Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Katie Couric Media. Hi, everyone, welcome to
Speaker 1: Next Question. I'm Katie Couric. About two and a half
Speaker 1: years ago, a white nationalist by the name of James
Speaker 1: Fields Jr. Plowed his car into a crowd protesting the
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. This rally, close
Speaker 1: to thirty people were injured. Thirty two year old Heather
Speaker 1: Higher was killed. What did what did you think of
Speaker 1: what you saw today here in Charlotte's Ville. I've never
Speaker 1: seen so much hatred in the eyes of my fellow
Speaker 1: human beings in my life. We are in very deep trouble.
Speaker 1: This country is in deep trill. I was there that
Speaker 1: day and since then, at least seventy three murders can
Speaker 1: be tied to the radical right wing extremist movement James
Speaker 1: Fields Jr. Embraced That includes, of course, they hate fuel
Speaker 1: shootings in Pittsburgh, Poway, California, and El Paso, Texas. In
Speaker 1: many of these cases, the perpetrators adopted the disturbing views
Speaker 1: of a broad Internet savvy movement made up of different
Speaker 1: misogynistic and white nationalist groups. In online forums and on
Speaker 1: social media. The suspect in today's mass shooting at the
Speaker 1: Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh had an extensive anti Semitic,
Speaker 1: anti Jewish digital footprint. Law enforcement officials in Texas say
Speaker 1: they believe he wrote a roughly six hundred word essay
Speaker 1: on the Internet and posted it an hour or so
Speaker 1: before the shooting that says the attack was motivated by
Speaker 1: anti immigrant hatred. Today, that's where hate spreads, not through
Speaker 1: top secret word of mouth meetings, but out in the open,
Speaker 1: on places like four chant and Reddit, and even YouTube
Speaker 1: and Facebook. People who feel lost or left behind, or
Speaker 1: maybe just looking to rebel are radicalized almost exclusively online,
Speaker 1: often without ever meeting anyone face to face. The technology
Speaker 1: itself is a big part of the problem. The algorithms
Speaker 1: on sites like YouTube encourage users to stick around by
Speaker 1: serving up ever more extreme examples of whatever topic they're
Speaker 1: engaged with. To be clear, not everyone who spends time
Speaker 1: in these virtual spaces will go on to commit horrific acts,
Speaker 1: but the marching orders for many of these groups are
Speaker 1: usually pretty explicit. True believers are encouraged to bring people
Speaker 1: with mainstream views so called norm e s, into the fold.
Speaker 1: And to ultimately take real world action against the groups
Speaker 1: they believe are threatening their way of life. That means
Speaker 1: people of color, women, lgbt Q individuals, and members of
Speaker 1: other marginalized communities, which brings me to my next question,
Speaker 1: how can we stop the spread of radical extremism online
Speaker 1: and keep people from becoming radicalized in the first place.
Speaker 1: My first guest knows from experience just how easy it
Speaker 1: can be to get sucked into this world. Three years ago,
Speaker 1: when he was just thirteen years old, he turned to
Speaker 1: the Internet as a way to escape a lonely stressful
Speaker 1: time at school. The community he found there gave him
Speaker 1: some dangerous ideas about who was actually to blame for
Speaker 1: his problems. In a jaw dropping anonymous account for Washingtonian Magazine,
Speaker 1: his mom opened up about forums where her son, who
Speaker 1: she calls Sam, spent countless hours and the toll his
Speaker 1: newfound beliefs took on the entire family. Sam, I knew
Speaker 1: you were having a pretty tough time emotionally when you
Speaker 1: were thirteen years old. What was going on back then?
Speaker 1: I had a kind of traumatic experience in eighth grade,
Speaker 1: and uh, my parents didn't really like how the school
Speaker 1: handled it, so they ended up pulling me out of
Speaker 1: the school, um, which just led to a lot of
Speaker 1: like confusion on my part, and it just made me upset.
Speaker 1: You know, I had to find new friends. I had
Speaker 1: to you know, kind of remake my mark on my
Speaker 1: new school. What happened exactly that made you feel this way?
Speaker 1: My friend and I were joking around and some people
Speaker 1: took it out of context and went to the school,
Speaker 1: and the school handled it really poorly, said you were
Speaker 1: sexually harassing. Yeah. They said I was sexually harassing these
Speaker 1: two girls, which wasn't the case, and the girls didn't
Speaker 1: even think it was the case. Um, and the school
Speaker 1: kind of they just had their sexual harassment training, so
Speaker 1: they were really on edge about that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they handled it pretty poorly. They said that I
Speaker 1: was bullying the girls. And then eventually it just got
Speaker 1: to a point where I said, okay, like it's time
Speaker 1: to go. And so you changed schools and you were
Speaker 1: feeling pretty isolated, lonely, I guess a little angry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was upset with the school. I was upset that
Speaker 1: I had to leave. I was, you know, angry that
Speaker 1: you know, my old friends weren't you know, in I
Speaker 1: wasn't in as much contact with my old friends as
Speaker 1: I like as I'd like to be. So you turn
Speaker 1: to the internet. What was the process that opened this
Speaker 1: door to the people you got involved with at least online.
Speaker 1: One of my friends at my at my new school
Speaker 1: UM decided to show me Reddit, which I had never known,
Speaker 1: so he was showing me some subredits, like there's one
Speaker 1: called r slash dank Memes that he was showing me,
Speaker 1: which was just a subredit for like internet jokes and memes.
Speaker 1: Um harmless enough, yeah, harmless enough. Seemingly the memes on there,
Speaker 1: I didn't really understand a lot of them. A lot
Speaker 1: of them were talking about right wing politics or um,
Speaker 1: you know, race issues or gender issues, you know, about
Speaker 1: women lying about rape, or about just in general, like
Speaker 1: like gender politics, about gay people, and you know, at first,
Speaker 1: I had come from a friend group that was pretty liberal,
Speaker 1: so I didn't really understand the memes or get them.
Speaker 1: But I started to look them up. And the more
Speaker 1: and more that I started to see the memes and
Speaker 1: I started to relate to them, the more I wanted
Speaker 1: to be part of that community since I didn't have
Speaker 1: friends to fall back on. So did you get involved
Speaker 1: in these chat rooms. I guess that's a very unequated
Speaker 1: way of describing it. Well, um, I decided to apply
Speaker 1: for a moderator position on our slashdanc memes, and a
Speaker 1: moderator is just someone who controls content that goes on
Speaker 1: the subredituh, deletes posts, you know, flags them. So I
Speaker 1: started getting in with the moderator community and a lot
Speaker 1: of the moderators that were there, there's like a group
Speaker 1: chat basically something called discord where you can talk to
Speaker 1: them about everything, talk to them about posts, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them were, you know, members of the alt
Speaker 1: right or at least believed in the philosophy. So you know,
Speaker 1: these people were basically my friends for a little bit,
Speaker 1: or at least they convinced me that friends. So what
Speaker 1: kinds of things would they say and what kinds of
Speaker 1: things would you say? They would say like on our
Speaker 1: group chat they would say like these liberal snowflakes can't
Speaker 1: handle the fact that science says they're only two genders
Speaker 1: and just stuff like that. Or they'd say like, you know,
Speaker 1: gay people, you know, aren't they aren't like genetically okay,
Speaker 1: Like it's not okay to be gay, It's not right
Speaker 1: with the Bible. They'd say, you know, immigrants are fighting
Speaker 1: or fighting to get Donald Trump out of office, and
Speaker 1: that you know, immigrants are killing people and immigrants are
Speaker 1: raping people. They would say that black people commit crimes
Speaker 1: at a higher rate than white people. Do. They bring
Speaker 1: up black crime statistics, which are obviously skewed and you know, biased,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, you want to agree with them,
Speaker 1: because if someone's your friend, or at least if someone
Speaker 1: says that they're your friend, you want to be like
Speaker 1: them and you want to have that friend. You want
Speaker 1: to keep that friend. You don't want to be isolated.
Speaker 1: What about women? How did misogyny play into their overall conversation.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff they would say about women
Speaker 1: was about how women would lie about rape and about
Speaker 1: how women would lie about sexual harassment, which spoke to
Speaker 1: me on a personal point because of the thing that
Speaker 1: happened at my old school in eighth grade. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of your I don't want to say sweet spot,
Speaker 1: but their way into you. Yeah, definitely, it was the
Speaker 1: topic that I had, you know, had to change my
Speaker 1: whole life because of and because of that, I was
Speaker 1: kind of like a claim mold. I could easily be manipulated.
Speaker 1: And did you ever challenge initially some of the things
Speaker 1: that were being set there, And did you ever say,
Speaker 1: wait a second, that's not true, or that's racist or
Speaker 1: anything like that. I would never audibly fight back because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to lose my position as a moderator
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to alienate myself from the rest
Speaker 1: of them. So if they said something, I disagreed, and
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't say anything back. You have been raised
Speaker 1: in a progressive Jewish Yeah, so you must have thought,
Speaker 1: g these views do not swear with the values that
Speaker 1: have been taught by my parents. I mean, how did
Speaker 1: you kind of wrap your head around that? For me,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was just resentment from
Speaker 1: my parents, and resentment that made me leave my old
Speaker 1: school and they made me leave my friends, and you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't see that they were, you know, right in
Speaker 1: the long run. You know, it was just I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be different than you guys. I'm gonna be the black
Speaker 1: sheep of the family, you know that kind of the thing.
Speaker 1: So you're sort of proud that you were being a
Speaker 1: nonconformist in a way. Yeah, it became like a part
Speaker 1: of my identity, that I was different than the rest
Speaker 1: of my family. Did your parents challenge you when you
Speaker 1: started sharing these newfound beliefs with them? Definitely, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of um. I'd say it became pretty
Speaker 1: tense in our household because I would keep learning new
Speaker 1: stuff and then something on the news would come on
Speaker 1: that would say it would be Trump saying they were
Speaker 1: fine people on both sides of the charts to about
Speaker 1: and he was said, I would say, you know, he's right,
Speaker 1: you know, not everyone was bad, not everyone was violent,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was basically defending neo Nazis, or
Speaker 1: I would say Jews basically run the world, which my
Speaker 1: parents were horrified by because I was Jewish and I
Speaker 1: was propagating anti Semitism as a teenager and as a Jew.
Speaker 1: But to hear this blatant anti semitism as someone who's
Speaker 1: Jewish himself, was there a disconnect there? I mean at
Speaker 1: first there was, but then you bought into it, bought
Speaker 1: into it somehow. Yeah. I became so receptive that kind
Speaker 1: of talk that I would basically believe anything that they
Speaker 1: told me. And that was the case with the anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: Who were these people? Did they reveal, say what they
Speaker 1: did for a living. A lot of the people were
Speaker 1: minimum wage workers, people who worked in restaurants, people who
Speaker 1: worked in you know, hotels, and some people made money
Speaker 1: off of Reddit. The only time people would talk about
Speaker 1: their actual jobs is saying like, oh, work, it was
Speaker 1: so hard today. You know. I think they're upset because
Speaker 1: they don't have a great job, they don't have a
Speaker 1: great life in general, and they need to blame it
Speaker 1: on other people for their downfalls. So these were a
Speaker 1: lot of aggrieved people. Yeah, definitely. I'd say no one
Speaker 1: was truly happy within the alright community. I think these
Speaker 1: people are disgruntled, upset, you know, men who really feel
Speaker 1: like they have the worst. You know, they feel like
Speaker 1: they have it the worst. They got the raw end
Speaker 1: of the stay they got, the yeah they got, the
Speaker 1: short they got, they pulled a short straw. And then,
Speaker 1: on top of their preexisting anger, all the new things
Speaker 1: that they're reading on the internet about immigration, about ethnic people.
Speaker 1: You know, all of that translates into real anger and
Speaker 1: they internalize it and you know, their wires get crossed
Speaker 1: and they're kind of like a powder keg. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're already primed and the alright, hatred is what light suffuse.
Speaker 1: That's scary, It's terrifying. How much time would you spend online?
Speaker 1: It depended on the day. I mean I would normally
Speaker 1: get home from school and then spend about three or
Speaker 1: four hours online. So you really did get sort of
Speaker 1: sucked into a vortex. That's a lot of time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it adds up to you know, after a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, you've spent days online on those subredit's already,
Speaker 1: and that amount of time is already detrimental. How did
Speaker 1: what you heard sam impact your your relationships or how
Speaker 1: you acted with friends or at school? It alienated me
Speaker 1: amongst friend groups because again, you know, my school was
Speaker 1: fairly liberal, you know, my new school at least, and
Speaker 1: then all my friends shared those viewpoints. So me saying,
Speaker 1: you know, like immigration is out of control, that would
Speaker 1: alienate me amongst my friends, amongst my teachers. Even so,
Speaker 1: it would just drive me deeper and deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: into isolation, which in turn led to more Internet time
Speaker 1: because I wanted to talk to people because you you
Speaker 1: were lonely, yeah, I mean, above everything else, lonely. Did
Speaker 1: you feel you were targeted in some ways that once
Speaker 1: you showed up in this place that people were enticing
Speaker 1: you to kind of get deeper and deeper into it.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like your groom. Yeah, a little bit, honestly.
Speaker 1: I mean the people there were really, really, really insist
Speaker 1: on their strict set of beliefs, which is immigration is bad,
Speaker 1: women lie about rape. Uh, you know, black people commit
Speaker 1: more crimes, black people are violent, that kind of stuff. There.
Speaker 1: They were so insistent on those beliefs that it felt
Speaker 1: like I was being brainwashed. And I liked it because
Speaker 1: it meant that people, you know, I was able to talk.
Speaker 1: I was able to tell them my beliefs and tell
Speaker 1: them my take on these issues. I would say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, women do lie about rape because this happened
Speaker 1: to me, and I'm proof that this is the truth.
Speaker 1: And then they would, you know, they would eat that
Speaker 1: shipped up completely. They would love it, you know, just
Speaker 1: to hear that. And so they felt like they had
Speaker 1: a receptive audience. And you definitely they thought that I
Speaker 1: was an adult for a while, which I loved. I
Speaker 1: loved feeling like an adult and feeling like my voice mattered.
Speaker 1: Was there a turning point did you say these people
Speaker 1: are assholes. Yeah, I mean it was gradual French Sam, Oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. You've heard it before, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: especially on the internet. It was gradual, like I got
Speaker 1: in gradually and kind of got out gradually as well.
Speaker 1: In September two thousand seventeen, a little over a month
Speaker 1: after Charlottesville, Sam convinced his mom to take him to
Speaker 1: the so called Mother of All rallies in d C,
Speaker 1: a gathering of right wing groups ranging from arden Trump
Speaker 1: supporters to far right fascists. You'd think that finally meeting
Speaker 1: his heroes offline would only reinforce Sam's views, but ironically
Speaker 1: it was those face to face interactions that made him
Speaker 1: have second thoughts. So he went and I was like
Speaker 1: talking to some of the all right people, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them were insane, like they were crazy people,
Speaker 1: Like one guy had an iron cross on his lapel
Speaker 1: and then had a like an anarchist cookbook and was
Speaker 1: talking about how he was an anarchist but he supported Trump,
Speaker 1: which it doesn't make sense. It's ridiculous, But he kept
Speaker 1: trying to justify it with his own you know, with
Speaker 1: his own reasoning that he made up. And it made
Speaker 1: no sense. That was the first time I finally saw
Speaker 1: that the people of the alt right had no idea
Speaker 1: what the hell they were talking about. And then from
Speaker 1: there on that kind of planted the seed in my
Speaker 1: brain that grew, you know, to think like, hey, maybe
Speaker 1: I should, you know, stop doing this. Maybe I should
Speaker 1: focus more on school. Maybe I shouldn't try to isolate
Speaker 1: myself among my friends, you know, maybe I should try
Speaker 1: to make a name for myself. So I eventually got
Speaker 1: out just through time. You just stopped going there. I
Speaker 1: just gradually stopped going on the internet, you know. I
Speaker 1: went on less and less and less every day until
Speaker 1: it I was not on the hateful sub credits at
Speaker 1: all anymore. I wanted to get Sam's mom's take on
Speaker 1: what it was like watching her son go from a
Speaker 1: carefree kid to an angering member of the growing far right,
Speaker 1: so I asked her to join us for the second
Speaker 1: part of our conversation. When you first realized that saying
Speaker 1: Am was doing this, what was your reaction, I mean,
Speaker 1: how did you process it? It was a really scary time.
Speaker 1: Sam is someone who we had raised from day one
Speaker 1: to be a very empathetic kid, and everyone had always
Speaker 1: commented on how he seemed like an old soul. Hey,
Speaker 1: even his kindergarten teacher couldn't believe how well he related
Speaker 1: to other people and saw other perspectives. He was the
Speaker 1: kid that every other kid went to in class when
Speaker 1: they were hurt or when they needed a friend. He
Speaker 1: was that person. And so to watch this transformation, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was as if he had a total personality transplant.
Speaker 1: How did you realize that this was going on. We
Speaker 1: have dinner together every night as a family, and do
Speaker 1: you just have one child. We have a daughter as well,
Speaker 1: who's younger than Sam, And and that actually is part
Speaker 1: of the story, because we we had dinner every night
Speaker 1: as a family, and we always talked through the day
Speaker 1: and you know, little little things and big things. And
Speaker 1: I noticed that Sam started to talk about really odd issues,
Speaker 1: such as there is no wage gap between men and women.
Speaker 1: So he was thirteen years old. We're at the dinner
Speaker 1: table talking about our day, and he's talking about how
Speaker 1: the wage gap is a fallacy his words. And our daughter,
Speaker 1: who's younger but it is already a very ardent feminist,
Speaker 1: would argue with him about that. And we'd had such
Speaker 1: a happy, peaceful family and the two of them are
Speaker 1: were in our best friends, and so it would they
Speaker 1: would fight about it, and we were just left scratching
Speaker 1: our heads thinking where did this issue of the wage
Speaker 1: gap fallacy even come from? It was never anything we
Speaker 1: had talked about. So did you ask him where are
Speaker 1: you getting these ideas? Well? Yeah, and he said, well
Speaker 1: I read about it online and he wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about it, and he felt like he was educating us.
Speaker 1: He was really excited to be discovering all this new information,
Speaker 1: and I think because we had always been the people
Speaker 1: to tell him things, he was thrilled now to have
Speaker 1: new in for nation that we didn't have and to
Speaker 1: be able to tell it to us. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was the wage gap, it was stuff about the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment. It was a ton of stuff about you know,
Speaker 1: women lying about rape, and it was very jarring because
Speaker 1: it was nothing we had ever been led to expect
Speaker 1: that our kid would um parent. Do you think that
Speaker 1: the people online saw an opening in because of Sam's
Speaker 1: personal experience at his other school. Well, what what I
Speaker 1: read about when I started finally looking into it and
Speaker 1: seeing what a problem we really had is that, you know,
Speaker 1: the people in these white supremacist communities prey on depressed, vulnerable,
Speaker 1: isolated kids, and they knew what to look for um,
Speaker 1: and they saw that in him. And we saw he
Speaker 1: was lonely. He didn't say he was lonely, but we
Speaker 1: saw he had no friends. We just figured it's going
Speaker 1: to take time, you know. And when he complained about
Speaker 1: the kids at his new school, we said, it's going
Speaker 1: to take time, like over and over, because that's what
Speaker 1: you say as a parent. It's going to be okay.
Speaker 1: But that's not what the people online were telling him.
Speaker 1: What were they say They were reacting in a much
Speaker 1: more immediate way, saying, the people in your new school
Speaker 1: don't have your back for whatever reason. That was what
Speaker 1: they were implying. And they were also implying, we are
Speaker 1: the ones who have your back, and we're your real friends.
Speaker 1: And and that resonated with him. And they knew that
Speaker 1: three or four hours a day he was online. It
Speaker 1: was actually I heard him say that too. It was
Speaker 1: more than that. It was more than that because he
Speaker 1: came home. You were online when you came home, and
Speaker 1: then you went back online after dinner anything. That's what
Speaker 1: I remember, because it was do you have an exact
Speaker 1: time frame? I don't have an exact time frame, but
Speaker 1: I do remember that when you became a moderator, you
Speaker 1: had a quota that you had to fill, and that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that actually added to your
Speaker 1: stress at that time. Becau as as a moderator, you
Speaker 1: have to spend a certain amount of time online. It's
Speaker 1: not about time. It's more like you have a certain
Speaker 1: amount of posts you have to approve a day. Um
Speaker 1: so it would be I would have to approve like
Speaker 1: a hundred posts a day or remove. So there's moderator actions,
Speaker 1: and an action is removing or approving a post. You
Speaker 1: sound like you're an amazing mom. So could you not
Speaker 1: have said, I'm sorry, you can't be online like this,
Speaker 1: you can't be talking to these people. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't understand at the time what was going on. I
Speaker 1: mean when when he told me he was a moderator,
Speaker 1: he was so excited and proud and proud, and things
Speaker 1: had been so rocky for such a long time that
Speaker 1: seeing him happy again made me happy. And I didn't
Speaker 1: realize what this sub bread it was about. I hadn't
Speaker 1: gone on it myself. Um, I thought it was just
Speaker 1: about funny memes. In retrospect, there was so much that
Speaker 1: I did that was wrong. When did you discover the
Speaker 1: kind of hateful, horrible things that were being discussed. So
Speaker 1: it started with the whole wage gap as a fallacy business,
Speaker 1: and then it moved on to the Second Amendment. And
Speaker 1: then when he started talking about women lying about rape,
Speaker 1: obviously that was incredibly alarming. When he started parenting Jews
Speaker 1: run all the financial networks in the world, that really
Speaker 1: helped us see how far gone he was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one thing to set out on his own
Speaker 1: like political journey. And we did for a while think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he's just maybe he just has a conservative mindset,
Speaker 1: like that's not a crime. He's not like us. But
Speaker 1: that's okay. You know, there's merit to both sides. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's sort of like an Alex P. Keaton conservative. That
Speaker 1: was like my frame of reference, the Alex P. Keaton
Speaker 1: of our family. Um. And but when he started, you know,
Speaker 1: parroting anti Semitic statements, I realized it was it was
Speaker 1: way more than that. And so that was when we
Speaker 1: started taking things a lot more seriously and engaging on
Speaker 1: a more serious level. I can't believe you went to
Speaker 1: this mother of all rallies. It took a lot of convincing.
Speaker 1: I mean, what did you think when you I got
Speaker 1: there and you saw these people, these very fine people.
Speaker 1: I was there for one reason and one reason alone,
Speaker 1: and that was to try to show Sam, by actually
Speaker 1: being there, that I I would be his partner in
Speaker 1: this um not in in believing these beliefs, but in
Speaker 1: having these discussions. And he saw for himself. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was what was so amazing about this whole experience
Speaker 1: is that he did see, by being there himself, that
Speaker 1: that these people don't have a leg to stand on.
Speaker 1: I always tried to get through to him that if
Speaker 1: you're going to have an opinion, you need to meet
Speaker 1: the people, You need to talk to the people, you
Speaker 1: need to see things with your own eyes. And that's
Speaker 1: what this was. He saw it with his own eyes,
Speaker 1: and his mind was changed. You're lucky because I imagine
Speaker 1: that there are a lot of young people who do
Speaker 1: not have the wherewithal to reject this philosophy and to
Speaker 1: basically see that it's wrong. I mean, do you ever
Speaker 1: think about what would have happened if if Sam hadn't
Speaker 1: had this epiphany. A lot of people wrote in both
Speaker 1: to the WASHINGTONY and also on Twitter, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the conversations were from parents whose kids had gone
Speaker 1: all the way in terms of the white supremacy movement
Speaker 1: and didn't come back and they were estranged and and
Speaker 1: I saw that over and over again after my article
Speaker 1: was published, and I just felt again how lucky we
Speaker 1: were that it worked out the way it did. And
Speaker 1: I think some of that has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that um Sam was so young when it all happened.
Speaker 1: He didn't, for example, he couldn't like go out and
Speaker 1: get his own apartment, you know, he was under our roof,
Speaker 1: and I think that helped bring him back into the fold.
Speaker 1: I think that I couldn't go to events myself also right,
Speaker 1: And also you had a mom who was learning but
Speaker 1: also presenting a counterpoint. Definitely. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the parents that have kids like that, you know, immediately
Speaker 1: go the your insane route like you did at first,
Speaker 1: and never change that route. But they don't realize that
Speaker 1: if you tell a kid no, they're just gonna want
Speaker 1: something more, I mean, more than anything else. I think
Speaker 1: that's the case with a lot of things. What do
Speaker 1: you think should be done about this? If I already
Speaker 1: given advice to a kid that was going through something
Speaker 1: like this, I would say that no one ever tells
Speaker 1: you something to be your friend, and that they only
Speaker 1: or at least a lot of the times it's not
Speaker 1: the case, and that when you read something in the news,
Speaker 1: there's a definitive yes, and you need to source your information.
Speaker 1: You need to find out where it's coming from. The
Speaker 1: thing that I do now is I'll read something from
Speaker 1: a conservative news site, and I'll read something from a
Speaker 1: very liberal news site, and I'll compare facts and I'll
Speaker 1: compile the information that has shared in both of those
Speaker 1: and to me, that is the full story. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of work, isn't it. I feel like it's worth
Speaker 1: it in the long run. I mean, even if it
Speaker 1: takes time, it's a good thing to find out the
Speaker 1: entire story. How scary is it to think that people
Speaker 1: are being radicalized online and then they are going out
Speaker 1: and in some cases, as we've seen, killing scores of
Speaker 1: people as a result of this indoctrination. It's really scary
Speaker 1: for me because, you know, over everything else, I could
Speaker 1: have been one of those people if I had gone
Speaker 1: down the path, if I had gone down further, you know,
Speaker 1: anyone has the capability to be radicalized fully, and I'm
Speaker 1: no exception of that. No one's an exception of that.
Speaker 1: Sam's story was shocking. After all, If a kid from
Speaker 1: a stable home and a progressive Jewish family at that
Speaker 1: could find himself identifying with white nationalists, what exactly does
Speaker 1: that say about the power of this movement to draw
Speaker 1: people in. Up next, an expert explains how widespread far
Speaker 1: right online radicalization has become. I'm here with Keegan Hankus
Speaker 1: of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. Keegan and
Speaker 1: his team closely monitor right wing extremists online. Again, I
Speaker 1: know that you keep a close eye on these communities
Speaker 1: and what's going on in these circles. So how and
Speaker 1: where exactly are these people congregating online and what is
Speaker 1: it about these spaces that makes them so appealing to them? Well,
Speaker 1: the modern hate movement is really marked by a lot
Speaker 1: of internet and online activity at this point. So we
Speaker 1: see a lot of these communities cropping up across all
Speaker 1: of the same major social media platforms that all of
Speaker 1: those us in our everyday lives, but we also see
Speaker 1: them trailing off into more disparate and more underground online
Speaker 1: spaces as well, especially as more pressure has been put
Speaker 1: on them in recent years. I know a huge part
Speaker 1: of the appeal I understand is the use of humor
Speaker 1: and irony and memes. How does that play into this?
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Humor, irony, memes, other forms of visual propaganda,
Speaker 1: video and audio propaganda tremendously important. There's a whole cottage
Speaker 1: industry in the racist movement around this. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of this has to do with this culture that
Speaker 1: they're building for themselves. There's a very intentional project going
Speaker 1: on across these movements to build content that's going to
Speaker 1: keep people engaged, is going to keep pushing people towards
Speaker 1: more extreme beliefs. And they also then claim, you know,
Speaker 1: plausible deniability and say, oh, we were just kidding around,
Speaker 1: we thought this was funny. If they get busted, yeah,
Speaker 1: you frequently see people say, oh, I was just being
Speaker 1: quote edgy, or this was just humor that was taken
Speaker 1: out of context. I think what's notable is that a
Speaker 1: lot of these communities are built around these uh this activity.
Speaker 1: So if you think about a platform like h Chan,
Speaker 1: which we've seen a number of manifesto show up on
Speaker 1: in the last year or so. Um these communities, it's
Speaker 1: more common to see death threats and in a joking
Speaker 1: and almost presented as an ironic manner, than it is
Speaker 1: to not see them. I spoke with Keegan in September,
Speaker 1: about six weeks after the El Paso shooting. Following El
Speaker 1: Paso and christ Church and pow Way, there was talk
Speaker 1: of shutting down eight chan, the site where all three
Speaker 1: shooters posted violently racist manifestos. Ah Chan went dark for
Speaker 1: several months as it struggled to find a company willing
Speaker 1: to host it, but re emerged on the so called
Speaker 1: clearnet in November as the rebranded eight coon. Keegan told
Speaker 1: me more about how the site works h chan. I
Speaker 1: would first describe it as probably one of the darkest
Speaker 1: and grimmest places on the Internet, particularly some of the
Speaker 1: boards that are dedicated to politics and more specifically to extremism.
Speaker 1: It's an image board that has some text in it,
Speaker 1: and this is content that's basically organized in threads and
Speaker 1: is almost always dedicated to some form of extremism. There
Speaker 1: are participants from all across the world, especially in the
Speaker 1: last year, so what we've seen is basically cheerleading on
Speaker 1: this site around massive violence. What's the difference between eight
Speaker 1: chan and four chan? They're very very similar. H chan
Speaker 1: it was designed to be an even more extreme version
Speaker 1: of four chan. It's four Chan with even fewer rules
Speaker 1: around moderation. Almost no content at its inception was taken
Speaker 1: off of h N. We've seen that change a little bit,
Speaker 1: especially as there's been a lot of attention put on
Speaker 1: the site for the number of manifestoes that have been
Speaker 1: posted there. But it is very uncommon for content to
Speaker 1: be taken down no matter how extreme. Do you worry
Speaker 1: about shutting down these sites that they'll go further underground
Speaker 1: and be harder to monitor by law enforcement and other authorities. Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing I would point out is that sites
Speaker 1: like h N are already incredibly difficult for law enforcement
Speaker 1: to monitor. The posters are almost always anonymous. It requires
Speaker 1: a heavy investigative lift to go and unravel some of
Speaker 1: these threads as they're happening. Um, so it's already a
Speaker 1: really big problem. The bigger issue with the site like
Speaker 1: HN being online is that it's well known and it's
Speaker 1: very notorious, and that people know to go there to
Speaker 1: look for this type of content. It has a wide audience,
Speaker 1: so whenever I get asked about, you know, the danger
Speaker 1: of driving this content further underground, I actually propose an
Speaker 1: idea more akin to containment. Right, we should be striving
Speaker 1: to make this content as hard to find as possible,
Speaker 1: because you are then limiting the potential pool of people
Speaker 1: who may be susceptible to its messaging. So you'd be
Speaker 1: okay to have it go into sort of the darkest
Speaker 1: corner of the dark web. Absolutely. It also makes it
Speaker 1: easier for researchers like myself and my colleagues of the
Speaker 1: SPLC to track these communities. We follow these extremes wherever
Speaker 1: they go, and there's this interesting tension in the hate
Speaker 1: movement where they can never go entirely underground. So if
Speaker 1: your entire project is based around the idea that doing
Speaker 1: nothing or not bringing more followers into your movement means
Speaker 1: extinction for white people, which is what many of these
Speaker 1: individuals believe, then you necessarily have to have some entry
Speaker 1: points into it. Well, that brings me to the next question,
Speaker 1: how do they convert people and how easy is it
Speaker 1: for them to have access to vulnerable targets. Well, it
Speaker 1: has become disturbingly more easy to find vulnerable targets. With
Speaker 1: the rise of social media, in particular in the last
Speaker 1: decade or so, as we've seen a lot of these
Speaker 1: tech companies really drag their feet, uh to enact meaningful
Speaker 1: policies and to enforce them against hate and extremism. One
Speaker 1: of the things that they commonly do is go to
Speaker 1: online spaces, whether it be on social media or certain
Speaker 1: you know, right leaning news sites, where they know that
Speaker 1: there are people who are near their ideological beliefs but
Speaker 1: still part of the mainstream, and they will start using
Speaker 1: very targeted propaganda to try to push them further and
Speaker 1: further to the right. They call this red Heilene. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, So that's common vernacular on a lot
Speaker 1: of these sites and in a lot of these communities
Speaker 1: for uh, you know, bringing someone into this set of
Speaker 1: extremist beliefs. You know, it's it's reminiscent of the matrix
Speaker 1: of course, right where you take this red pill and
Speaker 1: suddenly you see reality for what it is. Do potential
Speaker 1: recruits share anything in terms of demographics, geographics, socio economic backgrounds.
Speaker 1: It's a really difficult question, and the reason for that
Speaker 1: is it's really difficult to know just how many people
Speaker 1: have been exposed to these beliefs. What we see, at
Speaker 1: least from monitoring the extremist groups themselves and their leaders,
Speaker 1: is a really concerted effort to recruit young white men
Speaker 1: into these movements. Uh. And there's a couple of mechanisms
Speaker 1: that they used to do that. So one of those
Speaker 1: is that they play up this narrative of basically declining
Speaker 1: prospects for young white men. You know, they make a
Speaker 1: narrative about you know, what's being taken from them, are
Speaker 1: deprived for them, and they ascribe that to you know,
Speaker 1: a target community, say it's this group's fault that you
Speaker 1: did not get what you were expected, or this is
Speaker 1: the group that took what you thought you were owned,
Speaker 1: and sort of grievance politics. Right, that's absolutely right. Do
Speaker 1: you think the number of people who are gravitating towards
Speaker 1: these groups has exploded? What role do you think external
Speaker 1: factors are playing into this? I e. Political rhetoric that
Speaker 1: we hear, the immigration debate, the whole focus on diversity
Speaker 1: and inclusion in kind of all aspects of society, and
Speaker 1: by the way, changing demographics. So it's interesting you actually
Speaker 1: just named the three largest drivers that we point to
Speaker 1: when we explain that we listed the largest number of
Speaker 1: hate groups that we've ever counted last year. You know,
Speaker 1: there were a thousand and twenty of them in the country.
Speaker 1: And in that number, we saw fifty rise in the
Speaker 1: number of white nationalist groups. And when you're explaining or
Speaker 1: when we are explaining how that happened, those are a
Speaker 1: lot of the factors we point to. Demographic change is
Speaker 1: absolutely the biggest driver of these groups and what is
Speaker 1: giving them so much energy this tremendous anxiety about the
Speaker 1: idea that you know, whites will no longer be an
Speaker 1: absolute majority in this country. This rhetoric has been very
Speaker 1: effective in driving people these movements, and it has coupled
Speaker 1: really dangerously with a lot of the toxic political rhetoric
Speaker 1: that we've seen from the halls of power, particularly the
Speaker 1: White House in recent years. A lot of this anxiety
Speaker 1: about immigration, for instances showing up in the manifestos of
Speaker 1: mass shooters. Uh. And it is almost indistinguishable from some
Speaker 1: of the statements we see from politicians when it comes
Speaker 1: to the pres it in do you think that he
Speaker 1: has made or sent implicit or explicit messages to these
Speaker 1: very groups by saying things like they're very fine people
Speaker 1: on both sides, or just failing to criticize and come
Speaker 1: out and say this is wrong. Well, he's done both.
Speaker 1: I mean it's been explicit and implicit, and this is
Speaker 1: obviously not lost on these communities. I mean they see
Speaker 1: the president's language, whether they agree with him on every
Speaker 1: issue or not, as the ultimate validation of their worldview.
Speaker 1: What can be done about this, Well, there's a number
Speaker 1: of things. I mean the first, at a high level,
Speaker 1: especially when we're talking about this issue of radicalization and
Speaker 1: online spaces, you know, we need to demand more of
Speaker 1: the technology companies that play such a large role in
Speaker 1: our lives. For instance, we should have meaningful policies banning
Speaker 1: all of this content on every major social media platform,
Speaker 1: and not only that, we expect them to enforce this stuff.
Speaker 1: That is an easy first step, you know. One of
Speaker 1: the other things that speaks to the drivers that you
Speaker 1: brought up earlier, because you know, we as citizens and
Speaker 1: voters need to be making forceful demands that politicians speak
Speaker 1: out against hate and extremism, and also candidates should be
Speaker 1: including these planks in their platforms. And the other piece
Speaker 1: of this is, you know, we need to find ways
Speaker 1: of a civil society level to break down these feelings
Speaker 1: of social isolation and really do more to counter what
Speaker 1: the racist hate groups have been so good at perpetuating,
Speaker 1: which is this narrative that you know, demographic change and
Speaker 1: diversity in this country and multiculturalism is somehow a threat
Speaker 1: to white people. What about the free speech argument? I
Speaker 1: know you mentioned social media and basically stopping this on
Speaker 1: all platforms. You often hear the free speech argument and
Speaker 1: this being a slippery slope, and I'm curious what your
Speaker 1: reaction would be to that. Well, whenever I have the
Speaker 1: free speech argument presented to me, I bring up a
Speaker 1: couple of different points. You know, there's no one stopping
Speaker 1: these individuals from going out on a street corner and
Speaker 1: yelling racist slogans or trying to convince random passer bys
Speaker 1: of their racism and you know, the truth in their
Speaker 1: worldview as they would see it. However, the difference when
Speaker 1: it comes to the social media companies, as these are
Speaker 1: megaphones that are directed in every direction. Right, this is
Speaker 1: just tremendous amplification for these ideas, and members of hate
Speaker 1: groups and their leaders have proven that they're very good
Speaker 1: at manipulating them. These companies have every right as private
Speaker 1: institutions to set codes of conduct and acceptable use policies
Speaker 1: against these ideas, and I would argue that many of them,
Speaker 1: if not all of them, have a moral responsibility to
Speaker 1: do so, given the consequences that we've watched play out
Speaker 1: so many times. I would remind all of your listeners
Speaker 1: that you know, what happened in christ Church, New Zealand
Speaker 1: earlier this year is an absolute atrocity, and it's incredibly
Speaker 1: disheartening and was powered by Facebook's live broadcasting mechanisms. The
Speaker 1: fact that that was even allowed to happen and the
Speaker 1: devastating impact that we watched it have across the world,
Speaker 1: UH is a problem in and of itself. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of work to be done. You know. One
Speaker 1: of the things that we would expect from these companies,
Speaker 1: and these are two concrete suggestions, is you know, we
Speaker 1: want them to be much more transparent about the activity
Speaker 1: of extremists on their platforms, and especially making that data
Speaker 1: available to outside academics and researchers who study this so
Speaker 1: that they can try to find new ways to combat it.
Speaker 1: The other is, and this especially speaks to for instance,
Speaker 1: Facebook Live and the role it played in New Zealand. Um,
Speaker 1: whenever they're rolling out products, we should be testing them
Speaker 1: against civil rights concerns as opposed to just solely looking
Speaker 1: at how much money we can make from them in
Speaker 1: the consequences of not rolling them out quickly. You are
Speaker 1: offering some great suggestions, But when you really think about it,
Speaker 1: do you think, Hgan, that this can be controlled or
Speaker 1: is it just too hard to get a handle on this.
Speaker 1: I think it's too important and the consequences are too
Speaker 1: devastating not to try. And I think there's some obvious
Speaker 1: in easy steps for us to begin taking to go
Speaker 1: down this path. Um. Whether we ultimately succeed, we'll have
Speaker 1: to see. Um. But I just can't accept that the
Speaker 1: normal and regular pace of life is now going to
Speaker 1: be that we're going to see these violent actions taking
Speaker 1: place over and over again in our society. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just devastating to watch and for you, just unacceptable,
Speaker 1: absolutely unacceptable, well should be for everyone. Up next, we'll
Speaker 1: hear from someone who understands exactly what it takes to
Speaker 1: leave extremism behind, an ex neo Nazi who was able
Speaker 1: to turn her life around Angela Hi. It's Katie Curic.
Speaker 1: How are you, I'm well, thank you? How are you today?
Speaker 1: I'm good. Thing. We've talked a lot about how online
Speaker 1: radicalization works, but experts in this field also talk a
Speaker 1: lot about what it takes to do you radicalize someone.
Speaker 1: Angela King, a former neo Nazi, has devoted her life
Speaker 1: to doing just that. Her organization Life After Hate, helps
Speaker 1: people disavow far right extremism. Do you believe the radicalization
Speaker 1: process today is fundamentally different than it was when you
Speaker 1: were younger? Fundamentally no, just more streamlined, and individuals have
Speaker 1: the ability to now become radicalized completely online rather than
Speaker 1: in face to face meetings. How did your radicalization happen? Well?
Speaker 1: I was raised in South Florida in a household that
Speaker 1: there's no easy way to say it. I was taught
Speaker 1: racism and homophobia from as early as I can remember,
Speaker 1: from my parents and my family, and by the time
Speaker 1: I was an adolescent, I was angry. I had been bullied.
Speaker 1: I was very vulnerable, and when I ran into other
Speaker 1: UH kids my age who were already involved in the
Speaker 1: violence far right, it wasn't a great weak for me
Speaker 1: to become involved. I happen to have ingredients in my
Speaker 1: life and experiences that led to a very negative recipe.
Speaker 1: Let's call it so. You know, I had familial racism
Speaker 1: and homophobia that certainly socialized me in a way to
Speaker 1: think that I was better than others and that that
Speaker 1: kind of behavior and thinking was acceptable. But I was
Speaker 1: also vulnerable. I went through um in acute identity crisis
Speaker 1: at a very young age because of what I was
Speaker 1: exposed to at home and some experiences. I was bullied
Speaker 1: both verbally and physically, and I buckled under that pressure.
Speaker 1: You know, I I honestly felt that my pain emotionally
Speaker 1: and mentally was so intense I could not hold it
Speaker 1: on my own. And it's only in retrospect that I'm
Speaker 1: able to see that as this vulnerable young person that
Speaker 1: was struggling and in so much pain, I tried to
Speaker 1: literally beat my pain into other people. That's really difficult
Speaker 1: to come to terms with. But it's even more difficult
Speaker 1: to see the very same things happening to an even
Speaker 1: larger scale to our young people today. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of fear, and I feel like anger has its roots
Speaker 1: and fear one of the big factors that I think
Speaker 1: is contributing to an increase in and extremism and far
Speaker 1: right extremism in particular, is changing demographics. It will be
Speaker 1: a majority minority population. Absolutely. Communities or groups who are
Speaker 1: used to being in positions of power and affluence are
Speaker 1: losing those positions or feeling like they're about to lose them.
Speaker 1: What is terrible is that we are a society that
Speaker 1: is so quick to say this is mine, I'm not sharing,
Speaker 1: you're not taking this from me, instead of sitting down
Speaker 1: and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and allowing ourselves to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm worried about this. There's nothing wrong with being worried
Speaker 1: about the future, but when we allow that to translate
Speaker 1: into violence or into dehumanization. We always talk about learning
Speaker 1: from the past and learning from history. It is becoming
Speaker 1: clear on a daily basis to me that those lessons
Speaker 1: are almost blocked. You know, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: have seen or heard about any of the polls asking
Speaker 1: something as simple as or measuring, you know, people's knowledge
Speaker 1: about something like the Holocaust. That history is slipping away.
Speaker 1: And that's terrifying. When you look back at your own journey,
Speaker 1: was there a turning point when did you say this
Speaker 1: is wrong, I can't do this anymore. This isn't me.
Speaker 1: It took me almost a decade before I had that epiphany.
Speaker 1: I was nineteen. Oh gosh, I just gave my age away.
Speaker 1: I was nineteen when the Oklahoma City bombing happened. I
Speaker 1: had already been involved in the violent far right for years,
Speaker 1: and that was the first thing that I really remember
Speaker 1: kind of shaking me a little bit and even um
Speaker 1: inspiring me to consider my beliefs or my actions. It
Speaker 1: that wasn't even enough. What I was involved with isn't
Speaker 1: something that you know, you just wake up from one
Speaker 1: day and say, hey, you know, nice knowing you have
Speaker 1: a nice life. I'm growing up now or moving on.
Speaker 1: So it was another few years when I was twenty
Speaker 1: three and I found myself sitting in a federal detention
Speaker 1: center because I took part in a hate crime. You
Speaker 1: were arrested for taking part in an armed robbery of
Speaker 1: the Jewish owce store, and you were sent to prison
Speaker 1: for that. Yes, I was. And it was sitting in
Speaker 1: this federal detention center as a result of that that
Speaker 1: I really started to reconsider my life. There was a woman, um,
Speaker 1: a woman of color, who kept looking at me this
Speaker 1: one day and in my mind. I thought, she's going
Speaker 1: to do something to me, she's planning something, she's going
Speaker 1: to try to beat me up, or And she asked
Speaker 1: me if I knew how to play a game, and
Speaker 1: I didn't, So she picked this game up and came
Speaker 1: over and sat down next to me and taught me
Speaker 1: how to play. And she did that knowing why I
Speaker 1: was sitting in that detention center. She did that, knowing
Speaker 1: that I was there for a hate crime. She did
Speaker 1: that having to look at the racist tattoos I had
Speaker 1: on my body because I couldn't cover them all. And
Speaker 1: over the course of the time I spent in prison,
Speaker 1: I was treated with kindness and compassion by women who
Speaker 1: I never would have had the same respect for had
Speaker 1: I met them prior to entering prison. And it changed me.
Speaker 1: I mean I was changed at the core of who
Speaker 1: I was as a human being. Because I was expecting anger, aggression, hatred,
Speaker 1: potentially violence, I wasn't expecting kindness. That just absolutely disarmed me.
Speaker 1: And it inspired me not only to change who I
Speaker 1: was and to take responsibility, but to come out and
Speaker 1: do something meaningful with my life and to make a
Speaker 1: difference with the unique knowledge and experiences that I had.
Speaker 1: How long did you spend in prison? Almost three years?
Speaker 1: When you got out, I know you started an organization,
Speaker 1: Life After Hate. What inspired you to do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I did not start it by myself. I am one
Speaker 1: of six co founders of Life After Hate UM, and
Speaker 1: essentially I did outreach and some consulting for about a
Speaker 1: decade before I met my fellow co founders. In two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, I was invited to attend a summit in Dublin.
Speaker 1: It was at this conference that I first UM met
Speaker 1: face to face with others who were similar to me,
Speaker 1: and by that I mean other former violent far right extremists.
Speaker 1: On the last day, we talked about how inspired we
Speaker 1: were by you know, the individuals that we met and
Speaker 1: the things that we learned, the feelings, you know, the
Speaker 1: emotions that we had, and we all remembered what it
Speaker 1: was like to go through this disengagement from the violent
Speaker 1: far right on our own. And we also talked about
Speaker 1: UM coming back to the US and moving forward together
Speaker 1: as a group. And one of the men had an
Speaker 1: online journal called Life After Hate, and he said, I
Speaker 1: have the perfect name. Let's take the name of my
Speaker 1: journal and we'll go home and turn it into a
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization, and that's exactly what we did. What is
Speaker 1: the group's primary focus. Our primary program is called Exit USA,
Speaker 1: and Exit USA is a program that helps individuals to
Speaker 1: disengage from the violent far right. So there is UM
Speaker 1: an element of intervention that is involved. There is after
Speaker 1: care and support networks in place. UM. This is not
Speaker 1: a linear process. It is different for every individual and
Speaker 1: it can depend on so many different things. You know,
Speaker 1: why someone got involved, how long they were involved, what
Speaker 1: kind of violent far right group they were involved with them.
Speaker 1: We do not go out seeking UM. Individuals come to
Speaker 1: us concerned family loved ones. We get UM referrals, so
Speaker 1: it can be anyone from you know, a teacher, to
Speaker 1: a parent, to a sibling, to a spouse, to UM
Speaker 1: law enforcement to somebody from you know, a human rights group.
Speaker 1: We also get individuals who contact us directly and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I have been involved in this for this long, you know,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, I don't want to be involved,
Speaker 1: but I don't know exactly how to get out. What
Speaker 1: is the success rate? I mean, are you more often
Speaker 1: than not able to extricate people from this world? You know?
Speaker 1: It all depends, UM. There are so many factors involved.
Speaker 1: Part of it depends on the individual. It is not
Speaker 1: at all uncommon to see a certain level of recidivism
Speaker 1: with this when individuals get involved in these types of groups.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily because someone wakes up one day and says,
Speaker 1: I decided I hate everyone who doesn't look like me today.
Speaker 1: A lot of times there are so many other mitigating factors.
Speaker 1: So maybe somebody has grievances, maybe somebody's looking for protection,
Speaker 1: maybe somebody's looking for acceptance, are belonging somewhere, so when
Speaker 1: they find these things, they gravitate to the group, and
Speaker 1: they're so grateful for having found or filled whatever was
Speaker 1: missing for them that they take on the entire identity
Speaker 1: of the group. This affects every aspect of life, the
Speaker 1: kind of clothes they wear, the kind of music they
Speaker 1: listen to, the kind of food they eat, the people
Speaker 1: that they associate with. So imagine having all of that
Speaker 1: and then disengaging. You lose all of that, So you
Speaker 1: lose your entire identity and need to reshape a completely
Speaker 1: new one. So a lot of times we see individuals
Speaker 1: who we call it, you know the difference between disengagement
Speaker 1: and de radicalization. So for someone to disengage. They can
Speaker 1: disengage from you know, physically being in proximity to the individuals.
Speaker 1: They're not going to events any longer. They're not you know,
Speaker 1: going to meetings or out you know, physically recruiting people.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't necessarily mean that they've left behind the ideology.
Speaker 1: De radicalization, on the other hand, that's at the cognitive level.
Speaker 1: So that's deconstructing the beliefs and the ideology and leaving
Speaker 1: that behind. Um So it's a very very complicated process.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it's not linear, and it's really hard
Speaker 1: to go into success and failure because then we have
Speaker 1: to stop and ask, how are we measuring success? How
Speaker 1: do we measure what was prevented? So, for instance, look
Speaker 1: at you know, we can look at things like the
Speaker 1: cost to society. What if we prevent people from committing
Speaker 1: mass violence, you know, like a mass shooting. Is it
Speaker 1: successful if we prevent someone from picking up a gun
Speaker 1: and going out and doing something like that, but they
Speaker 1: maybe still have the belief. It's very complicated and it's
Speaker 1: something that I think is going to remain complicated probably forever.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you would say to someone listening today
Speaker 1: who might be worried about a loved one who might
Speaker 1: be attracted. I can't imagine people attracted to these beliefs
Speaker 1: necessarily be listening to my podcast, honestly, but you never know.
Speaker 1: What would you say to those people if they're in
Speaker 1: fact out there listening right now. I would tell them
Speaker 1: that their novelone that you know, things don't have to
Speaker 1: be that difficult. We have a community of individuals who
Speaker 1: understand from having the experience there, and you know, we
Speaker 1: are individuals who have gone on and worked hard to
Speaker 1: be so much more than just former extreme you know,
Speaker 1: we're educated, we've worked on, you know, making amends, and
Speaker 1: you know, really going for personal and professional growth. So
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, to everyone, whether it's an
Speaker 1: individual who wants to come out or a concerned loved
Speaker 1: one or family member, change is possible. Transformation is possible.
Speaker 1: One of the hardest things that we have to do
Speaker 1: is to listen to each other and to try to
Speaker 1: understand one another's grievances, not to concede our own position
Speaker 1: that these beliefs are heinous and they're wrong, But we
Speaker 1: are not going to just right off the individual human
Speaker 1: being because their beliefs are ugly. People can come back
Speaker 1: from this. I know this is true. Um, probably you
Speaker 1: know more than I know anything else in this life,
Speaker 1: because I've I've gone through it myself. So I would
Speaker 1: just say, you know, there is help out there. We're
Speaker 1: here to listen. We're not, you know, going to judge,
Speaker 1: and it's possible we we can find a way to
Speaker 1: get through it. We've talked about earlier, you know, the
Speaker 1: Holocaust and the lessons of the past. I have in
Speaker 1: the past two years had experiences with survivors who have
Speaker 1: said things like, it was never supposed to happen again,
Speaker 1: and it's happening again. Why Why are we letting this happen.
Speaker 1: Why isn't anyone doing anything? Why don't people care? It's
Speaker 1: horrifying to me that we have individuals, an entire generation
Speaker 1: that they're almost gone, their voices are almost gone from
Speaker 1: this world. What they survived and what they went through
Speaker 1: no human beings should have to go through. And we
Speaker 1: are on the same path again. It sure is enough
Speaker 1: to motivate someone to keep going. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing, Angela, and thank you for
Speaker 1: having such a profoundly open and honest conversation with us
Speaker 1: about your own story and about the larger story that
Speaker 1: unfortunately is unfolding in this country. Thank you. I am
Speaker 1: one of the lucky ones. Angela is in fact one
Speaker 1: of the lucky ones. Clearly she had the strength, support
Speaker 1: and newfound empathy that opened her heart to understand others
Speaker 1: and ultimately herself. It seems to me people are attracted
Speaker 1: to these groups because they're lonely, isolated and want a
Speaker 1: sense of belonging. If you need help or know someone
Speaker 1: who does, you can go to Life After Hate dot org,
Speaker 1: or you can text or call six one two eight exit.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening everyone. I hope you
Speaker 1: learned something from this episode. I certainly did. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling overwhelmed by news and ormation these days,
Speaker 1: and let's face it, who isn't, you can sign up
Speaker 1: for my daily newsletter, wake Up Call by going to
Speaker 1: Katie correct dot com. And of course I'm a social animal,
Speaker 1: so you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Speaker 1: Until next time and my next question, Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: Next Question with Katie Curic is a production of I
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Speaker 1: Katie Curic Lauren Bright Pacheco, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: Our show producers are Bethan Macaluso and Courtney Litz. The
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. Associate producers are Emily Pinto
Speaker 1: and Derek Clemens. Editing is by Dylan Fagan, Derek Clements,
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