In recent months and years, much attention has been given to the role of the internet in fostering violent extremism. The Devil’s Long Tail: Religious and other radicals in the internet marketplace is an investigation of our social and moral fragmentation and how the internet serves as a “marketplace” for extreme religious and political ideas where self-worth, solidarity and belonging are easily obtained online. Here, the book’s authors, David Stevens and Kieron O’Hara, discuss their arguments. More details about the book are here.
Your book looks at the way in which the internet provides a “marketplace” for extreme religious ideas by providing a sense of community. Could you expand on that?
Our major interest is in the way religious groups work, and how this is affected by new technologies such as the Internet. Much interest (both academic and popular) focuses naturally enough on the ideas that various religions espouse, spiritual and moral codes, frameworks, and directives – ideas about how we should live.
But, religion (and religious groups) offer much more in addition to spiritual and moral teachings. Crucially they offer what we might call social goods – comfort in times of difficulty, a sense of belonging and purpose, solidarity and community, the goods of welfare, sometimes healthcare, education, and so on. These functions are extremely important and are our primary focus. To the extent that religious groups (whether they are churches, synagogues, or smaller sects) provide this range of goods, they can be thought of as acting like, and competing with, other providers of services, not unlike commercial firms in the marketplace.
Just like customers in the market, people of faith are attracted to various different types of packages of goods, and their reasons (or preferences) are varied and often unique.The vast majority of people who identify themselves as religious congregate around a “moderate” centre-ground. If churches or sects wish to grow then they will gravitate to where they will find the largest number of potential adherents, and begin to articulate their messages and goods in a way that is appealing to them. Religions, by their very nature, cannot be everything to everyone. Those who wish for an intense communal religious experience often look for it in smaller, tighter, more committed groups.
Viewing religions in this way is not unique to us but it is useful to remind ourselves that religious people don’t stop being people when they join a church. They have preferences, and seek to satisfy them. The model provides an explanation not only of the enduring popularity of religious belief but also tendency for groups to moderate over time, and then for splinter groups to exit and reassert a version of that faith more in keeping with its tradition and in greater tension with the mores of their host societies. It is also the start of an explanation of where so-called “radicalism” emerges, and why some individuals and groups (both religious and non-religious) turn to violence to achieve their ends.
Our thesis is that a freer society (especially in terms of state attitudes to religion) tends to produce less radicalism and extremism, and more moderate religious groups. State intervention skews this distribution by altering the incentives of moderate groups away from growth. An established church does not need to compete in the marketplace of religious ideas, and leaves a vacuum which the extremists can fill.
Is the internet particularly useful as a place to market religious extremism? Why?
The internet threatens (at least on the face of things) to undermine this picture by making it easier to pursue a more radical – even violent – way of life by reducing the costs of participation. We can access material that appeals to us and converse with like-minded people more easily.
Before the internet, geography was a limiting factor on free association. Even in a large city there will be few like-minded radicals. Online, you can seek out kindred spirits, in chatrooms, social networks, or elsewhere. You can download books or pamphlets.
Meanwhile, the mass media have lots of barriers to entry – you can’t just set up a mass circulation newspaper overnight, and Osama bin Laden was never likely to get a column in the Daily Telegraph. To get attention on the mass media, a violent extremist needs to crash the news pages with some act or outrage that just can’t be ignored.
But even then, the extremist is not in control of the message (having said that, it is surprising how often the mainstream media write up extremists in terms that are helpful to them, for instance encouraging a Manichaean, black-and-white view of Good and Evil at war). The internet, on the other hand, allows extremists (or indeed anyone) to craft their own messages and control delivery. They can produce different messages for recruitment, fundraising, putting forward their own point of view, re-framing debates or dissing opponents, as their strategy requires.
And it’s not just control and access. The internet is cheap – you can download materials virtually for free. It is relatively anonymous – there are ways of avoiding attention from the authorities, for example by using anonymising software like Tor. And it is real-time – communication is a conversation, not broadcasting. Extremists can listen, respond and adapt their messages much more easily, say, than a mass political party.
None of that is to say that the internet causes or exacerbates extremism. It is a useful tool for lots of people, rather like roads or shops are useful for lots of people – extremists included.
What are the factors that push people to the margins?
Most evidence points to the fact that even the decision to join radical groups is a calculated one on the part of individuals; they weigh up the costs and benefits of belonging, trading off commitment and sacrifice for the returns of belonging, trust, increased social interaction, and so forth. Even those rare groups that take to violence can be understood as calculating that the risks involved are outweighed by the potential benefits of achieving their goals because other means are ineffective or closed off.
For someone whose life is characterised by generalised mistrust, it is hard to overestimate what a revelation it can be to find a group of people he or she believes can be trusted. An extremist group is tight-knit and coherent. Everyone undertakes a sacrifice for the common good; there are no free-riders. The feeling of mutual confidence is in itself a good for an alienated person.
This is very different from the common perception that such people have enfeebled minds or even mental illness that make you susceptible to radial ideas (surely you’ve got to be mad or stupid to be persuaded by extremist views). This has been termed “radicalisation”, and of course is very influential on government policy. The common idea is that individuals are “brainwashed” by charismatic individuals who lure (often young and impressionable) people away.
But, whilst brainwashing has much popular credence, it’s a largely discredited phenomenon, academically speaking. It’s not what happens. Alienated, distrustful people, opposed to various trends in society, seek out views that are in tension with that society. They may be in great ignorance of the detail of the ideological commitment they are making – witness the would-be jihadists Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, who bought Islam for Dummies before setting off for Syria. It’s not that these guys were comfortable in society, yet somehow got themselves corrupted by fierce imams. We don’t catch ideas in the same way that we catch ebola. Radicalisation in that popular sense is a myth. Ideas play an integrated role in our lives; they are not some great external force brought to bear on some of us.
In today’s internet age, are those factors that drive extremism notably different from the factors that pushed people towards extremism in the recent past?
Not really, except that the world is so much more connected now, and so one can be moved by events far-removed from everyday experience. In 1938, Neville Chamberlain famously said about Czechoslovakia “How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing”. That would be an impossible attitude nowadays; disease in West Africa, aggression in Eastern Europe and atrocities in the Middle East are hard to ignore. Obviously that is not just the Internet, there are many contributors to that. And of course, though the drivers of extremism may not have changed much, the ease with which extremists can connect, communicate and organize has clearly increased.
But by far a greater influence is the massive quantity of open debate and discussion online. As we argue, freedom of expression will tend to suppress violence and extremism, and so the Internet is a net positive force here. Yes, people can filter out alternative views and try to situate themselves in an echo chamber of like-minded people, but as a matter of fact the evidence is that these effects are usually offset by other, richer relationships, both online and offline.
You say that intervention is not the best way to counter online extremism. Why?
Well, that depends on the kind of intervention you have in mind. If we mean preventing, removing, and prosecuting hate speech, incitement to violence, libel, violence itself, then there are clearly applicable off-line laws to be applied. Detecting possible violence (or incitement) are important aspects of intervention, as is the punishment of such crimes where they occur – and the police and counterintelligence agencies have powers to do that. If, however, we mean intervention to prevent the “spread” of radical ideas (analogous to preventing the spread of ebola), then our view is that this is at best pointless, at worst counter-productive.
Often such calls to on-line intervention translate as providing “counter-messaging” or moderate alternative views. Sometimes this is state-driven, or encouraged by the state. In our view, the evidence shows that the religious ideas themselves are the wrong focus – individuals are drawn to radical positions not so much by the ideas or ideologies themselves, but the other goods such groups provide.
Second, government interference in religious matters is disingenuous; politicians pontificating on the “correct” interpretation or understanding of Holy Scripture looks self-serving, and actively discourages the engagement of those they hoped to engage. Those politicians are hardly credible among the people they are targeting, and their views have no traction. Instead, freedom of speech will tend over time to spread moderate views more widely.
That is not to say that politicians shouldn’t put their point of view – of course they should, that’s essential to democratic debate. But they should not seek to use governmental authority to close down discussion, however frustrated they get with the views held by some people in civil society.
Radical views, and violent extremism, unfortunately, will always be with us (indeed “radical” views are part of a healthy environment), but their quantity and appeal will be much less where the state does not get involved.
What is the best way for governments to counter it?
Standard policing methods of detection, deterrence, and punishment are obvious, and on that we have little new to say – others cover those aspects in much more detail and with greater expertise than us. The issue is whether ‘prevention’ in the form of actively trying to change people’s beliefs by providing counter-messages or prohibiting the articulation of “radical” ideas should be added to this list of counter measures. We argue that the concentration on ideas themselves is misplaced, and ignores other drivers of extremism based on the provision of other goods that governments can look to correct.
In general, a rich, vibrant and resilient civil society will do most of the serious legwork in undermining extremism, and it should be the aim of government to foster that and let it flourish – even if sometimes that causes tension. We are not going to reach consensus about something as sensitive as UK foreign policy in the Middle East, and we shouldn’t automatically file those groups which are critical as “potential terrorists.” To counter a group that we do not like, it helps neither to push it underground, nor to try to prove its radical ideas false (we can do that to our own satisfaction, but not to the satisfaction of its members). It is much more effective to discover what goods it provides for its members, and to try to foster other groups that provide competing goods.
Your book makes a case for free speech, arguing that extreme ideas should be left to sink or swim in the internet marketplace. What if they swim?
This is a great question! First, part of our view is that extreme (by which we mean violent) views will always exist, as will radical views (by which we mean non-violent views whose tenets are in tension with the mores and practices of their surrounding societies). There will always be someone standing three standard deviations from the mean. This will be the case under any permutation of the religious sphere – regrettably in the case of extremism, and less regrettably in the case of radical ideas which are part of a healthy social and intellectual environment (don’t forget that today’s consensus was yesterday’s radical idea).
So, extremism will always swim, to some degree. The question is how we minimize the number of extremist swimmers. Our view, following the evidence, is that a vibrant and free market (absent state interference or sponsorship) of religious ideas tends to produce a multitude of small, peaceable, moderate religious groups, and the number of extremists will be smaller than under alternative arrangements.
What if the evidence pulled in the opposite direction? This seems incredibly unlikely, but let’s run with it. It would need to be shown, for example, that in countries where the state-religion relationship is close, there is less religious radicalism and/or religious violence. And that despite greater freedom of speech, there is a preponderance of radical views, and a weak moderate centre-ground.
Such a place would be very interesting. It would seem to be a society whose general outlook was radical, even violent; maybe such countries exist in the world. But note that in such a society, radical or extreme ideas wouldn’t be radical in the sense that we have defined them – in tension with the surrounding society. Rather, they would be mainstream. But if they were the mainstream, the whole dynamic of interaction and debate would be different, and so the methods of suppressing them would be different. There wouldn’t be much of a drive to suppress them from within that society.
Ultimately, of course, if the outcome of a free market in religious ideas was more violent extremism rather than less, then our thesis would be falsified. But, we are social scientists, so that possibility of being proven wrong must always exist in order for our theory to have any worth. The balance of evidence, however, suggests we’re not too far off the mark.
