Societal Opportunity Structures and Radical Ideological Diffusion: Lessons from an Ethnography of Radical Settler Groups in Israel and the West Bank

This paper advances the concept of a Societal Opportunity Structure to explain how far-right and radical actors expand influence in mainstream spaces when institutional access is constrained or deliberately avoided. It asks how radical actors diffuse ideas and practices beyond their own ranks; what identity and character work they perform to resonate with different publics and leverage various non-institutional arenas; and how such outreach strategies ultimately facilitate institutional (re)engagement. The analysis draws on comparative ethnographic research among radical groups on opposite ends of the political spectrum in Israel—religious conservative far-right and secular liberal far-left actors—conducted between 2017 and 2022, complemented by ongoing fieldwork through the crises precipitated by the October 2023 massacres and the Gaza war. The paper focuses on the outreach strategies of radical settlers known as the “hilltop youth,” whose vision not only violently negates Palestinian legitimacies and rejects Israeli state authority, but also challenges mainstream social norms. Operating in societal fields characterised by weak state oversight, dense communal infrastructures, moral economies, and culturally receptive micro-publics, these activists display striking flexibility in the identities they foreground while maintaining rigid internal cohesion. The paper argues that what is commonly described as “mainstreaming” is better understood as the cumulative outcome of parallel outreach strategies driven by the activation of societal opportunities that exist independently of formal institutional openings. The analysis traces two interconnected processes through which mainstreaming unfolds via diffusion rather than conversion. First, it shows how activists engage in strategic identity and character work across multiple outreach arenas—settlements, mixed cities, protest sites, social media, and informal community spaces—to resonate with varied target publics. These practices leverage often contradictory counter-hegemonic claims and populist sentiments to build alliances grounded in shared identities rather than policy, thereby bypassing traditional electoral cleavages. Second, the paper demonstrates how hilltop ideas take root in spaces where political intent is ambiguous, allowing radical norms and practices to appear common-sense or apolitical. As a result, hilltop culture circulates beyond activist circles, produced, adapted, or contested by individuals who do not identify as political radicals, and increasingly embedded in mainstream cultural forms such as music, rituals, volunteering, and everyday consumption. Together, these dynamics help explain how radical actors translate extra-institutional outreach into institutional political power that challenges those very institutions, once societal maps have been altered and new institutional opportunities created. Methodologically, the paper reflects on the ethical and logistical challenges of ethnography in conflict zones and among far-right actors, including issues of access, researcher safety, and positionality. It argues that ethnography is uniquely suited to capturing processes of cultural diffusion as they unfold, at the boundary between radicalism and the mainstream. Theoretically, the paper demonstrates how social movement theory—expanded beyond the state and its institutions—provides powerful tools for tracing far-right outreach strategies and cultural diffusion. By conceptualising societal opportunity structures, it bridges debates on extremism, illiberalism, and non-institutional governance, showing how radical actors build capacity through disengagement, cultural embedding, and strategic re-engagement.