Radicalism and Radicalization: Where to Draw the Line?
- Rik Peels
- Date
- Thursday 7 May 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Wijnhaven
Turfmarkt 99
2511 DP The Hague - Room
- 3.60
The research group Terrorism and Political Violence, part of Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA), invites you to a seminar on Radicalism and Radicalization by Prof.dr. Rik Peels (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam). Please see below for details and a link to register.
Programme
15.45: Doors open
16.00: Word of welcome by Professor Bart Schuurman
16.05: Presentation by Prof.dr. Rik Peels
16.50: Q&A with the audience
17.00: Drinks reception
About the event
Radicalized groups used to be relatively clearly ideologically delineated: think of the belief-system of the Red Army Faction, ISIS, Al Quaeda, or various neo-Nazi groups. Nowadays, we witness how actors select from existing ideologies and eclectically compose their own belief-system. Moreover, we see various kinds of radical groups, such as Exctinction Rebellion, using extreme methods that are not violent but deeply disruptive. Finally, we note how various individuals and groups can blend conspiracist, fanaticist, extremist, and fundamentalist aspects of existing movements, making it hard to locate them on scales and measures of radicalization. All this raises the question: where to draw the line between extreme and extremist, between radical and radicalized? Is there a principled way to do so or is it simply a matter of perspective? In this lecture, I introduce the SAR (Subject-Axis-Result) Model of Radicalization and show how it helps us to distinguish radicalism from radicalization. I also lay out what this means for practitioners, in particular in preventing and countering radicalization.
About the speaker
Rik Peels holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He specializes in the ethics and epistemology of belief, in particular extreme belief, see https://extremebeliefs.com/. Among his most recent books are Ignorance (OUP 2023) and Monotheism and Fundamentalism (CUP 2024). He is the main editor of the OUP Extreme Belief and Behavior Series (2025-2027).