Journal for Deradicalization
Not a member yet
320 research outputs found
Sort by
Strategic Communications in FTF Repatriation & Reintegration: Guiding Principles for Policymakers & Practitioners
Full text linkWith the recent surge in the number of countries willing to repatriate and reintegrate their citizens from camps in Iraq and Syria, policymakers and practitioners around the world are revisiting their approaches to the management of foreign terrorist fighter (FTF) returnees and their families. FTF management policy and practice has significantly evolved in the last decade driven by a growing body of empirical research and a greater awareness of best practices. Despite these advancements, the role of strategic communications in FTF repatriation and reintegration is too-often absent or, at best, underappreciated, by scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike. Yet, interviews with policymakers and practitioners in this field reveals that they are often directly (e.g. as spokespeople) and/or indirectly (e.g. advising to public figures) engaged in public messaging. Without appropriate policy cover and practical guidance, public messaging risks becoming an inadvertent amplifier of policy missteps, public misunderstandings, and malign influence activities. This policy paper argues for an approach to strategic communication in FTF management that is multidimensional, integrated, adaptable, and crosscutting. To these ends, it offers a framework of guiding principles for strategic communication in FTF management that is relevant for both policymakers in government and practitioners in non-government roles
Being capable, yet helpless, in an egalitarian society: Are more educated individuals always less likely to support political violence?
Full text linkWhile some theoretical models of radicalization suggest that less educated individuals are drawn towards political violence due to grievances, others highlight circumstances in which more educated individuals may be more inclined to participate in violent collective actions. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis have not provided any firm conclusions regarding the role of education in determining radicalized attitudes and behaviors. The goal of this study was to provide a systematic overview of bivariate and interactive relationships between the level of education and support for political violence across countries. Therefore, multilevel regression analyses were applied to the World Value Survey data (seventh wave). Next to testing the linear relationship, the focus of this study was to test the relationship between education and support for political violence in circumstances which, according to theories of radicalization revolving around grievance, should undermine the protective role of education. Therefore, the cross-level interaction between education, attribution of success (to hard work or luck and connections) and egalitarianism in a society (measured on the country-level) was also tested. Results of the conducted analyses suggest that education has a weak protective role against support for political violence, although this role depends on the context. More precisely, education loses its protective role only among individuals who attribute success dominantly to luck and connections instead of hard work (i.e., perceive hard work as not an ineffective way of achieving success) and live in egalitarian societies.
Acknowledgement:
The work of Tomislav Pavlović was financed by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ; DOK-01-2018)
See No Evil, Fear No Evil: Adolescents’ Extremism-related Media Literacies of Islamist Propaganda on Instagram
Full text linkIslamist extremists are a group that pose a particular threat not only due to their proneness to violence but also because they recruit transnationally, utilizing freely accessible social media platforms such as Instagram. One of their key target groups is adolescents, a group that is particularly vulnerable and in need for orientation due to a variety of life-stage-specific challenges. As a result, adolescents are particularly susceptible to external influences on platforms such as Instagram. Recognizing this, Islamist extremists focus their strategic communication on adolescents, using a variety of strategies for both their messaging and the format of their content on Instagram to make it appealing to this group. To protect adolescents, the importance of extremism-related (media) knowledge is emphasized. However, the transfer of knowledge to action is not without preconditions. This paper is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 adolescents in Germany and examines how they apply their knowledge on Islamist extremism when using Instagram and whether, and why, a break between knowledge and action occurs. The study reveals several individual, situational, and message factors that interfere with the process and deter adolescents from applying their knowledge and protecting themselves
Qollateral: The Impact of QAnon on Loved Ones and the Potential for P/CVE Programs to Help
Full text linkSince 2017, the conspiracy theory known as QAnon has boomed in popularity and spread across national borders. While QAnon is linked to various violent criminal acts, including the January 6th riots on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., there is abundant anecdotal data to suggest QAnon also has destructive relational effects on the loved ones of its adherents. While these Q-believers and their loved ones would benefit from psychosocial support, they either do not seek help or are unable to find the type of support they need. By conducting an original survey of 473 family members and friends of Q-believers, this study adds to a nascent but growing body of research documenting the negative collateral effects of conspiracies on loved ones and their need for professional and psychosocial support. Our findings indicate that younger, immediate family members who live with the Q-person experience the greatest negative impacts from their loved one’s belief in QAnon. While this group expressed the highest level of need and desire to access psychosocial support services, they also reported the most barriers to accessing these services. Among these barriers, many respondents identified a lack of QAnon-informed or -specialized support services. These findings suggest that programs aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) are uniquely positioned to help Q-believers and their loved-ones, as well as to build capacity among health and social service providers to increase the support available to this population
Outsider Women: Understanding Women’s Roles in White Supremacist Deradicalization
Full text linkPrior scholarship has suggested that women of color and other outsiders (i.e., those not affiliated with White supremacist hate groups) have significantly facilitated the deradicalization of White supremacist hate group members. However, few empirical studies focus on the lived experiences of outsider women who have helped hate group members disengage and deradicalize. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to explore the experiences of women who facilitated the disengagement and deradicalization of White supremacist hate group members. The first author conducted interviews among four women who had significant experience regarding the phenomenon of interest. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) as a methodological framework, the authors identified five themes from participants’ rich descriptions of their experiences facilitating hate group exit: (a) identifying love as driving force behind exit facilitation, (b) developing their exit facilitation approach, (c) experiencing costs of helping others exit, (d) identifying areas for increased external exit support, and (e) offering recommendations for hate group exit facilitation. By examining this specific population, we hoped to gain insights into new avenues of development for disengagement and deradicalization interventions.
Editorial Note: An error was corrected in Table 1 in the annex. A corrected version was uploaded an published January 11, 2024
Online Radicalization Case Study of a Mass Shooting: the Payton Gendron Manifesto
Full text linkScholarship on the radicalization processes that lead to violence has consistently suggested there are limitations to online radicalization models noting that offline connections to extremist groups are typically required, as well. As the extent to which people’s social and political identities are increasingly online, this research investigates how content consumed online may correlate to rationales for violent action. Exploration of this thesis was carried out in a case analysis of Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron. Specifically, the manifesto he created prior to the attack overtly argues that his radicalization was informed entirely by online spaces, even listing the specific sites that were instrumental to his radicalization. The manifesto was evaluated in terms of where the content came from and the extent to which the document was plagiarized from specific online sources. Results suggest that the rationale provided for the attack was almost entirely sourced from the online sites Gendron claimed were foundational to forming his ideology. This suggests consistency between his claim to have been radicalized online and the radicalizing spaces online he frequented. Results are considered in the context of various deradicalization and radicalization prevention strategies
Book Review: ‘Intention is not method, belief is not evidence’: Civic Education and Prevention with Former Right-Wing Extremists in German Schools
Full text linkThis article reviews Antje Gansewig’s “‘Intention is not method, belief is not evidence’: Civic Education and Prevention with Former Right-Wing Extremists in German Schools” (2022)
Differentiating Violent and Non-Violent Extremists: Lessons from 70 Years of Social Control Theory
Full text linkP/CVE programs engaging in primary (prior to radicalization) or secondary (following exposure to radicalizing influences) prevention are often predicated on delivering interventions to individuals or groups at-risk of engaging in violent extremism. Preventative actions must take place before the potential negative outcome; however, additional research is still required to identify and empirically validate the factors that distinguish violent from non-violent extremists. In the interim, P/CVE programs have instead targeted all individuals within a community or those deemed “at-risk” of adhering to extremist belief systems or movements. Due to resource limitations, this approach dilutes the allocation of resources to individuals and/or communities with higher propensities for extremist violence and may incidentally increase the likelihood of violence. This paper argues that empirical and theoretical insights from criminological theories of social control can enhance the understanding of violent extremism and can be used to tailor P/CVE programs. Unlike most criminological theories, social control theories focus on why people do not commit these acts, giving it a unique perspective on identifying how to prevent violent extremism. Drawing on 70 years of research, we explore how variation in various forms of control can explain differences in extremist offending. We hypothesize how the antecedents to low social control may be connected to violent extremism and propose a research agenda to test these hypotheses. Finally, we examine how existing measures of self-control can be incorporated by P/CVE programming to better distribute services to their target population and reduce the risk of adverse outcomes
Framing local collaboration among frontline workers in the field of preventing violent extremism
Full text linkLocal collaboration among frontline workers is probably one of the main challenges for the PVE field. Many Western countries working in this field have developed multi-agency models to address this problem and there is a growing interest in the literature on these challenges. However, few efforts have attempted to analyze these issues theoretically and empirically. Thus, this article aims not only to provide empirical information from practitioners' field experience on these issues but also to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for interpreting them. To this end, frame analysis theory has been used to describe and understand the challenges of collaboration in this field. A total of 90 participants from 64 organizations in 27 countries were interviewed for this study. Personal ties, professional alignment, conflicts of interest, law enforcement involvement, governmental framework, competition, and time invested in collaborative efforts were highlighted as the main factors explaining the success or failure of local collaboration.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by Public Safety Canada
Guerre Révolutionnaire, Counter-insurgency, and U.S. Domestic Extremism
Full text linkThere is no shortage of academic literature regarding U.S. military veterans and their susceptibility to domestic extremist recruitment. However, this essay identifies a new potential culprit: military doctrine itself. Around 2006, amidst a deteriorating situation in Iraq, the U.S. military looked to history for innovative ideas on how to address a deteriorating counter-insurgency conflict. Unfortunately, they drew from several dubious historical examples, most notably, the documents crafted by French theorists during and after their 1954-1962 war in Algeria. We theorize that by heavily citing these French theorists without considering their conspiratorial underpinnings known as guerre révolutionnaire, the resulting product (FM 3-24, Counter-insurgency) inadvertently legitimized guerre révolutionnaire’s philosophies to U.S. military members. With the rise in domestic extremist groups correlating with FM 3-24’s publication, we examined whether guerre révolutionnaire’s concepts were present in modern extremist rhetoric. While it was not possible in this introductory study to establish a direct relationship between FM 3-24 and the rise in U.S. domestic extremism, we find that 1) guerre révolutionnaire’s tenets are present in U.S. extremist rhetoric, 2) there are subtle differences in rhetorical attitudes between veteran and non-veteran domestic extremists within their respective groups, and 3) previous concerns regarding the improper use of history for doctrine appear valid. Finally, we consider these results in the context of future studies regarding FM 3-24’s effects and the need for an interdisciplinary approach