Ferret, Jérôme (2014) Young radical nationalists : Prisoners of their own myth ?: the case of the Kale Borroka in the Spanish Basque country. Current Sociology (n°62).

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Abstract

How and why do some young people become street fighters who rally behind a political ideology? This paper attempts to explore this complex issue. First, using ethnographic data, we examine political and violent socialization, and its connections to and influences upon individual, peer and discourse conditions. Second, we explore how individual predispositions, i.e. those dispositions acquired from a certain family, social class or peer group in an ideological background, do or do not constitute requisites for young men to turn to nationalist street fighting, such as the Kale Borroka in the Spanish Basque country. Finally, we show that the current representation of young activists is not a mythological construct, rather an extension of complex processes in early socialization, a product of virtual and physical interactions raisonnantes with the police organizations, and lastly, a form of self-referential violence.