Paper presenters:
- Wennerhag, Jämte and Ellefsen: De-radicalizing radical left-libertarian movements: Dynamics and consequences
- Lars Erik Berntzen: Breivik’s Cult. The Evolution and Dissolution of a Transnational Clandestine Community
- Rune Ellefsen: Unintended consequences of escalating counter-extremism policing: The development of a multi-levelled response to ‘animal rights extremism’ in Britain (1999-2014)
Abstracts
De-radicalizing radical left-libertarian movements: Dynamics and consequences
Magnus Wennerhag,Södertörn university, Jan Jämte, Örebro university, & Rune Ellefsen, University of Oslo
In 2014, the Swedish government appointed a “national coordinator for protecting democracy against violent extremism”. The goal was to promote interventions at the local level, preventing individuals from becoming “radicalized”, and to offer exit programmes for those participating in “violent extremism”. The de-radicalization efforts are often carried out locally, by social workers, teachers, police, and civil society actors.
This paper explores the effects of de-radicalization measures on one specific movement milieu: radical left-libertarian (or extreme left) groups. As these groups themselves generally claims to radicalize prevailing democratic and egalitarian ideals, they provide a suitable case for scrutinizing whether de-radicalization measures might come in conflict with other state policies, such as the mission to promote equality, democratic values, free speech and critical thinking, or the encouragement into civil society engagement.
Through the analysis of interviews with movement activists and “street level bureaucrats” involved in local de-radicalization efforts, we ask how these measures have been perceived in action. Regarding activists, we investigate how these measures have affected their patterns of mobilization and their trust in political institutions and democracy. Regarding civil servants, we investigate how they perceive and deal with potentially conflictive objectives between crime prevention and other societal goals.
Breivik’s Cult. The Evolution and Dissolution of a Transnational Clandestine Community
Lars Erik Berntzen, University of Oslo
The right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik drew on ideas from others, but activists in the broader anti-Islamic movement shunned him and his claims of being part of an underground organization were never substantiated. It was not before after the attacks that Breivik began to accumulate supporters and idolizers.
This is a study of those adherents and their online interactions. It traces the evolution and eventual dissolution of this online community between 2012 and 2014, drawing on relational perspectives from social movement theory. The online community consisted of people driven by three different motivations: fascination for mass killings, romantic interest and ideological conviction.
The unifying aspect was their veneration of Breivik as something equivalent to a prophet. As the ideologically convicted grew in prominence, the community became more hierarchical and clandestine. Those solely fascinated by mass killings were ostracized. The community quickly collapsed, however, under external pressure from two sources: Breivik himself and public scrutiny. This case demonstrates the vulnerability of clandestine communities that form online as well as the dangers a cult faces when their object of veneration is still alive.
The unintended consequences of escalated counter-extremism policing: The development of a multi-levelled response to ‘animal rights extremism’ in Britain (1999-2014)
Rune Ellefsen, University of Oslo
Research on social movements have seen a recent resurgence of interest in the consequences of protest. The unintended consequences of movements’ violent protest activity – as, for example, the escalation of counter-extremism policing – are still largely underexplored.
This article seeks to contribute to filling that gap, by employing an analytical approach that locates different pathways through which escalated counter-extremism policing has unintended consequences for both protestors, agents of policing and protest targets. It does so by tracing the series of sequential consequences that leads to three types of unanticipated outcomes: worsening the situation for protest targets; triggering radicalization; and chilling effect on lawful protest.
Analysis distinguishes between direct/indirect and short/long term effects, while also attending to how the different pathways are interrelated in producing the, primarily, unanticipated outcomes. The empirical case studies is the conflict between the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) animal rights campaign and the Huntingdon Life Sciences corporation, involving also the government, criminal justice agencies and private businesses.
The article thus traces unintended impacts of the escalated policing of a radical social movement campaign in Britain throughout a fifteen-years period, between 1999 and 2014. Data is collected by a triangulation of qualitative methods and data sources, encompassing both the activists and their state and private adversaries. Key methodological challenges of studying movement outcomes are discussed, with suggestions made about ways of strengthening and expanding this strand of research. One way forward is, for example, to draw on and further develop the recently suggested research paradigm of interrelated effects.