Borum’s Pathway and Moghaddam’s Staircase to Terrorism

Radicalization of Homegrown Jihadis
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Radicalization of Homegrown Jihadis
The fight against terrorism in Western countries has picked up pace since the 9/11 incident. Since 2001, both security agents and social scientists have proposed and explored multiple frameworks to explain the rise of radicalization within their borders. The fight against terrorism has often targeted foreign agents for a long time. However, modern terrorists are homegrown, meaning that radicalization is taking place within the borders. Therefore, among the key question that scholars and security agents need to address include how this radicalization takes place and how it can be averted. This essay seeks to examine and compare two models of radicalization of homegrown jihadists: Borum’s pathway and Moghaddam’s staircase to terrorism. Secondly, the behavioral and psychological factors associated with disengaging from terrorism will be discussed. Lastly, the most effective efforts or programs for countering radicalization will be outlined.
Radicalization Models
Borum’s pathway is one of the radicalization models that help explain terrorism. According to King and Taylor (2011), the model is a prototypic psychological pathway that involves an individual developing an ideology that justifies terrorism. The model was outlined in an FBI Enforcement Bulletin by Borum (2011) as a four-stage conceptual model for the development of a terrorism mindset. Additionally, the ideas were derived from an unsystematic and anecdotal analysis of multiple violent extremist groups that had a diverse set of ideologies. The purpose of the analysis was to explore the possibility that there existed common factors in the radicalization process. The four stages of the model are 1) social and economic deprivation, 2) inequality and resentment, 3) blame and attribution, and 4) stereotyping and demonizing the enemy. Therefore, the initial stages involve individuals perceiving their conditions as undesirable and feeling unfairly treated as compared to other individuals. The individual then proceeds to find someone or some group to blame for their conditions, after which vilification and dehumanization follow. At this late stage, violent attacks against the targeted group can commence.
The second model is built on a metaphorical staircase that also describes radicalization as a process that takes place in stages. The floors of the staircase represent the levels of radicalization, for which there are six stages (King & Taylor, 2011). On the first floor, the individuals experience a sense of deprivation, which kickstarts the radicalization process. The feeling of deprivation is built on subjective interpretation of the intergroup situation. On the second floor, the discontent felt by the individual is channeled towards a target as opposed to focusing on the real causes of injustice. This stage is where the displacement of aggression takes place (Moghaddam & Sardoc, 2020). The third floor is where those who have reached this far start to justify terrorism alongside like-minded individuals morally. Through affiliation to each other, they start to radicalize each other through maximizing differences between them and the perceived enemy. On the fourth floor, the individuals have fully become terrorists and officially joined terrorist groups. Those on the fifth floor are willing to commit terrorist activities, and on the sixth floor, conformity and obedience become psychological motivations to facilitate violence.
The main similarity between the two models is that they perceive the radicalization process as a linear progression that begins with individuals perceiving injustice. Additionally, both models end the radicalization process with the radicalized individuals justifying violence and being willing to commit terrorist activities. However, certain aspects of both models differ, including the fact that Borum’s model comprises four stages while Moghaddam’s model has six stages. Additionally, Borum's model is more specific in the first stage, where social and economic deprivation triggers the radicalization process. On the contrary, the first stage of Moghaddam's model expresses that the differences in objective circumstances between intergroup cause the feeling of deprivation (Beelmann, 2020). However, the similarity at this stage is that the perception of material deprivation is responsible for kickstarting the radicalization process. Another difference is that Moghaddam’s model includes a stage where options to fight the unfair treatment are explored. As for Borum, demonization at the late stages justifies and legitimizes violent actions against the enemy without exploring further alternatives to the fight against deprivation.
Disengaging from Terrorism
Several behavioral and psychological factors have to be addressed when disengaging from terrorism. According to Ferguson (2016), trauma caused by extremism leaves many individuals unable to seek psychological support since they understand the nature of their activities is illegal. Additionally, many of ...