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Página 2724
Legal ideological radicalization and contemporary
political violence. A comparative hermeneutic reading in
the United States and the European Union
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17833897
Yurii Oliinyk
1
Correo: yuriy.oliynyk@lnu.edu.ua
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8675-8044
Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine
Ivan Kovalchuk
2
Correo: ivankovalchuk@vntu.edu.ua
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7467-5317
Vinnytsia National Technical University, Vinnytsia, Ukraine.
Nataliia Lesko
3
Correo: leskonataly@gmail.com
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1790-8432
Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine.
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
4
Correo: nataliya.zhyhaylo@lnu.edu.ua
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-2652
Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine
Abstract
In today's complex world, the emergence of authoritarian leaderships, whether far-
right or far-left, creates the conditions for the emergence of discourses and
practices of ideological and legal radicalization and political violence in general.
Given this reality, the objective of this research is to analyze, using a hermeneutic
1
PhD, Department of State History, Law and Political and Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, Ivan Franko
National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine.
2
PhD, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Information Electronic Systems, Vinnytsia
National Technical University, Vinnytsia, Ukraine.
3
Doctor of Law. Professor of the Department of Administrative and Information Law of Lviv Polytechnic
National University, Lviv, Ukraine.
4
Doctor of Psychology. Professor of Theory and History of Political Science, Ivan Franko National
University of Lviv Lviv, Ukraine.
Sección: Artículo científico 2026, enero-junio, año 6, No. 11, 2724-2769
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2725
and comparative methodology, the processes of ideological and legal
radicalization linked to contemporary political violence in the United States and
the European Union, to identify their discursive foundations, institutional
expressions, and consequences for democratic stability and the rule of law in both
contexts. It is concluded that radicalization processes depend more on the
existence of similar structural conditions than on the inevitability of a single model
of radicalism. These conditions include: the severe political fragmentation of
democracies, the delegitimization of traditional elites, the capture of the media by
polarized actors, and, essentially, the inability of the institutional frameworks that
constitute the rule of law to manage recurring social conflicts through peaceful
democratic channels.
Keywords: legal aspects, ideological radicalization, political violence,
institutional crisis, comparative hermeneutics.
Radicalización ideológica, jurídica y violencia política
contemporánea. Una lectura hermenéutica comparativa en los
Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea
Resumen
En el complejo mundo actual, la emergencia de liderazgos autoritarios, de
ultraderecha o ultraizquierda, crea las condiciones de posibilidad para la
emergencia de discursos y prácticas de radicalización ideológica, jurídica y
violencia política en general. Ante esta realidad, el objetivo de la investigación
consiste en analizar, desde una metodología hermenéutica y comparativa, los
procesos de radicalización ideológica y jurídica vinculados a la violencia política
contemporánea en los Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea, con el fin de identificar
sus fundamentos discursivos, sus expresiones institucionales y sus consecuencias
para la estabilidad democrática y el Estado de derecho, en ambos contextos. Se
concluye que los procesos de radicalización, dependen más de la existencia de
condiciones estructurales similares, que de la inevitabilidad de un modelo único
de radicalidad, condiciones entre las cuales destacan: la grave fragmentación
política de las democracias, la deslegitimación de elites tradicionales, la captura
de medios de comunicación por actores polarizados y, esencialmente, la
incapacidad de los marcos institucionales que constituyen al Estado de Derecho,
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2726
para gestionar conflictos sociales recurrentes, a través de vías democráticas
pacíficas.
Palabras clave: aspectos legales, radicalización ideológica, violencia política,
crisis institucional, hermenéutica comparativa.
Introduction
Political leadership has generally been a matter of paramount concern in the
field of critical social sciences and humanities, as it constitutes a central axis for
understanding the configuration of democratic orders and the emergent challenges
facing contemporary societies. According to Ofosu-Anim (2022), far from being
merely an administrative function, political leadership expresses, shapes, and
redefines collective discourses and institutional practices in times of crisis, with
unprecedented impact on processes of polarization and social transformation.
Indeed, as various classic and foundational studies on the subject have
documented —among which Seligman's (1950) work stands out for its heuristic
relevance— both in the past and today in the twenty-first century, the analysis of
leadership in contexts of high complexity reveals that its manifestations bear
directly on the consolidation of governability, the management of conflicts, and
the quality of democracy. This grants leadership a privileged position from which
to explore critical phenomena such as ideological radicalization and political
violence in general.
More precisely, ideological radicalization, legal radicalization, and
contemporary political violence have become substantive categories in debates
concerning leadership and power. As Gaspar et al. (2020) contend, these
sociopolitical phenomena not only challenge traditional frameworks of rational
understanding but also undermine the normative and ethical systems that sustain
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2727
democratic coexistence. In light of this reality, scientific research has
demonstrated that new expressions of political violence rupture classical
dichotomies between legality and illegality, as well as between legitimate conflict
and criminality, positioning hermeneutic and comparative analysis as a
fundamental avenue for unraveling their logics, discourses, and material and
symbolic effects.
In this vein, addressing ideological and legal radicalization demands moving
beyond conventional sociological approaches, instead proposing a qualitative
assessment of political practices, interpretive frameworks, and intersubjective
experiences that shape this phenomenon across multiple scales. According to
Wolfowicz et al. (2021), such approaches make visible how radical discourses, in
interaction with informal or institutional modalities of leadership, generate spaces
for the legitimation of violence and contestation of the democratic order.
In this manner, for the authors of this research, recent events such as the
assassination of Charlie Kirk or assassination attempts against Donald Trump have
underscored the necessity of attending to both the social impact of radicalization
and the contextual factors that facilitate its emergence. This recognition enables
the construction of more comprehensive investigative and policy responses to
political violence in all its manifestations.
The overarching objective of this research is to analyze, from a hermeneutic
and comparative perspective, the processes of ideological and legal radicalization
linked to contemporary political violence in the United States and the European
Union, with the aim of identifying their discursive foundations, their institutional
expressions, and their consequences for democratic stability and the rule of law in
both contexts.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2728
This overarching objective articulates two cross-cutting research questions
that guided the development of the study. First, how do the dynamics of
ideological and legal radicalization manifest themselves in political discourse and
institutional practices related to contemporary political violence in the United
States? Second, in what manner do processes of ideological and normative
radicalization interact with security policies and the legal frameworks for
democratic defense against political violence in the European Union? It bears
noting that these questions are posed with the purpose of fostering a comparative
and situated understanding capable of transcending reductionist explanations and
nourishing critical debates on democratic resilience in today's complex world.
The relevance of the interdisciplinary perspective characterizing this
research lies in its capacity to analyze the diverse—yet frequently
interconnected—pathways of political radicalization and their translation into
normative frameworks and collective action. Following the logic of scholars such
as Astley (2025) and Stephens and Sieckelinck (2021), contrasting the American
reality with the plural dynamics of the European Union allows us, first, to make
visible the contextual particularities and, second, to identify international patterns,
institutional resistances, and divergent trajectories in the management of these
risks to democracy.
The study thus underscores the central function of discourses, policies, and
leadership practices, raising new questions about the efficacy of legal frameworks,
the role of social actors, and the persistence of radicalized leaderships in both
global contexts.
The article is organized into five general sections, from which several
subsections emerge. Following the introduction, the first section is dedicated to
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2729
the theoretical foundations of the research, presenting a selection of seminal
readings that philosophically orient the understanding of ideological
radicalization, legal radicalization, and political violence.
The second section describes the methodology employed, justifying the
hermeneutic comparative option and the criteria for case selection. In the third
section, findings are presented differentiated: first addressing the contemporary
experience of the United States, and then that of the European Union. The fourth
section offers a comparative and critical analysis of the results, highlighting
similarities, contrasts, and possible lessons for both contexts. Finally, the fifth
section presents the research conclusions as well as recommendations oriented
toward public policy and future research agendas in this field of study.
1. Theoretical foundations
The most cited articles on ideological radicalization, legal radicalization,
and contemporary political violence offer decisive contributions at both the
theoretical and methodological levels, configuring an epistemic corpus that
redefines the manner in which critical social sciences and humanities address these
phenomena in the twenty-first century.
One of the foundational works in this field is authored by Borum (2012),
who conducted an exhaustive review of social science theories on radicalization
toward violent extremism. He proposed that radicalization should not be
understood as a linear or uniform process, but rather as a set of diverse processes
that operate differentially according to individuals, contexts, and historical
moments.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2730
Concretely, Borum (2012) argues that ideological radicalization is not
necessarily a precursor factor to terrorism, thereby challenging simplistic
conceptions that equate radical beliefs with political violence and suggesting that
the mechanisms of terrorist involvement require more complex and contextually
situated analytical frameworks. Furthermore, the author makes clear that:
Nearly a decade after declaring war on terrorism, it is apparent now—
if it was not before—that while removing terrorists from the battlefield
and disrupting terrorist plots are, and should be, high priority
objectives, they are insufficient to neutralize the global threat of
violent extremism. A successful effort to counter violent extremism
(CVE) must attempt to stem the tide of new extremists. Assuming that
a specific ideology drives that violence (which is, of course, open to
some debate), has led some to focus on interrupting the
"radicalization" process, referred to here as radicalization into violent
extremism (RVE). (Borum, 2012, p. 8)
In a complementary direction, the work of McCauley and Moskalenko
(2008) represents a substantial advance in the conceptualization of political
radicalization as a dimension of escalating extremism in beliefs, emotions, and
behaviors oriented toward intergroup conflict.
These authors developed a model that distinguishes among opinion
radicalization (extreme beliefs), affective radicalization (intense emotions directed
toward the rival group), and behavioral radicalization (actions that escalate toward
violence). They propose that each of these dimensions responds to specific
psychosocial mechanisms and that, consequently, political violence constitutes the
apex of a broader pyramid of sympathizers. In this regard:
There are many possible meanings of radicalization, but most of the
relevant distinctions can be represented with the usual social
psychological distinctions among belief, feeling, and behavior. Of
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2731
course, it is radicalization of behavior that is of greatest practical
concern. In a political context this means increasing time, money, risk-
taking, and violence in support of a political cause. As every political
cause is associated with a particular group that cares about this cause,
we may equally say that behavioral radicalization means increasing
time, money, risk-taking, and violence in support of a political group.
(McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008, p. 416)
Another high-impact methodological contribution is the systematic study
and meta-analysis by Wolfowicz et al. (2021) on risk and protective factors for
cognitive and behavioral radicalization in contemporary democracies, published
in open access and widely referenced in the specialized literature. This work
examined 127 studies and identified 101 risk and protective factors, concluding
that criminogenic factors—that is, those traditionally linked to criminal attitudes
and behaviors—are the most significant predictors of radicalization, alongside
psychosocial factors such as social alienation, the search for meaning, and peer
influence.
In terms of theoretical-methodological innovation, the 3N model of
radicalization developed by Bélanger et al. (2019) introduces a psychosocial
perspective that articulates three fundamental cognitive needs in the analysis: the
need for personal significance (Need), the ideological narrative that justifies
violence (Narrative), and the social network that facilitates recruitment and
collective action (Network).
This model was validated through the creation of two new psychometric
instruments—a social alienation scale and a political violence support scale—
applied across four different cultural contexts (Canada, Pakistan, Spain, and the
United States). The findings demonstrated that high levels of social alienation
predict greater support for political violence, which in turn predicts the desire to
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2732
join radical groups. Methodologically, this approach represents a significant
advance by offering cross-culturally validated tools that enable systematic
replication and comparison of radicalization processes across diverse contexts.
The authors conclude that morality plays a key role in the political radicalization
process:
The present research examined a radicalization trajectory proposed by
the 3N model of radicalization whereby individuals transition from
losing significance (feeling socially alienated), to adhering to
violence-justifying ideologies, to wanting to join radical groups. In
addition to finding empirical evidence for this model across four
culturally distinct samples, this research showed that moral
justification is one of the mechanisms linking social alienation to
support for political violence. (Bélanger et al., 2019, p. 10)
Beyond their particularities, the theoretical and methodological
contributions reviewed in this section (Borum, 2012; McCauley & Moskalenko,
2008; Wolfowicz et al., 2021; Bélanger et al., 2019) converge on a
multidimensional, contextual, and processual understanding of ideological
radicalization, legal radicalization, and contemporary political violence. From a
conceptual perspective, a consensus has solidified that radicalization is not a
monolithic phenomenon but rather a heterogeneous process influenced by
individual, group, institutional, and structural factors that interact in complex and
nonlinear ways.
Methodologically, the most cited studies (Borum, 2012; McCauley and
Moskalenko, 2008; Wolfowicz et al., 2021; Bélanger et al., 2019) underscore the
necessity of combining consistent quantitative approaches—such as meta-
analysis, predictive models, and multilevel analysis—with interpretive qualitative
approaches that capture the richness of lived experiences, discourses, and
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2733
intersubjective dynamics. This mixed methodological synthesis, together with
cross-cultural validation of instruments and critical attention to specific
democratic contexts, constitutes the nucleus of a mature research agenda that seeks
to understand and, insofar as possible, prevent radicalization without
compromising the foundations of democracy and human rights.
2. Methodology
This research, in keeping with its qualitative epistemological nature, was
developed through a hermeneutic approach that privileges critical interpretation
of contemporary political phenomena linked to ideological radicalization, legal
radicalization, and political violence in advanced democratic contexts. According
to Gibbons (2006), hermeneutics, conceived not only as a method of textual
analysis but as an epistemology of understanding, enables a critical approach to
the discourses and practices of political actors. This approach considers both their
manifest meaning and their latent ideological foundations, their horizons of
meaning, and their institutional effects.
For the authors of this research, this perspective is particularly appropriate
for the study of radicalized phenomena, where political discourses are not merely
rhetorical instruments but rather factors that construct intersubjective realities—
realities that legitimate, mobilize, or challenge existing democratic frameworks
(Foucault, 1981). Consequently, political hermeneutics, as developed in recent
scholarship (Ilieva, 2015), challenges the limits of traditional positivism by
emphasizing the centrality of language, the historicity of interpretations, and the
necessity of a dialogical understanding that acknowledges both the alterity of
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2734
political phenomena and the situated position of the researcher before a socially
constructed reality.
Complementary to hermeneutic comparative analysis, case study
methodology was employed for phenomena falling within the spectrum of
ideological radicalization, legal radicalization, and contemporary political
violence, drawing on the conceptualization of radicalization identified in
Helclová's (2015) work. This approach was applied both to the United States of
America and to the geographic and social space of the European Union.
Fundamentally, four cases of individuals clearly representative of far-right or far-
left political extremism were intentionally selected. In this manner:
Radicalisation is a context-bound phenomenon par excellence. Global,
sociological, and political drivers matter as much as ideological and
psychological ones (European Commission, 2008, p.10). The ever-
changing nature of radicalization makes it hard to define and even
harder to counter effectively (Schmid, 2014, p. 19). In recent years,
the rise of rightwing and far-right political parties across Europe has
reshaped national and international political landscapes. This trend
highlights that radicalization is not only a domestic concern but also a
transnational phenomenon lodged in a broader global political
discourse. The transformation of political landscapes is apparent in the
growing popularity of right-wing populist parties that base their
agendas on nationalism, Euroscepticism, and anti-immigration
rhetoric… (Helclová, 2015, p. 3)
For the United States, the study focused on Donald Trump, a paradigmatic
representative of right-wing nationalist populism, and Charlie Kirk, founder of the
movement Turning Point USA and an emblematic figure of youth conservative
activism.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2735
For Europe, the study examined Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally
(Rassemblement National) in France and a reference point for European right-
wing nationalism, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise and
an exponent of radical anti-capitalist left-wing populism. In all studied cases, a
representative sample of 100 speeches delivered by these figures between 2015
and 2025 was analyzed. These were selected through stratified sampling to ensure
the temporal, thematic, and contextual representativeness of the study.
To support the primary sources—comprised of the political speeches of the
study subjects, commonly published in internationally circulated press releases,
official transcripts of parliamentary interventions, social media statements, and
programmatic documents of their organizations—documentary materials of
proven academic and scientific value were employed.
The secondary corpus consisted of scientific articles published in double-
blind peer-reviewed journals, prioritizing open-access publications indexed in
high-impact international databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. It also
included specialized monographs, academic books, and publications from
websites specialized in studies on radicalization, political extremism, and
violence.
Central importance in the management of documentary sources was given
to the traceability process for primary and secondary sources, which was
structured following the principles of transparency, replicability, and
methodological rigor established by open science, as explained by Edgell et al.
(2025). For primary sources, the date, location, context of enunciation, medium of
publication, and audience of each analyzed speech were systematically
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2736
documented, creating a coded database that enables independent verification and
methodological audit.
For secondary sources, scientific quality criteria were applied, including
peer review, indexation in recognized databases, currency of publications, and
epistemological coherence with the hermeneutic approach of the research.
Furthermore, a cross-verification system was implemented, where each empirical
claim was supported by at least two independent sources, and bibliographic
management software was utilized to ensure correct attribution, citation, and
retrievability of all sources employed. This traceability process not only
strengthened the internal validity of the research but also, and this is most
significant, contributed to transparency and academic accountability.
Finally, in accordance with the parameters established by Bengtsson (2016),
the methodology was developed in five differentiated yet interconnected stages,
in keeping with the hermeneutic and comparative nature of the research. The first
stage consisted of constructing the theoretical framework and delimiting the
conceptual categories—ideological radicalization, legal radicalization, political
violence— through systematic literature review. The second stage involved
intentional case selection and exhaustive collection of political speeches, applying
theoretical sampling criteria until thematic saturation was achieved.
Following this methodological thread, the third stage focused on
hermeneutic content analysis of the discourses, identifying units of meaning,
rhetorical patterns, interpretive frameworks, and discursive strategies through
open, axial, and selective coding. The fourth stage developed systematic
comparative analysis between the American and European cases, contrasting their
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2737
ideological, legal, and contextual dimensions through analytical matrices that
enabled visualization of convergences and divergences.
Finally, the fifth stage integrated the findings through interpretive synthesis,
relating empirical results to initial theoretical frameworks and generating new
analytical categories that enrich understanding of contemporary political
radicalization in the advanced democracies of the Global North.
It bears noting that the adoption of a hermeneutic comparative approach
faces both objective and subjective limitations that require explicit
acknowledgment. Objectively, dependence on public discourses generates a
visibility bias that excludes latent motivations and private deliberations; the
intentional selection of four cases most certainly limits generalization to other
political contexts, and the temporal proximity of the analyzed period (2015–2025)
prevents obtaining the historical distance necessary to identify structural patterns
with clarity.
Subjectively, as inferred from Prager et al. (2019), hermeneutics entails the
inevitable inscription of the researcher's or researchers' interpretation, their
conceptual horizon, and their theoretical presuppositions in the reading of political
texts—biases that, although controlled through validation, cannot be entirely
eliminated. These limitations, far from invalidating the research, situate it within
an epistemological humility that strengthens the credibility of its conclusions by
neither claiming an impossible neutrality in the social sciences nor denying the
sociohistorical conditioning of all knowledge.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2738
3. Results
3.1. Political and ideological radicalization in contemporary european
history: the case of fascism
Political and ideological radicalization in contemporary Europe had one of
its most decisive moments in the interwar period, when fascism emerged as an
ultranationalist, anti-liberal, and anti-communist response to the crisis of the
liberal state and the fear of Bolshevism (Mazower, 2020). According to Strayer
(2015), movements such as Italian fascism and, above all, German National
Socialism constructed an imaginary of national regeneration through organized
violence, the cult of the charismatic leader, and the permanent mobilization of
disciplined masses.
This radicalization was translated institutionally into the concentration of
power in a single party, the elimination of opposition, and the total subordination
of civil society to the state, configuring totalitarian regimes that aspired to control
not only political life but also the cultural and moral sphere (Arendt, 1962). In this
context, fascist ideology thus articulated an expansionist nationalism, biological
racism, and militant anti-communism to justify wars of conquest and genocidal
policies that devastated the European continent. Historically, this radical project
also entailed a deliberate rupture with the European constitutional tradition and
with any legal limit on the exercise of power.
In parallel, as Mazower (2020) argues, the revolutionary communism that
consolidated in the Soviet Union gave rise to another form of ideological
radicalization that also resulted in a totalitarian single-party state. Under the
justification of building a classless society, European communist regimes
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2739
institutionalized the Party's monopoly over the state, a centrally planned economy,
and the systematic repression of political, religious, and national dissidence.
In both the fascist and communist systems, a combination prevailed: a
radical ideology, charismatic leadership (or leadership with charismatic
pretensions), and an omnipresent security apparatus. This produced systems in
which control over information, censorship, and massive state violence were
ordinary instruments of government.
From the perspective of twentieth-century European history, according to
Strayer (2015), fascism and communism generated human tragedies on an
enormous scale—wars, deportations, political famines, and concentration
camps—that marked the continent's collective memory. Both experiences
demonstrated how ideologies of total social control can derive into extreme forms
of domination, nullifying any political pluralism.
Faced with these historical realities, for the authors of this research, the
processes of radicalization and political violence observed today in Europe and
the United States do not mechanically reproduce those totalitarianisms. However,
they do reactivate logics of extreme polarization, exclusion of the "Other," and
delegitimization of democratic institutions that are disturbingly reminiscent of the
1930s. The rise of far-right parties, the strategic use of social resentment, the
diffusion of conspiracy theories, and the normalization of xenophobic or
ultranationalist discourses constitute, without a doubt, alarm signals regarding the
gradual erosion of the rule of law and trust in democratic mechanisms.
As Lempinen (2024) reflects, it is unsurprising that historians and political
scientists insist that structural conditions—economic crises, persistent
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2740
inequalities, cultural insecurity, and the accelerated transformation of media—are
factors that, when combined with radical leadership, can reopen spaces for
authoritarian projects. Consequently, the principal risk is not so much the literal
restoration of fascism or communism, but rather the consolidation of fragile
democracies that, from within, hollow out constitutional guarantees and checks on
executive power in their authoritarian drifts.
As Wiersma (2009) argues, recent historiographical trends regarding
fascism, communism, and radicalization in Europe have shifted from more
structuralist visions toward approaches that integrate political culture, memory,
and everyday experiences. In this epistemological context, current studies
combine comparative regime analysis with research on concrete social actors,
practices of violence, uses of law, and identity construction in totalitarian and post-
totalitarian contexts.
At the same time, intense reflection has developed regarding the "politics of
the past"—that is, how parties, states, and social movements utilize the memory
of fascism and communism to legitimate positions in contemporary debates on
Europe, democracy, and human rights. From our perspective, this
historiographical renewal underscores the need to understand radicalization not
only as a phenomenon of the twentieth century but as a persistent problem whose
historical interpretation directly impacts present political responses.
3.2. Manifestations of ideological and legal radicalization in political
discourse and institutions: the contemporary american case
According to Youngblood (2020), the United States is currently traversing
a political juncture characterized by the intensification of affective polarization,
the weakening of democratic institutions, and the consequent emergence of
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2741
discourses that openly question the foundations of the liberal democratic order.
From a sociological perspective, these conditions configure a breeding ground
conducive to radicalization processes, as the fragmentation of the social fabric,
distrust toward traditional political elites, and generalized perception of
grievance—particularly among segments of the white population experiencing
status anxiety—generate the structural conditions for radicalized discourses to
find receptivity and social legitimation.
Empirical investigations such as that of Gaspar et al. (2020) have shown that
endemic factors like poverty, the presence of organized hate groups, and the
utilization of social networks as spaces for ideological recruitment significantly
increase the probability of radicalization in specific regions of the country. This
reveals that this symbolic phenomenon operates as a "complex social contagion"
requiring multiple exposures and community reinforcement to consolidate over
time and space.
In this context, Donald Trump's rhetoric constitutes a paradigmatic case of
discursive radicalization whose hermeneutic analysis reveals deliberate strategies
of dehumanization of the political adversary and implicit legitimation of violence.
Expressions such as the characterization of his opponents as "vermin" who live
"within the confines of our country" and must be "rooted out" (Trump, 2023, as
cited in Soo and Ibssa, 2023, paras. 6–7), along with the assertion that
undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country" (Trump,
2023, as cited in Gibson, 2023, para. 1), deliberately evoke, in the logic of Arendt
(1962), the vocabulary of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes—particularly the
dehumanizing language employed by Hitler and Mussolini against minority
groups.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2742
Image 1. Donald J. Trump.
Source: The White House, 2025.
Indeed, according to Adetunji (2024), quantitative content analysis studies
have documented that the proportion of violent vocabulary in Trump's speeches
increased from approximately 0.6% in 2016 to 1.6% in 2024, surpassing the levels
of any other analyzed U.S. presidential candidate and approaching the discursive
patterns of authoritarian leaders such as Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro. This
increase in discursive violence does not respond to external events such as wars
but rather concentrates on references to phenomena like crime, immigration, and
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2743
alleged internal threats, thereby constructing a "besieged nation" narrative that
justifies exceptional responses at every turn.
From our perspective, the speech of January 6, 2021, represents the
culmination of this discursive radicalization, where the performative dimension of
political language translated into material violence against democratic institutions.
Phrases such as "We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not
going to have a country anymore" (Trump, 2021, as cited in Naylor, 2021, para.
5), pronounced before a crowd previously radicalized through months of electoral
disinformation, illustrate what speech act theory terms perlocutionary effects—
utterances that, beyond their literal meaning or ambiguity, produce significant
consequences in the real world, as noted by Rozenshtein and Shugerman (2022).
Trump ordered the removal of barriers keeping the armed crowd at a
distance and personally attempted to proceed to the Capitol with his followers.
These actions constitute overt acts that, according to legal-constitutional analyses,
resolve the interpretive ambiguities of his speech and evidence a manifest intent
to provoke the violent interruption of the electoral certification process
(Rozenshtein and Shugerman, 2022).
In this scenario of national tension, in which Trump lost the November 2020
elections to the Democratic candidate Joe Biden, legal radicalization manifests
itself here in the instrumentalization of the legal framework to legitimate
antidemocratic actions, pretending in the process that violence constituted a
legitimate response to an alleged nonexistent electoral fraud.
For his part, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, represents,
according to Cook (2025), a complementary modality of radicalization that
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2744
operates through the normalization of extremist ideas under the guise of rational,
youthful debate.
During his lifetime, Kirk actively promoted the "Great Replacement"
conspiracy theory, asserting without evidence that immigration policies seek to
"diminish and decrease white demographics in America"—a discourse that has
directly inspired perpetrators of white supremacist massacres in multiple
countries. This situation of political radicalization and incitement to social
violence escalated with Kirk's assassination on September 10, 2025, leading some
political analysts to ask:
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, part of a distressing
wave of political violence stalking this country, it would seem that the
United States is coming apart at the seams, poised at the precipice of
disintegration. So much hatred, so much anger, so much toxic rot, and
so many, many guns. We are boiling a poisonous stew. Can anyone
save us? Is there anyone or anything that can possibly cool us to a
simmer, at least? At this time, it appears not—in fact, frighteningly,
the rage that got us to this grim, spooky moment seems only to be
spiraling. (Cook, 2025, para, 1)
According to a study by Hagler (2024), Kirk's rhetoric included assertions
that prominent African American women lack the "brain processing power" to be
considered credible and, furthermore, must have "stolen a white person's spot",
while simultaneously characterizing Islam as "the sword the Left uses to slit the
throat of America".
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2745
Image 2. Charles James Kirk.
Source: (Advocate, 2025).
From a hermeneutic reading, these utterances operate through a strategy of
victimhood inversion, wherein the heterosexual white male is constructed as a
victim of inclusion policies, thereby legitimating resentments that can be
channeled into dynamics of political violence. Kirk's organization maintains
surveillance lists of professors and educational administrators considered
ideological adversaries, configuring practices of institutionalized intimidation that
erode spaces of democratic deliberation (Cook, 2025).
Table 1. Comparative analysis of the discursive strategies of ideological and legal
radicalization and political violence in Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk.
Analytical
dimension
Charlie Kirk
Dehumanization
strategy.
Denies intellectual abilities
to prominent African-
American women. It
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2746
Analytical
dimension
Charlie Kirk
characterizes Islam as a
lethal weapon against
America.
Narrative of the
existential threat.
It promotes the "Great
Replacement" theory as a
deliberate conspiracy
against the white
population.
Legitimization of
violence.
Glorification of white right-
wing extremists as heroes;
promotion of hyper-
masculine rhetoric of
defiance and social
revolution (Cook, 2025).
Legal
radicalization.
Statement that "America is
not a democracy".
Opposition to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 (Hagler,
2024).
Recruitment
mechanism.
University campuses as
spaces for youth
recruitment; Image of
normality for extremist
ideas.
Documented
impact.
Inspiration of white
supremacist violence.
Watchlists of Educators
Considered Progressive
Adversaries (Cook, 2025).
Source: prepared by the authors (2025).
Simplifying for expository purposes, the comparative reading of Analytical
Table 1 reveals convergent and complementary patterns in the discursive strategies
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2747
of Trump and Kirk. Far from constituting isolated expressions of individual
radicalism, these strategies configure a mutually reinforcing communicative
ecosystem where ideological radicalization, legal radicalization, and political
violence systematically feed back into one another.
In this vein, as Kleinfeld (2023) argues, Trump operates from the summit of
institutional power, legitimating through his presidential authority discourses that
in other contexts would be marginal. Meanwhile, Kirk functions as a transmission
belt toward youth audiences, translating extremism into accessible and apparently
respectable cultural codes and signs. For the authors of this research, both figures
share the construction of victimhood narratives in which historically privileged
groups are represented as existentially threatened, thereby justifying exceptional
responses that include violence.
In the current American context, legal radicalization emerges as a
particularly worrying dimension, as both actors explicitly question the foundations
of the liberal democratic order—from the electoral process to the Civil Rights Act.
This questioning prepares the cultural ground for institutional transformations that
would erode the constitutional protections of minorities and dissidents.
From the interpretive coordinates of Gibbons (2006), our hermeneutic
analysis confirms that contemporary political violence in the United States is not
the product of isolated individuals but rather the historical expression of social
processes of systemic radicalization. In these processes, political discourse
operates as a vector of legitimation, mobilization, and, finally, materialization of
political and social violence.
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ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2748
3.3. Interactions between ideological and normative radicalization, security
policies, and legal frameworks in democratic defense against political
violence in the European Union
Since the classic study by Rooduijn et al. (2017), it can be affirmed that the
contemporary European political landscape exhibits a proliferation of radicalized
movements spanning the ideological spectrum from the far right to the radical
populist left, configuring a scenario in which liberal democracies face
unprecedented challenges to their institutional stability.
Radical right-wing populist parties have consolidated significant electoral
positions in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Hungary, articulating
nationalist, anti-immigration, Eurosceptic, and Islamophobic discourses that
question the foundations of the European integration project and, simultaneously,
criticize the values of cultural diversity it entails.
Simultaneously, radical left-wing parties such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos
in Spain, and La France Insoumise in France, among others, have channeled
popular discontent toward anti-establishment narratives. Although divergent in
their objectives, these narratives share with the radical right a fierce critique of
ruling elites and the institutional architecture of the European Union. As might be
assumed a priori, these radicalization dynamics interact in complex ways with
European security policies, generating tensions between the necessity of
protecting the democratic order and the risk of eroding fundamental civil liberties
in the name of extremism prevention (Rooduijn et al., 2017).
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Legal ideological radicalization and
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comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2749
Image 3. Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen.
Source: Wright (2022).
Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (Rassemblement National),
represents the paradigmatic case of right-wing ideological radicalization in the
European context. According to Farand (2018), her discourse articulates a
narrative of existential threat wherein France is besieged by two "totalitarianisms":
on the one hand, economic globalization, and on the other, Islamic
fundamentalism. Following this thread, in her 2017 presidential campaign launch
speech, Le Pen asserted:
Financial globalization and Islamist globalization help each other.
"These two ideologies want to bring France to its knees," and she
added that "we do not want to live under the yoke of the threat of
Islamic fundamentalism," characterizing Islamists as "wolves in a
henhouse" who "establish themselves in certain neighborhoods and
vulnerable minds". (Le Pen, 2017, as cited in Farand, 2018, paras. 4-
5)
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Legal ideological radicalization and
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comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2750
In Vermersch (2022) research, Le Pen's rhetoric is dehumanizing and
constructs the Muslim immigrant as an ontological enemy of French identity,
thereby legitimating exclusionary policies under the mantle of republican defense.
At the same time, Vermersch (2022) has documented that, contrary to the de-
demonization narrative promoted by Le Pen to distance herself from her father,
her rhetoric has not moderated but rather has undergone notable radicalization
where economic themes have ceded space to increasingly marked identity
narratives.
In Seitz (2020) thesis, hermeneutic analysis of Le Pen's discourses reveals
scapegoating discursive strategies that constitute three concrete enemies —elites,
globalists, and immigrants— as responsible for France's ills. In 2010, she
compared Muslims praying in the streets to Nazi occupation, declaring: "There is
much talk of World War II and of occupation, so let us talk about occupation,
because that is what is happening here. There are no tanks, no soldiers, but it is
still an occupation" (Le Pen, 2010, as cited in Seitz, 2020, p. 26). This deliberate
equation of Islam with Nazism constitutes, without a doubt, an implicit legal
radicalization that prepares the ground for policies of exception against Muslim
populations.
Le Pen has promised to close "places of Islamic preaching" and expel
"preachers of hate," transforming the French national border into a symbol of state
security and employing the pretense of threat to argue that open borders contribute
to criminal and terrorist activities (Le Pen, 2015, as cited in BBC News, 2015). In
this manner, her discourse constitutes her followers as "always French patriots,"
proposing a reconstitution of French national identity grounded in far-right ideals
and revolutionary rhetoric (Seitz, 2020).
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Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
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comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2751
For his part, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise, embodies
a different modality of populist radicalization from the left side of the political
spectrum. In Marlière's (2018) words, his discourse constructs an antagonistic
dichotomy between "the people" and "the oligarchy," abandoning the traditional
language of Marxist class struggle in favor of a broad-reaching populist strategy.
In 2010, Mélenchon declared: "People are disgusted with elites. Do they deserve
something better? Let them all go! I am appealing to the energy of the many
against the arrogance of the privileged classes. Am I a populist? Yes, I am!"
(Mélenchon, 2010, as cited in Marlière, 2018, p. 15)
Image 4. Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Source: (Mélenchon, 2024).
As Marlière (2018) argues, the explicit assumption of populism marks a
rupture with the collectivist traditions of the French left. Mélenchon proposes a
"citizen revolution through the ballot box" and, consequently, has promoted the
creation of a Sixth Republic that breaks with the oligarchic institutions of the Fifth
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Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2752
Republic. His rhetoric employs a sense of urgency, anti-elitism, and emotional
mobilization characteristic of populism, though from an inclusive perspective that
seeks to integrate Muslim minorities into "the people" rather than exclude them.
For authors such as Gaudino (2024), analysis of Mélenchon's discourse on
Islam reveals a predominant strategy of "desecuritization" that rejects the
construction of Muslims as a threat to French national security. In 2014,
Mélenchon asserted: "Yesterday they blamed the Jews, today the Muslims. The
objective is simple: divide the people and divert their attention so that the
oligarchy can continue enriching itself" (Mélenchon, 2014, as cited in Gaudino,
2024, p. 6). This narrative displaces the threat to national security from Islam
toward financial capitalism, with particular emphasis on economic inequality and
right-wing extremism.
However, for the authors of this research, hermeneutic analysis also reveals
significant ambivalences: Mélenchon maintains a strong attachment to
French laïcité that limits his defense of Muslim religious freedoms, particularly
regarding the Islamic veil, which he has characterized as a sign of "servitude"
incompatible with republican values.
This is a secular position that generates tensions between his inclusive
rhetoric and his political praxis, revealing that his desecuritization of Islam is more
"managerial"—replacing one threat with another—than "transformative," in the
sense of fully recognizing the religious rights of Muslim minorities in France.
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Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
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comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2753
Table 2. Comparative analysis of ideological, legal radicalization and political violence
in Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Source: prepared by the authors (2025), based on the sources consulted.
Analytical
dimension
Marine Le Pen
(Rassemblement National)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon
(La France Insoumise)
Enemy Building.
Immigrants, Muslims, Globalist
Elites and the European Union as
Existential Threats to French
Identity (Farand, 2018).
Financial oligarchy,
corrupt political elites and
neoliberal capitalism as
oppressors of the people
(Marlière, 2018).
Discursive
strategy.
Securitization of Islam and
Dehumanization of the Migrant;
Rhetoric of Invasion and
Occupation of France (BBC
News, 2015).
De-securitization of Islam
and consequent inclusion
of minorities in the
category of "people";
radical anti-elitism
(Gaudino, 2024).
Ideological
radicalization.
Ethnocultural nationalism;
exclusionary nativism; Structural
Islamophobia (Seitz, 2020).
Left-wing populism;
Jacobin republicanism;
Inclusive civic patriotism
(Marlière, 2018).
Legal
radicalization.
Proposals to restrict citizenship,
close mosques, expel
"propagators of hate" (Farand,
2018).
Proposal of the Sixth
Republic; questioning of
European treaties;
possible exit from the
European Union
(Marlière, 2018).
Relationship with
political violence.
Rhetoric that legitimizes
exclusion and institutionalized
discrimination; Hate Crimes
Inspiration.
Rhetoric of confrontation
with elites; Street
mobilization and tensions
with law enforcement.
Position on
laïcité.
Instrumentalization of secularism
to exclude Islamic religious
practices from the public space.
Strict defense of laïcité
that limits recognition of
Muslim religious
freedoms.
Impact on human
rights.
Erosion of the rights of migrants,
Muslims and ethnic minorities in
general (Passuello, 2024).
Defense of social rights,
but ambivalence about
religious rights of Muslim
minorities.
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Legal ideological radicalization and
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comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2754
The comparative reading of Analytical Table 2 enables understanding that,
despite occupying opposite positions on the ideological spectrum, both Le Pen and
Mélenchon share populist discursive structures that divide the political field into
two antagonistic and irreconcilable blocs, although the contents of these
dichotomies differ substantially.
Whereas Le Pen constructs the boundary between "authentic French people"
and "foreign invaders" through an ethnocultural exclusionary logic, Mélenchon
traces the line between "the people" and "the oligarchy" in socioeconomic terms
that, at least rhetorically, include minorities within the popular field. However,
both question the legitimacy of existing democratic institutions and propose
radical transformations of the constitutional order —Le Pen through policies of
exclusion and national retrenchment, Mélenchon through a republican
refoundation—.
In this socio-discursive context, legal radicalization operates differentially:
in Le Pen's case, through the instrumentalization of the legal framework to
legitimate discrimination against Muslim populations; in Mélenchon's case,
through the questioning of European treaties and the institutional architecture of
the Fifth Republic. In any scenario, these dynamics pose complex challenges for
the European Union's legal frameworks for democratic defense, which must
balance the protection of political freedom of expression with the prevention of
discourses that erode the foundations of the rule of law and the dignity of
vulnerable minorities in the twenty-first century.
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United States and the European Union
Página 2755
4. Comparative and critical analysis of findings: structural
conditions of radicalization in the american and european contexts
For the authors of this research, all evidence suggests that the United States
of America faces a crisis of political legitimacy rooted in profound economic
transformations that have generated what some scholars term the emergence of the
"precariat" class (Cooley et al., 2024). Accelerated deindustrialization since the
1970s, systematic employment precarization, and the exponential concentration of
wealth—where the wealth ratio between high-income and low-income families
shifted from 28:1 in 1983 to 75:1 in 2016—have created conditions of profound
social insecurity among broad segments of the population, particularly among
working-class white men (Cooley et al., 2024).
What distinguishes the American experience is the racial particularity of this
precarity: although economic inequality has affected multiple population
segments, white men experience their relative poverty as an unexpected descent
from their historical racial status, generating a psychosocial phenomenon wherein
status comparison operates in racial rather than purely economic terms
(Youngblood, 2020).
Therefore, it is not irrational to suppose that this phenomenon has created
the political space conducive to the emergence of leaders such as Trump and Kirk,
who discursively capture this anxiety of loss through the promise of "recovering"
a disappeared America, legitimating discourses of racial exclusion and political
violence as instruments of social vindication.
As Torres-Vega et al. (2021) indicate, economic precarization in the United
States is accompanied by institutional weakening of traditional political
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2756
mediations, which translates into: weakened labor unions, political parties
captured by financial elites, and radical disconnection between democratic
discourse and concrete material reality. Indeed, the cited research by Torres-Vega
et al. (2021) on the threat perceived through economic crisis and low
socioeconomic status demonstrates that these conditions produce a "dangerous
worldview" and low perception of sociopolitical control, which in turn generate
authoritarian dispositions regardless of the subject's ideological positioning.
Precisely in this scenario, Trump and Kirk operate within this ecosystem of
vulnerability through the offer of "Manichaean certainties"—the identification of
clearly delineated enemies (foreigners, cosmopolitan elites, minorities) as
supposed bearers of national degradation—that provide their followers both an
explanation for their suffering and a renewed sense of political agency through
participation in radical and neoconservative movements of national restoration.
The discursive and legal radicalization of both actors thus reflects, for the
authors of this research, not so much a coherent ideology but rather systematic
exploitation of the structural fractures (material and symbolic) of the
contemporary American political order, in the present era.
For its part, the European Union presents a divergent, though
complementary, set of conditions that have generated the emergence of radicalized
leaders from both the right and the left. Unlike the United States, where inequality
operates primarily in racial terms, in Europe radicalization articulated itself
initially around the experience of what might be termed "truncated
globalization"—that is, national elites that, while preaching the benefits of free
trade and European integration, simultaneously imposed austerity policies that
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2757
generated massive unemployment, precarization of youth employment, and the
collapse of public services— (Bonansinga, 2022).
In addition to all the foregoing, the 2008 financial crisis, as Charalambous
(2022) explains, and its consequences of European austerity, produced a particular
phenomenon that cannot be omitted from the analysis: whereas in the United
States anger was channeled toward radical right formations through narratives of
racialized national restoration, in Europe radicalized formations emerged
simultaneously from both the radical right (Front National, Rassemblement
National) and the radical left (Syriza, Podemos, La France Insoumise) that, despite
their marked ideological differences, shared a frontal attack on political elites and
the supranational architecture of the European Union in general.
It is our assessment that hermeneutic analysis of European conditions
reveals radicalization operating through a double movement of "nationalization of
the social and socialization of the national". In Marine Le Pen's case, the
experience of economic precarity is capitalized upon, but it is recoded through the
prism of national identity, supposedly threatened by immigrants and the
Islamization of Europe. This offers a promise of national restoration that maintains
intact the capitalist structure while seeking to discipline migratory and cultural
flows (Seitz, 2020).
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, locates the source of precarity in
neoliberal policies driven by French and European elites, offering a "republican
refoundation" that would seek to unravel both economic domination and the
alleged supranational tyranny of Brussels (Marlière, 2018).
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2758
What is significant is that both political actors question the existing
institutional ordering, though from different angles. Le Pen seeks to restore
national sovereignty against "immigrant invasion" and cosmopolitan elites, while
Mélenchon seeks, in his own manner, a democratic refoundation with a new civic
morality that would recover popular control over institutions captured by financial
oligarchy.
The legal dimension of radicalization in Europe thus acquires particular and
differentiating characteristics. Whereas in the United States radicality operates
through the threat of direct violence sustained in presidential power, in Europe it
expresses itself through the promise of institutional transformation that would
erode the foundations of the supranational rule of law inherent to the European
Union as a geopolitical bloc.
Table 3. Comparison of the radicalization process in the U.S. and the European Union.
Aspect
United States
European Union
Economic
cause.
Racial inequality perceived as
extreme by white Americans.
Austerity after the 2008
financial crisis. High levels of
unemployment.
Radical
vector.
Ethnocultural National Restoration
in Trump/Kirk's Speech.
Identity nationalism +
economic anti-elitism.
Discourse.
Manichaean: Clear Internal
Enemies in Migrants, Vulnerable
Groups, and Opponents of
President Trump.
Multiple: divergences on the
origin of the crisis.
Legal
radicalization.
Direct institutional violence
promoted by the executive branch.
Constitutional reform;
questioning the supranational
foundations of the European
Union.
Type of
political
violence.
Direct, immediate electoral threat.
Potentially institutional,
gradual erosion of the rule of
law.
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2759
Aspect
United States
European Union
Legitimation.
Restoring White Socio-Racial
Status.
Recovery of national
sovereignty in Le Pen or
popular democracy in Jean-Luc
Mélenchon.
Threat to the
established
order.
Electoral collapse and immediate
coup d'état.
Institutional dismantling from
within.
Source: prepared by the authors (2025).
The radicalized leaders (Trump, Kirk, Le Pen, Mélenchon) are
simultaneously symptoms and agents of their own political crisis. In this manner,
they are the contemporary architects of the symptoms, not the causes, of
institutional deterioration produced at once by economic precarity and social
radicalization, yet they are also agents who actively accelerate this deterioration
through the normalization of political violence and the erosion of liberal
democratic norms.
The crucial difference is that in the United States the threat appears
immediately existential given its status as the world's foremost power—direct
violence, questioning of the electoral process—whereas in Europe it operates
through gradual institutional erosion from within. In any case, both contexts, with
their political protagonists, reveal that liberal democracy faces a threshold of
collapse closer than optimistic analyses suggest, where the question is no longer
whether democracy will persist but rather under what authoritarian or post-
capitalist forms the current political order will reemerge.
Conclusion
In current circumstances where the human rights paradigm appears to lose
ground before the model of national security, the phenomenon of ideological
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2760
radicalization, legal radicalization, and contemporary political violence, in its
comparative manifestation between the United States and the European Union,
exposes risks of systemic magnitude for the integrity of contemporary democratic
orders whose generalization requires careful reflection.
The pretension of extrapolating radicalization patterns identified in these
specific contexts toward other latitudes or undemocratic political regimes—to put
it mildly—entails the epistemological danger of universalizing the particular,
forgetting that historical trajectories, institutional configurations, colonial
legacies, and political imaginaries shape in irreversibly differentiated ways the
manner in which radicalization phenomena acquire social corporeality and
concrete political effects.
For the authors of this article, it is undeniable that the acceleration of
radicalization processes in both contexts, mediated by digital technologies,
intensified migratory flows, and crises of institutional legitimacy, points toward
structural trends that transcend national borders and that, should circumstances
align, could reproduce themselves in other democracies facing similar fragilities—
particularly in contexts of high economic inequality, social polarization, and
weakening of political institutions.
Well into digital society, the generalization of these risks becomes even
more complicated when we recognize that radicalization operates through
dynamics that mutually reinforce one another and express themselves in
discourses that legitimate violence, in institutions captured by radicalized actors
that end up channeling public resources toward selective repression, and in
vulnerable populations that, confronted with such a scenario, experience
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2761
cumulative erosions of their trust in the state's capacity to protect their
fundamental rights.
What emerges from this reflection is that, without a doubt, political
radicalization is not a discrete event but a systemic process whose territorial and
symbolic extension from advanced contexts toward others of the Global South
depends less on the inevitability of a single model than on the presence of
analogous structural conditions, among which stand out, for example: severe
political fragmentation, delegitimization of traditional elites, capture of media by
polarized actors, and fundamentally, the incapacity of institutional frameworks
that constitute the rule of law to process recurring social conflicts through peaceful
democratic channels.
Now, when we approach the consequences that ideological radicalization,
legal radicalization, and contemporary political violence generate on the effective
enjoyment of human rights in vulnerable populations, abstraction yields before the
concrete experience of structural suffering of persons and communities alike.
Migrants in the American context, particularly those traversing the southern
border, confront a control apparatus whose repressive practices have radicalized
in consonance with the radicalization of dominant political discourses. In this
context, the criminalization of the migrant is not merely a collateral effect but a
logical consequence of interpretive frameworks that construct him or her as an
existential enemy of the American nation while simultaneously denying their
human dignity.
In a scenario of mounting violence, the LGBTQ+ community, both in the
United States and in the European Union, experiences heightened vulnerability
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2762
when radicalized actors, electoral victors, accede to state institutions and utilize
their power to erode legal protection devices conquered decades ago. In Europe,
the ascendance of far-right movements has generated political spaces of greater
hostility toward diverse sexo-gender identities, while in the United States, the
intensification of trans-phobic rhetoric in circles of power of the MAGA
movement has legitimated institutionalized discrimination in healthcare,
education, and employment (Isacson, 2025).
In sum, ethnic and racial minorities, the poor, as well as persons with chronic
illnesses or disabilities occupy particularly exposed places in this map of
vulnerabilities, amplified by political radicalization that in many respects recalls
fascism.
If this research has demonstrated anything repeatedly, it is that radicalization
dynamics are nourished by unjust horizontalities—that is, by the perception that
certain groups enjoy privileges denied to others, generating social resentments that
can be instrumentalized by radicalized actors promising to "recover" supposed lost
status through the re-subordination of even more marginalized groups.
Although typically rendered invisible in their suffering, persons with
disabilities or chronic illnesses find themselves particularly exposed, not only to
direct political violence but also to the erosion of social protection systems, access
to healthcare, and basic services when radicalized governments prioritize austerity
rhetoric or the supposed defense of majorities against "special privileges" of the
most vulnerable minorities.
For these reasons, as Dixson (2024) demonstrates, migrants of Latin
American origin in the United States face, on the one hand, sustained rhetorical
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ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2763
violence and, on the other, institutional deployments that deliberately fracture
families, limit access to education, and generate climates of fear that erode the
exercise of civil, political, and social rights.
Considering that the results of this analysis project toward architects of
public policy and researchers committed to the defense of the rule of law,
recommendations emerge that seek to reverse current trajectories of radicalization
and democratic fragility. First, it is imperative in today's world that democratic
institutions construct solid mechanisms for the protection of human rights that
operate in counter-cyclical fashion—that is, that strengthen themselves precisely
when political pressures seek to weaken them. This implies constitutional
safeguards, autonomous human rights bodies, and guaranteed financing for
institutions that protect minorities.
Second, future research agendas require deepening how legal
radicalization—understood as the transformation of legal frameworks to
legitimate violations of fundamental rights—operates in dynamic interaction with
forces of ideological radicalization, allowing political violence to acquire the
appearance of legality and supposed legitimacy in social representations.
Third, the implementation of public policy must prioritize redistributive
policies addressing the horizontal inequalities that sustain radicalization,
recognizing that the absence of equitable distribution of goods of value—those
tangible and intangible things important to community life—services, and rights
commonly constitute the humus from which radicalized demands emerge.
Finally, the role of organized civil society, community networks, and
alternative public spaces must be strengthened to counteract radicalized narratives
Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2764
through practices of coexistence, recognition of diverse dignities, and the
construction of alternative political horizons where difference and conflict are
processed without recourse to material or symbolic violence.
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Clío. Revista de Historia, Ciencias Humanas y Pensamiento Crítico
ISSN: 2660-9037 / Provincia de Pontevedra - España
Año 6, No. 11, enero-junio, 2026
Yurii Oliinyk
Ivan Kovalchuk
Nataliia Lesko
Nataliya Zhyhaylo
Legal ideological radicalization and
contemporary political violence. A
comparative hermeneutic reading in the
United States and the European Union
Página 2769
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Conflict of interest and originality declaration
As stipulated in the Code of Ethics and Best Practices published in Clío Journal,
the authors, Yurii Oliinyk; Ivan Kovalchuk; Nataliia Lesko and Nataliya
Zhyhaylo; declare that they have no real, potential or evident conflicts of interest,
of an academic, financial, intellectual or intellectual property nature, related to the
content of the article: Legal ideological radicalization and contemporary
political violence. A comparative hermeneutic reading in the United States and
the European Union, in relation to its publication. Likewise, they declare that the
work is original, has not been published partially or totally in another medium of
dissemination, no ideas, formulations, citations or illustrations were used,
extracted from different sources, without clearly and strictly mentioning their
origin and without being duly referenced in the corresponding bibliography. They
consent to the Editorial Board applying any plagiarism detection system to verify
their originality.