent behavior, a delusional disorder with a single-issue grievance, autism spectrum disorder, and depression, with subjects becoming disillusioned and going on rage [7]. Besides, persons with a psychiatric disorder have a higher vulnerability to radicalization if they also experiment with social isolation and prison [8].
A further distinction is between disconnected-disordered lone wolves who show a grievance and experience in weapons and psychiatric disorders and the caring-compelled ones who believe that they should reduce and avenge the in-group’s suffering [9]. The definition of lone wolf derives from biology, where those individuals that do not fit with the group are extruded, become gamma wolves, and live isolated from the pack. Research on lone wolf terrorism seems to confirm this version suggesting that radicalized individuals were at some point in conflict with the in-group and became gamma individuals through several stages of development, isolation from the in-group, and progressive grievance [10]. In a Dutch study of police records, it was found that psychiatric pathologies tend to be comorbid in the LW, the most prevalent being psychosis, narcissistic personality, substance addiction, Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), homelessness, petty crime, schizophrenia, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Developmental Disorder, childhood problems, and coming from problematic families [11]. Research has also focused on the psychopathology of suicide bombers. It was found that female suicide bombers were driven by personal experiences while males by religious and patriotic drive [12].
RADICALIZATION AND LONE WOLF TERRORISM IN A HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Radicalization should not be considered a current and irregular phase in civilization and the abnormal historical development of the country. Instead, human history has been punctuated by radicalized movements. At any historic moment, the turn of every behavior into acts of psychological or physical terrorism should receive a socio-cultural assessment. The actual slaughter of children and women in civil wars and different parts of the world might be perpetuated in the name of some ideological agenda that stimulates radicalized bands of rebels or mercenary armies who embrace their own or an unauthorized political agenda. More extensively, radicalized individuals or lone wolves appear in our own countries while there is no direct identification of a specific ideology preserving their terrorism. Hence, a psychological analysis often reveals other factors that link the lone wolf phenomenon to personality and mental health conditions. The study of these factors is relatively new in the sense that it brings lone wolf terrorism out of a lens specifically social to focus on the person, his or her motifs, and thoughts when he or she decides to commit an atrocity. The meaning of this book is to provide psychological, social, behavioral, and philosophical instruments to analyze lone-wolves and their radical actions.
Simultaneously, the analysis of lone wolf terrorism extends beyond the standard definitions of radicalization as ‘simply’ a preparation stage for a terrorist act. Indeed, any act of inflicting harm on others with the simple aim to have victims identified as opponents of the own ideology should be scrutinized as representing, indeed, a sign of radicalization. We should not think on a large scale. Radicalization can literally be a monarch’s behavior overriding the opposition of an organized community of people in a dictatorial society to enforce inhumane controls and regulations. In a smaller case, radicalization is the authoritarian manager who tries to implement personal and debatable ethos and ideas on their employees to attain some unethical organizational goals.
We may assume that any historical incident that led to the decimation of victims was a radicalized act by a few or several persons who define themselves as kings, the right ones, or leaders. It may be dictatorial leadership, insurgents’ actions or a corporate organization’s direct unpopular decision to close down factories that become ‘redundant.’ No matter where the needle of scale hangs in historical events, the essence of the radicalized mind is marked by the slow method of accepting an ideology, no matter what style, which leads to the goal of imposing it to others using coercion, restriction, fear, and death. Hence, also on a small scale, if the corrupted manager tries to convince the own direct collaborators that it is right to adopt any action to coerce the employees who are more resistant to accept debatable organizational plans can be considered as an act of radicalization.
Once defined this way, we might quickly identify similar events in our lives that could match this example, perhaps even in our office. Then, how do we go from here to more destructive terrorism that is so dreadful to impress anyone for its destructiveness? Probably, it is a matter of quantity more than quality. There might be someone with charisma who can convince an emotionally weak person searching for identity, revenge, or power that some idea is right; the truths will occur if those who do not believe in this certainty are victims. The scope is identical since victims remain. The agents or terrorist targets are similar when they seek whatever way to force a concept, behavior, or reality on the victims. What will alter is the medium, which in some cases are government propaganda; in others, in public areas of populated neighborhoods, battles, or a truck running over people. The dilution of radicalization in too many ways reduces its impact, but only obviously, as it should be seen as a much more pervasive and troubling and less episodic and unexpected social and historical phenomenon.
Instead, there have been attempts to redefine terrorism for the sake of peace of the internal and social forces that might totally approve, disapprove or not openly disapprove of the aims of the terrorist attacks hence, indirectly supporting and endorsing it. This event is more easily when there are diverging political parties that aim to power or more power in a country. It is then constant to find actions of radicalization and terrorism almost daily. The propaganda of a ‘just cause’ has led to a historical decline of ethical and social acceptance of diversities to the expenses or more radicalized and partisan thinking of the different ethnic groups in each European country. To some extent, the ‘invention’ of an enemy or external disturbance is an amalgamation force that reduces group disintegration. Nonetheless, ideology is not always conducive to radicalization and violence; instead, historical involvement and knowledge of violence are frequently required to embrace radical ideas [14].
As illustrated in Fig. (1), the LW is surmounted by a rigid cognitive mind-frame that reduces moral dissonance and sets a priori judgment of honesty in his/her thoughts or actions to overcome ethical conflicts.
Fig. (1)) Radicalization is a cognitive mind-frame reducing moral conflicts in thoughts and actions.This mechanism has often resulted in wars that regularly surface on the social scene when each nation’s economies and politics find it impossible to preserve internal stability. In the very and constricted ethnic quarters of each cosmopolitan community, the seed of rioting and radicalization persists. Here, more than everywhere else, the moods of we-they, or in-group and out-group, are quickly diffused and diffusible. People speak the original ethnic group’s language but might have some prejudice and resistance to fully merge with and accept the local culture, beliefs, and habits. The history of terrorism in Western countries is linked to the regional parties’ political and partisan movements’ extremist fringes. This phenomenon is most prevalent in conflict areas where radicalization is connected to local dictatorships, the active radicalizers, and rulers present in the geographical scenario. In this case, people refusing to be indoctrinated and radicalized can die. Ideological instruments rely on biased readings, pamphlets, flyers, the Internet, and other media. Inspired books have regularly served as an instrument for consciousness-raising and diffusion of ideologies [15].
Under the pressure of radicalized leaders, weak and subjugated people might have no other way to escape repression and tyranny than to be radicalized. Other times, radical proselytism is a mix of personal choices and propaganda. To a minor extent, lone wolves never claim a leader while they still report pressure from feeling extruded from society as ‘gamma individuals,’ finding no private placement into the mainstream culture. A progressive decline in its internal and psychological balance brings the LW to mental, emotional, and ethical turmoil. Pretty isolated and schizoid minds might discover that strong ideologies can get back a glimpse of lost identity and power while providing debatable instruments to regains an allegedly lost ‘respect from others’ (Fig. 2).
Fig. (2)) The pathological cognition in the radicalized mind.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS
A theoretical framework of analysis of LW terrorism considers the following stages of investigation [16]:
socio-demographic information inclusive of the age, gender, racial background, work record, current relationships, educational level, and previous forensic records;psychological experience or history inclusive of psychological conditions and social isolation;reasons behind the outbreak of the terrorist attack, inclusive of political grievance and beliefs;the target of radical terrorism, which can be direct if rationally chosen and there is a motivation to attack that target, or random if there is no such a choice and victims were not meant to be there at that time.way of acting: for instance, what were the weapons used, often characterizing individual lone wolves, preferring artillery, but also knives, vehicles, and other forms of bombs;aim of the attack: often revenge and hope to trigger a change;outcome, death tolls and outcomes of the terrorist attack;awareness of the intentions it is not uncommon that terrorists leave a clue before their attack, for instance, a message on social media also indicating a sort of targeted information that the terrorists wanted to diffuse or even giving hints that an attack will occur;comparison with others, including what similarities lone wolves share with other solitary terrorists.Extremist parties’ scenarios of political radicalization will explain those modalities that persist in modern-day terrorism. There are radicalizers, laws, dictators, or politicians who believe they can prosper among citizens and social confusion and people who can be radicalized if there is internal and political turmoil in a country. Lone wolves start to ‘proliferate’ within geopolitical areas of unrest. They find that societal chaos creates grievance and revenge and that affirming their ideas would improve society. In political or regional unrest conditions, great terrorist organizations use social media to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize lone wolves and direct terrorist actions [17]. The movement of hidden forces and the radicalizer’s intentions, that is, the person who indoctrinates others to radicalize them, have several ambitions, not act in the first person, not to be discovered, not to be blamed or persecuted for the terrorist act.
The terrorist attack will then occur as the last ring of a set of acts, mainly moral and indoctrination, making it impossible to locate the primary author of the terrorist plot. The radicalized cell might have no close or any link with those who initiated the ideological indoctrination. Instead, a combination of intense propaganda acting on weak and gullible minds is the onset of lone wolves’ actions. Schizoid personalities, socially isolated individuals, people who are harboring acts of revenge and grievances, paranoid persons, or simple antisocial against society, and others find a sort of magnetic attraction to challenging ideas that enter into their pathological psychological world. Propaganda can lever and feed into subjective feelings of isolation, repression, emargination, revenge to ignite the mind of lone wolves.
In any radicalization scenario, some strategic players are a local government, a population who is angry and against this government, an extremist party, and a moderate group with whom the extremist group will control the upset population [18]. Such ingrained and involved the network from the initial ideology to the final terrorist attack can be that the ‘minds’ easily escape for a direct charge unless they publicly claim that the terrorist attack was under their patronage.
This chain is correct for negative as well as positive and more benign forms of radicalization and indoctrination. The radicalized persons might independently take direct responsibility for the terrorist act. However, a seed of radicalization exists in their history or reflects learning and (inter)personal interpretations.
Several tools are used to diffuse philosophies, directly from the ideologist to the proselyte through the media or indirectly through books, newsletters, posters, gatherings, etc. Indirect indoctrination by reading helps ideologists to make an effect on minds and individuals without any direct contact. This process has also been reported by radicalized people who confess that ‘someone has approached them and gave them some books to read.’ Radicalizers can overcome cognitive dissonance, resistance, and doubts if they praise a person, the radicalized, for the reading. Besides, vulnerable people might have no critical understanding of the texts hence accepting them as truth. According to Perry’s cognitive development model, a lone wolf and radicalized person usually and necessarily remains in the dualistic stage (Table 1
