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Speaker 1: If you have your own story of being in a

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Speaker 1: cult or a high control group, or if you've had

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Speaker 1: an experience with manipulation or abuse of power you'd like

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Speaker 1: to share, leave us a message on our hotline number

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Speaker 1: at five one three nine hundred two nine five five.

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Speaker 2: Or she had us an email at trust Me pod

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Speaker 2: at gmail dot com.

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Speaker 1: Trust Me trust Me.

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Speaker 3: I'm like a swat person. I've never lived to you,

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Speaker 3: and we never have a live.

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Speaker 1: If you think that one person has all the answers,

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Speaker 1: don't welcome to trust Me the podcast about cults, extreme

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Speaker 1: belief and the abusive Power from two never nominated OSCAR

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Speaker 1: people who've actually experienced it. I have Low La Blanc

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Speaker 1: and I'm making Elizabeth and Today our guest is Anne Speckhard,

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Speaker 1: director of the International Center for the Study of Violent

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Speaker 1: Extremism also known as the ICs FEET and adjunct Associate

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Speaker 1: Professor of Psychiatrie in the School of Medicine at Georgetown University.

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Speaker 1: So she's going to tell us about her experiences speaking

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Speaker 1: to hundreds of extremists, terrorists and former terrorists from groups

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Speaker 1: like Al Qaeda, ISIS, the KKK, Proud Boys, many more,

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Speaker 1: and how she's gotten so many of these people to

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Speaker 1: open up to her, and the factors that drive people

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Speaker 1: to extremism.

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Speaker 2: We'll also discuss whether terrorists are quote unquote evil, what

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Speaker 2: to do if someone you know seems to be spiraling

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Speaker 2: into extremism, and the deradicalization work she does with Ic Sve.

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Speaker 1: They do really cool stuff.

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Speaker 3: Go.

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Speaker 1: I'm like really stoked on this episode. Honestly, I'm like.

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Speaker 2: Oh, this is your dream job.

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Speaker 1: It is my dream and literally you're sor right it is.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk to extremists and bring them back

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Speaker 1: to Earth.

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Speaker 2: I can see those free.

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Speaker 1: If only I had my degrees, which I'll complain about

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Speaker 1: every week until I die instead of actually getting one. No,

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Speaker 1: I want to make movies. That's the problem.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of which, this is not my cultiest thing, but

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Speaker 1: I am going to shamelessly self promote for the next

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Speaker 1: four weeks y'all, because I'm launching a crowdfunding campaign hello,

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Speaker 1: unrelated to this podcast for a short film that I'm doing.

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Speaker 1: It's a political horror short film, oh some elevated horror

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Speaker 1: baby about a right wing commentator whose name gets cited

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Speaker 1: in a mass shooting and how she has to contend

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Speaker 1: with her conscience in a very gruesome sort of way.

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Speaker 1: So if y'all want to donate, that would be amazing.

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Speaker 1: You can go to bit dot l y slash pruning

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Speaker 1: film pruning as in like, you know, pruning the plant.

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Speaker 1: I just had to do it. I had to do it.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it next four weeks. I'm so sorry.

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Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. It's very embarrassing.

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Speaker 2: No, I hope you get it made. It sounds really great.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. We have some really cool people interested.

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Speaker 1: So fingers crossed, maybe I can finally join the Cult

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Speaker 1: of Sun Dance.

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Speaker 2: Woo.

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Speaker 1: Yes, But before we get into our interview, I have

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Speaker 1: to know what's the couldiest thing that's happened to you

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Speaker 1: this week?

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Speaker 2: Okay, this is fun, this is ironic, this has layers.

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Speaker 2: I went to a concert this week in Lola, and

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Speaker 2: people were calling my boyfriend and I cult leaders and

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Speaker 2: like a lovely way. Yes, Like they were like, oh,

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Speaker 2: you guys are the cult leaders, and like joking about

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Speaker 2: how our house is a cult. And then we had

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Speaker 2: a party like a little thing, and like a lot

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Speaker 2: of people wore white to be funny. So it's very ironic.

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Speaker 1: Oh they wore what wait you had a fit like

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Speaker 1: a party at your house.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like a like a pot luck and everybody

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Speaker 2: wore white.

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Speaker 1: Dude, I totally see that for you guys. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like such a communal house.

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Speaker 2: Yeah it felt real. It was like, oh, wait, I

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Speaker 2: do have a little cult, don't ie it?

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Speaker 1: But like a sweet colt.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a sweet cult. There's no nothing bad yet

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Speaker 2: until a.

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Speaker 1: Dot dot dot dot dot dot decide.

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Speaker 2: I want to like rescue every cat in California and

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Speaker 2: start I don't know, doing something crazy cat cult.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think I knew a guy who had a wow

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Speaker 1: he had I knew someone who had something named cat

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Speaker 1: colt and now I can't remember what it was. I

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Speaker 1: think he was a photographer. Yeah, you have a cat culp.

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Speaker 1: But I'm like, yeah, I definitely I want one. I

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Speaker 1: have used that phrase before I'll join your cat. Well, no, honestly,

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Speaker 1: I would be. I would be dog Cole. I will

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Speaker 1: have a rival call.

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Speaker 2: But you really like my cat?

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Speaker 1: I do really if it was your cat, like just

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Speaker 1: carbon copies of your cat, yeah I would. I would

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Speaker 1: do it. I like cats who act like dogs.

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Speaker 2: She's sitting right hair waiting for me to turn back

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Speaker 2: on the heater.

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Speaker 1: Oh little chicken nugging guys, It's so cute.

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Speaker 2: Okay, you guys follow her on Instagram. She hasn't posted

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Speaker 2: in four years because my old droammate no longer lives

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Speaker 2: with me. But I'm Fenn, I'm Fenn. What about you?

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Speaker 2: Come look at her body? What about you? What's the

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Speaker 2: coldiest thing that happened to you this week?

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Speaker 1: Well, so I got a DM from someone asking about

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Speaker 1: whether we are going to address Evan rachel Wood's new

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Speaker 1: documentary or I guess the new documentary about her and her.

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Speaker 2: Abuse from Phoenix Rising.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Phoenix Rising from Marilyn Manson, and I actually didn't

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Speaker 1: know about it until I got that DM, So thank

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Speaker 1: you for the DM. However, I haven't watched it yet

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Speaker 1: because I don't know if I have the emotional capacity

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Speaker 1: to watch it yet. Yeah, I have like such complicated

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Speaker 1: feelings about that stuff because it's like I I feel

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Speaker 1: shame about having dated him, and I know that that

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Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, yeah, because I'm like, well, I wasn't

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Speaker 1: abused and I dated him, and I like had an

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Speaker 1: article that like came out with the song about him

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Speaker 1: that like capitalized on that, and I didn't know obviously

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Speaker 1: that this stuff had been going on, right, but I

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Speaker 1: still feel fucking weird about it, and I feel like

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Speaker 1: it's gonna be really hard for me to watch because

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Speaker 1: I'm like, we never got to the point where he

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Speaker 1: was abusive to me, but he absolutely love bummed me,

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Speaker 1: and even in the like several weeks that we were talking,

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Speaker 1: like even literally before we had met, he was just

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Speaker 1: texting me from tour like pretty all consuming of my life,

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Speaker 1: like pretty like of course, wanting you to like give

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Speaker 1: everything up and not talk to anyone else, and just

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Speaker 1: texting like NonStop all fucking day. All of those things

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Speaker 1: that narcissistic abusers do. Army Hammer seems to have done

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Speaker 1: the same thing to all of those women, And I

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Speaker 1: guess it's gonna just be hard to see what somebody

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Speaker 1: that I dated. Yeah, however, briefly he still fucking basically

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Speaker 1: said he loved me and introduced me to his dad. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: basically Orchard Evan Rachel would like, that's just hard. That's

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Speaker 1: just gonna be hard to watch.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I had lunch with a friend today said it

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Speaker 2: was the worst thing she's ever seen.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know, Yeah, I don't think it's I know,

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Speaker 1: I have to be prepared. I'm like, will I even

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Speaker 1: watch it? I don't know, Like I obviously know that

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Speaker 1: it happened and believe that she's a victim, as are

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Speaker 1: all of those other women, Like, well, I don't know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, here's a question that my friend had. She was like,

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Speaker 2: why isn't this everywhere bad vegans everywhere? Which we really

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Speaker 2: need to discuss because I don't think we have yet.

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Speaker 2: But why is nobody talking about this movie? And her

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Speaker 2: thought was, she feels like it's kind of being buried

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Speaker 2: and hidden.

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Speaker 1: And it is interesting that I was shocked that it

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Speaker 1: had come out and I had not heard of it

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Speaker 1: sam outside of somebody literally like dming it to me

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Speaker 1: to be like talk about this. Yeah, it is weird.

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Speaker 1: It's weird. I don't know. I don't feel like people

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Speaker 1: like obviously his fan base want to defend him. But

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Speaker 1: I think for the most part, everybody knows he's a

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Speaker 1: piece of shit, you know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah one plus one equals too with that one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean every at least everyone in my social media, yeah, circles,

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Speaker 1: they're like fuck Marilyn Manson. So I don't I don't

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Speaker 1: know exactly. Maybe it's just that there are so many

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Speaker 1: popular docs right now that are like more fun. Like

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Speaker 1: I don't know, because the ones you're talking about, like

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Speaker 1: all of those scam artist ones, they're like crimey, but

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Speaker 1: it's not like too heavy. It's more like fun.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of fluffy. I mean, not for Sarma.

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Speaker 1: Not for the victims, but like it's more true crime

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Speaker 1: than it is like I mean, I haven't watched even

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Speaker 1: that one.

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Speaker 2: I just mean generally, Wow, you really need to watch

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Speaker 2: that today. It is so good, dude.

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Speaker 1: I know, I have so much to catch up on.

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Speaker 1: My watching has been bad because I've been so focused

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Speaker 1: on this campaign for this film.

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Speaker 2: That's really bad, Lola. You need to be focusing on

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Speaker 2: bad Vegan. I know.

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Speaker 1: I heard it's amazing. I heard it's amazing. Anyway, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to watch it at some point and we can

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Speaker 1: talk about it more at length. I mean, if Evan

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Speaker 1: rachel Wood would come on, that would be fucking incredible.

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Speaker 1: I would love to hear her story directly. But I'm like,

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Speaker 1: it makes me feel like upset in my body, just

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Speaker 1: like reading about the things that he did to her. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's weird. It's not even like that could have happened

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Speaker 1: to me. But that yes, logically, very much could have

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Speaker 1: happened to me, but because it didn't, I feel guilt

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Speaker 1: or something. I don't know.

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Speaker 2: Well, it makes sense just in the way our brains

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Speaker 2: process stuff, you know, it seems to be a common

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Speaker 2: conclusion people come to, which is feeling guilt.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll dive in soon, but just wanted to mention it. Okay, Well,

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Speaker 1: get ready, y'all. This is a super super interesting person

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Speaker 1: and interview and you're going to learn so much. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk to am now. Welcome Anne Speckhard. Thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for joining us today. I am like so

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Speaker 1: excited to talk to you.

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Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. So.

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Speaker 1: You are the director of the International Center for the

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Speaker 1: Study of Violent Extremism, an adjunct Associate professor of psychiatry

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Speaker 1: in the School of Medicine at Georgetown University. You've consulted

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Speaker 1: with NATO, foreign governments, and the US Department of States, Defense, Justice, Land, Security,

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Speaker 1: Health and Human Services CIA, FBI, basically everyone, and you've

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Speaker 1: interviewed hundreds of terrorists. Did I miss anything, No, you

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Speaker 1: got it.

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Speaker 3: Right, and it's about eight hundred.

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Speaker 1: Now eight incredible. So, first of all, what initially led

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Speaker 1: you to become interested in this field.

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm married to a US ambassador and he dragged

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Speaker 3: me from my private practice overseas and I kept having

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Speaker 3: to reinvent myself with each month. So I fell into

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Speaker 3: interviewing terrorists.

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Speaker 1: As one does. Exactly what were you doing before? What

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Speaker 1: was your practice focused on before?

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Speaker 3: I was a trauma psychologist garden variety private practice, but

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Speaker 3: I had a specialty in trauma dissociitive disorders. That's when

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Speaker 3: someone's confused about their identity, or they lose time, or

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Speaker 3: they kind of hover outside their body and see themselves

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Speaker 3: from outside, or don't feel that anything around them is real.

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Speaker 1: That would be yeah, good. Twenty percent of the time.

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Speaker 2: Trauma must come into what you do now a lot.

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Speaker 3: It definitely does. And it was really interesting to me

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Speaker 3: about oh, twenty years ago when we started presenting our

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Speaker 3: data from Chechnia and the terrorists that joined there, because

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Speaker 3: I'm always looking at a life history with a person

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Speaker 3: and what is their trajectory into tororism, what were the motivations,

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Speaker 3: how did they get in and how to online element,

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Speaker 3: what did that have to do with it? And then

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Speaker 3: what their experiences are in the group and their disillusionment,

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Speaker 3: disengagement and deradicalization if they are de radicalized. I remember

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Speaker 3: going to a NATO group twenty or twenty five years

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Speaker 3: ago and saying that most of the people that had

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Speaker 3: joined the Chechen terrorists had really bad PTSD and being

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Speaker 3: left out of the room that I was some kind

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Speaker 3: of liberal. Trauma can be a driver for joining a

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Speaker 3: terrorist or a violent extremist group. But I was the

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Speaker 3: first one to introduce that, you know, to the other practitioners,

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Speaker 3: who were mostly political scientists, and we're looking at it

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Speaker 3: through a political science lens.

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Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting? How Like? I feel like trauma is

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Speaker 1: so well known now as a thing that happens, and

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Speaker 1: it's so much in the zeitgeist, But it really wasn't

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Speaker 1: that long ago that people weren't taking trauma very seriously,

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Speaker 1: generally outside of like literal war and being in the

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Speaker 1: battlefield and the shell shock I guess, even.

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Speaker 3: Being in the battlefield. When I graduated, I got my

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Speaker 3: PhD in eighty five, and I remember a lot of

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Speaker 3: things that weren't covered in our training. One was incest.

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Speaker 3: I gave a presentation to my graduate school group on

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Speaker 3: it and said, look, this book is saying that incest

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Speaker 3: isn't harmful to girls, and ripe isn't harmful to women.

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Speaker 3: You know, it's just crazy. PTSD was just being defined.

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Speaker 3: Charles Figley was a big figure at that time, and

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Speaker 3: the International Society for the Study of Traumatic Stress was started.

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Speaker 3: I joined it, but I remember the topic that I

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Speaker 3: studied for my PhD was women that had high stress

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Speaker 3: reactions to abortion. They had had PTSD reactions. Well, and

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Speaker 3: that doesn't mean every woman will have that. These particular

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Speaker 3: women did and contacted me and said, you realize what

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Speaker 3: you're writing about is PTSD. But I didn't realize, and

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Speaker 3: I was just out of a very reputable PhD program.

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Speaker 1: Wow, fascinating and what an interesting perspective to come into

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Speaker 1: this other work with.

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Speaker 3: We were posted in Belarus for my husband's first ambassadorship.

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Speaker 3: Then we went to Belgium. I lived in Belgium for

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Speaker 3: seven years. He went to a rock for two of

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Speaker 3: those years, and then we went to Greece for three years,

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Speaker 3: so we were out for a total of thirteen years.

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Speaker 3: And that's the time when I started interviewing terrorists. I

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Speaker 3: had a student that in Belgium came to class and said,

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Speaker 3: I think I have this PSTD thing. And I was like, well,

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Speaker 3: it's PTSD and I'm sure you want to talk about

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Speaker 3: it in front of the whole class, And he said

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Speaker 3: he did, and he had been in an explosion in

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Speaker 3: Hebrew University and he had just walked out from the

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Speaker 3: cafeteria when it exploded from a backpack phone and everyone

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Speaker 3: inside was killed. And he pushed me really hard to

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Speaker 3: study the Palestinians. I was already studying the Chechens and

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Speaker 3: it went from there. Wow.

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Speaker 1: So, first of all, when we talk about terrorism, I

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Speaker 1: think most people generally would think of isis And I'm curious,

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Speaker 1: what is the definition that you use? Does it match

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Speaker 1: what the US government uses? And have you worked with

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Speaker 1: any terrorists in the US.

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Speaker 3: The US government has about five different main definitions, so

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Speaker 3: the FBI is different than the State Department and so on.

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Speaker 3: But basically what I use is that it's a nonstate

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Speaker 3: actor with a political intent to influence politics that uses

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Speaker 3: violence against property or persons and aimed at civilian targets. Okay,

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Speaker 3: it gets blurry sometimes when you look at groups like

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Speaker 3: Hamas or the Chechen jahadis that we're aiming a lot

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Speaker 3: of times from military checkpoints. In some definitions of terrorism,

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Speaker 3: you don't compos as terrorist acts. But if it's a

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Speaker 3: group that's also targeting pizzerias and airports and metro then

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Speaker 3: I would put it all together.

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Speaker 1: There is terrorism, gotcha. We can get more into what's

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Speaker 1: going on in the US and what you consider terrorism here.

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Speaker 1: But have you engaged with many people who meet that

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Speaker 1: definition here?

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Speaker 3: Well? Here we started in the November before the January

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Speaker 3: sixth attacks. We were getting concerned about the domestic terrorism problem,

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Speaker 3: and we started interviewing white supremacists from many different groups.

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Speaker 3: So I've now completed fifty interviews. They're all about two

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Speaker 3: hours long. And some of these people have engaged in stabbings,

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Speaker 3: in fire bombing synagogues. One of them got caught, thankfully

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Speaker 3: by the FBI in a sting operation, but he purchased

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Speaker 3: a rifle that he was planning to take into a

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Speaker 3: synagogue and shoot everyone. You know, this is definitely domestic terrorism, right.

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Speaker 1: Can you just name some of the groups that you've

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Speaker 1: interviewed people from just generally, Well, when it.

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Speaker 3: Comes to militant jahadist it's mainly ISIS two hundred and

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Speaker 3: seventy three of ISIS. I have also interviewed with al Qaeda,

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Speaker 3: al Shabah, Palestinian groups, Hamas PFLP. I talked to some

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Speaker 3: Husbi Lah in Lebanon, and then with a white supremacist.

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Speaker 3: It can go from KKKA, National Socialist Movement, Proud Boys,

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Speaker 3: Aryan Brotherhood, Aryan Nations. I don't remember them all.

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Speaker 1: Wow, wow everyone. Basically, these are such dangerous people and situations.

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Speaker 1: And obviously you're talking to a lot of people who

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Speaker 1: are maybe de radicalized or on the path of being

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Speaker 1: de radicalized. But how do you get people like that

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Speaker 1: to trust you? And what is that like?

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Speaker 3: Well, with ISIS, I talked to people that returned to

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Speaker 3: their home countries and were not jailed, and I talked

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Speaker 3: to people that crossed into Turkey and we're not imprisoned,

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Speaker 3: and that's a little scary because you never know exactly

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Speaker 3: what you're getting. And then I've gone into the Syrian prisons.

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Speaker 3: Syrian Democratic Forces has been very supportive of our project,

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Speaker 3: which what we call breaking the Isis brand, because all

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Speaker 3: of our interviews we asked permission to video and then

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Speaker 3: to take the top content out of their video and

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Speaker 3: create a counter narrative video, which is an insider speaking

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Speaker 3: against the group. Same thing in Zulimania, Iraq, and Baghdad.

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Speaker 3: I got into the prisons and prisons it's a little

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Speaker 3: different because there's a guard sitting with you most of

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Speaker 3: the time, right. But what I've found is that all

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Speaker 3: of these people appreciate some compassion, and I'm a compassionate interviewer.

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Speaker 3: They seem to appreciate that they get a chance to

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Speaker 3: look at their life as a whole with a psychologist.

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Speaker 3: The guys in prison are lonely and are just happy

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Speaker 3: to be out of their cell, especially talking to a woman.

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Speaker 3: But they're also really curious when they find out how

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Speaker 3: many people I've talked to. They're curious, so that's an

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Speaker 3: advantage for me. They don't want to talk to journalists,

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Speaker 3: many of them, I mean some of them do. Some

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Speaker 3: of them are big press rats. You know, they're concerned

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Speaker 3: about how it's going to be presented and if the

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Speaker 3: persons thoughtful. They're just looking for some sensational headline. And

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Speaker 3: then with a white supremacist. I haven't gone into prisons

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Speaker 3: at all. I've talked to people that some of them

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Speaker 3: have been in prison, some of them have been in

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Speaker 3: our military. Oh, and some of them are de radicalized

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Speaker 3: and some of them are still quite radicalized, but I

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Speaker 3: would say the whole sample of fifty they were at

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Speaker 3: least starting the process of disengagement de radicalization.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, gosh. I guess let's just start with I

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Speaker 1: think the biggest question of the day, which is, in

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Speaker 1: your experience, hundreds of interviews, all different kinds of groups,

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Speaker 1: what are some of the recurring factors that you see

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Speaker 1: that draw people into extremism terrorism.

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Speaker 3: I came up with this theory called the lethal cocktail

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Speaker 3: of terrorism, and I would say this almost always a

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Speaker 3: group involved. So we have the unibomber. He made his

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Speaker 3: own ideology and he acted independently, but he's also a

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Speaker 3: college mathematics professor. And we had Christopher Dorner. He was

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Speaker 3: lap the police officer that had been trying to a

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Speaker 3: sniper and he became a sniper all on his own,

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Speaker 3: wrote his own ideology. But most often people resonate to

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Speaker 3: a group and they pick up the group's ideology. They

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Speaker 3: don't rate their own, and even if they act as

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Speaker 3: a lone wolf, they pick up the group's ideology. You know,

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Speaker 3: they may personalize it in some way. So there's four things.

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Speaker 3: There's the group, the ideology, then there's social support. And

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Speaker 3: we used to find back in the days of Al

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Speaker 3: Kadeda that people had to travel to Pakistan to get

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Speaker 3: their social support. They had to work their way into

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Speaker 3: a group and really be trusted because the group was

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Speaker 3: taking a risk to take them in. But now with

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Speaker 3: the way social media is and the internet right now,

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Speaker 3: I don't know where you're sitting, you know, it feels

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Speaker 3: like we're in the same room together. That's how it

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Speaker 3: is now, so very quickly you can assemble social support

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Speaker 3: around a person who you want to recruit. You know,

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Speaker 3: you can twitter blastem, love bomb him, make him feel

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Speaker 3: really included and really supported to take part in terrorism.

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Speaker 3: And the more social support there is, the more willing

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Speaker 3: a person will be to join. So those are the

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Speaker 3: first three things, the groups, the ideology, and social support,

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Speaker 3: and then the fourth is what's inside of you, your

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Speaker 3: motivations and your vulnerabilities. So with white supremacists, we found

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Speaker 3: belonging was a really important motivation and vulnerability, wanting some

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Speaker 3: kind of noble purpose and a feeling of significance. And

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Speaker 3: a lot of these people in our sample had been

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Speaker 3: born in pretty rough homes, their parents may be never

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Speaker 3: even married, and there's violence and drugs in their home chaos.

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Speaker 3: So as young people, they were really looking for something

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Speaker 3: to belong to and then got either self exposed or

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Speaker 3: the group found them, and then they were exposed to

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Speaker 3: these ideologies and to the group itself. And we find

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Speaker 3: what pulls people in as a sense of belonging and oh,

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Speaker 3: I'm an elite, and I don't have to think what's

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Speaker 3: the cause of my failures in life at somebody else's

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Speaker 3: It's not that I failed, it's that the Jews are

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Speaker 3: running everything. This becomes very powerful, so that's the first

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Speaker 3: step in and then the group starts directing their hate

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Speaker 3: in the sense of saying, Okay, you're in the celite group,

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Speaker 3: but now you have a purpose, and your purpose is

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Speaker 3: to understand our ideology, adhere to it, and carry out

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Speaker 3: acts on behalf of it. So you have to hate minorities,

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Speaker 3: you have to stay away from minorities. You have to

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Speaker 3: hate Jews, even if you've never met one, and you

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Speaker 3: have to spread this. And when the group engages in violence,

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Speaker 3: support it and possibly even be one of the people

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Speaker 3: that does engage in violence. So we call that process

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Speaker 3: directed hate.

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Speaker 1: How often would you say, just in your experience, approximately

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Speaker 1: would a person who joins a group like that have

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Speaker 1: some kind of either traumatic or tumultuous like living in

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Speaker 1: a conflict zone or just you know, a traumatic childhood,

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Speaker 1: basically a troubled background, Like how frequent is that?

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Speaker 3: Well in the motivation section, and I came up with

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Speaker 3: fifty variables, and on our website, the ICSV website, we

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Speaker 3: have this paper the Lethal Cocktail of Terrorism, and all

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Speaker 3: fifty variables are laid out. But it can be as

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Speaker 3: as simple as you're in love with somebody and they

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Speaker 3: say come with me to Isis Jasyria, or you fall

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Speaker 3: in love with somebody that's in the clan and you

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Speaker 3: start going with them. So it's not all trauma driven.

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Speaker 3: It's sometimes wanting to feel that you're really helping other people.

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Speaker 3: A lot of people got drawn into ISIS because they

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Speaker 3: believed that they could practice their religion in a more

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Speaker 3: true way and they wouldn't be harassed anymore discriminated against

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Speaker 3: as they were in their home areas. I mean, the

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Speaker 3: list goes on. It's really fifty. It's belonging, significance, purpose,

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00:21:45,480 --> 00:21:49,000
Speaker 3: sense of adventure, money. You know, some of these white

435
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:53,240
Speaker 3: supremacist gangs are stealing things, drugs, women, if you joined

436
00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:56,280
Speaker 3: isis you were promised a sex life, and you promised

437
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:58,240
Speaker 3: that you would get married, so it could be a

438
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:01,600
Speaker 3: complete loser or unable to get married where you lived.

439
00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:04,160
Speaker 3: And if you went to Syria, they promised you a why.

440
00:22:04,240 --> 00:22:07,120
Speaker 1: Right, So basically, if you have a need, they can

441
00:22:07,160 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: probably fill it, is what they're promising.

442
00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:12,840
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. That's a good point. And I always

443
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 3: say that no one joins a Toroirist organization without having

444
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 3: the belief that they're going to meet your needs, because

445
00:22:19,359 --> 00:22:22,080
Speaker 3: that's the first thing the recruiter does. He figures out

446
00:22:22,520 --> 00:22:26,400
Speaker 3: what are your needs and starts convincing you that they're

447
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:28,879
Speaker 3: going to meet your needs, and gives you such a

448
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:33,240
Speaker 3: good sense about yourself, about your belonging, about your purpose

449
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,440
Speaker 3: that as time goes on, you begin to fuse your

450
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:39,320
Speaker 3: identity with the group, and then the group has no

451
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:41,879
Speaker 3: real interest in meeting your needs. The group has the

452
00:22:41,960 --> 00:22:44,679
Speaker 3: interest of the group, and they're going to use you.

453
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:49,359
Speaker 3: But when you're fused to the group and to their ideology,

454
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:53,000
Speaker 3: you probably have become a true believer. Right.

455
00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:53,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

456
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:56,080
Speaker 1: The reason I asked about the trauma thing was because

457
00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 1: I think that's like the most intuitive one, like we understand, Like,

458
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 1: if I'm living in a conflict zone and I believe

459
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:05,439
Speaker 1: that it's a particular group that's the cause of it,

460
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:06,919
Speaker 1: it makes sense that I would join a group that

461
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 1: would fight that group. Or if I had a you know,

462
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 1: really traumatic childhood, you know, just overcoming the demons in

463
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,679
Speaker 1: my head would probably lead me down a path like that,

464
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 1: or like could have the potential to leave me down

465
00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 1: a path like that. But I do find it so

466
00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:22,040
Speaker 1: interesting that there are so many people who don't necessarily

467
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:26,160
Speaker 1: have those things in their backgrounds and are just either

468
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:30,199
Speaker 1: targeted or stumble upon it. Like is it typically that

469
00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:33,680
Speaker 1: they're targeted or can it just kind of happen organically.

470
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 3: It happens both ways, and now it's online. But if

471
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:43,200
Speaker 3: you're hurting, you're seeking out people that might meet your needs,

472
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:46,240
Speaker 3: so you might go seeking the group, and if you're

473
00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:48,240
Speaker 3: in a conflict zone, you're right, it's a no brainer.

474
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:50,560
Speaker 3: It's a lot about trauma. It's a lot about revenge,

475
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,760
Speaker 3: a lot about they took my territory, they raped my sister,

476
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 3: or they tortured my brother. Right, it's very trauma driven.

477
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,760
Speaker 3: But still you see people conflict zones figuring out who

478
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:04,120
Speaker 3: the groups are that would be willing to equip them

479
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 3: for revenge and them joining instead of you know, active recruitment.

480
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 3: But we see the same thing in non conflict zones

481
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 3: that people are searching on the internet and they find

482
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:18,119
Speaker 3: something that appeals to them for some reason, or they

483
00:24:18,119 --> 00:24:21,679
Speaker 3: start chatting with someone and the person tells them, well,

484
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 3: you know it's not you, it's the Jews, and you

485
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,720
Speaker 3: know you're white, you should be with us, and you know,

486
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 3: just sucks them in. So in some ways there has

487
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:34,639
Speaker 3: to be some resonance to the ideology for it to

488
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 3: catch you. But it doesn't have to be a lot.

489
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:40,160
Speaker 3: But the more resonance that's already there are, the better.

490
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 3: Of course, I think when you talk about trauma, it's

491
00:24:44,080 --> 00:24:48,480
Speaker 3: sure easier to manipulate someone like. You alluded to having

492
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,359
Speaker 3: dissociative states earlier in the podcast. I don't know if

493
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:52,680
Speaker 3: you were kidding around or that.

494
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:53,840
Speaker 1: Was for real, that was real?

495
00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:57,680
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, if you lived that way. You know, when

496
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:01,199
Speaker 3: you're spotty about your consciousness, at the times when you're

497
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,920
Speaker 3: kind of gone, there might be somebody else present or

498
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,200
Speaker 3: nobody present, but that's a time when you're really vulnerable

499
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:11,639
Speaker 3: to being manipulated. And recruiters figure that out too, and

500
00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 3: they can push you in ways that if you were

501
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 3: fully present maybe you would catch on to and they

502
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:19,159
Speaker 3: can trick you.

503
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 2: So these people are so smart that they're looking for

504
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 2: people going through shit almost well.

505
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 3: You know, think about it. A stage hypnotist. You know,

506
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 3: they look out on their crowd and they figure out who's,

507
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 3: you know, going deep into trance and who's easily played with,

508
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 3: and those are the people they call up to stage.

509
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:40,119
Speaker 3: And I think it's probably intuitive. I don't know if

510
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,639
Speaker 3: those stage hypnotists go through on training and fortune tellers

511
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 3: do the same thing. You know, they notice when you're

512
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:48,879
Speaker 3: getting kind of fuzzy, and then you know they can

513
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 3: draw information out of you and feed it back to you.

514
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 3: So you think that they can see your life and

515
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:58,160
Speaker 3: know everything about you. Right, and recruiters stumble upon these

516
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:01,400
Speaker 3: things intuitively, and then they use of course, and any

517
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 3: group that's using your religion has won over on you already,

518
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 3: because if they know these are sacred, sacred scriptures and

519
00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:13,400
Speaker 3: probably sacred values to you, all they have to show

520
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 3: you is how those sacred scriptures or values are being

521
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 3: offended by others to make you upset, and you know,

522
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:24,240
Speaker 3: they may kick you into a dissociative mode by upsetting

523
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:28,000
Speaker 3: you and then you're more vulnerable. But either way they

524
00:26:28,040 --> 00:26:32,159
Speaker 3: can play with the verses and twist them. So I

525
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 3: worked with an abortion clinic terrorists. She didn't do really

526
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,199
Speaker 3: too much damage to the clinics that she tried to

527
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 3: burn down when they were being constructed, but she was

528
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 3: facing twenty five years mandatory sentencing, and she'd been very

529
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 3: manipulated by I believe it was a government informant, government

530
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 3: paid informant that she said assembled the whole group and said,

531
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 3: you know, nobody did anything during the Holocaust, and people

532
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,719
Speaker 3: knew that there was a crematorium in their community, but

533
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:04,760
Speaker 3: they didn't go and destroy it. They didn't stand up

534
00:27:04,800 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 3: to the Germans, and now we all condemned them. So

535
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,240
Speaker 3: they used this, you know, societal story that all of us,

536
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:15,359
Speaker 3: if we're against the Nazis, adhere to, but brought it

537
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 3: into a different situation. And then he also quoted scriptures

538
00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 3: about ultimately she found in her mailbox and Emmanuel called

539
00:27:23,520 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 3: the Army of God Manuel, and it was about unborn

540
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:29,920
Speaker 3: babies calling out to people like her to be warriors

541
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:35,680
Speaker 3: for them, and supposedly written from a Christian perspective.

542
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so they can really prey on any pre

543
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: existing belief basically as well as like need for you know,

544
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: social support, need for meaning and purpose, I need for

545
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: financial support, and like basically any need can be preyed upon.

546
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 3: Right, And we found plenty of these guys contacting young

547
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:56,119
Speaker 3: women and flirting with them and making it sound like

548
00:27:56,160 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 3: it was a big adventure and you don't have to

549
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:02,440
Speaker 3: get married to your pakistanius come here, right, and you're

550
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 3: doing God's work, right, and God gives you permission to

551
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:06,760
Speaker 3: rebel in this way.

552
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:12,200
Speaker 1: How often is it women? My perception is it's like vast, vast,

553
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: vast majority of men, but it seems like you have

554
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 1: interviewed a number of women.

555
00:28:15,480 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, terrorism and violent extremism is mainly a man's game,

556
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,439
Speaker 3: but there's women in these groups too. They're usually not

557
00:28:22,560 --> 00:28:26,199
Speaker 3: in leadership roles. In the leftist groups. We saw some

558
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 3: women in leadership roles way back when, but not as

559
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 3: much now. But it's both men and women that get tricked.

560
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 3: And there are plenty of Isis men that told me

561
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:37,760
Speaker 3: that they felt tricked, And there were plenty of white

562
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 3: supremacists men who felt that they'd been brainwashed. So, for instance,

563
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 3: you know, take this Christian identity, if you can call

564
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 3: it a theology being taught from the KKK and groups

565
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 3: like that, that takes Christianity but goes back to the

566
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 3: story of the Serpent and says, well, you know, Jews

567
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 3: and minorities, minorities were created ahead of time. Then God

568
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 3: created Adam, and even you have dominion over all these creation,

569
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 3: all these animals, and so black people and minorities are

570
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 3: just the animals you have dominion over. Or the serpent

571
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 3: was just a symbol, but he was really Satan in

572
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 3: the flesh, and Satan had sex with Eve. That's how

573
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:21,160
Speaker 3: he tricked her and her bad seed Caine is the

574
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 3: progenitor of all the evil people in the world.

575
00:29:24,280 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: All the juice, right right, And just.

576
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 3: Think, you know, if you believe in the Adam and

577
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 3: Eve story. And then somebody with any credibility starts explaining

578
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 3: this all to you and opens the Bible and says, look,

579
00:29:35,160 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 3: Jesus said, because Jesus did say, according to the Bible,

580
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,280
Speaker 3: use sons of the devil to the juice. But he

581
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 3: was talking to specific people at a specific time about

582
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:48,000
Speaker 3: a specific hypocrisy that they were following he wasn't saying

583
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 3: all Jews are the spawn of Satan, but you know

584
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 3: they connected.

585
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: Right, right. It's a very common thing when we think

586
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: of a terrorist, we think of almost like a caricature.

587
00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 1: Maybe this is my perception of how Americans receive tororism.

588
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that obviously this is not true of everyone,

589
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:06,719
Speaker 1: but you know, it's someone who's like committing evil acts,

590
00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: and we want to believe that the only people who

591
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: can commit evil acts are people who are evil. And

592
00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: I'm wondering your perspective as a psychologist, do you find

593
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: that people typically aren't psychologically pretty normal? Are there any

594
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: you know, recurring factors of mental illness or anything, or

595
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: is it just kind of anyone?

596
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 3: I think the whole concept of evil when you really

597
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:34,640
Speaker 3: start diving into it, falls apart. Yeah, because you know,

598
00:30:34,680 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 3: we tend to call people that harm us or harm

599
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 3: our loved ones or our property evil, but are they

600
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 3: you know? And when we start digging into all the

601
00:30:44,400 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 3: psychosocial things that are going on, then you a little

602
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 3: bit lose track of that label of evil that you

603
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 3: put on a person. Yeah, we know that most serial

604
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 3: killers had really horrible childhoods, and some of them are

605
00:30:56,360 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 3: dissative themselves, you know, killing when they're in a dissative stay.

606
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say that makes them innocent, and I would

607
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 3: never excuse their behaviors, But I don't know. I mean,

608
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 3: the concept of people, if you really really start looking

609
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 3: into it, it doesn't hold up well, right, And I

610
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:15,640
Speaker 3: think it's better to look at what are all the

611
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:19,959
Speaker 3: factors that are driving your behavior and how much are

612
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 3: you responsible for them? I mean, we have this concept

613
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 3: in Christianity at least of free will, But I always

614
00:31:27,560 --> 00:31:30,520
Speaker 3: ask myself, is a crack baby? That's some are born

615
00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:34,400
Speaker 3: addicted to their free will? Right? Most of us do,

616
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 3: and a lot of us hand over our free will

617
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:40,720
Speaker 3: to addictions to other people. But that's the choice that

618
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 3: you made, you know, so you have responsibility at those

619
00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 3: junctures in your life. But there are some people that

620
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 3: I don't think they ever have a chance.

621
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I agree completely, it's basically the premise

622
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: of this show. But yeah, we are interested in the

623
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: why of extreme behavior of all kinds, and generally I

624
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: agree that you is sort of an irrelevant word. A

625
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 1: criminal act is one thing, but what does evil actually mean?

626
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:08,400
Speaker 3: Like if you're applying it to a person. Yeah, applying

627
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 3: it to actions makes total sense. I would say that

628
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 3: brings us to another point in our research that we

629
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:18,080
Speaker 3: found that when people started to have cracks in the

630
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 3: ideology that they had taken on and started moving away

631
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 3: from being fused with the group. Some people argue that

632
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 3: once you're fused with the group, it's very hard to unfuse.

633
00:32:28,400 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 3: I don't find that to be the case, but I'm

634
00:32:30,600 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 3: also a psychologist that believes people can change, in part

635
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 3: just from talking to them. What we found with the

636
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 3: white supremacists, which is really interesting, is that they were

637
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 3: told to stay away from minorities. Some of the guys

638
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 3: would sneakily have sexual relationships with people of color or

639
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,720
Speaker 3: other ethnicities, but wouldn't admit it to anybody in the group.

640
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 3: So they're supposed to stay away from minorities, hate Jews,

641
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 3: and hate them all. But when they got away from

642
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,920
Speaker 3: their group, Like let's say the truck driver that drives

643
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,920
Speaker 3: across country and has to unload his truck, and every

644
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 3: week he's unloading with a black guy, and the black

645
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:10,000
Speaker 3: guy says he want a cigarette and starts chatting with him.

646
00:33:10,480 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 3: It's like, Wow, we have a lot in common. I

647
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:14,800
Speaker 3: know one of my friends that was in a cult,

648
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 3: Steve Hassan told me that we know Steve, Yeah, yeah,

649
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:24,480
Speaker 3: I figured that when he was out promoting for the Moonies,

650
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:28,160
Speaker 3: he was parched and some guy said, let me give

651
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 3: you something to eat and drink, and he said it

652
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 3: didn't get him out of the group, but it really

653
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,920
Speaker 3: shook him up. Because if everybody that's not a Moony

654
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 3: it's evil according to the group, then why is this

655
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 3: guy being nice to him?

656
00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 2: Right?

657
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 3: So I would say there is a power of one

658
00:33:43,640 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 3: and it's not our responsibility as victims of any group

659
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 3: should be nice to them, but we should understand the

660
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 3: power we have. Because many people in our sample told

661
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 3: us that they really got cracks in their fusion with

662
00:34:00,120 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 3: group from having positive interactions with minority members.

663
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:07,840
Speaker 1: Right, that's so interesting. We had a former white supremacist

664
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: on here as well. One of the big cracks for

665
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,399
Speaker 1: him was that he started working for a Jewish man

666
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:17,560
Speaker 1: who was very kind and generous and just did not

667
00:34:17,840 --> 00:34:20,400
Speaker 1: meet the caricature in his head of what a Jewish

668
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 1: Man was supposed to be. It does seem like that

669
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:24,879
Speaker 1: is what happens so much of the time, and it's

670
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: almost with regard to white supremacist ideology, specifically, like asking

671
00:34:29,160 --> 00:34:32,240
Speaker 1: people to not interact with minorities or people of color

672
00:34:32,640 --> 00:34:36,839
Speaker 1: is in itself kind of information control, preventing them from

673
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:39,879
Speaker 1: interacting with people and getting more information about what those

674
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 1: humans are actually like I've just never thought of it

675
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:42,919
Speaker 1: that way.

676
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 3: Before, and that they're actually human.

677
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean it's the same concept as like,

678
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 1: don't read books that are not our specific scripture, you know,

679
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 1: except just with human interaction.

680
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 3: We find that with all these groups that they narrow

681
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 3: your focus. So that's one of the reasons that with

682
00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 3: our isistem and our al Shabab interviews and our white

683
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 3: supremacist interviews for those that we could capture and video,

684
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 3: we worked really hard to get the people to trust

685
00:35:09,480 --> 00:35:12,840
Speaker 3: us enough talking about trust me to say would you

686
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,279
Speaker 3: be willing to take part in the Connor narrative? So

687
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 3: at the end of a two hour interview, if we

688
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:20,480
Speaker 3: had their permission, we could go through and say, Okay,

689
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 3: this part represents how they got sucked into the group,

690
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:25,960
Speaker 3: this is what they thought they'd get out of it,

691
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:28,279
Speaker 3: this is what they actually got out of it, and

692
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 3: here's their advice to others about joining. We found those

693
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:36,280
Speaker 3: to be really really powerful. We think they're important because

694
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:40,839
Speaker 3: groups like Isis told people mainline news is islamophobic. They're

695
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,320
Speaker 3: lying about us. Those things aren't true that they're saying

696
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 3: on the news. Just get your news from us. And

697
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 3: then they were very prolific and good at providing their news.

698
00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 3: They had all these media outlets, and they still do

699
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 3: what supremacists same thing. So when we make our counter

700
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 3: narrative videos, they're called breaking the ISIS brand and escape Hey,

701
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 3: we name them disgusting names. One of our escape hate

702
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,480
Speaker 3: ones is black people are not your friend, and you

703
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 3: will show a Nazi symbol on it from the guy

704
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 3: that's telling the story because we illustrate with b roll

705
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:16,919
Speaker 3: as the person's talking, because it's a video, and we'll

706
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 3: take that especially disgusting picture to be the thumbnail and

707
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 3: the disgusting title so that someone who is engaging in

708
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 3: hate groups and looking for them will click on it

709
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 3: and then he'll get a big surprise because we know

710
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 3: that they've been told only watch ours, right, So it's

711
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 3: a little bit of a trick.

712
00:36:36,640 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: Oh that's so smart, I think so.

713
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:42,080
Speaker 3: Most of the people we interview when we explain the

714
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:44,839
Speaker 3: conor narrative project to them and ask them if they'll

715
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,319
Speaker 3: take part in it. They say exactly like you, Oh

716
00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:48,440
Speaker 3: that is really smart.

717
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:51,200
Speaker 2: How long into the video do they realize that some

718
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:51,840
Speaker 2: things awry?

719
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:55,719
Speaker 3: Oh? This is interesting because we partner with Facebook, and

720
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 3: we learned that our first videos and we still make

721
00:36:59,360 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 3: them all five videos, but we learned that those don't

722
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,560
Speaker 3: play as well on Facebook because people would watch a

723
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:08,319
Speaker 3: minute of them and then they you know, the next

724
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:10,040
Speaker 3: thing would come up and they would you know, it's

725
00:37:10,080 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 3: just social media, that's why it works. So we made

726
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:16,800
Speaker 3: one minute versions of the five minute once and it's

727
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 3: usually about fifteen seconds when the person is saying why

728
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 3: they joined and this and that, and we don't put

729
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 3: our logo or anything at that point. We just have

730
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 3: the person talking, so you have no idea what you're

731
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 3: listening to, and hopefully they engage you. So Facebook will

732
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 3: give you these braggy metrics of you reach two million

733
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:41,000
Speaker 3: people with a fifteen second view, and I'm like, that's

734
00:37:41,040 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 3: not outful at all. You know, we want them to

735
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,720
Speaker 3: watch as much as possible of it, and we also

736
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 3: want them to go to our website that corresponds with

737
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 3: each of these videos. So right now, I think We

738
00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:56,399
Speaker 3: have fifty videos for escape Pit, and we have a

739
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,919
Speaker 3: website that we're building slowly but surely called escape dot org.

740
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 3: And when we campaign on Facebook, we say if you

741
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:06,480
Speaker 3: want to see more, and it also says that at

742
00:38:06,520 --> 00:38:09,359
Speaker 3: the end of the video, go to escape hey dot org.

743
00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:11,960
Speaker 3: So if you were somebody that thought I want to

744
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 3: get out, but I have no idea how to and

745
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 3: you want to escape hey, it's got a whole page

746
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 3: on all the organizations that might be able to help you,

747
00:38:20,440 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 3: and even some of them overseas, and the breaking that

748
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,920
Speaker 3: isis brand goes to the real Shahad dot org. The

749
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 3: real Shahad dot org is better populated. We've written a

750
00:38:30,719 --> 00:38:35,040
Speaker 3: lot of blogs with our sheik Ali about Islam and

751
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 3: the claims that isis al Qaeda al Chabab make that

752
00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 3: are simply false and not supported by good scriptural analysis.

753
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: So you've talked about how as a person begins to

754
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:48,280
Speaker 1: find their identity in the group, they start to fuse

755
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:50,560
Speaker 1: with the group and only consume materials from that group.

756
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: So typically in coolds there's a leader who's directing this

757
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:58,840
Speaker 1: kind of information isolation. But what we're seeing obviously now

758
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:01,640
Speaker 1: in the modern era, is that people are kind of

759
00:39:01,680 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: self isolating online and no one is really telling them to.

760
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:09,279
Speaker 3: Well, Google, on Facebook and Twitter is because they all

761
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,919
Speaker 3: have algorithms that suggest to you. I mean, we did

762
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 3: breaking the Isis brand on Instagram, and on Instagram you

763
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 3: have to have followers for you to look legit and

764
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:25,680
Speaker 3: put things up. So our researcher Molly Ellenberg started following

765
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 3: pages that looked extremeissed they're supposed to be taken down,

766
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 3: but she just followed them, and she said, Instagram itself

767
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 3: suggested everybody else, right, So she just followed everybody that

768
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 3: they suggested to her, and they got it.

769
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: Right, right. I get so frustrated when people are like,

770
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,839
Speaker 1: you have the whole Internet available to you to look

771
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:48,799
Speaker 1: at other information, but it's like you kind of don't like.

772
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 1: Once you start going down a path of a particular

773
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 1: kind of media, you just get fed that same media

774
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:57,919
Speaker 1: until you can become radicalized that way.

775
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 3: And the smart thing is what I finally got my way,

776
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 3: and we're really really happy because a state of kattarg

777
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:07,360
Speaker 3: got behind us on this. But I was saying for years.

778
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 3: Al Qaeda videos are so emotionally evocative and they sing

779
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 3: the the sheets, which are the Islamic scriptures and you know,

780
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 3: just puts you into a tranci state. And I know,

781
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 3: I watched them at my friend's house. He's a Lebanese

782
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 3: Belgium and I was like, I'm going to join. I

783
00:40:23,800 --> 00:40:26,800
Speaker 3: don't even understand Arabic, but they've convinced me. And he

784
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 3: was like, you got to be kidding. I always said,

785
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,560
Speaker 3: cognitive arguments are great, there's nothing wrong with them, but

786
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 3: we need to be catching people the same way the

787
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 3: terrorist groups do, which is very emotionally evocative material. And

788
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 3: the more emotional it is and the more you resonate

789
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,400
Speaker 3: with it, maybe with the victims that are being portrayed,

790
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 3: you start to suspend your critical reasoning and then I

791
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:52,880
Speaker 3: can get in. And I know this as a therapist.

792
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 3: I mean, if I'm sitting and working with you, and

793
00:40:55,040 --> 00:40:57,319
Speaker 3: you know, if you happen to be a disositive, I

794
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 3: just throw something up that's really emotional evocative, and you know,

795
00:41:01,280 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 3: I might flip you into a decositive state, or I

796
00:41:04,320 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 3: speak softly and then they're suddenly really listening to me.

797
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 3: You know, there's all kinds of tricks you can do,

798
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,799
Speaker 3: and they're masters at it.

799
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 1: Speaking of masters, how often is there a charismatic leader.

800
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: I remember I saw you had written something about a

801
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: man named Anoir a Lachi. He inspired a lot of

802
00:41:25,480 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 1: Westerners to join Isis because of the way that he spoke.

803
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 1: He was accessible and charismatic, and I think spoke English.

804
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:31,959
Speaker 2: Is that a.

805
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: Typical entry point, like is there typically a particular person

806
00:41:36,120 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: who speaks very well in videos.

807
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:43,080
Speaker 3: There's definitely different routes of incitement, and I would say

808
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 3: one of the roots is to show you something really

809
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 3: emotionally evocative and victimhood. But another is to be an

810
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:54,799
Speaker 3: ideologue that's an inspire and then you sell ideology to

811
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,439
Speaker 3: the people that are listening to and that's what Alaki did,

812
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:02,400
Speaker 3: So he sold the ideology, promoted the ideology of endless Shahad,

813
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 3: that everyone has individual duty to Shahad. So you can

814
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 3: be living in Belgium and if something breaks out in Syria,

815
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 3: you have a duty to go join Jahad, which is

816
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 3: not substantiated in Islamic scriptures. You have a duty to makishra,

817
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 3: which is also not substantiated. So that means that you

818
00:42:20,760 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 3: have to move out of wherever you live unless it's

819
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,880
Speaker 3: ruled by Sharia and go and live with the true Muslims,

820
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 3: and Isis touk It even a step further and said

821
00:42:30,520 --> 00:42:33,160
Speaker 3: that they were the only true Muslims. So you know,

822
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:35,280
Speaker 3: you couldn't go to Saudi, you couldn't go to Malaysia,

823
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:39,840
Speaker 3: couldn't go to Maldives. So there's insiders always in groups,

824
00:42:39,880 --> 00:42:43,919
Speaker 3: and insiders often can't be arrested because they're smart enough

825
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 3: not to say anything too far out. So Jeff Shup

826
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:49,680
Speaker 3: was like that. He was the head of the MSM.

827
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:52,800
Speaker 3: He even said the FBI would routinely come in visit

828
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 3: him and ask him questions about people in the group,

829
00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 3: and he was warned. Tim Garrett also was a group leader,

830
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:00,919
Speaker 3: and he said he was warned, and they were told,

831
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 3: if somebody in your group commits a crime and you

832
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 3: haven't told us about it, will hold you responsible too.

833
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 3: So some of these people, you know, we're pointing out

834
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,960
Speaker 3: possible violent actors, But at the same time, all their ideology,

835
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:18,160
Speaker 3: all their rhetoric was encouraging people should be violent. Well,

836
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:20,240
Speaker 3: their official policy was don't be violent.

837
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:21,839
Speaker 1: I just want to speak more to your point of

838
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 1: like emotionality. I think that one area that so many

839
00:43:26,080 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: of us get stuck on. If we see someone that

840
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:31,879
Speaker 1: we love, maybe falling prey to conspiracy theories or any

841
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 1: kind of you know, extreme belief of any kind. A

842
00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: lot of people maybe have ultra conservative family members who

843
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:44,200
Speaker 1: they're worried are dipping into dangerous territory. Facts don't work right.

844
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: Facts are not the thing that get people out of

845
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: their ideology. So what you're doing is an amazing way

846
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: to reach people online. What are some of the other

847
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 1: ways that you can, kind of as just a regular

848
00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:00,040
Speaker 1: person begin to try at least to deradicalize someone in

849
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:02,680
Speaker 1: your life. And also what has the official process been

850
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: for you?

851
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 3: Well, when we've worked in prisons, and the first deradicalization

852
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:09,359
Speaker 3: program that I put together was in I Rock and

853
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:13,359
Speaker 3: it was ultimately applied to about twenty two thousand detainees

854
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 3: that the US government was holding. When you're dealing with

855
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 3: people in prison, you can offer them incentives, you can

856
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 3: say you'll get a quicker release if you take part

857
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,839
Speaker 3: in this process. You have to convince them that you're trustworthy,

858
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:28,359
Speaker 3: that you have authority, that you want to and you

859
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 3: can help them. But I've always found that it's not

860
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 3: hard to create rapport with these people because they're just

861
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 3: normal human beings that want to be cared for. So

862
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 3: if you come across as compassionate, they generally are interested

863
00:44:43,440 --> 00:44:46,240
Speaker 3: in your compassion. Although of course you have to protect

864
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 3: yourself because someone that has an evil intent will manipulate you,

865
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 3: and you know you might become their victim. That's why

866
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:56,880
Speaker 3: a lot of these people that are formers that do

867
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 3: any kind of deradicalization disengage at work are always saying,

868
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if this person that I got a

869
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 3: text message from is a plant, if they're trying to

870
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 3: lure me into something, you know, even to saying things

871
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 3: that maybe wouldn't be cool. I would say it has

872
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 3: to start with the relationship, and then it depends what

873
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,359
Speaker 3: your expertise is. There's excellent people that have talked al

874
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 3: Qaeda and isis out of it by catering to their

875
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 3: vulnerabilities and their needs, you know, helping them to see, well,

876
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 3: you join this group because you didn't have your father,

877
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: and you know, let's talk about how we could build

878
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:34,319
Speaker 3: that up in you. You know. So there are psychologists,

879
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 3: social worker types, and then there's plenty that have come

880
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 3: in and said, brother, you've got is LAMB all wrong.

881
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 3: You know you're going to burn an hell if you

882
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 3: keep following this, let me tell you what the real

883
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 3: Islam says, and let me show you the scriptures, and

884
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 3: let me show you how to judge for yourself what's

885
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 3: authentic and what's not authentic. And I think you'll very

886
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 3: quickly see that al Qaeda, ISIS and al Shabab are

887
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 3: not following authentic habits. Both of those they come from

888
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 3: very different points of you often work for me. The

889
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,919
Speaker 3: best would be you do both. Same thing with white supremacists,

890
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 3: if they have any ideology, you need to understand that ideology.

891
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 3: You need to take it apart. You need to be

892
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 3: able to say, okay, I get where you're going. But

893
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 3: I would say, if you don't have people coming to you,

894
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,759
Speaker 3: and if you're not offering them something in prison, then

895
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:24,239
Speaker 3: I wouldn't come at somebody with facts. I would come

896
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 3: at them with care and compassion. And for instance, I

897
00:46:27,280 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 3: had a relative that called me. We have a huge family,

898
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:33,320
Speaker 3: and she said, I'm worried about my sister. She's her husband,

899
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 3: her son, and she have all gone into QAnon and

900
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 3: we share the caretaking of our mother. And I don't

901
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 3: know what to do about it. And I said, don't

902
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 3: argue with her. Don't you know, get into facts with her.

903
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:47,720
Speaker 3: But you're both really dedicated Christians. One's a liberal, one's

904
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 3: qunan ask her how this fits with Christianity and say,

905
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 3: you know, if this is really a Christian movement, I

906
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 3: need to be in it and get her to convince you.

907
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,759
Speaker 3: And as she's convinced you, then you have the opportunity

908
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:05,120
Speaker 3: to ask her questions without making her defenses. But she

909
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 3: is feeling like, from what you're saying, that she's protecting you,

910
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:10,680
Speaker 3: ensuring the inside knowledge with you.

911
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 1: That's such an interesting approach because yeah, typically we want

912
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,040
Speaker 1: to ask questions from sort of an attacking perspective with

913
00:47:16,080 --> 00:47:20,400
Speaker 1: this hostility, and that hostile approach makes people automatically defensive.

914
00:47:21,000 --> 00:47:24,280
Speaker 1: But if the premise is that they are potentially converting

915
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:26,640
Speaker 1: you to their cause and that's how you can kind

916
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 1: of get them to see inconsistencies, that's super super interesting.

917
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:32,319
Speaker 1: And Steve talks a lot about maintaining the relationship and

918
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 1: how while it's tempting to cut people off, they need

919
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:38,760
Speaker 1: to know that there's some kind of like support system

920
00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: if they do decide to leave that ideology or that group,

921
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: So staying connected to them in a compassionate way is

922
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: actually one of the most important things. Would you agree

923
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:47,239
Speaker 1: with that?

924
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say, you know, you have vulnerable people

925
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 3: around you. So if this is you know, Uncle Teddy

926
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 3: and he's coming to stay at your house and is

927
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 3: going to talk here pre ado lesson Sinda joining, you

928
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,200
Speaker 3: might need to make some really strong you know, uncle

929
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 3: Teddy needs to know he has a safe place to

930
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 3: come back to. Right.

931
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 1: So, on a societal level, what are ways that we

932
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: can prevent extremism? As you said, there are like dozens

933
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:14,759
Speaker 1: of factors, but what are some of the things that

934
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:16,920
Speaker 1: we could do on a sort of grander scale.

935
00:48:17,280 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 3: Well, I don't think our social media companies will agree,

936
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 3: but the algorithms could be changed. And the algorithms work

937
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 3: so well for everything else, you know, it's kind of

938
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:29,759
Speaker 3: a pity, but maybe they can figure that out. I

939
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 3: like it when I, you know, click on some shoes

940
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 3: or click on dresses and I get twenty others suggested

941
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 3: to me. That's the same algorithm. You know, if they're

942
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 3: going to track you on shopping, you might as well

943
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 3: get things you like suggested to you instead of things

944
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,240
Speaker 3: you were never interested in. Any part of our society

945
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 3: will reap huge benefits if we start being much more

946
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:56,440
Speaker 3: aware of child abuse, particularly child sexual abuse. This creates

947
00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 3: such vulnerabilities in our society and people going down the

948
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 3: wrong roads into drugs and alcohol, into cults, into extremist

949
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 3: groups because they've got a hole in their soul, something's

950
00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 3: really hurting. They're angry, and the group plays upon that

951
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 3: and tells them that they should stand up for all

952
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 3: the other victims of the world. I think this is

953
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 3: one of the reasons that qNaN probably launched into a

954
00:49:19,480 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 3: lot of people that were sexually abused and have never

955
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:25,360
Speaker 3: told anybody about it. You know, it could be why,

956
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,840
Speaker 3: you know, the one guy picked up his gun and

957
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:31,920
Speaker 3: traveled across states to ostensibly stop Pizzagate. I mean, he

958
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 3: didn't have a real reason to do that other than

959
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:36,759
Speaker 3: he had been led to believe there were victims in

960
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 3: the basement, right and if he himself is a victim,

961
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,640
Speaker 3: you can see how powerful that would have been. Right. So,

962
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:47,920
Speaker 3: the more that we can stop kids from being victimized,

963
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 3: early reporting and taking early reporting extremely seriously, stopping bullying

964
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 3: in schools, getting good trauma treatment for the people that

965
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,879
Speaker 3: had been hurt. The mental health system the US is

966
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 3: so poor right now. Yeah, I mean people that don't

967
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 3: have money. I mean, finally we got it that the

968
00:50:06,560 --> 00:50:09,520
Speaker 3: insurance companies for those of us that have good insurance,

969
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:11,799
Speaker 3: I don't think they can put a limit too much

970
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:15,719
Speaker 3: on getting weekly appointments with the psychotherapists they used to

971
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 3: be able to. But I think, and now it's been

972
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 3: considered equal to medical care. Oh good, But really everybody

973
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 3: should be able to get psychological services that needs it.

974
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:30,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm someone who has a degree of privilege at

975
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 1: this moment in my life, and even for me, finding

976
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: good therapists that I could afford was really difficult in

977
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: my time of need. So I can't imagine being somebody

978
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 1: who is low income right now and suffering from some

979
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: kind of traumatic event or at really any mental health crisis.

980
00:50:49,160 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 3: The model, the model for low income has hand them pills, right,

981
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:57,720
Speaker 3: and often something they also can't afford. And even in prisons,

982
00:50:57,760 --> 00:51:00,879
Speaker 3: they're just handed pills and sometimes you know, yanked out

983
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:04,799
Speaker 3: a prescription with no warning. And we know that some

984
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:07,439
Speaker 3: people get suicidal when they're taking off us all after

985
00:51:07,560 --> 00:51:11,239
Speaker 3: prozac really quickly, right, And that has to change, and

986
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,919
Speaker 3: we have to change our whole understanding of trauma it's

987
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:17,239
Speaker 3: not something that you just want to medicate away. You

988
00:51:17,280 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 3: want to get to the heart of it. You want

989
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:21,640
Speaker 3: to create real resilience in the person. And I'm not

990
00:51:21,680 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 3: saying that psychotropics aren't useful. They are if you need

991
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:28,719
Speaker 3: to keep functioning. They keep you functioning, but they never

992
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:31,000
Speaker 3: get to the heart of the matter. Yeah, and you

993
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 3: get to the heart of the matter. You really changed

994
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:35,640
Speaker 3: people's neurobiology.

995
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:38,279
Speaker 1: Right, I think that's so important. I didn't find that

996
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 1: medication was helpful for me so much as just actual

997
00:51:41,040 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 1: you know, CBT and EMDR and all the things. But

998
00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:46,920
Speaker 1: you also studied resilience.

999
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:49,880
Speaker 3: We've looked a lot at resilience. And I would just

1000
00:51:49,920 --> 00:51:51,839
Speaker 3: go back to that too and say, now there's all

1001
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 3: these new things coming out with computers tracking your brain

1002
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,760
Speaker 3: because with trauma, we know Vessel vander Kolk was putting

1003
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:02,880
Speaker 3: people into MRIs and inducing a traumatic flashback and finding

1004
00:52:02,920 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 3: out that with a lot of them, broke us area,

1005
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 3: which is your ability to verbialize, would go black, meaning

1006
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 3: no blood was flowing to that part of the brain anymore.

1007
00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 3: And it goes with speechless terror. And now we're finding

1008
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 3: that with all kinds of traumas you can get learning disabilities,

1009
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:25,600
Speaker 3: you can get inabilities of a brand to function well together,

1010
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 3: and you know, they can buy hand sets on you

1011
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,880
Speaker 3: that do these. I don't know if it's EEG. I

1012
00:52:30,880 --> 00:52:34,240
Speaker 3: don't know what it is that can both stimulate different

1013
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 3: parts of your brain or watch you and reward you.

1014
00:52:38,440 --> 00:52:39,279
Speaker 1: Is that what you're referring to.

1015
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 3: Yes, And there's there's all kinds of devices coming out now.

1016
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:47,440
Speaker 3: You know, it's really exciting to see that we're moving

1017
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 3: away just from this chemical model, which has its uses,

1018
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:54,800
Speaker 3: but you know, we really want to see true healing

1019
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,799
Speaker 3: in people, right. I Also, I'm glad you're speaking about

1020
00:52:58,840 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 3: your treatment, that you're brave enough to speak about it.

1021
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:02,600
Speaker 3: Good for you.

1022
00:53:02,880 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 1: Thank you.

1023
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 3: You're helping a lot of people.

1024
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: Oh god, I hope. So it's embarrassing sometimes, but.

1025
00:53:10,640 --> 00:53:13,759
Speaker 3: It's not embarrassing. It's brave and it's wonderful that you're

1026
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 3: doing it. Thank you, And that's a role model to

1027
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:18,040
Speaker 3: other people. That's not embarrassing at all.

1028
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 1: I appreciate that a lot. Thank you. I was also

1029
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:24,799
Speaker 1: wondering about poverty. Is poverty one of the factors or

1030
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: do you find that it's kind of across all income levels?

1031
00:53:27,640 --> 00:53:29,480
Speaker 3: You know, that was an interesting thing. When we first

1032
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 3: started studying Palestinians, we found that college educated were much

1033
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:36,520
Speaker 3: more likely to be terrorists than impoverished people.

1034
00:53:36,719 --> 00:53:37,279
Speaker 1: Interesting.

1035
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, if you're impoverished, you're oftentimes struggling just

1036
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 3: to live. But on the other side, if you're a

1037
00:53:44,840 --> 00:53:49,520
Speaker 3: young man and your family's impoverished, you can fall into anything.

1038
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,759
Speaker 3: So I'd say poverty plays a role, But it's just

1039
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 3: like trauma. It's not ever the one end all be all.

1040
00:53:56,719 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 3: It's just one variable among fifty.

1041
00:53:58,719 --> 00:54:01,200
Speaker 1: It seems to me, you know, a lot of the

1042
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 1: people who join cults join when they are younger, when

1043
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: they're like around college age, And I wonder if part

1044
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:10,200
Speaker 1: of that is due to just like trying to figure

1045
00:54:10,239 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 1: out who you are and where you fit in the world,

1046
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 1: and like find your identity and find your purpose.

1047
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 3: So it's a developmental stage at that age, right from

1048
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 3: I don't know, tell eleven twelve onward. Your developmental requirement

1049
00:54:24,160 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 3: is to separate from your family to a certain extent

1050
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:31,040
Speaker 3: and to establish your own identity. And depending on what

1051
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 3: kind of culture you came from, you might still stay

1052
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:38,320
Speaker 3: really tied into that family, or you might go completely independent.

1053
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:42,839
Speaker 3: I think Americans tend to go for the full independence,

1054
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 3: So we go to college, living far away from our

1055
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 3: families and that kind of thing. And as you're searching

1056
00:54:49,200 --> 00:54:54,280
Speaker 3: to build your own identity, that's an extremely vulnerable point

1057
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 3: when a cult or a troist group or what's from us,

1058
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,640
Speaker 3: this group can grab a hold of you and start

1059
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 3: to build it for you.

1060
00:55:02,560 --> 00:55:06,319
Speaker 1: What are ways to protect ourselves from being targeted by

1061
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:07,280
Speaker 1: any kind of group?

1062
00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 3: I would just say question everything you're told, develop a

1063
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:15,879
Speaker 3: healthy skepticism, judge actions more than words. I mean, all

1064
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:19,160
Speaker 3: of us. When we hear beautiful words, especially about ourselves,

1065
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:23,040
Speaker 3: we want to believe them, okay, And when we're offered membership,

1066
00:55:23,239 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 3: we want to belong. That's human, Yeah, but you know,

1067
00:55:27,280 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 3: always be asking yourself what is the price of belonging?

1068
00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:33,960
Speaker 3: And do those beautiful words match with the actions? I

1069
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 3: know I had the opportunity my husband was ambassador in

1070
00:55:37,080 --> 00:55:40,320
Speaker 3: Greece and we hung out with some extremely wealthy people

1071
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:43,880
Speaker 3: and everyone would always be very kind and polite to

1072
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 3: me and my husband because he was the US ambassador.

1073
00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 3: So to gauge a person's character, I have been watched

1074
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 3: how they interacted with their servants. And you know, somebody

1075
00:55:54,520 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 3: that's really rude to service staff probably doesn't have that

1076
00:55:58,040 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 3: good of a heart, right, you know, I be judging actions,

1077
00:56:01,920 --> 00:56:04,719
Speaker 3: looking for little clues, and you know, just having a

1078
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:08,319
Speaker 3: healthy skepticism when you first start a relationship. And the

1079
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 3: other thing that I think is always useful for everybody

1080
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 3: to know is that when we first start relationships with anybody,

1081
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,320
Speaker 3: they have all kinds of projections because that person shows

1082
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 3: us their best self and we have a hope for

1083
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,399
Speaker 3: them to be probably better than they truly are. Right.

1084
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:29,240
Speaker 3: And you know, if you meet someone kind and good,

1085
00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:33,279
Speaker 3: you might project even more kindness and goodness on them,

1086
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:35,759
Speaker 3: and when they disappoint you, you're like, oh, well, at

1087
00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:39,759
Speaker 3: least they're ordinarily kind and good. But if they're trying

1088
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:42,640
Speaker 3: to trick you, and you go with all your projections

1089
00:56:42,680 --> 00:56:45,839
Speaker 3: for a long time, you got into deep and then

1090
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,439
Speaker 3: there's going to be costs of breaking.

1091
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:51,319
Speaker 1: Off that relationship, right, I think of do you know

1092
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: you've all lower?

1093
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 3: I think I've heard the name, but I don't remember.

1094
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:57,400
Speaker 1: He's a researcher. He was on one of our episodes

1095
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 1: Really Interesting Work. He talks about the cultic relationship having

1096
00:57:01,520 --> 00:57:04,880
Speaker 1: the similar phases to any kind of attachment, where in

1097
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:08,400
Speaker 1: the beginning, you're in sort of an infatuation period, so

1098
00:57:08,480 --> 00:57:11,120
Speaker 1: you are blinded to the fault or the flaws of

1099
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:15,080
Speaker 1: the belief system or the group. And similarly, like over time,

1100
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: that will fade unless they kind of keep generating emotional

1101
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: experiences for you. But I always found that really interesting that, Yeah,

1102
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:25,480
Speaker 1: we can be blinded to the downsides of something that

1103
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 1: feels really good in the beginning, the same way we

1104
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: can with a new boyfriend who's lavishing attention on us.

1105
00:57:31,040 --> 00:57:34,320
Speaker 3: And that's just good advice for life. Be aware of

1106
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 3: your projections, right, Aware is the person truly living up

1107
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:41,640
Speaker 3: to what you've projected on them, right, Because you know

1108
00:57:41,680 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 3: everybody when you first meet them, they're going to put

1109
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:46,560
Speaker 3: their best foot forward. They may try to meet your

1110
00:57:46,600 --> 00:57:49,080
Speaker 3: needs in order to get something out of you. And

1111
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:52,919
Speaker 3: just keep observing and don't get fooled by your own projections.

1112
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:55,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we're wrapping up, do you have any thoughts

1113
00:57:55,560 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 1: on these situation between Russia and Ukraine and how that

1114
00:57:58,600 --> 00:57:59,720
Speaker 1: pertains to extremism.

1115
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:02,400
Speaker 3: I think we can say that we're seeing a lot

1116
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 3: of travelers now thousands of them going to the Ukraine,

1117
00:58:05,840 --> 00:58:09,919
Speaker 3: and the Ukraine is calling for foreign fighters, but among them.

1118
00:58:10,240 --> 00:58:13,280
Speaker 3: We know that white supremacists are answering the call and

1119
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 3: Ukraine doesn't necessarily want them, but it has been something

1120
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:20,800
Speaker 3: that's been going on since twenty fourteen with white supremacists

1121
00:58:20,840 --> 00:58:24,960
Speaker 3: going to train in Ukraine with the as of Brigade.

1122
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:29,040
Speaker 3: So once again we're watching people make decisions based on

1123
00:58:29,480 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 3: Internet interactions to go join. And we also know that

1124
00:58:33,880 --> 00:58:37,280
Speaker 3: Putin's talking about sixteen thousand Syrians. I think he's going

1125
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:39,720
Speaker 3: to pay them coming to fight for him. I hope

1126
00:58:39,720 --> 00:58:42,400
Speaker 3: that doesn't become a truth. So in his case, he

1127
00:58:42,400 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 3: probably won't use just information. You know, everyone that's making

1128
00:58:46,520 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 3: really serious decisions about their life to possibly be a hero,

1129
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:52,720
Speaker 3: and it might be very heroic to go and fight

1130
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:56,680
Speaker 3: in Ukraine, but you know, you should also evaluate where

1131
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:59,640
Speaker 3: you're getting your information from that you're making really big

1132
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:03,360
Speaker 3: decision about. And then we need to keep aware of

1133
00:59:03,400 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 3: these people coming back, particularly back into the EU, that

1134
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:11,440
Speaker 3: have been supplied with weapons that may now know how

1135
00:59:11,440 --> 00:59:15,600
Speaker 3: to use explosives that have a white supremacist ideology. They're

1136
00:59:15,640 --> 00:59:19,080
Speaker 3: not the most of the people traveling. I know Germany

1137
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:22,200
Speaker 3: has a thousand that have gone over to Ukraine, and

1138
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 3: they've identified among them three. That's probably a way low underestimate,

1139
00:59:27,520 --> 00:59:30,120
Speaker 3: but when they come back, we need to keep an

1140
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 3: eye on them.

1141
00:59:30,880 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: Right Well, where can people find your organization and find

1142
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:35,560
Speaker 1: your work online?

1143
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:39,200
Speaker 3: All of our papers pretty much are on the website

1144
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 3: i ce SVEE as for International Center for the Study

1145
00:59:43,320 --> 00:59:46,160
Speaker 3: of Violent Extremism dot org. Maybe you can put it

1146
00:59:46,240 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 3: up with the podcasts ICSVE dot org. If you want

1147
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:51,480
Speaker 3: to watch our counter narrative videos, you go over to

1148
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:55,200
Speaker 3: our ICSVE YouTube channel. You can also look under my

1149
00:59:55,360 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 3: name on academia and you come up with all my papers.

1150
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:00,600
Speaker 3: I should keep you busy for a while.

1151
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're so incredible. I admire you so much. I'm

1152
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,280
Speaker 1: like fascinating work that you're doing and really really important.

1153
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: So thank you for all of it, and thank you

1154
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:09,320
Speaker 1: for coming on today.

1155
01:00:09,600 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 3: Thank you.

1156
01:00:10,680 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: Okay, y'all. She is fucking incredible, Megan, I don't think

1157
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:19,080
Speaker 1: that asking if you would become a terrorist is quite

1158
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:24,640
Speaker 1: the right question, So so I guess I'm wondering would

1159
01:00:24,680 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable kind of doing what she does and

1160
01:00:27,240 --> 01:00:31,240
Speaker 1: going into these dangerous groups and territories and talking to

1161
01:00:31,440 --> 01:00:32,760
Speaker 1: these extremists.

1162
01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:36,440
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that would be so intriguing. I love the book

1163
01:00:36,800 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 2: Silence of the Lambs. I love the movie Silence of

1164
01:00:39,200 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 2: the Lambs. I love Clarice going down there and like, yeah,

1165
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:46,640
Speaker 2: I love that shit so absolutely me too.

1166
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:48,800
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's you know, this is just

1167
01:00:48,840 --> 01:00:51,160
Speaker 1: like the question of my life. It's like the most

1168
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:53,760
Speaker 1: the interesting thing like on earth to be, which is

1169
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 1: how do people fall prey to extreme belief and then

1170
01:00:56,520 --> 01:00:58,560
Speaker 1: how do they come back from it? Yeah, I mean

1171
01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: that's literally like what part of the entire thesis of

1172
01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:03,760
Speaker 1: this podcast. But I guess terrorism is just the more

1173
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:06,960
Speaker 1: extreme version than Yeah, yeah, you know, former cult members.

1174
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 1: I would be very interested in that job.

1175
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:12,840
Speaker 2: My mom has a radio where she listens to police

1176
01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 2: the scanner stuff and what she does, like she thinks

1177
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:18,480
Speaker 2: she's a spy solving things. I guess that's what happens

1178
01:01:18,520 --> 01:01:21,040
Speaker 2: when you don't have a television. But also my mom

1179
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:22,200
Speaker 2: has a little bit of that too.

1180
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: That's amazing.

1181
01:01:23,760 --> 01:01:24,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1182
01:01:24,640 --> 01:01:27,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanted to be an FBI profiler when I

1183
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 1: was a teenager, you know, so that would be that's

1184
01:01:29,840 --> 01:01:32,440
Speaker 1: just like an extension of that childhood dream.

1185
01:01:32,640 --> 01:01:35,360
Speaker 2: I think I see it coming to fruition for you somehow,

1186
01:01:35,400 --> 01:01:35,880
Speaker 2: some ways.

1187
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. So I'm going to do

1188
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:42,919
Speaker 1: one more shout out for my crowdfunding campaign for my film. Yeah, guys,

1189
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 1: part of what the film deals with is literally like,

1190
01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:50,080
Speaker 1: what is the experience like of knowing that you've gone

1191
01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 1: too far down a particular ideological pathway and influenced people

1192
01:01:55,760 --> 01:02:00,360
Speaker 1: in a very destructive way as a result, What happens

1193
01:02:00,360 --> 01:02:01,840
Speaker 1: in your brain and how do you deal with that

1194
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:04,520
Speaker 1: cognitive dissonance? So it's like, it's very much connected with

1195
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:07,600
Speaker 1: the general spirit of this podcast. And I'll give you

1196
01:02:07,680 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 1: that link one more time. It's bit dot l y

1197
01:02:10,480 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: slash Pruning Film. Okay, that's enough, shut up, blow us

1198
01:02:15,080 --> 01:02:16,320
Speaker 1: stop it, okay, lolla.

1199
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:18,920
Speaker 2: We love it as for now, we can't wait to

1200
01:02:18,960 --> 01:02:21,800
Speaker 2: see you here next week. Have a great week and

1201
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 2: remember to follow your gut, watch out for red flags,

1202
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:27,880
Speaker 2: and never ever trust me.

1203
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:28,760
Speaker 1: Bye.