Samenvatting

Research into radicalization and terrorism assumes that violent individuals have political or religious intentions and motivations. However, what ‘political or religious motivations’ exactly are changes through time. A rigorous conceptual demarcation of ‘radicalization’ and ‘terrorism’ runs the risk of overlooking societal and political changes leading to a variety of violent outbursts that may have more in common than assumed at forehand. Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s concept of ‘the radical loser’ is used as an example of a broader conceptualization that can function as a category enabling interconnected and interdisciplinary research into different manifestations of violence, both in their differences and their similarities. Whether or not terrorists, school shooters and violent lone actors are fundamentally different categories should be a topic of academic enquiry instead of being taken for granted.