An Interpretive Account of Individual,Nonviolent Radicalization

Abstract

While recent research has focused on radicalization mainly in relation to religiously inspired terrorism, we suggest that radicalization is not intrinsically tied to political violence or group recruitment. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Italy, we analyze two case studies—one religious and one secular—of individual, nonviolent radicalization bearing on personal choices of lifestyle and ethics. We rely on 33 interviews with Catholic hermits and 22 with antispeciesists—a radical fringe of the animal rights movement—to provide an interpretive account of the lived experience of radicalization. The findings suggest that from a subjective viewpoint, radicalization is a highly demanding choice which, however, is also perceived as empowering.

Keywords

radicalization commitment antispeciesism Catholic hermits animal rights interpretive sociology

Personal Reflexive Statement

Since my PhD in Sociology, which dealt with Catholic hermits in Italy, I have been interested in contemporary ethics. According to the ancient meaning of the concept – recently rediscovered by Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault – I understand ethics as the conduct of a just life. In contemporary Western democracies the quest for a just life often takes the form of lifestyles that try to put some moral principles into practice. After my survey on hermits, which are an example of religious ethics, I turned to the study of a secular one, that of animal rights advocates. I focused on ethical vegans, who strive to live consistently with their principle of equal respect for all animal species. While not myself a religious person nor an activist, I am nevertheless genuinely interested in the struggle in which these people voluntarily engage in order to be faithful to their ideas in their everyday life. I believe that their choice of a minority lifestyle – which by the way is often stigmatized by the surrounding society – deserves full respect and is a stimulus to better understanding their commitment.

Introduction

It has become commonplace in the media and policy landscape of the post–9/11 world to view radicalization as inevitably leading to political violence, particularly inspired by terrorist groups. Radicalization thus entails the loss of one’s personality to the benefit of a totalitarian ideology devising violent attacks against political targets. In particular, “Islamic radicalization” has become almost a collocation in mainstream media and political discourse, as testified by the mention of “radical Islamic terrorism” in Donald Trump’s first presidential address. The pairing of radicalization and violence has to a certain extent entered academia,¹ despite the presence of critical voices warning against any such simplistic account (Githens-Mazer and Lambert 2010; Kundnani 2012; Sedgwick 2010). Nevertheless, these scholars have not tried to propound an alternative paradigm of radicalization not intrinsically tied to violence. Indeed, research on radicalization has been conducted mainly within the frame of security studies. Instead, we believe that the topic is also relevant to contemporary issues of lifestyle, ethics, and social change and therefore falls within the range of cultural sociology broadly conceived.

In the field of social psychology, Kruglanski and colleagues have made a valuable contribution in this regard by focusing on the “quest for significance” as the main driving factor leading to radicalization. In their account, the quest for significance “represents the fundamental human need to matter—to be someone, to be respected in the eyes of others, to achieve, to earn a sense of value or self-esteem” (Kruglanski and Webber 2014:380). The problem with this approach is that it is mostly concerned with violent extremism and therefore assumes that negative experiences such as threats, traumas, or loss of meaning must be at the root of the radicalizing process. In the field of social sciences, works by Koehler (2014), Pisoiu (2015), and Slootman and Tillie (2006) have begun to shift the paradigm of radicalization toward a more comprehensive understanding of positive cultural and subjective factors. Drawing on interviews with former leaders of German far-right organizations, Koehler (2014) concluded that radicalization is “a process of self-realization” driven by a desire for moral agency, self-expression, collective identity, and also “the desire to be able to utilize one’s own creative potential” (pp. 364-65). In their fieldwork on radicalizing young Muslims in Amsterdam, Slootman and Tillie (2006:84-90) have shown that radicalization is also about the existential search for meaning, stability, and justice. It was because of a need for commitment, acceptance, security, and social justice that the teenagers in their study began to follow the path of radical Islam, sometimes in contrast with the orientation of their own families and therefore in a move toward more autonomy and the assumption of an adult identity. In a study on seven individual cases of jihadi and right-wing radicalization in Germany, Pisoiu (2015) moved further away from an interpretation focused on deprivation. Instead, she found that her interviewees “were neither failures nor mechanically directed by situational circumstances; they were very much in charge of the political agenda they were trying to promote, assertive and purposive, and strategically used for this purpose a rich cultural arsenal available in the mainstream or other subcultures” (p. 20). Overall, these qualitative surveys provide significant insights into the moral and cultural agency of at least some radicalized individuals. Their empirical scope, however, is limited by the low number of cases examined (7–12). On a theoretical level, these authors assume that radicalization is intrinsically tied to violent or antidemocratic attitudes. This definition neglects all those cases where extreme commitment is at the service of a libertarian cause, as is often the case when activists opt for some forms of passive resistance or self-sacrifice as means of struggle (hunger strike, self-chaining, and self-immolation without other victims).

Indeed, as Githens-Mazer (2012) has observed, the academic literature on radicalization suffers from two major problems: the first is the lack of an agreed-upon definition of what radicalization is exactly, and the second is the relative dearth of empirical data. With this in mind, the aim of this article is twofold: first, to put forward a definition of radicalization that does not assume any essential link to religion, violence, and group affiliation. We argue that there exist instances of individual, nonviolent radicalization, and that one should first understand the common ground of all forms of radicalization in order to assess the specificities of violent radicalization. Second, drawing on qualitative research on people who have radicalized in two different ideologies, religious and secular, we identify and describe a set of common features. This is intended as a first step toward understanding the subjective experience of radicalization in line with the interpretive paradigm in sociology (Campbell 1996) that dates back to the works of Max Weber (1981).

Definition of the Concept

Social psychologists have observed that the term “radicalization” has a subjective meaning: ideas and behavior that appear radical if judged from outside may be reasonable means to achieve a valued goal for those who adopt them (Kruglanski et al. 2014). The judgment on the importance of a given goal is therefore the subjective basis for the labeling of ideas and behavior as “radical” or “normal,” that is, “extreme” or “acceptable.”

Besides this subjective element, there are two context-related variables that contribute to making the concept of radicalization relative rather than absolute. First, radicalization is the prerogative of minorities. If the same behavior or ideas are adopted by a majority, they cease to be perceived as radical and tend to be seen as normal. Second, an idea or behavior can be defined as radical only in comparison with other positions more inclined to compromise. Radical and moderate, like revolutionary and reformist, are points along a continuum of positions. Radicalism is but one particular version of an ideology, program, or tradition that is also professed by others in less extreme terms.

Radicalism often leads to tensions and clashes with surrounding society. These conflicts may result in open confrontation or in withdrawal, that is, partial or complete self-segregation. On the level of practices, radicalization chooses direct action instead of representation and negotiation (Githens-Mazer 2012). Radicalized people reject bureaucracy and institutional mediation, which they view as vehicles of normalization and ideological weakening.

We can therefore list four defining features of radicalization: the absolute preference for a given aim at the expense of other goals and values of life, horizontal hostility (White, Schmitt, and Langer 2006) toward other positions more moderate and inclined to compromise, the acceptance of tensions and conflicts with mainstream values and positions, and engagement in direct action. In regard to this last point, it should be stressed that radicalization does not solely concern the extremism of opinions; it also involves the translation of radical principles into actions. The distinction between “cognitive” and “behavioral” radicalization may have analytical merit; but, as Neumann (2013) argued, it is often contradicted by the facts.

None of these features entail strong group affiliation or recourse to violence. That group affiliation is not a requirement for radicalization does not mean that people devise their own ideology. It is possible to learn a given philosophy or religion through texts, at schools, and via the media and then radicalize in its regard without being tied to a specific group or institution. Radicalization—understood as a process of shifting from majority and moderate positions toward minority and extreme ones—presupposes a plurality of sources and exposure to different versions of the same tradition or ideology. Despite the existence of groups devoted to spreading radical views and recruiting proselytes, each new proselyte will radicalize along an individual path that usually includes distancing himself or herself from relatives, colleagues, and peers who profess less radical versions of the same religion or cause (Wilner and Dubouloz 2011). The plurality of sources and perspectives is the terrain on which radicalization can grow, although in a later phase the radicalized person will likely reject that same pluralism.

Data and Method

We turn now to an interpretive analysis of the experience of people who have followed a path of nonviolent radicalization. We draw on two qualitative fieldworks conducted in Italy: one on Catholic hermits carried out in 2002–2003, and the other on antispeciesists in 2012. Hermits are people leading an individual monastic life outside monastic communities. Antispeciesists represent a radical fringe of the animal rights movement (Bertuzzi 2018; Turina 2010). They borrow their name from the psychological and philosophical concept of speciesism coined by Richard Ryder and developed by Peter Singer in the 1970s. The Oxford English Dictionary defines speciesism as “[d]iscrimination against or exploitation of certain animal species by human beings, based on an assumption of mankind’s superiority.” Antispeciesism rejects widespread practices that use nonhuman animals for human purposes, such as farming, eating animal products, or exposing animals in circuses and zoos. Antispeciesists adopt a vegan lifestyle and support animal liberation. They are active members of the animal rights movement and devote a large part of their time and energy to advancing the cause of animal rights.

This article relies on 33 in-depth interviews with Catholic hermits² and 22 with antispeciesists.³ All interviews were conducted in Italian. The English translations in this article are mine. All names are pseudonyms. We have discussed elsewhere the findings of each fieldwork (Turina 2007, 2018). The aim here is to compare these examples of religious and secular radicalization in order to determine their shared features. The analysis of the interviews followed the principles of Max Weber’s (1981) interpretive sociology, the focus of which is on the individual as “the only agent of meaningful behavior” (p. 158). Weber’s (1981) program well suits the aim of exploring the subjective experience of radicalization because it takes into account not only instrumentally rational action but also “the role that ‘irrational’ emotions and ‘feelings’ play in the actions of men” (p. 152). Indeed, references to values and emotions frequently emerged in the interviews as directly related to the process of radicalization. Consequently, although political and historical factors are admittedly important in the formation and diffusion of various forms of radicalization, a full understanding of their development cannot neglect these other dimensions.

A Comparative Study of Two Cases

At first sight, animal rights and eremitism display striking ideological differences. On the one hand, animal advocacy is mostly secular and sometimes overtly antireligious, in particular against Christianity, which it accuses of having legitimated exploitation of nonhuman animals throughout Western history. In fact, only two people in our sample declared themselves to be religious. On the other hand, the only link between hermits and nonhuman animals seems to be the keeping of companion animals, which, by the way, was rarely the case among our interviewees. Indeed, Catholicism has so far been more eager to endorse environmentalist than animal rights claims: of the 246 paragraphs of Laudato si’, the 2015 encyclical by Pope Francis on ecology and climate change, only one (the 130th) deals explicitly with human-induced suffering of nonhuman animals, and its positions are, at best, moderate. We can safely conclude that there is no significant common ground between the principles of antispeciesism and those of Catholicism.

The collective dimension also has a different influence in the two cases. Eremitism is individual by definition. There exist weak networks of hermits that function mainly through the mail and through intermediate people (religious followers) or institutions (monasteries, dioceses), but there is no proper movement or collectivity, the eremitical choice being precisely an alternative to entering a monastic community. There exists, however, an antispeciesist movement in Italy, akin to the ethical vegan movement in the United States. Yet affiliation to antispeciesism still displays strong traits of individualism that depend in part on the local context. In Italy, the so-called antispeciesist movement is an archipelago of small groups that rarely work together (Bertuzzi 2018). This might be due to three main reasons: the particularism of the Italian political tradition, ideological divisions among factions, for example, abolitionists versus liberationists or left- versus right-oriented groups, and the prevailing view that animal liberation should be the outcome of many individual choices. Consequently, the aim is to convince as many individuals as possible to turn to veganism. Taken together, these conditions induce many activists to spend considerable efforts on themselves, striving to become more and more consistent in their cruelty-free lifestyle. Therefore, while a relative trend of radicalization has been recognizable in the Italian animal rights movement since the 1990s (Tonutti 2007), it is indistinguishable from the individual radicalization that sustains and accompanies it.

To these differences one should add the otherworldly orientation of the hermits’ worldview, in contrast with the immanent attitude of antispeciesists who struggle for social change here and now. Nevertheless, our purpose here is to ascertain the existence of three common features: (a) individual, (b) nonviolent, and (c) radicalization. We have described the individualistic traits of both hermits and antispeciesists. As regards nonviolence, while hermits are overtly peaceful and harmless, not all antispeciesists would subscribe to the principles of nonviolence. The animal rights movement in Italy has indeed carried out illegal actions in order to free animals. In the course of direct actions, there have been cases of violation of property and damage to objects, but personal aggression has never been the aim. Although one cannot absolutely exclude the occasional occurrence of violent actions by activists, so far one can only talk of illegal, not violent, acts. Moreover, the activism of many of our interviewees did not include any acts of such a kind. We can safely conclude, therefore, that one can adopt an antispeciesist lifestyle and worldview without becoming violent.

We still have to prove that antispeciesism and eremitism are examples of radicalization. We have listed four defining features of radicalization: (a) prioritization of a particular goal at the expense of other goals or values in life, (b) hostility toward moderate versions of the same cause or ideology, (c) acceptance of conflicts and tensions with mainstream values and lifestyle, (d) direct action and first-person involvement.

These four patterns are common among both hermits and antispeciesists. In the case of hermits, (a) the priority goal is communion with God in prayer, silence, and solitude. It is pursued at the expense of other, legitimate goals of life such as spending time with relatives and friends or building a family. In some extreme instances, this choice prevails over the conservation of life itself. In an attitude of rendering to God’s will, two women whom we met had freely chosen not to cure dangerous illnesses; as a result, they died within a few years after our interviews; (b) hostility toward moderate attitudes is expressed in criticisms of the lukewarm religious commitment of most ordinary believers and of the Church itself, accused of being unfaithful to its evangelical roots. Hermits themselves dub their own choice as radical in opposition to a faith that would not pervade and change all aspects of a believer’s life; (c) tension with society is apparent in the distance that they take from peers and relatives and from their previous work, choosing to live in solitude most of the time; and (d) direct action is explicit in their demanding lifestyle centered on prayer and solitude instead of being satisfied with the low level of commitment that the Catholic Church traditionally requires from common believers.

Turning to antispeciesists, (a) their priority goal is advocacy for nonhuman animals, which often absorbs most of their time, money, and energy while conditioning choices of job, family, and mobility; (b) horizontal hostility targets animal-oriented attitudes judged inconsistent, like vegetarianism instead of veganism, animal welfare instead of abolition of any form of exploitation, or an exclusive concern for pets or endangered species instead of equal consideration of all animal species; (c) the conflict with surrounding society emerges at both individual and movement level: individually with frequent disputes and breaking of relations with relatives, friends, and colleagues; collectively with confrontational campaigns for animal liberation or against cruel practices or products (furs, vivisection, and circuses); (d) direct action is explicitly invoked in opposition to the bureaucratic and institutional structure of mainstream animal rights advocacy. The claim that a vegan conversion is the only acceptable lifestyle is part of this view. Veganism is seen as proof of authentic commitment, while sustaining a group only through donations would be just half-commitment. According to antispeciesists, advocacy cannot be delegated: one must personally make the effort.

Both hermits and antispeciesists therefore comply with our definition of radicalization. We will now focus on their subjective experience, trying to single out the common features that emerged in interviews. These features have to do with social, cognitive, and emotional processes that both hermits and antispeciesists undergo as they identify increasingly with their respective goals and as they struggle to lead a consistent lifestyle.

The Experience of Radicalization

In the course of the interviews, six common features emerged:

Extension of the frame of commitment to all aspects of individual life (family, work, free time). Life is gradually “absorbed” by the cause itself.

Growing distance and sometimes outright separation from people who do not share the same commitment.

Ascetic efforts to conform practices and thoughts to the chosen ideal. Feelings of guilt can ensue when the person feels inadequate to the task.

A ravishing sense of possessing a reason for living and for dying, that is, of having found one’s “mission.”

Perception of positive processes of self-affirmation and self-transformation, such as achieving order, clarity, and discipline in life; acting in harmony with cherished principles and life models; progressing toward higher levels of perfection and sometimes heroism; and moral and intellectual superiority over ordinary people. These positive sensations are sometimes counterbalanced by contrary feelings of powerlessness and despair.

A clearer, deeper understanding of how the world goes and how one should live in order to lead a conscious and just life.

Collective processes can accompany these individual features. Although less important in our case studies, they are certainly relevant in other contexts of radicalization. These processes include reliance on a community of like-minded people and the influence of the group in determining individual levels of commitment. Given our focus on the individual dimension, however, we shall not discuss collective processes at length.

Life Absorbed by the Cause

Extension of the frame of commitment to all aspects of individual life, sometimes referred to in the literature as “identity extension” (Ruiz-Junco 2011), is recognizable among both hermits and antispeciesists. They understand that the cause is so exacting that its pursuit is incompatible with former businesses and habits. Radicalization, however, is a process, not an event (Schmid 2013:23-25). Even when the cause is embraced overnight, it takes time to diffuse through the network of previous relations and activities. Confronted daily with the routines of their former lifestyles, fresh converts choose at every step whether, when, and how to assert the principles and needs of their new ideal against the demands of their old habits. In the case of hermits, an inner impulse toward prayer, poverty, and solitude overtakes the mundane calls of work and wealth. This shift can happen abruptly, like a sudden awakening, or it can come about slowly, like falling into a sleep where voices from outside fade and eventually disappear. The experience of Barbara, a retired university professor, testifies to the first way:

it’s been a sudden thing, and yet it has been so absorbing that I understood I wanted to quit everything else. But then it also came gradually: leaving the university was the first thing, that is, leaving my job for a life of prayer, silence, solitude, and so on; I more and more retired into my home without seeing friends, colleagues or relatives; then the question of poverty arose. So I began to sell what I had to give [everything] immediately to the poor, and so it was also quite a busy time.

Don is an example of the second, slower way. A hermit who formerly worked in advertising, Don recounted what happened to him after he had discovered the contemplative life:

I’ve changed my life, and when I went to work—I was a freelance and I didn’t work every day: just one or two days a week—I said [to myself]: but what am I doing here with these mozzarella cheeses…I mean, what am I doing here with these trifles, that is, you understand that you live in a world so fake and useless (…) and so, slowly, very slowly, work slipped away. They called me, they made an estimate, and then the job slipped away, all jobs slipped away from me, and I was glad that they did so, I didn’t look [for more], quite the contrary, and so over three years work faded away on its own.

For hermits, the extension of commitment takes the form of withdrawal from mundane engagement. Antispeciesists, however, do not usually withdraw from social life. They begin to think their lifestyle anew, and they start to devote a growing amount of their time to animal rights. For Richard, the discovery of veganism at the age of 20 soon sparked public activism:

I suddenly turned to veganism. At the same time, I began to visit on-line forums and I got into contact with vegan people, asking them for information about ordinary life, [that is] the difficulties you face in your everyday life [as a vegan] (…) My first contact was with a very active person who introduced me to animal rights: I did translations from English for websites against circuses and fur and I began to send protest mail to authorities about vivisection, animal farming, or, occasionally, mistreatment of animals. So I began to follow the road towards the animal rights struggle.

In such cases, animal rights can become the almost exclusive focus of one’s thoughts and activity, as Cindy testified:

I always have a thought for animals, all my days, all my life are always focused on doing something to provide solutions for some [bad] situation. Even when I am at work, I am working and still I think: well, what could I do? I could do a food collection, we could visit this place, we could start a collaboration with another group, organize a rally…there’s always something on, my brain is always working. If I see an animal, let’s say, a farm animal, like a horse or a cow, I know they are not living a pleasant life and I think: I would like to save them, I would like to create a sanctuary for them, I would like to be very rich in order to stop working and be able to give everything to animals, to save as many of them as possible.

Social Segregation

Distancing oneself from people who do not fit the hermit’s lifestyle, which is mostly about living alone, is quite obvious. But in the case of antispeciesists, self-segregation is not one of their ruling principles. It often comes as a reaction of rage and despondency as friends and parents receive the neophyte’s message with indifference or hostility. Anne, a young activist, recollected the first period of her involvement:

I was studying natural sciences at university. In some courses, they used animals. Not many courses, admittedly, but still there were containers with animals and they brought living animals into the laboratories. Initially I refused to do these things; later I learned about a law on conscientious objection to animal testing. That discovery was really important to me. So I began to print forms and to collect signatures. I began to go around the university buildings saying to other students: “Look what I have found out; you can get committed too!” But nobody paid much attention. So I began this personal fight and at the same time I discovered that nobody—almost nobody—around me was close to this problem (…) I felt anxiety, even anger: it was a fight not only against the treatment of animals, but also against all the people around me who didn’t consider it a problem; it was as if I had discovered a treasure and shown it to others and they couldn’t see it. It was hard, because all the people I used to love, in fact, had become, not enemies, but [almost]…and so I began to meet only people who shared my views.

As time goes by, this confrontational stance may give way to a more tolerant acceptance of other people’s incomprehension, seen as a more productive way to spread one’s views. In the words of Richard:

I became a vegan on watching videos of slaughterhouses (…) Once I discovered these horrors all around me, I became a quite rabid vegan (…) so I lived the first two or three years almost alone. I met people only for work (…) I seldom went out and I wasn’t interested in meeting people, because I knew that we were bound to fight over animal rights (…) [later] I began to realize that rage, expressed in that way, was not productive. Therefore, I began to open myself again to other people and I am still evolving (…) I used to be much more aggressive, now I am still wary, [but] I am willing to get closer to people, to make contact with them in order to lead them to reason, in the hope that they will make a choice or act consistently with the things they learn.

Eventually, it is up to the activists to decide the extent to which they should compromise with or, alternatively, sever links with people who do not share their worldview and lifestyle. However, a certain degree of self-segregation is a widespread attitude among antispeciesists. While they recognize that this may have negative effects on proselytizing, they admit that it is too stressful to quarrel constantly with prejudiced people. Intravegan sociability therefore appears to be a reasonable and less demanding option.

Ascetic Efforts

Ascetic efforts to conform practices and thoughts to the chosen ideal were often reported in the interviews. Hermits follow the tradition of Christian asceticism. Askesis is the Greek word for “exercise.” It is through long and everyday repeated exercises of prayer, meditation, and renunciation of things which they used to see as normal that hermits really discover what eremitism is about. Anthony, a former missionary priest, was considering getting rid of an old car that his brother had given him:

[A car] is a stumbling block because you go out more often. On foot, you think twice [before going]. If we do not pay attention to these things, which are not in the [monastic] rule, they are not in the Commandments, nobody tells you about them…and so everyone must work them out [by himself].

Ascetics concerns not only actions or properties but also feelings and thoughts as Elmer confessed:

the eremitical life is a very special gift that God gives only to a very few people. It is highly risky, and I feel the difficulty when I am alone (…) because the temptations are greater, the control over your thoughts is difficult, [and so is] stewardship of the heart; loneliness is really difficult if you haven’t got a particular grace.

Too much strain can engender a breakdown which puts the hermit’s life project in jeopardy. If this is the case, she or he must learn to be less demanding toward himself or herself as Luke testified:

at the beginning of my monastic life I was very strict, also with myself, and I did not allow any mistakes. Then, I got a duodenal ulcer, because when you control and control and control [you break down]…and then I understood that you must be merciful to other people but also to yourself.

Antispeciesists do not talk of their efforts to act consistently in the same terms as ascetics. What some of them described, however, seemed quite similar to the hard and endless task of hermits. Harold, a graphic designer, remarked:

Someone has called the ethical vegan the best accountant of himself. You are continually accounting to yourself and trying to polish, to remedy what is wrong, and to improve yourself. You seek perfection, but luckily we are imperfect beings and therefore you will never achieve [perfection]; that’s why some say that the perfect vegan is the dead one, that is, no living vegan can be perfect, because regardless of how careful you are, you will impact on others’ life anyway, particularly [on the life of] animals, and you will exploit them inadvertently.

A sense of guilt may arise when the person feels inadequate because she or he cannot live up to his or her strict ideal or because she or he feels powerless in fighting animal exploitation. Georgia, who had experienced both, revealed the painful side of commitment:

At the beginning, when I went out for dinner I would commit some minor transgressions (…) I might take a dish of cheese with honey and that was my monthly transgression. But I was fooling myself. Yes, because I later understood that the cheese that I ate had the same origin and [entailed] the same suffering as meat (…) Hence, a big enlightenment and initial satisfaction, just to become aware, later, of an immense frustration (…) That is, the awareness that in this very moment, while we are talking, there are millions of animals (…) suffering unspeakable and atrocious pain; and so, either you live in your small world, pretending nothing happens, or if you really think how things go, you fall into desperation, frankly.

A Reason for Living and for Dying

Interviewees, implicitly or sometimes explicitly, often attested to a ravishing sense of possessing a reason for living and for dying, that is, of having found a “mission” in life. This mission connects people to a reality that is larger and worthier than them. Indeed, radicalization is also about the discovery of transcendence. Transcendence may be of a religious or secular kind, but it is sometimes mixed when worldly entities such as a people, a nation, or a class are invested with a quasi-religious character. The individual then struggles for them and on behalf of them, not for his or her own interest. In the case of hermits, a strong, lived faith gives meaning to both life and death. Accordingly, the widespread fear of death that they observe in contemporary society is, they argue, due to a lack of faith. Michael, a hermit then in his forties, put this in a provocative way:

Why do people today enter into a crisis when they get old? Of course, they believe that life is here, that heaven is here. They are satisfied with being comfortable here, and so when they are about to die or they get sick, they go into crisis. If I didn’t have faith, I would take a machine gun and I would rob a bank. I would rob a million and then go to the Seychelles. And if they killed me, that would be even better: why should I live badly on earth? If there were no afterlife, who should care at all?

Acquaintance with death was evoked as a positive outcome of eremitism, as Barbara explained:

[As a hermit] you live a sort of conciliation with death. Death is frightening, and Jesus himself as a man felt anguish before death. Instead [as a hermit] you think of death as, really, returning to the Father, [you feel] the joy of this encounter and that there we will all be together in a fuller, deeper way. And so in the evening I quite naturally pray a bit longer, with the idea that tomorrow I could awake somewhere else [i.e., I could be dead].

Antispeciesists are less eloquent about death. Theirs is not a philosophy of the afterlife but a struggle to bring change into this world. Nonetheless, rescuing animals from exploitation may assume a transcendent character. Indeed, it is perceived by many activists as an ultimate, global cause worth living and dying for. Georgia held a particularly dramatic view of what fighting for animals meant to her:

At this point, I would really like to devote my life to doing something concretely, more than I do now with communications. I would really like to become an activist physically, with everything that this entails, with all the risks. If I must think about dying, I would like to die doing something like this. Then, I would not be afraid. I badly fear death, but that would give [it] a different meaning, and when I think about that (…) I would like it to happen in the course of a field action for raising awareness.

Self-affirmation and Self-transformation

As they gradually embrace an all-encompassing cause, activists feel that they undergo positive processes of self-affirmation and self-transformation. These changes usually include establishing order and discipline in everyday life, acting in harmony with cherished principles and life models, progressing toward higher levels of perfection, and moral and intellectual superiority over ordinary people who do not have an explicit reason to live or lack some essential understanding. Following an ordered and disciplined lifestyle, for example, was frequently mentioned by hermits as good, both in itself and as facilitating closer communion with God: “the hermit is not exactly someone who avoids people; rather, he avoids a disordered way of organizing life that becomes an obstacle to meeting the Lord,” remarked Jonathan. According to most hermits, discipline, when correctly observed, is not constraining. Quite the contrary, happiness and well-being are its output and, at the same time, the proof that the hermit is on the right path. Luke held exactly this view:

the hermit must have a balance, that is, he must have fixed rules and clear purposes, but he must also have the sense of using them with freedom (…)

Do you feel serene?

Yes of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure! In my view, for a hermit to be able to say that he is on his right path, he must be serene in his life.

Among antispeciesists, achieving consistency between principles and behavior might provide a psychological reward in itself. Carol elaborated on her vegan lifestyle in these terms:

[living cruelty-free] makes me feel less split; it makes me feel that what I say is also what I think and what I do. For years I maintained I was an animal lover, but actually I wasn’t. And so [now] I try to have this internal consistency that allows me to hold a coherent image of myself and that gives me the meaning of my being in the world. Even if, I insist, it is not easy to be [consistent] to the end. But still, I try hard.

Self-transformation has to do with changes in sensitivity and personal well-being. Some antispeciesists reported that a vegan diet had made them feel better and it had helped them to overcome former health problems. According to Philip,

if you want to live a life of depth and harmony, you must avoid many kinds of food (…) if you interviewed a thousand people who have become vegetarians, they would all tell you the same thing: as an omnivore I suffered from this and that, I had hypertension, I was very nervous, etc. As a vegetarian I feel better, more relaxed and so on.

Their relationships with nonhuman animals also evolved, as Mary testified:

There’s an evolution in sensitivity and cognition: [for you] a pig is no longer a farm animal; he is an individual with his own story, his own privacy, his personality, his character, and he is unique in his personhood and individuality.

But these positive sensations were often counterbalanced by contrary feelings of despondency and powerlessness. Asked about the gratification that she obtained from living as an ethical vegan, Marion, a 30-year-old activist, replied:

The only gratification I can say I get—which by the way is often diminished by the pain of living in a society of this kind [i.e., speciesist]—is that I greatly respect myself (…) I can’t tell you whether I feel satisfied or not, because satisfaction happens when you feel well doing what you do. To tell the truth, since I began to reflect more deeply, I cannot say I live well, because there are no bases for living well. In the antispeciesist milieu you rarely find people who are particularly enthusiastic about their life, or people who tell you that they have really exciting days. This is very difficult, because their ability to empathize does not allow them to live differently. I think we are pioneers (…) who cannot hope to see the fruit of their work. I hope there will be someone who, sooner or later, will be able to say: well, they have begun and [thanks to them] we have attained a good point…. Then, perhaps there will be some satisfaction.

Clearer Knowledge and a Just Life

While the stereotype maintains that radicalized people are the dupes of a fabricated worldview, in fact their point of view is quite the opposite. Both hermits and antispeciesists consider that, through their conversion, they have gained a truer, clearer, and deeper understanding of how the world works. They are critical of mainstream worldviews and lifestyles, which they see as forms of mass delusion induced by vested interests, traditional habits, and social conformity. Antispeciesists might resort to sarcasm when they point to widespread public ignorance about factory farming (the most cited example is the surprise of many nonactivists when told that cows are artificially fertilized in order to produce milk). This enhanced awareness provides intellectual self-esteem and may be a reaction against stigmatization of vegans by public opinion and the media (Cole and Morgan 2011). But it also induces them to feeling estranged in society, as Marion again explained:

if you are highly empathic, you have a small wheel in your head that constantly turns and makes you see things in a less Arcadian, less bright and less positive way than certain messages or the society itself want you to see. A simple example: I might have a whole day spoiled—and I think most antispeciesists feel the same—when on a highway I overtake a truck taking animals to the slaughterhouse. Talking among ourselves [activists], we understand that we live a bit like in the movie Matrix. I mean, it is apparent to us that we now see the world as it [really] is, cleared of the gloss that advertising, for example, gives to our [actual] relationship with nonhumans.

Harold opposed this critical stance of ethical vegans to what he saw as a form of passivity in religious radicalism:

If they tell me I am an extremist, I say that I perfectly agree and that I am right to be so; if they say I am a fundamentalist then I disagree, because fundamentalism presupposes that you submit yourself to a view imparted from above, you accept it and then you adopt it in an uncritical way.

Yet, religious radicals would probably object to this account of themselves. People who radicalize in a given religion often feel that they have escaped from “the wrong path” that they used to follow, that is, a mundane lifestyle leading to perdition (for examples of Islamists, see Wilner and Dubouloz 2011; Slootman and Tillie 2006). Unlike themselves, those who follow the (secular) mainstream are passive, supine, and blind. The perception of gaining a superior understanding of reality is likely to be a major appeal of radicalization. Catholic hermits, for example, “send back” the stereotypes that worldly people have of them, pointing to the madness of a mainstream lifestyle:

my nephews think I am a bit of a nut; but I think they are more nuts than me, because they used to go to the disco and stayed out until 2 or 3 a.m. almost every night, and then the day after they had to go to work. This is very hard and it causes people to become brutish, because if you don’t rest enough, how can you smile during the day? So you are always nervous and annoyed. And so I draw their attention to these things and then I tell them: who is the craziest here?

Someone could tell me: you always wake up at the same hour [to pray]. Ok, but I do that freely. While you wake up reluctantly, maybe grudgingly, and you believe you are free just because sometimes you take a couple of days of leave in which you do what you want.

In this vein, the life of a hermit might become an exemplary experience exposing the weaknesses of mainstream lifestyle:

The solitary who leads a particular rhythm of life should be a question mark, a tangible sign that it is possible to live otherwise, or that the life we normally live needs something more to be fully human (…) Living all the time as in a centrifuge, with the evil of hurry, I believe that does not do good to anyone (…) I meet stressed and depressed people, and some who nevertheless manage to survive anyway. There are some who live but in fact they do not know they are living, because they are caught up in this big centrifuge. And if you tell them to stop, they feel bad.

These examples show that the experience of radicalized people may be one of the extended agency and better understanding compared with their previous life. For those who have come to see an ordinary lifestyle as dull, conformist, and influenced by powerful media and economic interests, the experience of radicalization is in fact a form of empowerment that gives access to an independent and personal way of life which is perceived as rich, conscious, and just.

Conclusion

This study has aimed to shed light on the subjective experience of radicalization. It has sought to understand the reasons that make a highly exacting lifestyle appealing to those who adopt it. We have listed four defining features of radicalization drawn from the literature of social psychology and security studies. These features are absolute preference for a given aim at the expense of other goals and values of life, hostility toward other groups and ideologies deemed moderate and inclined to compromise, acceptance of tensions and conflicts with mainstream values and attitudes, and personal engagement in direct action instead of referring to mechanisms of bureaucratic and institutional mediation. We have ascertained the presence of these four features in both Catholic hermits and antispeciesists. Through qualitative fieldworks conducted in Italy on these case studies, we have singled out six subjective features of individual radicalization in either a secular or a religious ideology: the all-encompassing reach of the cause, which comes to include every aspect of life; social segregation; ascetic efforts; finding a reason to live and to die for; various processes of self-affirmation and self-transformation that may have both positive and negative emotional outcomes; and a deeper understanding of how the world goes and of what a good, conscious, and autonomous life is.

These findings suggest that, from a subjective point of view, radicalization is a highly demanding choice which nevertheless is also perceived as empowering. Despite feelings of despondency when the social change one fights for does not materialize, or when one feels inadequate to one’s own standards of life, a radicalized person is generally someone who, according to Durkheim’s account of the believer, “is stronger.” If one substitutes any cause, even a secular one like animal rights, for religion, Durkheim’s (1995) conclusion still holds true:

[Religion’s] true function is to make us act and to help us live. The believer (…) is not simply a man who sees new truths that the unbeliever knows not; he is a man who is stronger. Within himself, he feels more strength to endure the trials of existence or to overcome them. He is as though lifted above the human miseries, because he is lifted above his human condition. (p. 419)

Accounts of radicalization as surrendering one’s reason to the totalitarian grip of a doctrinarian group, or as inevitably leading to violence, should therefore be called into question. People can certainly be indoctrinated by a group which recruits them for violent actions. This outcome, however, is not one and the same as radicalization itself. As an antispeciesist warns:

extremism is generally seen as negative, but I see it in a positive way. In my view, extremism is neutral: it all depends on what idea you push to the extreme. For example, someone like Gandhi could well be seen as extremist: he pushed a positive idea, that of nonviolence, to the extreme. (…) [If you] push to the extreme a worldview that does not want to exploit and wants to impact as little as possible on other lives, [then] I am glad to be an extremist.

Nonetheless, our survey of two case studies of nonviolent radicalization raises the question of the connection between radicalization and violence. The literature on terrorism now generally agrees that the processes of radicalization and political violence cannot be conflated (Borum 2011b). Indeed, there are terrorists who are not radicalized; conversely, radical views are shared by many people who never take part in violent actions (Khalil 2014). These studies, however, compare the attitudes of small samples of terrorists with those of a much larger population, for example, Islamists (Bartlett and Miller 2012). Accordingly, their distinction between violent and nonviolent radicalization is based upon a theoretical distinction between cognitive and behavioral radicalization. This article has focused on two examples of radicalized people for whom ideas and behavior are and must be as closely interrelated as possible. Indeed, both hermits and antispeciesists devote much effort to trying to achieve consistency between principles and behavior (Turina 2018). In light of these empirical findings, the analytical distinction between a cognitive and a behavioral level seems out of place. Radicalization is always about ideas and actions, the match between them being a distinctive feature of radicalized people and their source of pride. If, therefore, a person can radicalize both in principles and in actions without thereby becoming violent, it would seem that the roots of violence should be sought elsewhere. The degree of polarization in society (Lenos 2016) and the influence of violent groups (Borum 2011a:20-22) are likely contextual factors that make radicalization a life-changing process that ends in violence. But this is far from being its inevitable outcome. These considerations could open the way for a study of radicalization rooted in cultural sociology instead of security studies. Instances of radicalization have a place in contemporary issues of lifestyle, ethics, and social change. From this vantage point, radicalization appears as a paradoxical product, among others, of a pluralist society.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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