Episode 247: Religious Extremism with Rik Peels

Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil

Today Dominic hosts Rik Peels on the podcast to discuss religious extremism. They dive into the background of radicalisation; the differences between extremism, fundamentalism, and conspiracy theories; what the global patterns are; what role belief systems play in radicalisation; why radicalisation has such an impact on crises; and more!

Dr. Rik Peels is a Professor in Philosophy and Theology of Radicalisation and the Faculty of Humanitie at the Free University of Amsterdam. Rik specialises in the ethics and epistemology of belief, in particular extreme belief, and replication in the humanities. He has developed a theory of responsible belief, studied ignorance, criticised scientism and developed a common sense alternative, explored the ethics of religious belief, and delved into the epistemic responsibilities of universities. He is currently leading an ERC Starting Grant named “Extreme Beliefs: The Epistemology and Ethics of Fundamentalism” (2020-2025)

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 Behaviour Series (2024-2026). Among his most recent books in Dutch are: De extremist en de wetenschapper: Hoe we radicalisering beter kunnen begrijpen (Amsterdam 2024) and Leven zonder God: Wat je kunt leren van atheïsten (Utrecht 2024). His most recent monograph is Responsible Belief: A Theory in Ethics and Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2017). He edited Moral and Social Perspectives on Ignorance (Routledge, 2017), and co-edited The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Scientism: A Philosophical Exposition and Evaluation (Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Cambridge Companion to Common Sense Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He published over 50 articles in such journals as Nature, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and The Journal of Philosophy. He also regularly publishes opinion pieces in newspapers, does radio and television interviews, and engages in public debates on several issues in ethics and the philosophy of religion.

Finally, Rik is one of the few academics fusing philosophy, theology, and psychology to explain the architecture of radicalisation

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Transcript:

Dominic Bowen: Welcome back to the International Risk Podcast. I’m your host, Dominic Bowen, and today we are digging beneath the headlines and beyond some of the assumptions, and we’re gonna discuss religious extremism. And it’s often presented as a fringe issue, one that’s irrational, distant, and disconnected from the world of boardrooms, markets, and regulation, but that really is a dangerously outdated narrative.

Today we’re joined by Professor Rick Peels. He’s a professor of In Philosophy and Theology of Radicalization at the Free University of Amsterdam. Rick specializes in the ethics and epidemiology of belief, in particular extreme belief and the replication in the humanities amongst his most recent books ignorance from 2023 and Monotheism and fundamentalism from 2024.

He’s also the main editor of the OUP, extreme Belief and Behavior Series. And I really encourage you to have a look at that and we’ll include links in the show notes. And he is just one of the few academics that’s fusing philosophy, theology, and psychology to help explain and understand the architecture.

Of radicalization in an area where fundamentalist movements are gaining political traction and conspiracy theories are infiltrating mainstream democratic discourse. I think his insights are gonna be really essential and helpful to us to understand the risks that lie beneath global insecurity. So whether you’re running a company shaping policy or safeguarding civil society, I think this will be an interesting conversation for you.

Professor Rick Peels, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.

Rik Peels: Thank you. My pleasure,

Dominic Bowen: Rick. Your research suggests that people don’t need to be crazy or uneducated to adopt extreme beliefs. I wonder what does this mean for our understanding of the narrative that we use to understand and categorize these national security threats?

Rik Peels: Right. So I think we might have to revisit certain ideas that we have about people who have radicalized our ideas, our image of extremists, our anthropology, if you like. So of course very often people who have radicalized hold beliefs that are so different from ours and perform actions that we deem so dangerous or abnormal that we are inclined to think they must be crazy or in insane.

But I think by now there’s ample. Research, particularly in psychology and psychiatry. So, John Horgan has been a leading figure here showing that extremists are generally remarkably normal people. People like you and me. Just to be clear, people who embrace beliefs that are deeply problematic and perform actions that can be a threat to democracy, right?

So this is not to say that we ought to agree with them, it’s just to say that they’re remarkably normal. Psychopathology can play some role, but it is not a general, I. Explainer of what they do or who they are. And I think that matters for, it means among other things that in order to understand what they do and what they believe, we need to engage them.

We need to listen to them. We need to take them seriously as people who have. Thought about their lives and have a narrative and to think and reason and feel and react to experiences and the like. I think that matters to prevention de-radicalization programs, everywhere, basically where we encounter radicalization.

Dominic Bowen: Thanks for explaining that, and you’ve differentiated between extremism, fundamentalism, and even conspiracist. Now we’ve seen examples of extremism influencing violent acts in the us across Asia and even in Europe. Does it matter whether someone is an extremist, a fundamentalist, or someone that’s just buying into the latest conspiracy theories and.

Are there shared risk indicators whether geographically or across these different, spaces or beliefs that we should be aware of?

Rik Peels: Yeah, I think that matters quite a bit. So, it’s important to be conceptually precise as precise as we can, while acknowledging that, of course there is overlap between these phenomenons, so between fundamentalism and extremism and radical conspiracy theorizing.

So it’s even possible to embody all three of them. But there is somewhat distinct. So there will be fundamentalists who are not conspiracy theorized and not extremists. Maybe starting with extremism that is roughly the ideological belief that you and your group can be successful and flourish only if you live in animosity with those beyond a group or another outgroup.

So it centers around the notion of hostility, animosity, things like that, and often in a way that undermines democracy. If you take radical conspiracy theorizing, that is not just the belief in the conspiracy. I think we all believe in a couple of conspiracies like Watergate, for instance, that truly happened.

But the radical conspiracy theorizing goes a few steps further. So there are the ideas that, the big overarching story that we can tell about, for instance, current geopolitics, is that there is an evil elite consisting of humans or persons, maybe aliens who have. Harmful intentions towards humanity or a specific part of us in any way.

And who would try to hide that? So they’re act in secrecy conspiracies in terms of Q anon for instance, or the bulk economic forum, or the Jews or reptilians, shape shifting, reptilians, things like that. And then finally there’s fundamentalism, which is, again, slightly different. So fundamentalism is a modern response.

That rejects parts of modernity, and that’s a bit paradoxical. So the idea is it’s modern, so it embraces things like fundamentals, so alleged certainties principles that we should not question things that are indubitably true. For instance, a literal historical reading of the Bible. Cover to cover.

It works with modern media like, podcast for instance, or, videos and the like. So it’s modern, but it also rejects parts of modernity, like parts of science, like evolutionary theory or cosmology. And it often works with what’s called moral dualism or manism. And there the idea is there are two forces in the world, good and evil.

Light and darkness, and you belong to the light or to the darkness you choose which side you join. There’s nothing in between. A compromise is not possible, right? And if we define ’em in that way, we see how it’s possible to embody all three of them, but also how one can embody just one of them. So fundamentalism as such can be problematic, for instance when it comes to treating women, but it need not undermine democracy, So it’s important to pay attention to the specificities of these three.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, thanks for clarifying that for Over the past decade, Rick, we’ve seen really clear patterns emerge across multiple regions where institutions falter, whether it’s through corruption, incapacity, or even just a legitimate crisis.

We see extremist ideologies gain ground, and we saw it in the Sahel where there was the collapse of state security forces that left a vacuum that was exploited by jihadist extremist groups. We saw it during the Arab Spring where the erosion of trust in government institutions enabled radical narratives to fill the void.

And sadly, we’re seeing it now in the West where declining trust in democratic institutions in North America and right across Europe seeing people lose trust in government and media and even scientific expertise. And this is driving citizens toward a really much more. Absolutist and extreme ideologies, things like Q anon militant environmentalism, and even the alt-right.

And I think from what I’ve seen, this convergence between social fragmentation and institutional weaknesses is one of the most dangerous trend lines that I’m seeing right now. It doesn’t seem to just threaten state stability. It introduces volatility into markets. It disrupts supply chains, it fuels misinformation, and I think it leads to real world violence.

So given this global landscape where uncertainty is being weaponized consistently by politicians and on social media and belief. Becomes a vector for disruption. What ways are you seeing where the social context and institutional failure come together to create this fertile ground for extremism?

Rik Peels: if we look at the Middle East, for instance, we see how the war in Iraq contributed to the rise of isis. so very often, and I think this is important to pay attention to in the public debate and in policy there is dynamics going on between. Political measures the rise of extremism programs seeking to counter violent extremism or counter-terrorism measures and terrorists responding to that. So in thinking about terrorism and extremism, radical conspiracy, theorizing, we ought not just to think about those people, but also about ourselves and how we are framing those people. And I think this is crucial. It can make a difference To elections, for instance. So remember when in the election, earlier on in the debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton, she called Trump supporters a bag of deplorables, So here, there was a particular frame that she used to which people were actually responded.

And I think something like that we witnessed all the time. So it is important to. For instance as a body of politics for instance, but also as academia, it is important to think about how we frame and perceive others who have radicalized.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, and I think that’s really important. And there was some fantastic research being done and we were obviously looking into this quite a lot for many of our clients wanting to understand the potential impacts of the 2024 US election. So we’re looking at this a lot in Q3 and Q4 of last year.

And you describe conspiracies as a psychological coping mechanism and making sense of a complex world is understandable. And the more and more I looked into some alts right now, I need to wear this very carefully. So listeners don’t think I’m jumping to one side of the spectrum.

But the more and more I listened and looked and read about a lot of the alt-right theories. So many of them I didn’t necessarily believe and buy into them, but a lot of them made sense. And I sat there going. I can understand why someone would believe this. I don’t believe this, but I totally could buy into that.

And I don’t, but I could. And they weren’t. These crazy that, we’re not talking about pizza shops with, child pornography and child exploitation rings. We’re talking about things that made sense. But depending on how much research you did, you could come to a different conclusion.

So how do we resist and what’s based on your research, how do we make sure that reasonable people and not diving into the rabbit hole.

Rik Peels: So one important notion here is that of grievance. So for a lot of anti-institutional extremists and radical conspiracy theorizes, they’re driven by a certain grievance. For instance, how the state treated them. Or over losing their jobs. And there is in many cases something like a certain veracity to these experiences.

Something that we can acknowledge as true, or at least partially true. So these people are not crazy. They have experienced something. It’s just that. They have been offered a particular narrative or frame to interpret that experience, for instance, as the product of an evil elite or the cause is a Sikh ideology or a secular ideology, an anti-religious ideology, or some sort of left wing ideology that is radically woke, for instance.

So. They’ve been offered that narrative to interpret what happened in their lives. And I think what we can do is to acknowledge what is true about these experiences, but offer them a different narrative to understand what is going on in their lives. For instance, by showing that politicians and policy makers are often also struggling with complex issues when it comes to migration, for instance.

So that is one of the core things that we can do, treat them as. People with true experiences and engage their reasoning and narrative and offer an alternative. I.

Dominic Bowen: And that was really interesting. And you got me thinking when we work with corporate actors and even in government agencies, but particularly corporate actors, that what you’re talking about grievances and having a level of veracity around them. And you also started to talk about this.

Productive and evil elite. I mean, that’s a lot of the language, slightly different, but a lot of the language that we know that people that have been found to be insider threats to companies people that either maliciously, deliberately, sometimes they’re forced into it, but become a threat within companies.

We usually look at those. We talk about access to information and access to funds and access to data. And we talk about behavior, but what we don’t talk about. Is belief systems and how people believe. We talk about grievances, we talk about veracity, we talk about people who are disgruntled and look at their managers and their employees as an us and them.

And I wonder how companies and governments and people working in risk management should also be considering this and looking at the aspect of belief systems in understanding risks within their own companies or government agencies or universities even.

Rik Peels: I’m one of those people who thinks that extremely do actually matter, so they can actually motivate people.

And something about way of a background. So when I came into radicalization studies about six years ago, so my background is in philosophy and theology, and I worked on the ethics of belief. So how do people form their beliefs? How can we do so responsibly? But that was for me. Until then, a mostly philosophical endeavor, mostly theoretical.

And then I moved into radicalization studies right before the COVID-19 pandemic basically. And before Ukraine, Russia before Israel Palestine, and all those things. The second degree, the reelection of Trump and the like. And one of the things that struck me when I entered that debate is what had happened is that right after nine 11.

There was this idea that what led to these extremist attacks was just Islam basically. So it was ideology. Now they call it a conveyor belt model. So once you embrace Islam, you automatically move in the direction of extremism. And of course that is a deeply problematic idea.

So that idea was abandoned and some people moved. In a totally opposite direction. Some scholars and they say, well, ideology isn’t really all that relevant to radicalization. People radicalize because of economic factors, because of psychopathological factors, level of lack of education, maybe social isolation, things like that.

And what I try to do in my own work, such as in the extreme believe in behavior series that you mentioned, is to push a more nuanced understanding of ideology. So I do believe that for many. Not all, but for many radicalized people extreme beliefs do matter but not in a simplistic manner, as if once you embrace an extreme belief you are thereby likely to act violently, right? A lot of people with extreme beliefs don’t act violently at all, but for many of them, it will reflect in one way or another in their actions, for instance, in the person they would vote for or the way they treat women, or the way they treat homosexual colleagues for instance.

So I think what we need is a more nuanced understanding and extreme beliefs. For instance, play a role in the narrative that I mentioned earlier. So a narrative comes with certain beliefs and a narrative provides a way of looking at the world into interpret experiences, So they’re not a direct calls, but what’s called a moderator. So they do influence one’s perceptions.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, I think that’s something that certainly requires a lot more thought from all of us. I wonder what do you see as the most under-recognized belief related risks or issues facing us today are?

Rik Peels: so I think it’s, gaining prominence now in the academic debate, but I think for years the focus was on radical Islam. So Salafi Jihadism, for instance, there was some attention for right wing extremism, but of course, lately we have seen, what you could call mass radicalization when it comes to right-wing extremism.

So incel, dom, radical conspiracy, theorizing, anti-institutional extremism but also even like larger movements that undermine democracy in the west. So movements that would question the legitimacy of elections would aggressively approach judges, or try to get rid of them.

And that holds for the United States, but equally for various countries in Europe, including my own. So we have seen right wing populist movements trying to grab power and in the name of democracy, seeking to undermine what I believe is in fact democracy. And their approach has been again, it’s been a narrative.

So, we’ve received the popular vote, So we’ve been given a mandate. To act for the people to protect democracy. And what they do though because democracy is not just about the opinion of the majority. It’s about, for instance, protecting minorities it’s about the rule of law. It’s about the separation of powers, those things that make democracy work. And those are the very things that are, I would say, under attack in many Western countries nowadays. But that being said, I think scholars are surely catching up on this and a lot of research is being done on that.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, I remember when studying politics many years ago, that was one of the things that stood out to me first, that when a politician says, I have a mandate, or I’ve been elected too, that is sometimes the start of a statement that can be quite exclusionary or a little bit concerning.

But when you talked about radical Islam, you talked about mass radicalization, even the extreme right wing, one of the more under-explored dimensions of radicalization, I think, especially from a corporate and a governance perspective, I think is the role that everyday work environments play in, shaping belief systems.

We often talk, and even on the podcast we talk about online echo chambers. We talk a lot on the international risk podcast about disinformation networks. We talk about geopolitics, every second episode. We overlooked the fact that I think and please correct me if I’m wrong that some of the most radicalized individuals, as you and I spoke about just before we started recording, they didn’t start in caves in Afghanistan or fringe forums on the internet.

They started in offices, in classrooms, in logistics, subs, and sometimes even in, in government agencies. And I work as a strategic advisor. I work with some of the largest, Europe’s most successful companies. And in this work, especially in global firms and in public sector bodies. I see how high stress, high controlled environments can create unintended vulnerabilities.

And, when people feel like they’re being surveilled, but they’re not actually seen, or, they’re controlled, but not supported and they’ve got these really important and mission critical duties, but, they don’t seem to have meaning in their work. I feel like this does become a breeding ground for disillusionment certainly for threats to companies, but perhaps even radicalization, especially when there’s these identity crisis social isolation, perceived injustices that you spoke about before. How do you see these risks emerging, especially in the workplace,

Rik Peels: right? Yeah. Yeah. I do see those risks emerging and I. Maybe one crucial factor that we could add is that of crisis.

So crisis is another core notion that is one-on-one root cause in a way of radicalization. And that is because crisis is by definition a perceived threat. Whether or not it is actually, it is a perceived threat, right? It comes with uncertainty. By definition and a lack of control or even losing control where others have to take over, for instance the government, right?

And I think that provides the opportunity for radicalized groups to, again give a narrative to interpret those circumstances and to fill that void, the uncertainty that exists with a certain kind of certainty. And when you think of religious radicalization, for instance.

But actually you could do something similar for secular radicalization. A core notion is that of a metaphysical battle between good and evil that I already mentioned that is so prominent in fundamentalism, right? So if they can reinterpret what happens in a crisis where say the government or others have to act under uncertainty as a situation in which there is an evil force.

Who wants us to do some something, say vaccinate for instance, or stay home or whatever. And you can reinterpret it as a metaphysical battle between good and evil. Or you could add a temporal dimension to it and say, look we’re going through a pandemic or through a climate crisis. This is the end time.

So you add a temporal dimension to it. There’s an apocalyptic. event going on. So that enlarges things in a way so it’s the end times there’s more at stake than ever before, and you can play a crucial role in all of this. So it confers meaning and makes what you do even more important.

And one final thing it can do is put things in a transcendent light. Particularly when things are going wrong or people, you know are dying as in a pandemic. So in the face of death you can interpret things in terms of heaven and hell, eternal reward. So these are all elements that radicalize narratives can use to move people in a particular direction to motivate them to cultivate distrust towards others. To become more certain of themselves in times of uncertainty.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah. Your inclusion of crisis was spot on. And when there’s so many crisis, Rick, we’ve got declines in democracy. You’ve got institutional trust being eroded financial divides, widening obviously things like COVID.

We’ve got the ongoing environmental crisis. Threats of war actually realized. What role can businesses play when you know there’s a need to counter extremist efforts. There’s a need to show stability, especially in parts of the world where there is so much upheaval and sadly today that even includes parts of Europe and parts of North America.

Rik Peels: so one thing, and it’s slightly overlooked that I think we need to restore is the public debate and the conversation among one another. So even within a particular business with friends and colleagues and the like. So remember that Jurgen Haberman had this idea that the public sphere is a place where people can freely converse with one another.

About what to do, for instance, in a crisis or what to do in the face of a threat or the threat of war or anything. And that space is free from particular financial incentives and free from ideological incentives. So we can exchange our experiences, give arguments for something, and give arguments against something, and then people can make up their minds before a decision has to be taken.

And I think what we are witnessing nowadays is that. That free space of the public sphere, as described by Habermas, is eaten up in a way by, for instance, social media, right, who do have financial, and in many cases, like acts, ideological reasons behind what they do. And I think what is needed is that we create this free space.

And I think businesses can do so for instance, by facilitating the conversation among colleagues, for instance. So as to get to know one another and understand how people deal with a crisis or with uncertainty or with a particular threat. And how they, what narrative they construe and how they see their own place in that.

And one, one other crucial thing I think is that businesses can help people in, perspective learning. So we all have our own perspectives, but what is sometimes needed to, to also, to flourish as a company is that we learn to adapt or adopt the perspective of the other person with whom I’m working.

It doesn’t mean that I have to agree with that person, but I can learn from that person, holding my horses for a second and trying to. To take that other person’s position and see the world through that person’s eyes can be really helpful.

So Dominic, one example that I often give in this context is the Israel Palestine conflict. And I do this in front of classes with secular people, Christians, Jews, Muslims, in mosques, in churches. In university, and it usually works it has worked so far.

And I say, look we can debate the facts, like, did this happen? Did they attack that ambulance? Who fired this record? And they’re like, but we can also take a step back and ask ourselves, not so much what are we seeing, but how are we looking at all of this? And then I sketch four paradigms. The first one is a theological paradigm that some people embrace and it says.

Israel is an elected people, elected by God, continuously threatened by the people surrounding it. The second paradigm is moral historical. It says the Holocaust is the, in a way, the black hole of history. Right? The worst thing that has happened. And we ought to make sure that doesn’t happen again and we’re, we can look at that conflict through this particular lens.

The third one is a post-colonial way of looking at things, which says, Israel is the youngest. Colonial Project of the West and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are continuously oppressed and maltreated. And the fourth way of looking at this is something you could call a kind of sober geopolitical approach, which interprets what’s going on in terms of, people, resources, conflict.

We just ought to find a deal or a solution which is a win-win situation. Don’t draw too much ideology into it. And I think if you look at. And how they think about is you can distinguish those four paradigms. And I invite people first find out what is your own lens or paradigm? How do you look at this conflict is one of these four prominent?

And then try to look at the lens of another person, which is different from yours and my domain element of truth or insight in that other way of looking. Right? And then first try to have a conversation on elements on which you agree. And then start to explain why you look at things differently, why you adopt this paradigm, and an approach like that has been very fruitful.

And I think even companies can facilitate a conversation because I think what they do nowadays, because there are disagreements and sometimes conflicts about these geopolitical issues or how to deal with vaccination or things like that. And I think companies tend to avoid a conversation about this.

Because they don’t want conflict on the work floor, so to say. But I think the opposite then happens as a result. People are silent about it, but it kind of bruise, bruise underground, right? And it manifests in other ways. So open up the floor, but open up the floor on this in a way that encourages people to look a bit deeper than just the surface alleged facts.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for explaining that. And I’m glad you mentioned religion. Rick. It made me think of the Spanish pastor. I heard he was visiting Sweden a couple of years ago. He was fantastic. The coolest guy and he was giving this amazing sermon and he actually spoke and he spoke about how, although religion is largely on the decline all religion’s largely on the decline in Spain.

His community is just growing. He’s got about 10,000 people coming to, to church every Sunday night. It’s just booming. And he talks about this. God sized hole that people have. And he says, we’re trying to fill it with social media, with sex, with drugs, with chasing money.

And ultimately all those things fall flat. But when they come to church, when they find God, it fills that hole. And I think there’s a lot of studies using global and national data sets and my understanding is that they consistently find that generally Christians report higher scores on measures of happiness and life satisfaction than people who are a non-practicing religion.

But it does make me think when you hear pastors like that, when you look at some of the studies that have used data school national data, that it sounds quite similar, that extremist groups are also using religion to meet psychological needs, like, identity, belonging, purpose. I wonder if you can help us understand and explore that.

is religion being abused? Is it being used correctly? Is it just a coincidence? Where does all this fit together?

Rik Peels: Right. Yeah. So I think an important insight in richer studies is that the order of things so belong, behave, belief. That’s the order. So first you find a community, you encounter community where you feel, I belong here.

I’m welcome here. I understand these people and they understand me. Usually that’s the first thing that matters. Then when you’re with them for a while, whether that be a church or a mosque, then you start to behave accordingly. You learn the rituals, the practices, the prayer, the fasting, celebrating the feast and the like.

And then finally the third, only after that comes the belief. This is not always the case, but very often then learn about doctrine or the teachings or how to read scripture. Historical facts, things like that. And I think communities, religious communities make use of this.

Often, unconsciously. So, and I think all communities use this in a way, right? We welcome people and make them feel welcome. At least we, we try to do that and that makes perfect sense. There are exceptions where people first cognitively radicalize, for instance, online, the encounter belief system that does justice to their experiences. For instance, a great replacement, we’re being replaced by people of color intentionally, right? Like a narrative like that. And then they find a community that, that echoes that really, so that can happen. But usually it’s the belonging first. And that applies to healthy religious communities in which people flourish.

And it equally applies to extremist communities in which people radicalize and, embrace harmful ideas and behavior. And in fact. A healthy religious community may in the course of time, become more violent or more racist friends or sexist and, so I’m afraid we’ve seen we’ve seen that, for instance, in the Russian Orthodox Church, and I’m not saying of course, that this applies to all those, I don’t know, a hundred, what is it, like million people or so?

Of course not. But leading figures such as the Patriarchial, for instance, have become more racist in the course of time. More violent and blessing, weapons, demonizing others. It also demonizing the west caricature in it and the like. So the same mechanisms can have good and purposes and use that make people flourish and it can be truly harmful.

Dominic Bowen: Yeah. Double-edged sword. No thanks for that double edged sword. Yeah. Good. Yeah. And how do we balance that, how do we balance freedom of belief, which is, as you said, can have a really positive impact with that need to prevent harmful ideologies from spreading and obviously manifesting sometimes in, in physical and violent harm.

How do we find that balance? What is the right balance?

Rik Peels: I think, the balance is really not that hard to seek. There’s no, in most Western countries, there’s not much of a. Thought police going on. It’s not as if people knock on our door to, to ask what we believe we’re by and large, free to, to believe whatever we want there.

There are a few exceptions, but Jenny, I don’t think there’s much of a threat in the West, and I think a threat is exaggerated by particularly right wing extremists nowadays who claim boldly that freedom of speech is under attack. That is, we can claim almost anything and get away with it.

So I would go almost the opposite direction and say the problem is that we often don’t rightly delineate the limits to free speech. Because if we say just anything that, we believe or feel experience, then that will actually, in the long run, undermine democracy. For instance, when we instigate hate towards other people or when we question the legitimacy of elections or when we say beforehand if you elect me you’ll never have to, what? Vote again. There you go. Things like that. So I think what we ought to do is continue as we do now to protect free speech. Then also to put clear limits on that.

And I think this particularly holds on an institutional level. So for instance, we had something like fact checking on Twitter or X you remember. And they got rid of that and replaced it by community notes, what they call community notes, where basically anything can be said by anybody in response to a particular message.

And if we continue to go down that road. In like platforms like X and other platforms will become utterly confusing to people will no longer be clear what the truth is or what, what reasoning or evidence something is based on. And people I think will have to go almost fully tribal.

So you opt for what you already believe or for the people who are like you or the people whom you like basically. So what we do need to do is to have clear limits and regulations for social media, for instance and other platforms about what you can freely express and what you cannot freely express.

Dominic Bowen: No, that makes sense. And when you look around the world, Rick, when you see the variety of things happening, good and bad, what are the international risks that concern you the most?

Rik Peels: What concerns me the most is there perhaps two things I can mention. The one is mass radicalization. So 20 years ago in the years after nine 11, it was small terrorist groups performing a attacks in the west.

What we see now, I think is radicalization on a much larger level, so. A large part of the Palestinian population in Gaza has radicalized and is behind the attacks, for instance, of Hamas on seven October, 2023. Similarly, a large part of the Israeli population has radicalized partly in response to that, and for instance, fully supports something that is partially genocidal.

Or ethnic cleansing and just has no eye for the basic human rights of the Palestinian population. and we call this simulation to cumulative radicalization. they can radicalize in response to one another. And I think we’ve also seen radicalization on a mass scale in the United States over the last few years, where also people radicalize in response to what they perceive as the radicalization of the political other basically.

And there’s that threat also in in Europe. So for instance, the I Day alternative has been. Classified or qualified as an extremist organization by the German security services. But has I think, slightly over 20% of the German vote. so that is one thing that really worries me, mass radicalization.

And the other thing that worries me is the threat to democracy. So I think you rightly said political leaders can equally well radicalize. And there’s a well-known book with the title, democracy Erodes from the Top Down, I realized like those Islamist attacks in the years after nine 11 were horrendous.

They were horrendous and utterly unjustifiable, but they were not a direct threat to Western democracy. But if. part of the government itself or an entire government radicalizes and tries to get rid of the fundamentals of democracy, then we are in serious trouble. So those are two developments that worry me.

I’m not without hope, I think we, we can turn the tide. I think we can build stronger democracies. I think we can educate people. What is value about democracy? I think we can educate for virtues such as nuanced, going against black and white thinking. I think we can educate for hope and trust in institutions.

So I think we’re not fighting for a lost cause, but these are serious threats.

Dominic Bowen: And not to end the podcast on a downer, Rick, but you know, you talked about a radicalized Palestinian population contributing to a cumulatively radical Israeli population.

Not all of them,

Rik Peels: but parts of that. Yeah, just yeah.

Dominic Bowen: No. Please. Thank you. Yeah, that’s important. Please do clarify or correct me who’s then, partnering with an increasingly radical us to attack a radical theological regime in, in Iran.

That’s quite a messy spider where we’ve got there and, hope and education alone is not gonna be enough. And when democracy, by all indices have been declining consistently for the last 20 to 21 years, what is the hope? Why do you have hope? Where do you get that hope from?

What should we be looking at to see the bright side of this picture?

Rik Peels: So, I think one reason for hope is that we can learn from history and we have learned from history. So we have learned from the Second World War, for instance, when it comes to formulating human rights, standing up for minorities.

That will be one example. And similarly, I think in Europe we can learn from what we witness and fold in the US nowadays. Realize we don’t need to go that direction. I feel like the US population has become so polarized that even most Europeans realize this is not what we want. We don’t want this future where everything becomes politicized and we avoid even contact with the political other. By far, most Europeans don’t want that. So we have an example, and I think an example of how we don’t want it to be. And I think that gives us a bit of hope. So both history and what we’re witnessing nowadays.

There’s also resilience in societies. There are groups that, that are responding to this. There’s measures on the European level seeking to counteract this. There’s sensible people who try to humanize others. Yeah, so that’s the nature of hope, I would say, as a philosopher. Hope is not, it’s not certainty or knowledge.

It is something weaker, but not utterly without ground either. It’s not irrational hope. It’s, it is rational hope.

Dominic Bowen: Very good. You actually sound a little bit like that Spanish pastora about, not irrational hope, but believe in what, what could be based on. Yeah. But no, that’s good. I really appreciate your insights, Rick.

That was really insightful. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast today.

Rik Peels: My pleasure. It’s been great to talk to you, Dominic.

Dominic Bowen: Well, that was a great conversation with Professor Rick Peels. I really appreciated hearing his thoughts on extremism, on mass radicalization and on conspiracy theories as well.

Please remember to join our mailing list at the international wi podcast.com to get your weekly newsletter in your inbox every second week. Today’s podcast was produced and coordinated by Elisa Garbil. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak again next week.