Quianna Canada’s Theory on State-Sponsored Radicalization
What is State-Sponsored Radicalization Theory?
State-Sponsored Radicalization Theory (SSRT) is a form of state-sponsored persecution, where the State seeks to harm persons who are at a transitional time in their life and have experienced a traumatic event, such as racism or discrimination, which causes them to have feelings of grievance or injustice, or a desire for political change.
Under the SSRT, I argue that state agents will mistreat or exercise power over victims or groups of marginalized persons through systems, institutions, governmental authority or influence, and/or cultural opprobrium, to lure the person into adopting a radicalized or extremist view in opposition to national security interests.
This allows state agents to spread disinformation to portray specific victims as threats to society. These victims may include, but are not limited to human rights defenders, activists and journalists.
What is Radicalization?
According to Dr. Alex P. Schmid, there is no universally accepted definition of radicalization. One of the difficulties with defining radicalization appears to be the importance of the context to determine what is perceived as radicalization. Therefore, Dr. Schmid argues that radicalization can mean different things to different people. However, in Radicalisation and Terrorism: A Teacher’s Handbook for Addressing Extremism, Alison Jamieson and Jane Flint describes radicalization as the processes by which a person adopts extreme views or practices to the point of legitimizing the use of violence.
What is Violence?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines violence as “intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.”
What is Extremism?
As with radicalization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) (8*) asserts there is no internationally agreed-upon definition of extremism. However, Preventing violent extremism through education: a guide for policy-makers document, defines extremism as “belief in and support for ideas that are very far from what most people consider correct or reasonable.” Thus, extremism refers to attitudes or behaviors that are deemed outside the norm. The document defines violent extremism as “beliefs and actions of people who support or use violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals.” This can include “terrorism and other forms of politically motivated violence.”
Understanding Quianna Canada’s State-Sponsored Theory of Observational Learning
State-Sponsored Theory of Observational Learning (SSTOL) entails governments strategically allocating resources to prime the victim towards a curated set of preferences for observation, deviating from their innate inclinations. The aim is to foster radicalization or the adoption of extreme beliefs and behaviors.
Through careful calculation, this strategic approach aims to intricately manipulate and reshape the victim’s preferences, steering them away from their original beliefs and towards a predetermined outcome that entails acts of violence. The state agents’ actions transcend mere bullying and are classified as direct acts of violence under international law.
Through my research, I have discovered that Western nations engaging in transnational repression often employ SSTOL as a form of indirect oppression. For instance, some States leverage their political influence to enact conversion practices by using what I call Diametric Content Saturation (DCS), which is a saturation of a victim’s social media, streaming and email accounts, with an influx of opposing content which may be provocative or violent, so the victim can elaborate on the stimuli.
State agents may also flood social media with offensive content, aiming to make people more familiar with it and influence their behavior. This technique, called mere exposure effect, may involve bombarding victims with a carefully managed flow of content.
For instance, state agents may implement restrictions on a trans person’s access to hormonal treatments, while concurrently employing psychological priming techniques, such as inundating their social media account with bot-generated images of bikini-clad women or muscular men. The strategic aim here is to elicit what I refer to as heterosexual nostalgia — the desire that a non-heterosexual person will return in thought or in fact to the time of perceived heterosexuality. The former may have a de-transitioning effect while the latter attempts to shape the victim’s preferences to align with heterosexual norms.
However, DCS can yield contrasting outcomes, potentially instigating an emotional response characterized by revulsion in lieu of violence or deviancy, thereby underscoring the intricate interplay of cognitive and emotional mechanisms in this orchestrated information exposure paradigm. Examples of such revulsion are seen below:
· A popular Black social media activist said his Twitter feed was saturated with posts of Black women fighting, content he didn’t subscribe to or consume.
· An animal rights activist also expressed concern about her Twitter feed being inundated with posts featuring people consuming McDonald’s burgers and dining at steakhouses. She suspected that these actions might be orchestrated by cyber hackers associated with the meat industry.
As can be seen, the DCS can yield contrasting outcomes.
General Aggression Model
States may also use the General Aggression Model (GAM), which integrates the priming theory with the social learning theory. GAM describe how previously learned violent behavior may be triggered by thoughts, emotions, or physiological states provoked by media exposure.
However, its important to mention that the GAM has come under considerable criticism in recent years regarding underlying and unproven assumptions and poor data support for the theory.
Violent Streaming Platform Priming
Extending beyond social media priming is streaming platform priming, where the state may saturate a victim’s accounts with violent films. This includes but is not limited to slasher horror films, documentaries about serial killers, and films saturated with gun violence and war. The anticipated consequence is that the victim consumes this material, potentially leading to an escalation of violent tendencies.
In a psychological context, state agents might deliberately expose the victim, who may have a history of self-harm, to content strongly suggestive of such thoughts. They might employ colluders to deliver distressing messages, aiming to provoked a self-harming reaction from the subject.
Under SSRT, populations will usually rely on the opinions and judgments of toxic state agents. This bias can lead people to accept information or follow instructions without critically evaluating the content, simply because it comes from a state agent.
As shown, the SSRT and SSTOL empowers States to condition victims of abuse, propelling them into an ongoing cycle of passive-aggressive behavior, with the anticipation that the victim will respond violently. This tactical move seeks to create a pretext for the State to engage in either wrongful incarceration or the enforcement of extrajudicial execution measures on victims, asserting that they exhibited violent, radical, or extreme behavior.
