Via the good transparency people at Public Intelligence, here’s a presentation from the Justice Department about paths to domestic radicalization. There’s only so much one can tell from briefing slides. But the slides provide an important context: the conspiratorial nature of those who enlist. Notice the “Cosmic Crisis” framework, something that should gladden the heart of any Jack Kirby-obsessed counterterrorist. The world is imperiled; the purpose of Creation has been subverted by a powerful and unjust force; only a privileged few recognize the depths of the crisis.

It should be clear that someone who accepts those premises will find any intellectual force to shove inside of it: religion, politics, war. That’s why the most salient fact about al-Qaeda isn’t its self-proclaimed religious agenda. It’s that they buy into this Final Crisis conspiracy theorism. Religion is the gasoline, not the engine.

I include the Paul Kantner track here because it’s one of the purest musical expressions of a paranoid conspiracy theory that I know. The world is doomed by the corruption of Amerikkka and so the only hope is for the hippies to steal a spaceship and leave earth. (Some of us would consider that win-win.) Obviously there’s no comparison between the Jefferson Starship and al-Qaeda, and that’s why I post it here. Not all conspiracy theorists are violent and dangerous. To its credit, the DOJ briefing points to observable indicators of growing militancy (“each path involves exposure to violence”). However vague that is — it’s a framework, after all — it’s a reminder that you can only avoid false positives by looking at how people act on their beliefs, not the crazy-as-hell beliefs themselves.