Path to Radicalization Winds through Shame and Loneliness

By Elizabeth Charnock

Elizabeth Charnock is the CEO of Chenope, an American software startup, who has been working in partnership with CPDSI to build technical targeting technology. Chenope has translated portions of CPDSI's research, available at: http://www.chenope.com/cpdsi

By Dounia Bouzar

Dounia Bouzar is the head of CPDSI, an entity which had been funded by the French government to study deradicalization and to implement federal programs.

The problem of Islamist radicalization presents a grim challenge to France, and the forces that drive young people to join violent extremist groups remain poorly understood. Far more than the United States, the circumstances that drive average people to become violent affect a far larger proportion of the population.

Often, discussions of the subject devolve into simple platitudes. Radicals must be mentally unstable; religious fanatics; or victims of societal pressure —or all of the above. Grooming efforts by terrorist recruiters, playing on the personal vulnerabilities and shame of French citizens, appear to be the root cause of radicalization.

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