The psychology of how someone becomes radicalized

Before he walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue with three handguns and an assault rifle, authorities say, professed his desired to “kill Jews” and opened fire, Robert Bowers was radicalized. He became an angry white nationalist who authorities say killed 11 people in an act of hate.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the rise of the Islamic State, researchers have intensively studied what makes someone a terrorist and how people become radicalized. Arie Kruglanski, a research psychologist at the University of Maryland, has found that although the subject matter of their extremism may be different, the way in which neo-nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and members of the Islamic State evolve from merely disgruntled to violently angry is the same.

“It's the quest for significance,” Kruglanksi said. “The quest to matter.”

For radicalization to occur, there are three necessary ingredients, according to Kruglanski's research. The first is the universal need to live a worthwhile life – to have significance. People usually satisfy this need through socially accepted means, “like working hard, having families, other kinds of achievements,” Kruglanski said. Radicals instead tend to place significance on their gender, religion or race.

The second is “the narrative,” which gives someone permission to use violence. Kruglanski said the narrative is usually that there is an enemy attacking your group, and the radical must fight to gain or maintain respect, honor or glory.

The third necessary component is the community, or the network of people who validate the narrative and the violence.

Bowers had all three pillars of radicalization, Several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches march through Charlottesville in August 2017.

Kruglanski observed.

Before the attack, “he had very little significance – odds and ends jobs,” and no family, Kruglanski said. His neighbors never interacted with him and he did not seem to have many friends. He does not appear to have finished high school, and classmates barely remembered him. “But he was a white male, and that made him part of

a white majority.”

Kruglanski said that the immediate threat to Bowers’ significance, his white majority, was the caravan of immigrants on its way to the United States, which prominent conservatives linked to the Jewish community by suggesting that George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, was paying for and organizing the caravan.