Language learning as a model of radicalisation

The Canadian Prime Minister said today, in response to the arrests for the planned Via Rail attacks, and perhaps to the Boston Marathon bombings as well, that these are not a reason to “commit sociology”. I think he’s exactly right. As I said in the previous post, I’m dubious that levels of dissatisfaction with societies, or even with religions, play a major role in radicalisation — it’s a much more individual-specific process. This is why only a tiny fraction of people in exactly the same social, religious, and even family setting become radicalised.

I’m also deeply skeptical that anyone becomes radicalised via the Internet. Our survey results indicated that variations in access to the Internet, or to mass media channels that have a frankly jihadist orientation have no correlation with attitudes on radicalisation-relevant subjects or dissatisfaction of any kind. I’m convinced that it always takes contact with a person, perhaps only one and perhaps only once, for radicalisation to happen.

Here’s where the analogy with language learning comes in. I learned French (in Australia) the same way I learned Latin (declensions, conjugations, agreement). I read French well and could speak it after a fashion. But the first time I heard French radio and then met people who actually spoke French, there was a kind of click in my brain and something changed about the way I used and learned French. I don’t think this is just autobiography; as I mentioned in the last post, learning languages via TV programs doesn’t work nearly as well as you might expect it to.

I’m fairly convinced something similar happens with radicalisation. An individual can watch the videos, talk the talk, fantasise the actions, but unless/until they make contact with someone who has actually done something, there isn’t any danger. Once this happens, of course, radicalisation can proceed very quickly indeed, which explains (I guess) the several cases where apparent changes have been very swift.