Affective Disengagement from the Pyramid of Terror
Open Access
- Author:
- Lunden, Keith Kenneth
- Area of Honors:
- Security and Risk Analysis
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Donald Richard Shemanski, Thesis Supervisor
Donald Richard Shemanski, Thesis Honors Advisor
Peter Kent Forster, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Terrorism
disengagement
deradicalization
disillusionment
security - Abstract:
- This study attempts to find a link between factors serving as catalysts for voluntary disengagement and positions held by members of terrorist organizations, with the objective of improving counter narratives for terrorist ideology and counter-radicalization programs. Using terrorist positions identified in Gruen’s Pyramid of Terror as an independent variable and disengagement factors identified in Horgan’s Walking Away from Terrorism: Accounts of disengagement from radical and extremist movements and Jacobson’s Terrorist dropouts: Learning from those who have left as a dependent variable, I analyze the possibility of differences in affective physical disengagement among terrorist positions. Chi-square analyses yield unsupportive results. The study fails to support the hypothesis that there is a relationship between positions and reasons for disengagement, finding no differences among leaders and operatives disengaging from: disillusionment with terrorism as a lifestyle, disillusionment with the tactical and operational output of terrorism, disillusionment with the ideology and legitimacy of terrorism as a strategy, personal disagreements with personnel, an inability or fear to carry out attacks, and a ‘pull’ factor through family ties and obligations. The study concludes by emphasizing the need to understand terrorists as individual consumers of counter narratives, offering a number of recommendations to academics, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.