The power of far-right terrorist manifestos lies not just in their arguments but in their capacity to provide existential significance to collective anxieties. Drawing on Blumenberg's concept of the "absolutism of reality" and Bottici's philosophy of political myth, this paper argues that Brenton Tarrant's manifesto works to provide the existential significance that radicalisation can draw on, transforming formless demographic anxiety into a certainty that licenses action. Analysing the manifesto through an interpretivist lens, the paper identifies four themes through which the Great Replacement myth operates: warfare, invasion and biological destiny; degeneration, betrayal and redemptive violence; enemies, extermination and hesitation resolution; and urgency, sacrifice and the promise of victory. The analysis shows how the cognitive, integrative, and mobilising functions of myth fuse inseparably in extremist contexts, forming a radicalisation mechanism that operates independently of empirical truth. These findings carry implications for understanding why political myths persist irrespective of their accuracy, and why counter-narratives that seek to rebut them may miss what gives them their force. Given that Tarrant's manifesto has been cited as an influence by later attackers, understanding how it works is both analytically and practically urgent.
Understanding why some individuals convicted of terrorism engaged in violent or non-violent acts is a central issue in terrorism research. This study examines factors associated with the likelihood of committing a violent terrorist act using the European Database of Terrorist Offenders. The sample comprised 171 individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses in Belgium and the Netherlands. Offenders were categorized as violent or non-violent based on the nature of the acts committed. Multiple Correspondence Analyses were conducted to extract latent dimensions from several nominal variables. These dimensions were subsequently included in a logistic regression to assess their association with violent versus non-violent offending. Age and gender were included as covariables but showed no significant influence. The results indicate that violent terrorist acts are more likely among individuals characterized by a prior criminal history, higher levels of ideological radicalization, and familial configurations marked by religious homogeneity and ideological immersion. Conversely, structured Islamic family environments (when not embedded in radicalized contexts) and existential motivations for engagement are associated with a lower likelihood of violent offending. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of conceptualizing radicalization and violence as multidimensional phenomena and underscore the value of latent, continuous approaches for distinguishing violent from non-violent terrorist trajectories.
This study evaluates terrorism deterrence and displacement, following two specific post-9/11 airport security target-hardening measures: 2006 liquid restrictions and 2017 US-led screening measures. We use a quasi-experimental design and monthly data from the Global Terrorism Database, with a control group pre-intervention and treatment group post-intervention. We employ interrupted time-series analysis (ARIMA and VAR models), alongside Poisson regression models. Together, these grant several controls: global and country-specific background trends, and attacks in countries unaffected by US-led restrictions. Almost all models found no decrease in attempted aircraft attacks after airport security improvements, even when controlling for background trends, implying these measures failed to deter attempted aircraft attacks. Regarding displacement, interventions coincided with increases in attacks using similar targets or methods, though not always as a proportion of terrorist attacks overall. Regardless, due to the failed deterrence findings, such increases cannot be attributed to the intervention and therefore cannot be concluded as displacement. We highlight methodological complications of this, past, and future terrorism analyses, including the necessity of multivariate controls, measurement of variables as a proportion of background trends, and the possibility of unmeasured displacement dynamics distorting results. Future research should further attempt to isolate interventions' impact to provide concrete policy recommendations.
This article analyzes how and why senior PKK cadres (both male and female) became radicalized and joined the PKK between 1960 and 1980. Using a qualitative research method of comparative analysis, the article examines this issue by reviewing the life stories of these cadres, as documented in their self-criticism reports. The main research question of the article is: "What are the most frequent and consistent motivational factors expediting an individual's radicalization and subsequent decision to join the PKK between 1960 and 1980?" The study concludes that factors such as poverty, peer group influence, family conflict, school life, ethnic and cultural beliefs and differences, propaganda, and witnessing violence trigger and facilitate the radicalization process, while factors such as peer influence, the cult characteristics of a charismatic group leader, and propaganda consumption spark the decision-making process for individuals to join the PKK. It is suggested that these factors may similarly explain some of the multi-level dynamics of radicalization and why individuals join terrorist groups in other parts of the world.
