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The Social Movement Study Network's
Boston Bombing Study Guide

What Policymakers, Journalists, and All of Us Need to Know

Roger Griffin, 2012,

Terrorist's Creed:

Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning


Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Listen to an Audio Interview with Griffin Recorded on May 7, 2013

This is an interview with Roger Griffin, Professor in Modern History at Oxford Brookes University in the UK, who has turned his expertise in modelling the dynamics of fascist support to understanding the psychological mechanisms which drive terrors fanaticism. In this interview he explains the phenomenon of what he calls 'heroic doubling' which can turn a 'normal' individual into someone who carries out acts of fanatical violence which may make no sense to the victims or the media-spectators to whom it is supposed to act as as a message. His analysis has a direct bearing on the 'inexplicable' acts of the Boston Marathon Bombers:

Interview Audio Formats: MP3 | MP4 | MP4 High Quality

Read an excerpt from Griffin's book here

Browse chapter headings here


Don't let terrorism stampede us into further eroding civil liberties in the United States. Expanding freedom is the best payback. Resistance is not futile.

Social Movement Theory
for Activists

The Movement Action Plan (MAP)

The Practical Strategist

---- More ---

Challenging Right-Wing Social Movements that Undermine Human Rights


Visit the New Website of Political Research Associates


Now Online: COSMOS - Centre on Social Movement Studies in Italy

For Students Young & Old

 

Featured Research Center
Berkeley Center for
Right-Wing Studies

Featured Social Movement Organization

Spirit House Project uses the arts, research, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic, and social justice, as well as for spiritual maturity.

Featured Physical Archives

Marquette University has acquired a large collection of FBI files on US right-wing organizations and individuals. The files were released under the federal Freedom of Information Act to researcher Ernie Lazar. The Lazar Collection is also ONLINE!

Emory University: Neighbor's Network (Atlanta, Ga.) 1987-1998)

Featured Multimedia

Anti-Nazi lithograph cartoons by a survivor of the the genocide.

Why this Webpage?

The goal of the website is to provide online linkages to a variety of existing and new transatlantic resources for the study of social movements that seek to expand or restrict access to full democratic human rights for all people. The mission is to illuminate the relationship of hierarchies of race, gender, and class to societal conflicts, especially those involving social movement organizations and their specific ideologies, frames, and narratives.


This website is sponsored by a group of scholars in the United States and Europe for the purpose of providing reliable resources for scholars, researchers, students, journalists, and organizers for human rights as defined by various international documents and United Nations declarations.

The Social Movement Study Website is an independent collaborative non-profit endeavor that receives no funding from governments or partisan political organizations.

Advisory Board
(in formation)

Cynthia Burack (US)
James Danky (US)
Alex DiBranco (US)
Martin Durham (UK)
Matthew Feldman (UK)
Paul Jackson (UK)
Angelia R. Wilson (UK)

The global human rights movement challenges the
systems, structures, and institutions that create, defend, and extend
oppression and repression in a society.

“Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
                      --Frederick Douglass

“There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.”
                      --Audre Lorde

"The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion."
                       -- Molly Ivins

Democracy is not a specific set of institutions but a process that requires dissent.

Democracy is a process that assumes the majority of people,
over time, given enough accurate information, the ability to participate in a free and open public debate,
and can vote without intimidation, reach constructive decisions that benefit the whole of society, and
preserve liberty, protect our freedoms, extend equality, and defend democracy.

Without dissent there is no progress in a society: Dissent is Essential

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Site curated by Chip Berlet