manifestos
Definition
Manifestos refers to written documents produced by perpetrators of political violence that are performative and curated in nature, designed as public-facing declarations rather than transparent expressions of underlying belief. Because they are selective, frequently plagiarized, and cover only a minority of perpetrators, treating them as the primary evidentiary source introduces systematic distortion into ideological analysis. Researchers who rely on manifestos as the main unit of analysis tend to perceive incoherence that dissolves when the full corpus of a perpetrator's discourse, including forums, chat logs, and memes, is examined instead. This over-reliance is one of the mechanisms by which the field has generated artifactual findings of ideological mixing or instability in cases that closer analysis would classify along recognizable trajectories.
Sources: Perliger (2026)
Related Terms
- ideology (1 shared article)
- far-right extremism (1 shared article)
- political violence (1 shared article)
- violent extremism (1 shared article)
Applications
Manifestos and Ideological Incoherence
The field's heavy reliance on manifestos as evidence has contributed directly to the rising count of perpetrators classified as ideologically mixed, unclear, or unstable. Because manifestos are performative documents rather than complete records of belief, analysts reading them in isolation encounter apparent contradictions that the broader online participation record frequently resolves into a coherent ideological trajectory. The problem is compounded when analysts already lack familiarity with the intellectual genealogies of violent movements, so that fragmentary source material meets limited interpretive capacity.
Sources: Perliger (2026)
Manifestos and Online Discourse
Manifestos represent only one layer of the discursive record perpetrators leave behind, and a particularly curated one. The full corpus of online participation, spanning forums, chat logs, and memes, provides a more complete picture of ideological commitments and frequently renders cases legible that appeared incoherent when only the manifesto was consulted.
Sources: Perliger (2026)
