Radical Milieu Research Articles

Myth, Insects, and Surrealism: the Influence of Henri Bergson on the Writings of Roger Caillois

The focus of this text is the influence of Henri Bergson’s ideas concerning instinct, intelligence and myth on the work of Roger Caillois. My aim is to offer a reading of intellectual history which draws Bergson back into the orbit of the French avant-garde in the 1930s. In doing so, I highlight the axiomatic presence of Bergson’s ideas on Caillois’ work, which can be described as the combining of contemporary philosophical, cultural, and social science studies with the surrealist method, most notably exemplified by the unlikely juxtaposition of the study of relations between insect behaviour and the myth-making function in humans. While the historical reception of Bergson’s ideas has largely mapped the waning of his influence in the inter-war period, I wish to present one strong case in which Bergson’s thought continued to have formative influence. It is largely assumed in studies of surrealism that Bergson had been entirely rejected by the movement for political reasons, I argue that Bergson’s ideas were in fact central to Caillois’ writings on insects and society. As well as highlighting the Bergsonian core of some of Caillois’ key works as a member of the surrealist group and the College of Sociology, I propose that the presence of Bergson’s ideas within this radical milieu contributes to the ongoing discussion of the philosopher’s influence and legacy.

Dusty Feet: The Postings of an ISIS Blogger

He was credited with having compiled the “Lonely Planet guide” to joining ISIS, yet little is known of the remarkable stories told in Zafirr Golamaully’s series of blogs called ‘Dusty Feet’. In this research paper we retell these stories, of an individual’s journey to join, dwell with and fight for ISIS. As we describe these accounts, we discuss their significance as informal reflections seeking to reach Western audiences and draw them into a radical milieu supporting Islamist militancy. We argue that these accounts are important for three reasons: they highlight the role of informal communication in legitimising and promoting terrorism; they illustrate how such communication contributes to notions of a jihadi community that combines the virtual and physical, where real experiences imbue online outreach efforts with credibility; and they constitute innovative attempts at bridging cultural domains, linking the austere and heavily theological representation of ISIS with ironic, often humorous messaging designed to appeal to Westernised youths.

The Radical Milieu and Radical Influencers of Bosnian Foreign Fighters

This research note looks at the radical influencers of Bosnian foreign fighters. This group is important, as the Balkan region has been seen as a spot of jihadist activism and recruitment for the IS and Al-Nusra Front. Previous research on foreign fighters emphasized that a small number of individuals (religious leaders, former combatants, and others) at the local level play a significant role in this recruitment. The influence of such figures results in hotspots of radical activism, which are called “power centers” here. This research note argues that such dynamics are likely to be even more evident in postwar societies due to state weaknesses, which create more power for social actors and inhibit counterterrorism. The paper also analyses the role of leader-led radical “institutions” that have appeared after the Bosnian War. By doing so, it stresses the significance of local radical influencers in the recruitment of Bosnian foreign fighters. The research note shows that radical influencers in postwar radical milieus manage to “institutionalize” their authority by filling the void left by domestic war(s) with life guidance and religious values. The paper provides insights into the social relations, authority and decision-making connected with foreign fighter departures to Syria and Iraq (2012-2016).

Shapurji Saklatvala, the Workers' Welfare League of India, and transnational anti-colonial labour organising in the inter-war period

This article focuses on the transnational organising of Shapurji Saklatvala, the communist MP for Battersea North during the 1920s. It examines his role in popularising the cause of Indian independence and the Indian labour movement within the heart of the metropole, demonstrating that he was capable of developing solidarity efforts through drawing together a border-spanning network of students, lawyers, journalists, and labour activists into his organisation, the Workers Welfare League of India. His independent practice, which relied more on Battersea's radical milieu and his own personal connections than communist party members, is demonstrated to have prompted rivals within both the social-democratic and communist camps to approach anti-colonial activism on the subcontinent with greater vigour, and facilitated connections that were forged between the wider British and Indian labour movements. As the Third Period unfolded, Saklatvala's organisation gained greater support within the Comintern, but conversely lost the autonomy which had defined its early years. The ecumenical network he had developed splintered owing to the proscription of key figures by the Comintern, and the Labour Party's invigorated attempts to build alliances with labour activists on the subcontinent, ultimately undermining the basis of the Workers Welfare League and leading to its demise.

Going Underground: The Politics of Free Music around 1968

Going Underground situates the demand for “free music” as part of a broader contestation of the terms of cultural consumption in the radical milieu of the long 1960s. At stake in the mobilizations recounted in the reflections of Action Directe-member Jean-Marc Rouillan was not just access to popular music, but the validity of the subversive meanings ascribed to cultural production under capitalism. Struggling with the system’s ability to co-opt challenges to its hegemony by putting them up for sale, activists insisted that it was they, and not promoters or other financially-interested middle men, who had the right to determine the conditions under which liberatory cultural expression such as rock‘n’roll would be consumed. The insistence that music be “free” embodied a characteristic demand of the radical moment around 1968: that culture actually matter.

Fight after flight? An exploration of the radicalization potential among refugees in Greece

ABSTRACTDrawing on a survey of asylum seekers, the article provides a security assessment of the ‘refugee experience’ in Greece. This exploration of the ‘refugee situation’ on Europe’s eastern shore touches upon refugees’ prior and present grievances, the local and imported ‘radical milieu’ and (Greek) host state’s will and capacity to implement sustainable and effective policies. The paper demonstrates that, although Greece lacks a developed radical milieu that could facilitate radicalization, Greece’s policy of ‘uninvolved tolerance’ creates a vacuum that might be filled by radical groups in the future. Also, with the exception of minors’ education, Greece scores low in most socio-economic indicators that delineate the ‘refugee experience’. In this environment, scarce employment opportunities and dependence on external sources for life-sustainment interweave with institutionalization and negative coping mechanisms. These silent and largely hidden from the public eye processes might become the ingredients of future radicalization.

The Rise and Fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas by James D. Ross

Reviewed by: The Rise and Fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas by James D. Ross Kyle Wilkison The Rise and Fall of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union in Arkansas. By James D. Ross Jr. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2018. Pp. x, 166. $55.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-352-9.) As the fiftieth anniversary of Donald H. Grubbs's Cry from the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the New Deal (Chapel Hill, 1971) draws near, James D. Ross Jr. offers a new take on the sharecropper uprising that—Ross asserts—complements and slightly revises, but does not replace, the work of Grubbs or a later interpretation by Pete Daniel. Ross contends that previous tellings have oversimplified the union's identity and origin story with competing caricatures of either forward-thinking leftists fighting for racial and human equality or forces of reaction fighting to conserve a customary political economy. Neither interpretation captures the complete picture, because each fails to consider "the views of the sharecroppers and the tenant farmers" who actually composed the union (p. 4). Ross's five short thematic chapters cover the lifetime of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) from 1934 to 1945, with most of the focus on its crucial formative period. Chapter 1 introduces the sorry tale of late-nineteenth-century southern cotton and its deleterious hold on the Arkansas Delta going into the Great Depression. Chapter 2 provides background for the union's radical milieu, with detailed descriptions of 1930s socialist-communist doctrinal disputes and a surprising amount of biography of leaders near (H. L. Mitchell), far (Norman Thomas), and farther (Henry Wallace). Chapter 3 covers the founding moment, acknowledging the role played by both elite actors and ordinary people. The very founding of the union and its maintenance thereafter were fraught with the crippling white supremacy of some of its white leaders and members. Chapter 4 introduces the promised voices of the union's ordinary members through the desperate letters they sent to the union's headquarters in Tyronza, Arkansas, and later Memphis, Tennessee. The letters reveal hungry, destitute people suffering the collapse of the only economic order with which they were familiar. Ross argues that the gut-wrenching excerpts he provides from about three dozen letter writers represent the typical concerns of most members. For Ross, the letters show that the members, far from being ideologues, were pragmatic people trying to find their children's next meal. They wanted work as sharecroppers; they believed the planters owed them a share of the government's crop reduction payments; they wanted to avoid the social slippage they saw as planters evicted tenants and hired day laborers; they frequently mentioned the ultimate goal of owning their own land. Chapter 5 seeks to explain the union's collapse by focusing on its own frailty. Ross acknowledges that externals—violence, official oppression, and mechanization—defeated the union, but he still pointedly dissects the union's internal weaknesses. His thesis is simple. The racial beliefs and practices of white STFU members and leaders doomed the effort. Where others have portrayed the STFU as another bright moment in the southern Left's pantheon of principled defeats, Ross sees the union as an ineffective organization whose ideologically oriented leadership failed to deliver what its members actually wanted: short-term emergency relief, the ability to continue cotton sharecropping under less [End Page 488] brutal conditions, and, ultimately, sufficient incomes to afford landownership. While Ross acknowledges the STFU's abstract challenge to Jim Crow, he also emphasizes that its white leaders and members manifested an everyday practice of white dominance, rejecting African American members' calls for equity and inclusion in decision-making. This, of course, mortally wounded any hope of solidarity. This work will not replace that of Grubbs or Daniel on the STFU. Nevertheless, it is a helpful companion to both as well as to later writings on the topic. As promised, Ross brings the tenant farmers back into the history of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and reminds southern historians to see what is there, not what they wish to see. Kyle Wilkison Collin College Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

Radicalisation in Europe after the fall of Islamic State: Trends and risks

The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has experienced repeated defeats since 2017. To develop more effective counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation strategies, the counterterrorism community has started to focus on the possible consequences in Europe of these defeats. The goal of this article is twofold. First, it aims to address the resilience of jihadism and the major challenges that Europe has to face in dealing with it. Second, it gives an overview of the best practices that should be adopted to face the persistent risks that will have to be addressed in the short and medium terms. Moreover, it argues that understanding the concepts of re-Qaedisation—the process that might cause ISIS-affiliated cells to bear a greater resemblance to the al-Qaeda model—and old-style recruitment—a set of recruitment patterns based on face-to-face interaction, pre-existing bonds and a shared radical milieu—will be crucial to reaching the above-mentioned objectives.

End of the Lone Wolf: The Typology that Should Not Have Been

ABSTRACTThis research note argues that the “lone wolf” typology should be fundamentally reconsidered. Based on a three-year empirical research project, two key points are made to support this argument. First, the authors found that ties to online and offline radical milieus are critical to lone actors' adoption and maintenance of both the motive and capability to commit acts of terrorism. Second, in terms of pre-attack behaviors, the majority of lone actors are not the stealthy and highly capable terrorists the “lone wolf” moniker alludes to. These findings not only urge a reconsideration of the utility of the lone-wolf concept, they are also particularly relevant for counterterrorism professionals, whose conceptions of this threat may have closed off avenues for detection and interdiction that do, in fact, exist.

The Portuguese foreign fighters phenomenon: a preliminary assessment

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the phenomenon of a group of Portuguese citizens and Portuguese-descendants who went to fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) organisation and other extremist groups in Syria and Iraq. The article provides a new contribution to radicalisation by using a new dataset and an understudied case study: Portugal. It hosts a small Muslim community, which has not found itself under the spotlight of being a major concern, as regards the terrorist threat. Is it possible to find common underlying motivations driving young men and women to volunteer for jihad? Do young Muslims face different constraints that explain their involvement in militant activity, particularly being more vulnerable to factors such as socioeconomic marginalisation? Does socialisation in peer-to-peer ideological networks, and small-group recruitment within pre-existing radical milieus play a decisive role? By identifying biographical factors that stand out in two radicalisation theories – social network analysis, and the relative deprivation hypothesis –, it is possible to elicit what factors hold when applied specifically to the Portuguese case. The data provide support to socioeconomic explanations and group-level factors as the main mechanisms that lead converts to involvement in extremism and terrorism.

In the Nest of Extreme Radicalism: Radical Networks and the Bolshevization of Claude McKay in London

ABSTRACTBetween 1919 and 1921, Claude McKay (1889–1948), best known as a distinguished black poet and novelist, spent 14 months in London, a crucial and transformative moment in his life and work. Yet this is the least studied and understood period of McKay’s life and oeuvre. Drawing upon newly discovered archival sources, the essay documents and analyses the extraordinary impact McKay’s British sojourn had on his radicalisation. He met and befriended disgruntled black and colonial veterans of the Great War, spent most of his spare time at the International Socialist Club in the East End of London, a key venue for radicals of various stripes and nationalities. He became an important member of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers’ Socialist Federation, the first British group to embrace and join the Communist International (Comintern). He was at times the de facto editor of its newspaper, the Workers’ Dreadnought, for which he penned some of his most remarkable articles (including his very first) and radical poems. The moment that McKay arrived in Britain and the radical milieu in which he lived and worked turned out to be profoundly influential in the decolonisation of his mind and his full embrace of revolutionary socialism in general and Bolshevism in particular.

Probing the Time Scale of FPOP (Fast Photochemical Oxidation of Proteins): Radical Reactions Extend Over Tens of Milliseconds.

Hydroxyl radical (⋅OH) labeling with mass spectrometry detection reports on protein conformations and interactions. Fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP) involves ⋅OH production via H2O2 photolysis by UV laser pulses inside a flow tube. The experiments are conducted in the presence of a scavenger (usually glutamine) that shortens the ⋅OH lifetime. The literature claims that FPOP takes place within 1 μs. This ultrafast time scale implies that FPOP should be immune to labeling-induced artifacts that may be encountered with other techniques. Surprisingly, the FPOP time scale has never been validated in direct kinetic measurements. Here we employ flash photolysis for probing oxidation processes under typical FPOP conditions. Bleaching of the reporter dye cyanine-5 (Cy5) served as readout of the time-dependent radical milieu. Surprisingly, Cy5 oxidation extends over tens of milliseconds. This time range is four orders of magnitude longer than expected from the FPOP literature. We demonstrate that the glutamine scavenger generates metastable secondary radicals in the FPOP solution, and that these radicals lengthen the time frame of Cy5 oxidation. Cy5 and similar dyes are widely used for monitoring the radical dose experienced by proteins in solution. The measured Cy5 kinetics thus strongly suggest that protein oxidation in FPOP extends over a much longer time window than previously thought (i.e., many milliseconds instead of one microsecond). The optical approach developed here should be suitable for assessing the performance of future FPOP-like techniques with improved temporal labeling characteristics. Graphical Abstract ᅟ.

Rechtsextremer Terrorismus und Ultra-Militanz als Gruppenphänomen? Der Einfluss der Gruppe auf rechtsextreme Radikalisierungsprozesse

[Right-wing terrorism and ultra militancy as group phenomena? The group’s influence on processes of right-wing radicalization] Daniel Köhler’s article develops a theoretical model to explain radicalization by examining the interaction mechanisms between radical social movements and their surrounding social environment and their overall visions for society or “target societies” ( Zielgesellschaften ); this in order to identify and contextualize the relevant group-related factors and operating mechanisms that are active in the process. The model is based on results from the German extreme right environment, but is also applicable to other, religious and political, radical milieus. The core of the interaction theory, the “radical contrast society”, consists of the radical social movements’ ideology and infrastructure, their internal hierarchies and visions for society. The specific operating mechanisms behind both individual and group-related processes of radicalization are explained against the background of the individual elements of the “contrast society”. Publication history: Translation of the article “Rechtsextremer Terrorismus und Ultra-Militanz als Gruppenphänomen? Der Einfluss der Gruppe auf rechtsextreme Radikalisierungsprozesse” from Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik , issue 9 2014 ( http://www.zis-online.com/dat/artikel/2014_9_853.pdf ). (Published 18 April 2016) Citation: Köhler, Daniel (2016) “Högerextrem terrorism och ultramilitans som gruppfenomen? Gruppens inverkan i högerextrema radikaliseringsprocesser”, in Det vita fältet III. Samtida forskning om högerextremism , special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys , issue 5, pp. 111–139. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.5.5

A Bloodless Guerrilla Warfare: Why U.S. White Leftists Renounced Violence Against People During the 1970s

Between 1968 and the late 1970s, a significant number of U.S. white leftist groups escalated their protest to armed struggle. After experimenting briefly with violence, they opted for low-intensity armed propaganda that targeted property and avoided hurting people. By contrast, European leftist groups and anti-colonial organizations in the U.S. made extensive use of antipersonnel violence. Why did U.S. leftists eschew attacks against civilians? Scholarship does not explain this case, as it focuses either on the internal dynamics of a single group or on structural variables. Conversely, this article addresses this question through a historical reconstruction and a multilevel analysis. The research identifies the critique and ensuing de-solidarization by the radical milieu as the main factor accounting for the restraint of violence. This article demonstrates that the radical milieu censored and isolated armed groups as soon as they escalated and began to endanger human lives. Therefore, in order to safeguard the solidarity pact with their constituencies, violent fringes moderated their repertoires of action. This article employs primary sources and original interviews with militants to support this claim and to assess the relevance of three concurrent factors: the trauma generated by the “townhouse incident,” the deterrence by law enforcement, and the militants’ socio-economic background.

The Radical Milieu: Conceptualizing the Supportive Social Environment of Terrorist Groups

Terrorist groups are not completely isolated, socially “free-floating” entities, but emerge from and operate within a specific, immediate social environment—what we call the radical milieu—which shares their perspective and objectives, approves of certain forms of violence, and (at least to a certain extent) supports the violent group morally and logistically. In this article we introduce an approach to conceptualize and analyze this formative and supportive social environment of clandestine groups, addressing the questions of how the radical milieu emerges, what forms it takes, and what role it plays in shaping the development of violent groups. Our focus, thereby, rests on relationship-patterns between violent groups and radical milieus as well as on processes of interaction between radical milieus and their broader political and societal environment, which may entail dynamics of support and control but also isolation and radicalization.

Commemorative Calendar and Reproduction of Radical Basque Nationalism

The article analyzes the terrorist phenomenon and its social concomitants in the Basque Country, from the transition to democracy in Spain at the end of the 1970s until armed violence ceased in October 2011. Confronting the terrorist phenomenon requires joint political, judicial, police, social and economic measures. The cultural sphere is one dimension of the struggle against terrorism that has been avoided for too long in the Basque Country and in Spain. Several questions will be addressed: how is a radical milieu forged and perpetuated, fostering habits of exclusiveness, extremism, incivility and parochialism among its members to the point of justifying the use of violence to achieve political goals that affect the entire social sphere? What mnemonic mechanisms are used in the struggle to preserve a collective identity within a society that overwhelmingly rejects recourse to violence? What role do rituals and activities linked to a ‘commemorative calendar’ play in this integrating process?

Taking Control or Losing Control? Activist Narratives of Provocation and Collective Violence

This article examines the complex relationship between political agency, responsibility, and collective violence in connection with political protest. Contemporary Danish and Swedish left-wing activist narratives of police provocations at political protest events are analysed to clarify how provocation and its relation to the outbreak of violence are retrospectively constructed in radical milieus. Three ‘provocation plots’ are identified that, respectively, present (1) the interaction as purely a matter of attack and defence, (2) provocation as a cause of anger leading to retaliation, and (3) provocation as a trigger bringing about a redefinition of the situation that then offers an opportunity for violence. Subsequent negotiations among political activists regarding the position of moral high ground revolved around the issue of whether responding to the provocation in each of these cases meant taking or losing control of the situation. Internet discussion forums are highlighted as important arenas for debates among members of protest coalitions and in broader social movement milieus in which the interpretation of protest events and their implications for future protest tactics is negotiated. In the cases considered, storytelling after violent events was used to make sense of, and evaluate, often quite chaotic and ambiguous processes of violent confrontation, suggesting itself as a key to understanding the micro-dynamics of how social movement repertoires of action are maintained and developed.

Making Civil Rights Harder: Literature, Memory, and the Black Freedom Struggle

In a March 2005 essay in Journal of American History entitled The Long Civil Rights Movement and Political Uses of Past, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall notes how [t]he civil rights circulates through American memory in forms and through channels that are at once powerful, dangerous, and hotly contested (1233). For most part, this circulation has resulted in a of civil rights [that]--distilled from history and memory, twisted by ideology and contestation ... distorts and suppresses as much as it (1233). With Martin Luther as its defining figure, this dominant chronicles a civil rights movement that begins with Brown v. Board and ends with passage of Voting Rights Act of 1965. Following this season of moral clarity comes collapse brought on by Vietnam War, urban riots, and reaction against excesses of late 1960s and (1234). According Hall, this simultaneously elevates and diminishes movement, for while it ensures that status of classical phase [of civil rights movement] as a triumphal moment in a larger American progress narrative, it also prevents one of most remarkable mass movements in American history from speaking effectively challenges of our (1234). Instead, Hall proposes that we tell a expansive ... more robust, more progressive, and truer story--the story of a 'long civil rights movement' that took root in liberal and radical milieu of late 1930s, was intimately tied 'rise and fall of New Deal Order,' accelerated during World War II, stretched far beyond South, was continuously and ferociously contested, and in 1960s and 1970s inspired a 'movement of movements' that 'defies any of collapse' (1235). (1) In end, Hall wants to make civil rights harder. Harder celebrate as a natural progression of American values. Harder cast as a satisfying morality tale. Most of all, simplify, appropriate, and contain (1235). In her essay, Hall joins a chorus of historiographers who are making civil rights harder by compelling us take a closer look at how we are framing story of movement. For instance, in their critiques of histories, Steven Lawson and Charles Payne have focused on vertical dynamics of that framing, noting how civil rights scholarship has passed through three generations, first wave taking a top-down or national focus, second wave a bottom-up or grassroots perspective, and third wave interactive dimension that is trying connect local with national, social with political (qtd. in Payne 414). Hall's critique is more horizontal, asking us dismantle Montgomery-to-Selma axis in favor of a more expansive timeline. Here, Hall echoes Peniel E. Joseph's call construct an alternative civil rights narrative challenge popular and narratives [that] have conceptualized this era literally and figuratively as 'King years' (7). Joseph agrees that this standardized historical and of 'the movement' obscures and effaces as much as it reveals and illuminates, (7) but whereas Hall wants dismantle King years in order resituate single short movement into a larger of multiple liberal and radical movements, Joseph wants relocate the black radicalism that has been chronologically situated during late 1960s [into] earlier landscape dominated by Southern movement's struggles against Jim Crow, thereby underscoring fluidity of two time periods too often characterized as mutually exclusive (7). Joseph too wants make civil rights history harder--first, by noting how the heroic period of has been strategically appropriated by state deliver sanitized images that extol resilience of democratic liberalism, and, second, by insisting that historians fight against false dichotomy between King's and Black Power, a dichotomy that reduces the rich and multilayered ideological tendencies within African-American discourse a series of cliches and false binaries that completely ignore international dimensions of black thought (7-8). …