Domestic Extremism in Europe - Athena Institute

The main arguments of the Securitization theory are:
first, security threats do not just exist ‘out there’.
Threats are social products. A thing becomes a
threat only when social agents construct it as such. A
special case of securitization is societal security,
which is concerned with threats to identity. The
referent of security is not the state, but social groups
that have a common ‘we’ feeling that they feel is
under existential threat. In the case of societal
security one can clearly see a basic mechanism of
security, the drawing of boundaries between ‘us’ and
‘them’. Whatever threatens that ‘we’ is an enemy
that needs to be eliminated or neutralized before it
‘kills us’.
People need security, as much as they need the
feeling that they belong to a bigger collective. Thus,
there is a certain demand for security from the
population. If the state loses its credibility as a
provider for that demand, the door is open for
other voices to securitize on behalf of society.
Leading members of political extremist groups
articulate speech acts that speak on behalf of the
Domestic Extremism in Europe - Threat Landscape 42