Hi. we're back for the second part of our discussion on radicalization with Peter Neumann, the Director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization. hi, again, Peter. >> Hi David. >> Let's talk about a bit some of the things you mentioned with how lucky, was really communicating mostly online with these individuals. it's all the rage these days, especially since Boston, to talk about so-called online recruitment. you know and I talk about the this and not recruitment online radicalization. you know, when I talk about this sometimes, I say, well if you go back to the colonial times then they Washington and Jefferson they must have been printing press radicalization. In the 60's and 70's maybe fax machine radicalization. The fact of the matter is that people are going to communicate through whatever the dominate communication vehicle is of that era. And the internet of course is that today. nonetheless you know, have, do you see that there are some aspects of the Internet that are, make it different from other communications vehicles, that lend itself to, you know, something different and unique about what, what we call online radicalization? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, that's another very important and big issue. And maybe, maybe we kind of, slightly disagree here David. I, I will give you I'll give you, at least two. Maybe, if I can think of a third, I'll give you three. three reasons why it. >> Always gotta be three, right? >> Exactly. why the Internet is different. I mean, the first one. And and a very important one is audio and video. I think that's, that's a very important element. If you, if you look at the, the testimonies and statements that people who've been convicted of terrorism offenses If you look at what they say in court when they speak about their radicalization. Almost all of them talk about videos they'd seen on YouTube. Or on online extremist forums that really shocked them. That created that sense of moral outrage that Marc Sageman was talking about in his in his 2004 book. And the truth is that these are often pictures from war zones, from battlefronts that you simply do not see on TV, that are produced, often by insurgent organizations precisely with the intention to shock people. And that has an impact on people and before the Internet there was no way you could have gotten hold of these videos. And in fact, there's an interesting anecdote. I'd forgotten who, who dug it out, but in the 1990s in London Chechnya was a big issue for, for extremists there. And you wondered, why is there, why, why do people worry about Checnya in London in the 1990s? They are mostly of Pakistani descent, they live in a western country. Why is Chechnya such a big issue? And the answer to that is that, Ethan Katab, who was the leader of the foreign fighters in Chechnya was the first, Islamist radical to start filming every operation they carried out. And he was producing these films, and sending them back to western countries. And in all the radical bookshops in London in the 1990's, you could buy video cassettes from Chechnya, not from any of the other battle fronts. So the people who were interested in that kind of ideology were watching a lot of stuff on Chechnya, cruel things, terrible atrocities happen that you could never see on TV. And that's why they got so animated about Chechnya. Obviously today you have all that on the internet at the tip of the finger and I think that has a profound impact on people that they can see that's point number one. Point number two is, the difference to the printing press, and to the fax machine is, the Internet is interactive. It's not a one-way communication. It actually creates community. You can now go online, and you can be part of an online extremist community which actually functions like a community. You can hang out there for 10, 12, 15 hours, talk to people, chat to people, and have a sense of, of or build a sense of loyalty and friendship to other people that you cannot build to a fax machine, or to a printing press. That's the difference, and I give you one example from a case where I served as an expert witness in, in London two years ago. This was a guy who wanted to, who presumably wanted to go to Iraq and blow himself up, and who was stopped and arrested. And he was someone who was almost exclusively radicalized on the internet. On the day of his arrest, if you had asked him, who are your best friends? He would have given you five names of people he had never met in his entire life, he had only interacted with online, whose real names he didn't even know because he only knew their screen names online. But he would have honestly sincerely considered those people to be his best friends. These are people that he had interacted with ten hours a day for almost two years. And it's hard for people to our age, David, to understand that. but this is where the internet is, there are real communities. There are actual places albeit virtual places where people interact and build relationships. I think that is the real game changer in terms of the internet, you can actually experience communities and build very strong relationships with people. And because that's so important, I leave it with two points. But probably after the end, after the end of the call, I, I'll, I'll be thinking of a third really powerful point. But these are really things where I think the Internet adds something. Or makes something different. I mean, a third point that you could probably mention is that. The internet reduces the threshold, reduces the risk, if you want to, if you're ready to radicalize and you want to connect to a group, because it is relatively anonymous. As we now know, it's not completely anonymous, but it reduces the threshold for reaching out and connecting to other people. If I wanted to join up Al-Qaeda today, you know, sitting in DC, I would not know how to go about that. I would not know where to go. The truth is, if I went to the next mosque, and asked, can I please join Al-Qaeda, the chances of me being reported to the police. Would probably be greater, much greater, than me being able to join Al Qaeda. But on the Internet, I can actually poke around and search around and ask a lot of people without a lot of risk being attached to that. And there may be a small chance that still a higher chance of actually connecting with someone who is actually a violent extremist than if I just went out and started asking people for Al-Qaeda in mosques, in northern Virginia, or in DC. So, the ability to connect the people in far-away places, to find things at a low risk to yourself, is also something that the Internet has facilitated. By the way, all these function. That I just enumerated are true for terrorism. But they are also true for all sorts of other things. You know, the fact that 20 percent of marriages that happen in the United today, have started on the internet. It's something new. It's something genuinely new. it's something that the internet has facilitated. And, so the internet changes our lives. And it would, it would be odd if it wasn't also changing the behavior of parents . Because parents is a human being, too. So I, when I, whenever I talk about online radicalization, I'm saying this is nothing exceptional. It is exceptional only in the sense that, that terrorists are using the Internet to carry out acts of violence, but the Internet is changing all of, all of our lives and same, in the same way that it has changed your life and my life in many respects. It also does the same to terrorists. >> Of course it's also letting students take this course, which wouldn't have been possible even a couple of years ago. I think what's interesting is what you talked about, online radicalization, how related to your initial discussion of. Of the different elements. you know, you talked about the group dynamics as being an important part, and what the Internet has done really, is it's made it easier to have those group dynamics in places where the groups have, possible fellow radicalizers aren't really available. >> And, and. >> And, and you talked about how the you know the opportunity to actually meet with the group and whether it's top down or bottom up. I'm much more of a bottom up person. I don't think there are these huge networks of recruiters. There's some but there's not these huge networks all over the world, especially in the United States, that, that are you know, reaching their tentacles into places to, to try to recruit people. It's really About people who have radicalized, who've taken these ideas and then want to have that opportunity to join, and what you're saying is the internet facilitates that meeting point. I'm thinking about the five young men from Virginia who went off to the [FOREIGN] region of Pakistan to try to join the Taliban, they really couldn't find them. so in some ways, the, you know, the opportunity to, to join is not so easy in the non-virtual world. But, as you've said, it's, it's much easier in the virtual world. >> Yeah. And, and one point I want to add to that, and I agree with everything you've said. Is that of coarse of the past couple of years we had a very intense debate about the concept of the so called lumbell. And these are so called non operated who are not connected to any particular character organization. And was, was they by themselves, and I think, just for the benefit of your students, I want to introduce another important distinction, because what you find with a lot of these so called lawn vogues is that they were highly active on the internet. And even though they were physically on their own, so they were alone, they did not subjectively feel lonely, because they were actually very involved with other people, albeit online. They required a lot of these so-called lone wolves to a part of this online extremist community. Even though they were physically on their own sitting in their bedrooms. Doing it, you know, without anyone surrounding them physically. And I think that's an important distinction, because we're talking about lone wolves. But often, you know? These lone wolves did not feel that they are lonely. They did not experience loneliness. Because they felt that they were surrounded by other people, albeit online, and I think that's, that's what really new. It's not that we're suddenly seeing a lot of people, going off, doing things on their own. The, the, the, the, the incidence of truly, socially isolated people committing acts of terrorism is still very, very small. but what we're seeing is with those so-called lone wolves is people essentially interacting with other people online and having virtual relationships, rather than being entirely lonely or on their own. >> My sense is you think that the lone wolf, wolf phenomenon is is, is much rarer and, and more difficult to achieve. That the Unabomber, and of an example, someone who's truly, truly isolated, it sounds like you think that's a pretty rare phenomenon. >> Well, so the Unabomber is a good example of someone with proved Lombo, because he really was a recluse. He was socially isolated. He didn't, didn't interact with anyone. he was doing this entirely on his own. I can think of maybe a couple of other examp-, contemporary examples. it's worth looking at the example of someone called [INAUDIBLE] Chadwick in the UK. A woman who was a student who became radicalized, and then went off to stab a member of Parliament because he voted for the Iraq war. He was someone that wasn't part of any Islamic societies of [INAUDIBLE] group. She didn't interact with people online. She was online because she wanted to listen to the lectures of [INAUDIBLE] . But she didn't really join any forums. She didn't interact with people. She went off and did this on her own. She's a good example of an actual lone wolf. But most people that are often talked about and lone wolf. Even the Boston bombers. Even though, clearly, they were not on their own. even people like Zack [INAUDIBLE] and others. Or, or, or [FOREIGN] , even. And he was occasionally talked about as the lone wolf. I mean, he was anything but lonely. They were highly active on the internet. They were interacting with other people. >> In the case of the socially isolated [UNKNOWN] is much rarer than we often think. >> Let's talk for a moment as we head to the end about deradicalization. I think we often think about radicalization as Almost like a virus that somebody gets, and inexorably, the virus progresses and progesses and they get very ill and they commit violence. But de-radicalization can happen really at any time And an individual who becomes radicalized is, is not necessarily a, a, a radical for life. So, wh-, what do we know about, you know, de-radicalization. Either de-radicalization that just happens because of the circumstances of individuals, or de-radicalization that happens because of a An actual effort by others to move somebody from being a radical or extremist out of that status. >> Yeah, so I mean it happens all the time, as you indicated. Probably 99.9% of people who Played with radical extremist ideas to not embrace violence so they stop at some, at some point for some reason and there's no inevitability about people becoming terrorists. And and so people will stop all kinds of reason. And, I mean, if you think about de-radicalization processes, if you wanted to engineer them, if you wanted to, as, as a matter of policy, bring them back, you would have to, first of all, go back to maybe these three elements, and think about how you can address these three elements. And indeed A lot of counter radicalization de-readicalization polices are about resolving the conflict or the grievances that led someone perhaps to be open to extremist ideologies. They are about counter messaging, they are about debunking the ideological claims that are being made by extremists. And they are thirdly about getting people out of the group context that they used to be in. Because even as someone stopped believing in the cause, quite often they find it hard to leave a group that they considered to be friendly, they considered to be close to, etc. etc. So a lot of de-radicalization programs where those have been executed are aimed at facilitating those three elements. Solving the grievances, countering the message, and getting people into a new social context. Maybe re-establishing links to the family. Establishing moderate ties so that you're not completely dependent on radical elements. So those are the three anecdotes if you want to the radicalization process. But there are also other elements. We know from psychological research for example that people leave groups quite often because they feel disillusioned Because they realized that there is a gap between their claim and the reality that often needed these groups not live up to be ideal of the group. And they often come to a disapprove of for example, the violence that is being used. For example the fact that Alquieda. In the particular case of Al-Qaeda, that Al-Qaeda killed more Muslims than, than Westerners or Jews or crusaders or whatever they considered to be legitimate targets. And so it's not only about countering those three elements of the radicalization process, it's also about leveraging All these doubts that people might have, these feelings of disillusionment, and these potential problems that they encounter in terms of those gaps between claim and reality. That's what kind of radicalization possibly should be about. It should be about trying to, you know, facilitate all of the problems and doubts. And, you know, these, these kind of ideas that people may have that may lead them to leave a particular group. And now just to, you know addressing the second part of your question there are different methods that have been used. In a lot of Muslim majority countries, there are so-called de-radicalization programs. They are often based in prison. they are there to deal with people who've been either convicted or charged with terrorism-related crimes. There are so called exit programs in a lot of Western European countries. They've been used with some success for white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And they are basically offering people who are part of these groups an opportunity to exit those groups. And then, there's so called intervention programs, which are aimed at people not at the point. Where there are already members of these groups. But where they are believed to be on the verge of joining these groups. And the idea of intervention programs is that you give people one last opportunity, maybe, to, to, not go further and join a violent group. So there are different varieties of these programs. It's all very new. And this is something where a lot of research will probably be done in the coming years and then probably something that will be very interesting and exciting. >> Well, Peter Newman you've been incredibly generous with your time. Is there any last word you want to leave the students from all around the globe taking this course, a final thought you would like to leave them with. >> Well, going back to the beginning in saying that there is no Holy Grail radiclization, there is not one formula. There is not one set recipe for that process really you always have to look at how people radicalize and embrace extremeist ideas in particular context at particular points in time. That's really important. >> Well again thank you so much for your time it's been a great discussion and we're very grateful for you participating in this mass online course. Thank you. >> Thank you for the opportunity David. Thank you.
