ABSTRACT
A new type of political violence among young people has begun to gain momentum throughout Europe. In earlier work I have argued that the explosive sociality of direct confrontation between rival social m ovem ent action groups a n d /o r w ith the police riot squads is providing the cement for their collective identity construction. (Peterson 1995 and 1997) In this chapter I will discuss the contemporary phenomenon of the explosive sociality of militant political groups in contemporary complex societies in light of classical sociological theory. As early as 1903 Gustav Le Bon predicted that we were entering the "era of crowds", a phenomena of emotional intensity and potential revolutionary upheaval. (Le Bon, 1912) The phenomena in post-modern societies has been eloquently theorised in terms of "neo-tribalism" by Michel Maffesoli (1995) and Zygmunt Bauman (1993) as a societal process of expressive identity construction. Less eloquently, the phenomena has been discussed by Hans Magnus Enzenberger (1993) as the expression of mindless violence by roaming urban gangs (Cf. Peterson, 1994 for a critique) and bombastically theorised by Stepjan Mestrovic (1991) as post-modern forms of irrationalism, cynicism and disenchantment. (Cf. Peterson, 1996b for a critique) What insights can fin de siecle social theorists lend towards an understanding of collective identity formation among m ilitant social movement groups and organisations today?
