Since 9/11, intelligence and security services have become particularly concerned about radical ideologies and have looked for ways on how to counter them. One of the strategies has been to develop a counter-narrative. Some authors, including those of this article, are concerned that, in the marketplace of ideas, the West is losing market-share.[1] Communication failures with the Muslim world were cited in a report by a U.S. Department of Defence Advisory Committee as early as 2004.[2] The puzzle this article explores is why, having recognized the problem early on, the data suggest that further ground has since been lost. We posit the problem as having to shift the discourse from one focusing on a single counter-narrative to one of tailoring …show more content…
The question mark and separate location would represent an important uncertainty about political activism, which we understand as legal and non-violent political protest or political action. It is beyond the scope of the present article to explore whether or how often activism leads to radicalization, that is, how often legal and non-violent political action leads on to illegal and violent political action. We expect that the answer will differ for different groups, different decades, and different cultures.
Note also that the pyramid does not imply a stage theory, which would require that every trajectory to terrorism must start at the base of the pyramid and rise through each intervening level in order to reach terrorism at the apex.[24] Note that, in the pyramid model, the volcanic "magma pipe" of radicals/terrorists reaches down even into the neutral population. This representation recognizes that even apolitical individuals at the base of the pyramid can sometimes shift more or less rapidly to political violence and