The attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, which, in taking the lives of 11 worshipers, represents the worst attack on the Jewish people on US soil. The shooter was explicitly anti-Semitic and white supremacist, telling the SWAT officer who apprehended him,”They’re committing genocide to my people. I just want to kill Jews.” An investigation into his history showed he had spat virulent anti-Semitism to no one in particular on alt-right social media platform of choice Gab and collected an arsenal of weapons.
His actions follow two years of anti-Semitic rhetoric becoming a louder and more explicit part of the general white supremacy that has leapt into the mainstream discourse since the election of Donald Trump.
While Australia is in some ways insulated from the kind of extremism faced by the US, it’s worth taking note of where Australia’s discourse is at. In Monday’s Daily Telegraph, fresh reports of neo-Nazis infiltrating the ranks of the Young Nationals were published.
We have had explicit white nationalists interviewed on Sky News (again and again), Nazi slogans referenced in maiden speeches and white supremacist motions voted up by the sitting government in the Senate. Only last year, a racist group surrounded and menaced a Australian senator, for no reason other than his Iranian heritage. As Guy Rundle wrote in these pages, it seem more a case of when, rather than if, fascist violence makes its way to Australia.
The question of how we respond to radicalisation is increasingly relevant.
It all grows from the same soil
“The process and structure of radicalisation and extremism,” J.M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, told The Atlantic, “are the same in different kinds of movements, even when the content of the extremist belief is different (such as with neo-Nazis and jihadists).”
Extremist groups rely on a crisis-solution construct, says Berger. “The in-group [the ideological group, say, neo-Nazis or ISIS members] is afflicted with a crisis that is blamed on the out-group [people excluded from that group as enemies and threats, say, non-believers or non-whites] and the extremist movement is presented as offering a solution to that crisis, which is often violent. The crisis is defined as being intrinsic to the identity groups involved, rather being than situational or temporary.”
Prior to entering politics, Dr Anne Aly was a counter-terrorism academic — she told Fairfax back in 2014 that the indoctrination, the manipulation into feeling you have no choice but violence is also the same across jihadists and white supremacists. “It is the same as white supremacy groups. They become a group or hive mentality,” she said.
Social groups and masculinity
Happy people don’t plant bombs, and happy people don’t behead people, and happy people don’t paint swastikas on synagogues. It’s just not the case. Disenfranchised, lonely, self-loathing people do that.
Christian Piccolini, Co-founder Life After Hate
On one level, these guys feel that they have been emasculated. They feel humiliated. They feel like they’ve lost something that they were entitled to. It’s aggrieved entitlement. They also feel like what was rightfully theirs has been given to people who don’t deserve it. Like black people: Well, they’re not real men. Or gay men: Well, they’re not real men. They’re effeminate. Or Jews: They’re not real men. So the constant theme is the masculinity of the Other. So, you join up and you get your masculinity back.
Michael Kimmel, author, Healing from Hate
Experts (and former members of violent racist groups) routinely point to social and familial isolation as a risk factor, often combined with a sense of injustice or persecution afflicting a group with which the individual identifies. Tony McAleer, a former member of violent white supremacist group White Aryan Resistance, says people who leave such groups are at risk of relapsing, partly just due to loneliness. “Early on, formers have to spend time in a void where they don’t have a social circle. That can feel worse than the dysfunction of the old group, and that’s when people go back.”
It takes a while
People are not in the group one day and out of the group another day… people have to exit on many levels. They have to exit in the sense of breaking their ties with people, changing who they’re hanging around with. They exit in terms of leaving the lifestyle, maybe the criminal actions or the violent actions they were associated with. And they exit in terms of changing their ideas.
Distinguished professor of sociology Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh
And one size does not fit all. “There is no easy way. It is in-depth and a lot of work. You have to deal with each case intensively,” Aly said
It’s ultimately on the individual
It is worth noting that many of the leaders of “exit programs” made their way out of the movement based on individual transformative moments rather than external pressures. For McAleer, it was the birth of his daughter. For Frank Meeink and Angela King, it was the Oklahoma City bombing. For others it was stretches in prison. For many of those who leave, the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of white supremacist movements simply pile too high to be ignored. As Piccolini puts it, one has to incrementally help the person change their perspective:
Because often when you change their perspective just a little bit, it allows them to see the cracks in the foundation of the ideology that they believe in. I don’t force it. I let them come to the conclusion on their own.
Twittler loves to stoke the hate, then pretend to be appalled at the obvious consequences of his hate-mongering. Yet then still happens to find a way to blame those who are the victims of these hate-crimes. The sooner the Cheeto in Chief is removed from office, the better for everyone.
Apart from the reaction of his lumpen base, do we really want Mike ‘Gilead’ Pence in charge?
Deradicalisation must be tailored, but so many root cause denominators are evident.
Acceptance of this is politically complex, so thanks for the reminder Charlie.
I am sure that you are aware of the perils, Charlie, of generalising from particular instances. If we wish to become philosophical about the matter we could identify the absence of tolerance in any form of religious fundamentalism – or political fundamentalism come to that. To the fundamentalist there are no “innocents”; all “others” are complicit. Such sentiments have nothing to do with logic and they are not intended to have any association other than to aid or facilitate the action.
Summing up the quotes that you present (and others elsewhere have put it better) the behaviour occurs when a sense of superiority presents itself that that has become indistinguishable with Infallibility. In large measure such individuals and groups have been omni-present since ancient times. With the convenience of smart phones and farce bonk the allegiances that were not possible previously, or possible only to a much diminished extent, can be co-ordinated into joint-efforts rather rapidly. Cafes being held up and similar events can be expected to increase.
Abetted in these acts of civil disdain or contempt is the cultural relativism that the post modern schools of thought have encouraged; a classical case of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice – and not to be confused with the film. The tolerance towards an alternative point of view has been replaced with an obligation to remove the dissenting voice from the landscape. In this regard PC can take a bow too.
In your reference to the ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ I take it you mean that the intended use of the internet to make our work easier, has also come with a price. We can’t control the misuse of this creation for purposes unintended. That is, the ability of previously disjointed bigots to connect.
As for your other inference, re PC, how can (through exercising the right of free speech) the practice of defending the human rights of ALL, by sensoring hate speech, be considered intolerance? Is the tolerating of intolerance what you consider to be tolerance?
Trump’s not happy, of course, because his narrative is to denigrate the incoming migration column, and these “local idiots” keep taking the focus off him and his own hate speech.
Like junkies, drunks or smokers, the light bulb has to want to change.
It’s one thing to denounce but surely some attention to the root causes of estrngement wouldn’t go astray?
As noted in the article by Piccolini, happy people don’t seek weird beliefs – when has a religious convert, whether happy-clappy or Sinead O’Connor ever said, “Well, I was bopping along happily, smiling and smelling the roses when suddenly…”?