I’m working on some research for a client about radicalization and terrorists, but in reading the work so many people have done on the subject I realized how radicalization is NOT just about suicide bombers and war protesters and terrorists. It’s about the human race. It’s about how we respond and react and act in our world.

For the record, a definition of Radicalization:

Radicalization Definition:

1. change fundamentally: to undergo fundamental change, or introduce sweeping change in something

2. make or become politically radical: to adopt politically radical views, or cause somebody to do this -
The experience of war radicalized the younger generation.

In terms of terrorism, radicalization refers to what it takes to turn a university student from an upper-middle class kid to a revolutionary willing to blow themselves up. In terms of what I’m thinking about, radicalization is what it takes to turn a soccer mom or middle-class parent into someone willing to join a political tea party, or hold a sign and march on Washington. What did it take for me to be willing to become forever associated in people’s mind with “homelessness”? What causes us to become politically radical?

I believe it’s a cocktail of things - most notably anything that offends our sense of self, our ethics, our beliefs, our religion, our reality. I become radical when I think that a more powerful entity has used its power to take unfair advantage over someone with little or no power - like state legislators who are willing to institute laws that benefit them financially in some way. Or, governors who use their office to cut deals that make them and their friends rich - Tennessee is notorious for this, but so are other states.

I belong to both Democratic and Republican organizations because I back issues, not parties. It angers me to see Democrats whining and putting down “tea-baggers” and trying to shut them up, beat them or have them arrested or denied their first amendment freedoms as much as it does to see Republicans denouncing the homeless as lazy drunks and addicts. Free speech is just that - and not speech that only agrees with your beliefs! There are people in both parties who don’t see life that way - but few will speak out for fear of being ostracized for not being joined at the hip with their party. How ridiculous! Peer pressure, this feeling that to belong one must go along with the majority rule rather than taking time to weigh out what is right has always been a detriment to a better way of life.

Radicalization is that sweeping anger - the emotion that drives us to oppose, protest and act to stop an action or actions that enrage, disturb and offend us. Terrorists are willing to kill themselves and others. Most Americans won’t go quite that far - but will bear false witness, will threaten or intimidate, bully, abuse, lie, steal and cheat to ensure their world view triumphs. Are we all so different then? Maybe we aren’t as extreme as the suicide bombers - but in seeing how the left and the right, the liberal and the conservative and the Republican and the Democrat treat each other it’s not hard to see that the old joke about the prostitute still holds - “We’ve already established what you are - now we’re just talking price.” (Man in a bar asks a woman if she’ll have sex with him for a million dollars - she says yes. He says what about $50? She replies, “What do you think I am, a prostitute?” He says, “we’ve already established that - now we’re just talking price.”)

We are all radicals, we just need to identify what it takes to unleash that passion within us. I get radical about powerful people taking advantage of the powerless; of people in authority who abuse their power and authority. What radicalizes you?