I've been monitoring radical groups for years. At first, I did what was asked from me. Focusing on the obvious: the men shouting, fighting, posturing.
That's what everyone looks at: the noise.
But the more time I spent inside, the more I realised the real power wasn't there.
It was in the quiet coordination underneath, with "my peers"... the women.
They were the ones keeping the machine alive:
They organised, educated, listened, nurtured, contained, redirected, healed, protected, comforted, encouraged, reframed, cleaned, moderated, mediated, legitimised, forgave, disciplined, sanctified, moralised...
And yet, every time I brought it up, I'd get the same reaction:
a smile, a shrug, a "it's not that serious."
But it is !
Because that blind spot is the system.
It took me time to accept it.
You CAN'T understand radical groups through logic alone.
With logic you can map.
You can categorise, quantify, trace networks, analyse speeches, follow money, predict escalation. That's very important. Logic helps you see the geometry of behaviour.
But with emotions... you reveal the architecture underneath.
It tells you why people stay, not just how they join a radical movement.
Why they're ready to commit irrational - terrible - actions. Because the cause has become the only thing that makes them feel whole. Yes, people join movements to repair a fracture inside themselves.
That's why you just CAN'T counter radicalisation with logic. You have to understand the emotional economy it sustains: the trade between guilt and absolution, fear and belonging, pain and meaning.
Emotion exposes the mechanism of meaning: empathy, guilt, affection, care, belonging, purity, redemption.
Therefore they define who belongs, who deserves empathy, who must be excluded.
And once you control empathy, you don't need no weapons!
The form of violence it leads to is invisible - relational, emotional, symbolic - but faaaar more durable than physical violence.
You can decide who the world is ALLOWED to feel sorry for and that means you control the moral axis of society.
That's the part most intelligence analysts miss.
They analyze narratives, but not the emotional circuits that sustain them. But we - women...