Feeling upset, alone, or lacking meaning and purpose in life

The argument

Being insecure and unstable in one's life can lead a person to make all sorts of rash and impulsive decisions. A study showed that men who felt insecure about their masculinity were much more likely to become violent than men who were secure with themselves — which points to insecurity itself, rather than any particular belief, as what moves someone towards violence. The belief supplies the direction; the instability supplies the push. Extremism answers that instability directly, which is why it recruits from among the people experiencing it. It gives people a sense of stability and a sense of belonging to a community of others who feel as they do — two things that have nothing to do with the truth of the ideology and everything to do with the condition of the person adopting it. The community then changes how its members think. Group thinking makes people feel more confident in their decisions and leads to swifter, more decisive action without taking risks into account, and that combination of certainty and disregard for consequences is what carries a group towards violence. The internet has made this route far more available. People who feel upset and alone may find comfort and community online, and online platforms give extremists the ability to disseminate information and recruit other extremists from the comfort of their own homes. Someone isolated enough to be susceptible no longer has to encounter an extremist group by chance or geography; the group can reach them where the isolation is being felt. The rise of cyber terrorism and online violence has caused concern among government officials around the world, and the reason it works is that the loneliness it exploits was there before the ideology arrived.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Loneliness is not the root cause of extremism. Extremism is caused by multiple factors and is mostly driven by hate and personal bias, not by internal insecurity. Insecurity is not a strong enough emotion in itself to drive extremism and violence bred from extremism.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Insecurity about masculinity is not the same as loneliness or a lack of meaning, so the study cited does not support the premise it is offered for — and that extremism supplies belonging explains its appeal without showing that isolation is what drives people toward it. [Rejecting P2] Online recruitment describes the channel rather than the motive, reaching the aggrieved and the hostile as readily as the lonely; and the counter's point stands that extremism is generally treated as multi-causal, which is what the sibling positions on grievance and hatred each take up.