Being left out by others is a painful experience that threatens basic needs. When people are excluded, they may merely distance themselves from those who have wronged them to avoid further rejection. However, some individuals may engage in compensatory actions to defend their self, their group, or the interplay between them in a way that could be a first step for radicalization leading to violence. How and when people opt for each strategy might vary depending on psychosocial mechanisms as well was macro-level cultural differences. Here, we focus on a mechanism useful for capturing who is more willing to fight or flee under social exclusion – identity fusion, a profound alignment between the personal self and a group, individual, value, or ideological conviction – and on a global cultural factor of relevance for the link between exclusion and extremism, as it is the distinction between WEIRD and non-WEIRD populations.

This chapter explores terrorism, terrorist groups, and potential solutions to terrorism. It discusses conceptual and legal definitions of terrorism. It then provides historical context, describing terrorist waves driven by ideologies such as anarchism, anti-colonialism, New Left perspectives, and various religions. The chapter looks at who becomes a terrorist, taking account of theories of grievance, radicalization, recruitment by terrorist groups, lone wolf terrorism, and foreign fighter recruitment. It considers relationships between regime type and terrorism, examining why democracies, anocracies, and autocracies respectively might be more or less likely to attract terrorist violence, and exploring issues such as media coverage, grievance, and repression. Terrorist tactics and how these might diffuse across groups are discussed, as are terrorist group cooperation and state sponsorship of terrorism. The chapter also looks at the challenges of crafting effective counterterrorism policy, with a focus on deradicalization. It then applies many of these concepts to a quantitative study on whether targeting terrorist group leaders helps stop terrorism, and a case study of al-Qaeda.

This chapter translates the lessons learned from extremist side-switching into the context of countering violent extremism and deradicalization or disengagement work. First, I expore how far the initial decision to leave an extremist milieu among defectors to the enemy camp overlaps with the available knowledge about those exit processes leading to a life outside of extremism. It is argued that side-switching is a so far unknown type of disengagement process, which can be seen as an incomplete or failed exit process. Another important takeaway is that side-switchers retain particular ideological core elements (e.g., anti-Semitism, nationalism) and use them as ideological bridges betweenmilieus. For a majority of defectors, the continued desire to oppose the mainstream or a certain previously identified enemy, is the main inhibitor of leaving extremism altogether. The chapter includes a discussion on potential ways to improve countering violent extremism and counterterrorism methods with the insights gained from extremist side-switching.

This chapter continues with the argument that the built-in tensions of the autonomous system, namely centralization and ethnicization, have intensified in the reform era. The focus of this chapter is religious revival in Tibet and Xinjiang. Religion has been a volatile problem in the state’s relationship with the two outer peripheral regions, thanks to its crucial linkage to ethnic and cultural identity. This identity, in turn, can be linked to ethno-nationalism and even separatism. Heightened institutional tensions for ethnic strife have stemmed, on the one hand, from state sponsorship of religious revival, and on the other hand, from state curtailment of its unsanctioned growth. The alternatively facilitating and constraining roles of the state have intensified centralization as well as ethnicization in the religious development of Tibet and Xinjiang, or cycles of state facilitation/control of religion and ethnic backlash. Foremost among this backlash has been increased radicalization, from private madrassas, Wahhabism, “Arabianization,” and “terrorism” in the Uighur case, to self-immolation in the Tibetan case. These have in turn induced state crackdowns, including deradicalization camps.

Joshua L. Dratel expands upon Azmy’s theme to examine the relationship between two much-overlooked aspects of US security strategy: race and economics. He argues that the institutionalization of profit-making efforts in programs for counterterrorism and deradicalization have reinforced what political theorists refer to as a permanent state of exception inside America’s criminal prosecutions of terrorism suspects. Drawing on his vast experience as a litigator in terrorism and national security cases, Dratel incorporates fresh examples of the evolution of racism as a national security issue and argues that counter-messaging and de-radicalization are as illusory as are America’s sense of infinite resources.