Radicalisation

You don’t need me to tell you that on the evening of 6 January 2021, a mob of several thousand people stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, following a rally to protest against Donald Trump losing the presidential election. What I’d like to touch on here is the role the Capitol riot plays in […]

On 24 February 2020, a 17-year-old boy with a machete entered the Crown Spa massage parlour in Toronto and attacked three people. Ashley Arzaga, 24, died at the scene. Two others, a woman and a man, were seriously injured. The boy reportedly identified with the ‘incel’, or involuntary celibacy movement. The boy was charged with […]

Wikipedia defines patriarchy as “a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.” This is a superficial view. Exploration of the unconscious exposes patriarchy as a system in which interlocking ‘psychological laws’ create a society that distributes power on very […]

Despite the recent downfall of the Islamic State, the term radicalisation is still largely associated with religious extremism. In The sexual radicalisation of Elliot Rodger, I wrote that religion is only one of several possible ‘radicalisation narratives’. Others include sex (Elliot Rodger), race (2015 Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof) and a combination of race and politics […]

I recently wrote about the influence of unconscious shame upon the personality of perhaps the single most memorable individual to emerge from World War I, T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. Since then I have been reading Scott Anderson’s monumental work, Lawrence in Arabia. Anderson’s work is fascinating because, while Lawrence is […]

I recently posted about the emotional dysfunction underlying the Finsbury Park and Westminster Bridge attacks in London. A scant few days later, a shooting in New York with distinct emotional similarities has occurred. In the afternoon of 30 June 2017, Dr Henry Bello entered the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital where he used to work as a family […]

On Wednesday 19 June 2017, a van rammed into pedestrians near the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. One man died and several others were injured. The van’s driver, 47-year old Darren Osborne, was detained at the scene by the mosque’s imam. Finsbury Park terrorist attack While the Metropolitan Police treated the event as terrorism, […]

On the morning of 22 March 2017, 52-year-old Khalid Masood ploughed his car into the crowd along Westminster Bridge before being shot by police near the Houses of Parliament. Four people died and several dozen were injured. While the Islamic State claimed Masood as one of their own, Scotland Yard found he had no known […]

Radicalisation may seem a strange thing to lump in with shame-based issues, but every single extremist who ever lived has or had an unconscious but profound sense of shame. It is from this shame that the injustice that impels terrorists to violence springs. Every single extremist who ever lived has or had an unconscious but […]

Radicalisation. This single, scary word has rapidly shot to prominence in British current affairs. Everyday the news carries stories of people who want to go to Syria, who have gone to Syria, who have killed in Syria, who have been killed in Syria. In the summer of 2014 it was the ‘Trojan Horse’ affair, an […]