Revisiting Laclau´s categories: Current muslim religious radicalization in Europe as a form of Populism

Revisiting Laclau´s categories: Current muslim religious radicalization in Europe as a form of Populism Dr. Ivo Hernandez. University of Muenster One of the most complex topics in the study of contemporary religious inspired terrorism in Europe, is the pursuit to find a satisfactory answer to why and how the process of ideological radicalization occurs. Radicalization itself has several polarized definitions, as current research reveals, but the European Commission (2006) settled for a middle ground stating it is “the phenomenon of people embracing opinions, views and ideas which could lead to an act of terrorism”. Radicalization theorists have provided us with either macro or micro variables on a social scope that attempt to reach a term mostly guided by the context under which it was thought, be it security, integration, or the foreign-policy environment. It could be argued that these circumstances could force a particular outline, such as the case of the integration agenda, drawing us far from a common understanding of how radicalization develops. Thus, each one of them uses the term “radical” to mean something different (Sedgwick, 2010). Until now, no one has convincingly been able to prove that a particular ideology, be it political or religious, does not guarantee it may be free from radicalization processes. On political terms, as well as on religious ones, the message must have the capacity to relate to a certain group, and in a sense, create a people. This article focuses on the problem of radicalization from a rather different perspective, namely, that of Populism as interpreted by Laclau on his Populist Reason (2005). Ideally according to Laclau, the specificity of populism requires starting the analysis from units smaller than the social group. If integration policies in order to avoid religious radicalization are meant to include “not only access to the labor market for all groups but also measures which deal with social, cultural, religious, linguistic and national differences” (EC, 2006) that denotes an extraordinary effort for the European states, already quite stressed and not over the financial crisis of 2008. This over stretching might result in a possible inefficacy to what have even before proven to be socio structural problems. Radical religious groups live the dichotomization of the social space through the creation of an internal frontier and the “construction of an equivalential chain between unfulfilled demands ” (p.4, 2005). Laclau argues that this articulating form, apart from its contents, produces “structuring effects” which primarily manifest themselves at the level of the modes of representation of those formerly named units, or for the purpose of our study, for the modes of political action. Populism then emerges, not as a pre-ordained ideological form, but rather the opposite, as a generalizing emptiness into which almost any popular identity can be condensed. This can be achieved by either message or image production (significants) that address not only institutional needs but the equivalential needs, those born out of abstract frustration and dissatisfaction with the western liberal democratic state.