Radicalisation

Finally a week with more than two links! Beatrice de Graaf is a Professor at Utrecht University. Her talk at Stanford on The Quest for a Third Rome describes using text mining techniques to analyse Putin’s speeches since 1999. The paper, written with her student Neils Drost, is open access: Putin and the Third Rome:: Imperial-Eschatological Motives as a Usable Past “In this corpus, we ask how Putin used the combination of history and Russian Orthodox theological, biblical tropes as a usable past, to create his powerbase, to understand how he built up to defending and legitimizing the invasion in Ukraine” A similar area was covered by Teitelbaum in his book War for Eternity about the influence of Alexsandr Dugin and mysticism on both Putin and Steve Bannon in the US. Does Putin believe it? Maybe. Is he using mysticism and religion for his own ends? For sure. ...

Trying something new, with a weekly-ish list of links 1) OAPs are radicalised too When Grandpa Turns Extremist: Digital Immigrants, Radicalisation and the German Reich Citizens Movement the radicalisation of middle-aged and elderly people remains largely overlooked despite their active involvement in nearly all extremist movements. This Insight advocates for a more nuanced understanding of extremism and ageing, emphasising the need for radicalisation prevention strategies geared towards those born as Digital Immigrants, such as Baby Boomers and Generation X. These generations did not grow up in a digitised world, and their education largely did not include critical media studies. Among others, this factor makes them prone to misinformation consumption online. [This article looks..] at the example of the German Reich Citizens Movement, which has a very specific age structure and is characterised by the relatively late radicalisation of its adherents. The movement, which predates the digital age, now primarily relies on the internet for communication, spreading its ideology, and mobilising action against the state and governmental authorities ...