Divided We Fall: The Political Psychology of Extremism, Radicalism, Terrorism

Abstract

How do societies respond to terrorism? How is this response important to the success or failure of the terrorist group? Why do individuals join terrorist groups? What prompts some to leave terrorism behind and how do they exit? How are refugees being represented in the media? Are refugees seen as a threat or as part of a humanitarian crisis? What is political tolerance? How does political tolerance work in young democracies? This panel will explore these questions through four papers that focus on different contexts and use different research methodologies. Hidalgo-Redondo’s paper will study the link between the power of ETA as an active organisation and the response of the Basque society to the use of violence with a political motivation through the analysis of data from public opinion studies series (Euskobarometer). Da Silva’s paper will explore the change processes involved in moving from engagement with to disengagement from an armed militant group, as well as from radicalisation to deradicalisation, using a dialogical analysis perspective to study a former militant’s narrative account of three periods of time of the life-cycle of involvement with an armed organisation in Portugal. Dumitrescu’s paper will present a quantitative analysis of the visual representation in the UK and in France of the refugees’ arrival in Europe at the peak of the crisis, in August and September 2015. Finally, Fuks’ paper will test, for the first time in Brazil, some factors that, according to international studies, explain political tolerance, such as education, psychological insecurity and ideology through the analysis of data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project 2017.