Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. Institute Of Peace On Citizens Radicalization 20240714

It was a bipartisan effort, drawn broad support from both parties. , president reagan signed into law United States institutes of peace, a Bipartisan Institute charged with the mission of preventing violent conflict abroad. We fulfill that mission by linking training and analysis, research and policy, and by working with local partners on the ground in conflict zones around the world. We have offices in iraq and afghanistan, tunisia, just to name a few and when it comes to violent extremism, we know that significant knowledge gaps still exist and they continue to pose obstacles. We are proud to host the resolve network which stands for researching solution to violent extremism. It is a Global Consortium of researchers and research organizations, committed to more understanding of violent extremism in the sources of resilience. We have seen through our work and through research that the rise, spread, and evolution of violent extremism is one of the most challenging issues we face today, especially as it interacts with existing conflict, or create new ones, or further damages fragile contacts. Violent extremism is on everyones mind following the attacks in el paso and dayton. The newly empty side of the bed and those reading the text message over and over again. Those who are in hospitals, asking why did i live and others died. Added more families and friends to the list of the forever injured, forever scarred from a forever home to buy scarred forever by violence. This is a type of grief and the type of violence that exists in way too many countries around the world today. In fact, a task force on extremism in fragile states, worldwide, tags have increased fivefold since the year 2001. And extremist groups have spread to 19 out of 45 countries in the middle each, the middle east and the horn of africa. Here at an institute committed to the notion that peace is possible, we want to help uncover new ways to do better at addressing some of the most Wicked Problems involving violent extremism. Today, we are tackling the problem how governments and communities are grappling with what to do with their citizens to travel to the socalled Islamic State and other conflicts and they return home. With the territorial caliphate extinguished, more than 100 countries could face the task of not only reintegrating their citizens, perhaps 10,000 in total, but also preparing their communities for a future with living with people nextdoor. Some who were part of these violent extremist groups will face trial, and some will face incarceration, but not all. Some will eventually be released from prison, and many others will reintegrate directly back into committees. So local communities need to be prepared and society has a Public Safety imperative to pursue rehabilitation and reconciliation. People need processes to enable them to abandon their violent attitudes and behaviors, but communities also need avenues to enable social cohesion and to avoid reradicalization. Yet, we lack the language in our Public Discourse diva talk about people or disengaging from violent extremism. To even talk about people disengaging from violent extremism. As far as most of us are concerned, once a terrorist, forever a terrorist. And while the radicalization is a very complex process, there are many, many different paths to violent extremism. It is social in nature, so disengagement needs to address social factors to not only help someone to disengage from their violent attitudes, but rebuilt the bonds between that person in society and generate a new sense of belonging. Currently, we scholars, committee members, can be unintentionally using language that underscores, anger, and fear. We reinforce a persons identity as a terrorist or a fighter, and it may contribute to a self fulfilling prophecy. Luckily, for those of us who study violence and conflict, we are not the first discipline to work with highly stigmatized populations. In Public Health and criminal justice, and social work, practitioners have learned to leverage language as a tool to shape attitudes and behaviors, to reduce the burden of stigma, and to ease open spaces for engagement. In the spaces, communities can be presented with opportunities for social learning and rehumanization and reconciliation. Let me be clear, i am not pollyannaish about the real violent risk that violent extremists groups pose, and this conversation does not take away the need for accountability for those who have committed atrocities and other crimes or enable others to do so. This is not about forgiveness, but rather solutions. But once justice meet up with sentences, prison time has been served, or those who did not commit crimes were never charged, this need to call a spade a spade must grapple with the other reality of how we enable communities, new to the front lines, to get reintegration and reconciliation right because all of our safety depends on. This is a tall order. This is what i am delighted to be joined by four incredible experts who help us further unlock and unleash new avenues for adjusting this challenge addressing this challenge. I will introduce each speaker individually. They will give a 15 minute or so presentation. I will introduce the next speaker and they will present. When everyone is finished, we will move to question and answer session. We are also accepting questions live on twitter and from our overflow rooms here. With that, i will introduce our speakers and get the day going. It is my pleasure to introduce this doctor, social psychologist with research on the dynamics of violent radicalization. His model drawing from human needs is outlined in his latest book from Oxford University press, the three pillars of radicalization. He will provide context on the social and psychological drivers, with attention on the role of marginalization, group dynamics, significance and , respect. With that, please help me welcome to dr. The dr. [applause] thank you very much. Good morning to all. I am very honored and pleased to be here, and thanks for arranging and organizing this event. Thank you for inviting me. As you all know, radicalization that progresses to violent extremism has been and continues to be a major issue for nations around the world. Isis has lost its caliphate, but it is far from being defeated. Neither is al qaeda. Attackstinue to launch and attract followers and inspire individuals to join the all over the world. Hundreds of attacks in different parts of the plan. The question is, how do we understand the global threat, and what can we do about it . In todays talk, i would like to present a psychological perspective on this issue that i believe to be important. Many psychological phenomena, Many Political phenomena that have shaped history and the fate of nations are rooted in human psychology. Macrolevel phenomenon, such as poverty, poor education, or oppression occasionally contribute to radicalization. Sometimes, they matter less and sometimes they matter not at all. Why . Because they matter only when they are in circumstances that activate the psychological mechanism that promotes radicalization. Psychology is the basic discipline that addresses radicalization. And most importantly, if we understand these mechanisms, we cannot only understand it, but we can understand it and prevent radicalization the world over. Over the last decade, several decades actually, we have been carrying out research and various parts of the Globe Research in various parts of the globe with hundreds, if not thousands of terrorists in jails and other locations, and on the basis of that empirical work, we have developed an integrity model, a model that on the one hand, capitalizes on important insights about extending social sciences, and that model integrates in the the sense of showing how diverse insights, combined into a process whereby radicalization and violent extremism take place. We suggest, in fact, three parameters of the process are critical. They had been a full different models. We combine them together, and the three parameters are individuals motivation, the narrative that tells the individuals how to satisfy their motivations, and the network that validates the narrative and dispenses rewards for those who serve their needs in terms of violent extremism. Let me say a few words about these three. The need is critical. After all, radicalization is located by the individual. It is an individual who decides who will wear a suicide vest, pick up a weapon, and travel thousands of miles to join the fight and kill people wherever they might be. Therefore, a very important question was posed by a researcher is, what is the motivation . Why do they do that . What makes them take those risks, and make those sacrifices, and risk life and limb in order to join the fight . The researchers have provided an answer in terms of the list of different motivations. Or a motivational cocktail as they put it. For example, the perks of afterlife has been one motivation. They do it in order to enjoy the perks of afterlife. Or they do it because of their adulation and commitment to their leader. Or they do it because they want to show that women can do it, or they do it because of vengeance. All of these motivations have their place and are important in specific cases, but i submit to you, underlining all the motivations is one universal need, and that is the need to matter and to be significant. To have selfrespect and respect from others and ones community. Now, this quest for significance, like with all motivations, isnt around at all times. How is this quest activated . The simple answer is it is activated when significance acquires special value. It requires a special value primarily when one feels ignificant, when one feet feels humiliation, disempowerment, or discrimination. This can be ones own failures, lack of luck, ones own circumstances that they promote ones suffering. For example, palestinian women were accused of Extramarital Affairs or infertile, or disfigured by fire, so it could be a very personal thing, having nothing to do with international conflicts. But it can also be associate with ones social identity. A religious group, and ethnic group, when you are discriminated, humiliated, you feel discrimination as your own thing, and then you are motivated to restore your significance. And that is humiliation, that is discrimination that provides an opportunity to become a hero, a martyr for the group that was discriminated against and who was humiliated and experienced the grievance. Now, the quests for significance is a universal human need. As an author put it, all of us have a sense of being a human and a martyr. Heroes and martyrs. A little baby has a quest for attention because otherwise it would not survive. Nobody wants to feel disrespected. How, then, do we acquire respect. How do we acquire that sense of significance. We acquire significance through living up to our values. It is the values that trickle down to the ones who serve them and let them significance lend them significance. These varied by cultures and groups. Element of what our network does tie violence to the values of significance, and shows how to obtain significance through violence. It tells you to gain significance, you have to join the fight. You have to kill other people. You have to be ready to take risks, sacrifice yourself, maybe die for the cause and that will give you significance. The narrative function is very important. We all create significant. We are not all terrorists, we have other avenues to significance, we serve other you are of the narrative that you values, but if have been assaulted, your group has been insulted, and you have to stand up for the group, join the fight, and protect the groups glory and significance, at this point, you become a violent extremist. And finally, the last is a network. Why the network . The network is important because we are social beings. The network of people who you respect in the group, define for us what is real and it is validating the narrative. Without the social network, we would not know that actually you have to fight. It is important to fight. The Network Tells you, yes, that is what you need to do. Him him agreement of the network him him him him validates, and beyond validation, it dispenses rewards. It admires people who serve the network through violence. It tells you, you know, you are a hero, you are a martyr, and you will be forever engraved in the collective memory of the group. You may go to paradise and so forth. What kind of network . What are we talking about . The network varies widely from approximate face to face networks. A bunch of guys that get together and inside each other incite each other to action, all the way to virtual networks, networks on the internet that are particularly influential these days that people attend. So, it does not have to be in a physical presence of the network. You know that if you carry out a shooting, if you run your vehicle into people and kill them, and if you pick up a knife and kill enemies of the group, you will be appreciated, so it is kind of an implicit network. You do not have to be in physical presence of. Now, what is unique about our model . And how does that relate to radicalization . After all, social scientists social scientists have been studying violent extremism for many decades. And they have provided very important insight. I think what is important about our model is that it brings him and him these insights together into a unified function al portrayal of violent extremism. Some people in some models illuminate one part of the elephant, and our aspiration is to highlight the entire elephant and show how the different parts work together. Let me examine some very let me illustrate that by examining some very important contributions in this domain. Ted kearns famous book, while why men rebel discusses relative deprivation, the idea that your group has not received its just desserts and has been slighted, discriminated in comparison to others. This touches on the quest of significance. There are other ways of losing significance, as i mentioned, even sources of significance that are personallybased, and your personal failures. We have evidence that personal failure leaves people to embrace collective causes in the service of regaining their significance. Of course, he does not emphasize the essence of the network. He does identify an important element, but i think those other parameters are also important and we bring them together. People talk about macro factors, economies, and others, poverty, oppression, poor education, and they all came to the inclusion all came to the conclusion that neither of them promote. Violent extremism. It also addresses the loss of significance. If you are poor or oppressed, you dont feel very good. You feel very significant, like you dont matter, but not all poor or oppressed people become violent extremists. There are other ingredients to the mixture. You need to have the narrative and you have to have the social movement that supports the narrative in order for this to combine into this combusted thatmbusted mixture creates violent extremism. My colleague emphasized the issue of sacred values and devoted actors as an important ingredient in violent extremism. But sacredtely am a values are important because they allow people to serve them, and therefore, become significant. It all comes to the individual and their motivation and the motivation for significance is served wonderfully if you sacrifice life, take risks, are ready to die, on order of sacred values, so sacred values are important in conjunction with the other elements. Another colleague made famous the issue of networks. Networks are important. They are important because they validate the narrative and they dispense rewards. They pronounce you a martyr or a hero. Adicalization . R it is, in some sense, a reversal of radicalization. The same three elements that promote radicalization, if you reverse them, they promote deradicalization. For example, the importance of narrative, the importance of counter messaging is of paramount significance. You have to counter the idea that islam is served by jihad. You have to promote the idea that there is a tolerance and that the audiology is actually ideology is actually misinterpretation of what the prophet intended. You have to have a counter narrative. We are sent into beings, beings, we sentient listen to reason. And narratives are what provide justification and the rationale for our actions. Narrative is important in deradicalization. Network is very important in deradicalization. We recently completed another book on the german neonazis, and those who led the movement, often left because they connected to another network. They meet somebody, a friend, a romantic relationship, that drove them back to the mainstream ways of thinking. So the networking important is very important in promoting deradicalization. And finally, reduction of the dominance of the quest of significance. It is an activation of other needs. A need for love, having a career, having a life, and nobody expressed this better than a former member of an basque terrorist saidization who saiad why he wanted to deradicalize. You say to yourself the f word, i better get myself in line is time is running out. It is a matter of getting that much older, and my skis, wanting to get old married. You are going on 40 years old and you want to get married next year, and you say to yourself, well, at this stage of the game, to go packing apiece it would be toit, because you just got live a bit. The other needs are activated. Request for significance is reduced. The quest for significance is reduced. I mentioned empirical evidence, and time is too short and are i probably already exceeded my time, but i would like to share with you a story of one Research Project on violent radicalization. Of the tamil tigers. You all know who they are. They raised a 30 year long secessionampaign campaign. They were recognized as a terrorist organization and employed brutal tactics, highprofile assassinations, suicide bombings, child abductions, the use of human shields. They did a lot of damage. Victims, civilians, over the course of 30 years 50,000 fighters killed. It was one of the most vicious terrorist organizations in the history of this phenomenon. They had their air force, air tigers, their navy, their sea tigers. In 2009, more than 11,000 tigers surrendered after a bloody battle after thousands of civilians lost their life in 2009. The government at that point launched an effort to rehabilitate the surrender of the terrorists. And they were placed in facilities of different kinds. It was our great luck to get into those facilities. To carry out research on all 11,000 extremists. This was the secretary of thense, the architect of demolition of the tamil tigers. The radicalization problems were adopted from the Saudi Program and other programs. They stole the best elements of this program. They had vocational, educational, cultural, recreational, familial and communal programs and the idea was to equip the with capabilities to reintegrate into society. Terms of our framework, the needs had to do with respect and dignity. They reported a really respectful treatment they were not even referred to as the terrorists. They were called beneficiaries. There was extensive use of family, community, integration to embed them in social support of their changed attitude. We were able to carry out controlled research of close to 500 that were exposed to a program of education, social, social and other programs and we were able to use a controlled group. It was important to see whether the program was effective as opposed to individuals or exposed to a more limited program. This was the minimal treatment asup, and we looked at it three ways of data, at sixmonth intervals. Over time, the full treatment group, there radicalization their radicalization decreased significantly over the minimal treatment group, which would suggest this particular program was effective. At the end of it, they were much less radicalized than when they entered. And what is interesting for all of us, their attitudes in the program were related positively to a reduction [indiscernible] and this was mediated by feeling significant, feeling that they mattered and that they felt cared for. This was immediately after the ending of the program. We examined the beneficiaries released from the program. And the number of programs they participated in was negatively related to extremism, and what is particularly interesting, they were less extreme. [indiscernible] who were never apart of the organization. What is a bit more troubling is most of them that had the connections to the network, they were more extreme than those who did not. This is a community where they were connected to a former member who were a bit more extreme. And some connected to the ds for be moretended to extreme than those not connected aspora. Dice fo sorry for being so long. I think these results offer a mechanism that support the model and suggest that the effectiveness should utilize an approach that empowers detainees through their connection through mainstream society. In the same way they can radicalize, they can deradicalize and reradicalize. The human mind is very malleable. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much for a lot of information on empiric as well as theory. I hope many others find they can learn even more about his work in his latest book. Please join me for a warm welcome for shannon martinez, whormer white supremacist helps others disengage from violent extremism by emphasizing empathy and compassion. She will provide remarks on the stigma, and pro social engagement in the rehabilitation process. Please join me in welcoming shannon. [applause] shannon thank you for having me. I dont have a slideshow. I wanted take a moment to honor those who have died this week at the hands of people who took the ideas that they were wrestling with and looking through, and chose to enact catastrophic violence as a result of those ideas. There are lives that are irrevocably changed, lives that are lost. The timing for this event is pretty, pretty uncanny because we are currently engaged inside this country in a discussion about the language that we use. And whether or not that language holds power, and whether or not language influences behavior . Had a saying, essentially is how we pray is is how we believe, is how we live. I thought about this a lot over the years about the words that we use. Change our thoughts and how we think, and our thoughts then change how we live. In a perfect scenario from this moment, not a single human would radicalize into violence based ideology. In a perfect world, no one would take that trajectory. It still leaves a whole lot of people who are still currently in that movement, or whatever movement of choice, whatever expression of their violent spaced ideology. The best scenario for over this past week would be for the young men involved to have turned away from their ideologies before they committed catastrophic acts of violence. But then, where do they go . What do we do with them . And how do we treat them afterwards . From the time i was 15 until just about the time i was 20, i was involved in a White Supremacy movement. I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood, but not overly abusive or anything like that. Pretty runofthemill 1980s white, middleclass dysfunction. At the age of 14, as i was doing what most 14yearolds do in grappling with my identity and who i was in the world and who i chose to be, i felt pretty certain that mainstream culture was never really going to be a place where i could posit my identity and gravitated towards counterculture. The first place i really looked, one of my very first favorite books was the autobiography of malcolm x. I loved the power of the revolutionary idea and the nature they were presented. I would end up going into the punk movement, shortly before i turned 15, i went to a party where i was raped by two men. Because of my childhood, i knew i could not tell my parents. I knew they would have blamed me for lying about where i was going. And having bench ranking at that party, they would be more angry about that than that i was just assaulted. I took that trauma, shoved it down, became consumed with rage over six months. The angriest people in the periphery of the subculture where i existed were the White Supremicist skinheads. The rate i felt resonated deeply with the rage they felt. I spent more time with them and started listening to white power music. It broke down the barriers for me of using raciallycharged language and introduced the ideology and the talking points of the movement into my vernacular. I began to read some of the literature that was a part of the movement. Over time, i would have a complete and utter physical echo chamber i lived in that was only about this movement from the time i woke up to the time i went to sleep or passed out drunk at the end of the night. Very luckily, i ended up not having a place to go at one point. I was dating a young man who was in the army. He was also a white supremacist skinhead. He was in the army and was in training. And so i could not go to live with him. At that point, i did not have anywhere else to go. Luckily for me, his mom, who was a single mom and had three younger sons, besides him, said i could go live with her. I am pretty sure she knew what our ideology was. Even if she didnt, at the time, i looked very gruff, my external appearance mirrored my internal experience of my life and i looked very angry, and carried myself with bravado and really did not take anyones shit. S word. [laughter] hey, cspan. She chose to see passes violent this violentt creature and chose instead to see a struggling young woman. Shes set some parameters about trying to get a job, helping her with stuff around the house, and included me in all of the daytoday family activities. Taking the kids to cub scouts. Throwing frisbees. Reading the chronicles of narnia to the boys at night. She created enough stability in my life that expanded the space around me so i could begin to shift and look and examine where i was and how i had gotten there. The ideology for me fell away relatively quickly as i got space and stability. One of the other very crucial things i think she did for me is that she reconnected me with a sense of future. When you are living a hyperbaric echochamber life, there is no future. There might be a future in terms of the movement, or what you hope will come from your belief system, but in a personal sense, there was only right now, and a couple of minutes from now. She challenged me on ideas like, dont you want to go to college . Dont you want to make something with your life . Beyond just introducing those ideas, she connected me to the resources that i needed to make that happen. She did not just say, hey, dont you want to go to college . She was like, lets find out information, addresses on the internet, lets find out how you can contact the schools. Lets take you to sit for your s. A. T. s. Two pencil iner your hand, get in the car, i am driving you there. She didnt just introduce ideas to me. What i did not know while i spent these five years in the movement is that not only was i actively dehumanizing other people, but that in order to do that and maintain that viewpoint and way of living, i also had become deeply dehumanized. I was much less than human. I actively had to work at being seeing other human beings as not human, in order to project the wretch i felt inside and out onto other people. I think one of the reasons this woman was so transformative in my life is because she initiated the process of rehumanizing me by choosing to first see me as a human with a broken and twisted need set that was being expressed in terrible ways. Rather than just as an ideologue, or someone who was not worth it. It is a hardsell to gather resources and to invest time and money into even discussions about reintegration of people from violent extremism. I had no idea that one of the main reactions in most of the Common Threads that are out there in the media or on internet about me would be a challenge to the very idea that people can fundamentally transform their lives. When we were talking about reintegration, it is paramount to examine whether or not you genuinely believe that people can transform. The objections are, either i never really believed that in the first place, or i still believe it now. Both of which are categorically untrue. It was an ideology that i would have died for, that i hoped i would die for it. My belief system is utterly transformed. I believe in the coempowerment and genuine equity building of all human beings. That is the first focus we must have when we are talking about any sort of reintegration. Is it worth it . Are these resources really worth spending on these people who have children with these terrible belief systems, and put forth heinous actions, a lot of time . I am a mom of seven children ages almost 22 down to three years old. They are phenomenal human beings. They fight for equality and justice, equitybuilding in their lives on a daily basis. They have certainly transformed my world. They transformed the communities of which they are apart on a daily basis, and i feel absolutely certain that they will have a piece of transforming the world. I think it is worth it. To invest resources. When we look at things things from a restorative point of view, and instead of just seeing the bad actions of one person, which they are. I hold personally responsibility for the choices that i made and the things that i did. We always do a good job talking about that. We talk about people falling down rabbit holes, sliding down pipelines, getting caught up in some way that releases them from personal responsibility, and i believe that to be a mistaken in terminology. It is important that i accept responsibility because it is the only way to get towards making ongoing meaningful amends. I first have to say, i did this. I take responsibility, and i am sorry. How do i make amends . However, when we talk about that, i so resonated with what jed said, and the way i frame it is that we all have a basic needset beyond food, beyond food, shelter, clothing, and the way i see it, we all have a need to give love and be loved, to and heard, andn en to feel like we have a meaningful connection with something greater than ourselves. Every Single Person that i have ever worked with and helped disengage from violent extremism, this essential needset was broken, and that was compounded by a multitude of factors. From a Restorative Justice point of view, we have to see that bringing people back into the fold doesnt just help that individual, but it helps the entire network. We have to see that even though the actions are the responsibility of one person, that the ecosystem involves us all. Terrorists still have come from a family. They still have lived in communities. There are many layers of fracturing of those three basic needs that have led to their trajectory towards violence. When people leave and we are trying to reintegrate them back into society and more prosocial and more prosocial ways, it helps heal us all. It heals the broken fabric that was part of the trajectory in words. Devote resources to healing those among us, we become stronger for it. I can leave my finger broken and i can still get through life probably with the use of my other fingers. How much stronger will my hand be if all of my digits are thriving . Lets talk about that for a second. I am a female. I became a violent white supremacist. There was a sense in which i found twisted sexual empowerment in my position inside a movement that is based on dehumanization and objectification of people perceived as weaker. Women fit into that category. On the outside i wasnt super successful with boys and dating. Inside, i could go out with whoever i wanted. I was one of only a few women. Sexual assault was part of my trajectory inward. It felt very much like sexual empowerment. I didnt know that at the time. I was just doing what i was doing. There was more to it to that. I was an active participant in my own radicalization, i amplified my willingness to use violence and take risks. I was not a passive agent who is simply arm candy of someone else in the movement. When we use words like jihadi bride, we remove the agency and that quest for significance that we just heard about. We are actually reinforcing a lot of the viewpoints that exist with that. We remove also the ability for someone to take full responsibility, come to whichwith their actions, is a crucial part of society. Ting into one last challenge in terms of the modern world, there are entire radicalized trajectories that exist nowhere except online. There are people who have stories of going into the movement and these thoughts spaces. When we talk about the movement in terms of the far right, all tright, White Nationalists, they are very overlapping ideologies. I believe we will see ideologies get more and more convoluted and enmeshed over the next several years. It will be harder to pinpoint a single ideology which looks like what we used to know it was. These trajectories dont exist anywhere outside the internet. There is no action taken. Maybe they have conversations in real life with other people where they bring their ideology there. The echo chamber is completely digital. This is a challenge for us to figure out how to navigate those spaces, and how do we address people, and how do we treat their trajectories out of these violent space ideologies . They have not traveled across the world. And yet it is still a multinational network because its the internet. Its everywhere. Do we treat them as though they are the same or different from People Living this out in the typical space . Do we offer the same sort of services . Do we prosecute them the same way . Do we hold them accountable the same way . I dont know that i have answers. I do think that there is a trend toward a virtual caliphate in conjunction with the physical space. Obviously, the most catastrophic thing is when the Digital World leaks out and becomes catastrophic of violence and action like we have seen over and over again. With that, i will turn the microphone back over. All of you who have the influence to do so, whatever you are challenged about, helping former violent extremists, please remember my face. Please remember my story. Please remember the value that my life has now. Given thatver been chance, i would never be able to be here, and i would never be able to spend the rest of the breath of my life doing as much good as i possibly can. Thank you. [applause] shannon, thank you so much. Thank you for reminding us of the empathy and compassion necessary to really accept the humanity in all of us. Thank you. Please allow me to introduce our next speaker, he is an expert on the way language affects cognition. He will present on the cognitive power of language, metaphors and , how they shift perception and reduce stigma. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you for having me. If my slideshow pops up here. I am a psychologist of language. I am interested generally in the ways in which we use language to think about complex problems. Im going to start with an obvious and silly point. That is just that solving big problems is really hard. How do we fight world hunger . How can we fix a broken Education System. What can we do about a crime epidemic . And when does language marginalize people . These are all big important questions. They are nuanced. There is no magic bullet solution to any of them. As a society, we are solving solving these kinds of problems. In my work, im interested in the metaphors as narratives that are embedded in these questions. They are embedded in the way we think about these problems. When we ask a question, were hunger, weight world are positioning world hunger as something in a war that we have to defeat. When we are fixing a broken Education System, we are thinking about the Education System as a machine or a vehicle that we can just fix. When we talk about a crime epidemic, we are talking about crime as a virus. When we talk about marginalizing people, we might be thinking people on a page. Some people are in the middle, some are on the outside. Language is an important window on the world. In particular when we talk about big picture sociopolitical issues. Those are issues that we have some direct perceptual experience with them. We see depictions of world hunger, we see depictions of crime. But those kinds of issues are not the same as a concept of a tree or a bird. We can go outside and see in see trees and birds and experience them directly. With these other more abstract, complex sociopolitical issues, most of the information we get about those issues is through language. Reading the newspaper, hearing other people talk about them. Language is a primary and critical source of information about the world. And one way of thinking about the way language works is it describes the world. It describes our thoughts. Its a tool for communication. A followup question might be does it shape the way we think about the world . Does it shape our thoughts . And if so, how . Im going to talk through a few experiments quickly that illustrate the power of language to shape the way we see the world. Early work on this question was done by Elizabeth Loftus and palmer in the 70s. In the experiment, participants watched a video of a car crash. They were asked to estimate the speed of the cars. They varied the verb they used to ask the question. One group of participants was asked about how fast was the car going when they smashed each other. Other participants were asked the same question but with the verb collided instead of smashed, or bumped into, or hit, or contacted. There is variability in the emotional vividness of these verbs. There is a corresponding sort of variability in the speed estimates people gave. When a really vivid verb like smashed was used, people gave a higher speed estimate. When a more neutral verb like contacted was used, people gave a lower speed estimate. All the participants watched the same video. At some level, the questions , these verbs are all asking the same thing. Reflect on what you saw. And just give us an estimate. But there is a dramatic difference in the estimates people give. In my own work, im interested in the power of metaphor to shape the way we think about complex problems. I present people with narratives like this where people are exposed to one of two different metaphors. Most of the information in this report is the same. But there is a different metaphorical frame. Participants will read something virusrime is a beast or ravaging the city of addison. Five years ago, addison was in good shape with no obvious vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, in the past five years, the citys Defense Systems have weakened and the city has succumbed to crime. Than 55,000 more criminal incidents a year. There is a worry that if the city does not regain its strength, more Serious Problems may develop. Participants read one of two versions, the beast version or the virus version. They are asked a simple question. In your opinion, what does addison need to do to reduce crime . We have done this experiment with a free response format. That is how we started doing the experiment. People would write things like Law Enforcement should be stricter and the Justice System harsher. Things like study the causes of crime and implement strategies to study the causes. When we were starting to do this work, we were looking through these responses. Two big categories emerged. Some people were emphasizing more enforcement Oriented Solutions and others were emphasizing social reform Oriented Solutions. Peoples responses into these categories. Then, we would look and see who read thee virus version of the report would give different responses, different types of responses than people who read the beast version. We found that they did. People who read that crime was a beast would tend to emphasize enforcement Oriented Solutions to crime. Increase the police force. Lengthen prison sentences. People who read the virus version would give relatively more social reform solutions. Fix the Education System. Create jobs for people. This was a pretty dramatic effect. A oneword difference in a crime report that had mostly the same information across conditions was leading to a 20 point shift in the kinds of suggestions people were making. We also followed up using slightly different methods where people would evaluate policies as opposed to just responding freely. Maybe the metaphors would make something come to mind more easily in a free response wasnt but maybe it really making people think differently and maybe it wouldnt affect how people would actually evaluate these policies that we provided. We would provide some policies that were enforcement oriented and some that were reform oriented. People would read the same report, either the virus version or the beast version. They would pick one of these as their preferred method for solving crime. And using this multiplechoice format, evaluating actual policies, we saw the same effect. The first two sets of bars were from the free response format. It is showing the proportion of enforcement oriented responses. People who read the beast version of the report are more enforcement oriented than the people who read the virus version, people who read the virus version are more reform oriented. Those are the only two categories we were coding. We see this effect using a variety of different methods. Another line of work that is related that i want to talk about briefly and i will unpack the cognitive mechanisms that i think are at play, is work i have done on obesity and looking at narratives for obesity. In the context of obesity, i am going to use the term narrative rather than metaphor, although i think they are very similar and we can talk about some of the similarities and differences. But there is a variety of very salient popular narratives about the causes of obesity. Some focus on the individual and limitations of the individual. So talking about being overweight as a sin, a failure of selfregulation. At the other end of the extreme, we talk about how the environment can contribute to obesity. Food deserts, the lack of support, the stigma associated with being overweight. Those factors can contribute to obesity. We have run some studies that are similar in design to the beast the virus and studies where people read a narrative about obesity and then make some judgments. And in this study, one judgment that people made was about blame. Who deserves the blame for obesity . We had people answer questions that were related to individual blame and societal blame, environmental blame. Some participants read the thin narrative that focused on the individual, others had a narrative that talked about overweight as an addiction. Medicalization of the problem. A disorder narrative was similar to that one. At the other extreme was the environmental narrative. What we see in this plot is after reading the narrative that emphasizes personal failure, people are happy to assign a lot of blame to an individual for being overweight and they dont think the environment plays a big role. At the other end of the extreme, people who read about some of the societal and environmental causes of obesity are showing the opposite pattern. They are happy to attribute blame to the environment and are much more forgiving to an individual. In this study, we asked people about their support for Public Policy designed to reduce the prevalence of obesity. We looked at policies that were more protective. So education campaigns, treatment programs, as well as policies that were more punitive. So allowing insurers to charge higher premiums for people who were overweight. What we find is, this measure of blame, how people think about who deserves blame for the problem, tracks almost perfectly onto how they are thinking about these treatment programs. Sorry, the graph is tricky to see. What it says is the more that we blame an individual for being overweight, the more we support punitive policies and the more that we recognize the environmental factors that contribute to obesity, the more we support protective policies. There is a growing stock of evidence, lots of experience of experiments are showing the power of language to shape the way we see the world. One very positive line of work in my opinion is work by carol black showing intelligence is something that is malleable, something that can grow and can really change students thinking about education and the role of hard work and practice in education. There are a lot of issues, the addiction, some of the problems i talked about in the context of obesity also apply to addiction. It is a stigmatize health issue. Talking about it as a disease has a profound effect on the way people think about addiction. It reduces stigma. It encourages people to get help if they need it. Talking about cancer as an enemy in a war has become a topic that has gone under a lot of research garnered a lot of Research Interest recently. There are tradeoffs associated with the metaphor. On the one hand, it seems to be very effective at raising money and grabbing our attention. Thats important. Its a very emotionally salient metaphor. War is a salient, attention grabbing topic. As susan sontag talked about in her book, this is supported and by research, it can lead people with cancer feeling marginalized. If cancer is an enemy in war and the doctor is fighting the war, the person with cancer is a battlefield and nobody really wants to be a battlefield. The last experiment is a little bit raw. I wont go into it into much detail. Talking about immigration as a contamination in the nations body has negative effects on how people see immigration. That has become a pretty prevalent framing recently. So language shapes what we see. Its not just a tool for describing reality. Its also a tool for thinking and it affects the way we think. How does language shape perception . Thats the main focus of my lab. I will talk about a few mechanisms here. Metaphors, narratives, stereotypes, a big part of their function is that they ground the novel in familiar terms. And this is a the process of categorization. If i see an animal in the world maybe ibody tells me, have never seen it before and it looks new and somebody tells me its a bird, i can make a variety of inferences about what that animal can do. Metaphors and stereotypes and narratives are culturally salient, familiar abstractions like bird categories or tree categories in some sense. They help us simplify and understand complexity. When we talk about crime as a beast or a virus, we are leveraging what we know about how to solve comparatively simple problems for the purpose of thinking about more complex ones. A beast problem is fairly straightforward. If a lion escapes from the zoo and is terrorizing the city, we need to capture and contain it. If we have a crime epidemic in the community, we are not going to capture and contain that crime epidemic. We need to diagnose and treat that problem. There is structure to these metaphors and narratives. When we use them to talk about novel situations, complex sociopolitical issues, we are leveraging that structure. One of the functions of language is to ground novel experiences in familiar terms. Guides is that language our attention. It shapes what we see. It shapes the process of making meaning. In this description of the crime problem that i started with, there is a lot of ambiguous phrases. We are talking about how addison didnt have any obvious polar abilities and how in the past five years, the citys defense sick systems have weekend. Have weakened. Those phrases are not necessarily calling out anything in particular. They are kind of vague. So what do they really mean . What does it mean . What makes a city vulnerable to crime . What does it mean to say the Defense System is weakened . What we are finding is that it really depends on the context in which they are used. When a beast metaphor starts this paragraph, people call to mind the police force and criminal justice. Thats what it means to make a city vulnerable to crime. A bad criminal Justice System, a weak police force. If people just read a virus metaphor, the ambiguity in the phrases is resolved differently. People are thinking about poverty, infrastructure, they are thinking about education. So the way we are talking about problems is having a direct influence on the problems. But its also shaping how we seek out other information and how we interpret other parts of the world. How we resolve that ambiguity. In a followup experiment, one of the ways we tested that particular interpretation is by moving the metaphor frame from the beginning of the report to the end. In that situation, we dont get any metaphor framing. When the metaphors are at the beginning of the report, we see people who read the crime as a beast are more enforcement oriented. When those phrases are presented at the end, there is no difference. N people want to resolve have already resolved these ambiguities without the help of metaphoric labels priming them to think one way or another, the metaphors presented at the end are not reshaping or reconfiguring those mental representations. So language guides our attention. Language also evokes emotion. Loftus and palmers work illustrates that nicely. The verb smashed is much more emotionally salient than the word contacted. That leads people to give higherspeed estimates. The last point i want to make about how language shapes the way we think is that the process is often unconscious. Both in the production side and on the comprehension side. In the studies we conducted on crime, in some versions we would ask people afterwards to identify the part of the report that was most influential in their subsequent judgment. Underline the part of the report that led you to give your suggestion. People would typically identify numeric information. They thought they were being really objective. Only about 5 of participants would identify the metaphor is as having any influence on the way they were thinking. It wasnt a particularly salient feature of the report. In followup studies, we would ask more targeted questions. We would ask people at the end of the study if they could remember which metaphor they got. About half could remember and half didnt. We looked at whether we saw these framing effects among both groups. So we might expect to see the on everybody who remember the metaphor and may be the are using the metaphor actively to think about these problems. But if people forgot the metaphor, its unlikely they were actively using it to think about the problems. We asked those questions one minute later. What we find is the metaphor framing effect among both groups, people who remember the metaphor are showing the effect of the metaphor and people who dont are also showing the effect of the metaphor. So at least in some circumstances, we feel like we have pretty good evidence that people are not aware of the influence of language on the way they are thinking. What about the capacity for language to stigmatize and build compassion . At a cognitive level, stigma communication creates simple categories, us versus them. It assigns blame to them. It evokes negative emotions, fear. T, anger, and it has real effects on people. It generates negative attitudes. It isolates the groups and individuals who are stigmatized. On the other end of the communicationthic at a cognitive level typically situates a problem in a broader, more complex ecosystem. It evokes more neutral or positive associations. It engenders compassionate, compassionate attitudes, connecting individuals and groups. To conclude, language is a window into the world. It is our primary source of information about lots of really important sociopolitical problems. It shapes what we see. Its not just the tool for describing what we are thinking. Es in thely meddl perception process and it does this by grounding novelty in familiar terms, guiding our attention and activating emotion, often unconsciously. Which highlights the stigmatizing and empathic potential of language. Thank you. [applause] now we will all watch what we are saying. We know the power of language. Thank you so much, paul. Our final speaker is a sociologist who has studied reconciliation in rwanda. She will provide an applied example in the context of postgenocide and the role language has played in reconciliationn and justice. Please join me in welcoming holly. [applause] holly good morning. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for coordinating this fantastic event. As im sure you are aware, in the 19 94 genocide in rwanda, hundreds of thousands of civilians essentially took up arms against their neighbors. They grabbed machetes and clubs. They went out to hunt tutsi. Throughout this, over one Million People were killed in raped 250,000 people were in about two months. In the aftermath of this genocide, the government held people accountable by creating a localized Justice System. As you see in this photo, this meant that the incarceration rate soared in the aftermath of the genocide. Since then, people have steadily been returning home. Toost always, they returned the same communities where they committed violence, and sometimes they return to the same village as their victims families. The Research Project i will be telling you about looks at the reentry and reintegration. I was asked to talk about this as a case study. To contextualize it so you know the broader study, there are three core questions. Do we theorize reentry and reintegration in the context of genocide . What obstacles do people convicted of genocide face as they Reenter Society . And what are the individual family, community and state level factors associated with successful reintegration . Today, i cant tell you about all of this. Instead, what i will do is this. I will start by telling you briefly about one of the course core theories. I will talk afterwards about the other theoretical frameworks. Then come i will tell you briefly about the context of rwanda and my message. I have been following 200 people as they returned to their communities. I interviewed 100 rwandans about what they think about the reintegration and will be going back to wanda in september to continue the interviews. I will talk about three Core Insights relevant to our discussion today, then i will conclude with broader implications in particular. I have notes because im going to try hard to stay to my 15 minute limit. If i am speaking too fast, please raise your hand. I want to have time for q a. To begin, i am a sociologist and criminologist. Criminologists have studied reintegration for decades. It is important to note political and biased crimes like genocide or terrorism are different than other crimes like, side, rape or burglary. They have a lot in common. I draw some parallels from criminology. Criminologist look at reentry, its called labeling theory. Labeling theory essentially posits that labels matter. Ourselves, how others label us can influence our selfconcept and actions and how we interact in the world. Peoples identities and behaviors are influenced by the terms others use to describe and classify them. In our case, this is important because people who are labeled ofteniant or terrorists face new problems associated with this label. , where it is where we stigmatize people with these labels, these individuals face little chance at reentry within mainstream society. This is important because these individuals can turn to other communities that will accept them, sometimes violent subcultures. Reintegration,ut we have to think both about how people label themselves and understand themselves and their actions, and how their communities label them as well. As i mentioned, im looking at this in the case of rwanda. This project is funded by the u. S. National science foundation. I have a separate grant that has basically enabled me to create a data set of people tried for genocide in rwanda. About 200,000 people were found guilty of participating in the genocide, specifically crimes Violent Crimes against people. About 6 of these individuals were women. You can see the figure here. Its fairly small. But it is the category one, category two, category three. The post genocide court system split crimes into categories. Categories one and two were Violent Crimes against people, like genocide a homicide. They were met with prison sentences or Community Work service camps. Category three, these were crimes against property, looting during the genocide. Met with prison sentences but with fines meant for reparations. With this project i focus specifically on people who were found guilty of category one and category 2 crimes. Im following 200 people as they leave prison. I will talk about the moment i first talked with them in prison in 2017 and i have been following them since their release. Of these 200 individuals, 180 were convicted of genocide. Were convicted of other crimes, more ordinary crimes like, side after the genocide so i have a comparison group. Im not talking about them today but i am happy to talk about more of the comparisons to ring the question and answer. 19 of these individuals are women come as women did participate in the genocide. Their sentences ranged from eight years to more than 25 years. They are reentering in urban and Rural Communities across rwanda. Very briefly, im talking with. Hese individuals at set times i talked with them before they left prison to learn about their prison experience, why they did what they did, how they expected reentry to go. Then ive been finding them at their homes, sometimes a neutral location if they dont want me coming to their homes, six months, one year and two years after their reintegration. Im currently at the oneyear mark in particular. As i mentioned at the outset im also talking with Community Members. I interviewed 100 people about what they thought about the people coming back to their neighborhoods. When i go back in september, we will talk to those people again. Its important to note there has been a little bit of attrition. In the ordinary crimes division, are back inve prison. None of the people who left are back in prison. Its an important point. What i would like to do with my remaining time is tell you about three Core Insights that are relevant to the discussion today. How do they label themselves . How do the talking with the violence they committed . The second is how the communities are talking about them. The third is an important point about social factors that shape the narratives and the reintegration experience. To begin, how people label themselves. If reentry means something, it will involve somebody who was not just physically relocated back to their community, but moral inclusion. When people return to society, this means they have rights of passage. Thats a ritual that signifies the change in stage or age in life span. These are consistent across cultures. Marks and rituals that some kind of transition. When you think about people who are reintegrating from violent extremism, you might think these are important because they allow someone to have a clear break from their prior life and reentry into community. What i have found for some individuals in rwanda, they have told me about when they come home they were met with a family dinner, Community Members welcome them back. They were supportive. Another person told me there are people i never expected to help or greet me. Neighbors would come and give me small amounts of money. These rights of passage influenced how these individuals were talking about themselves. One person shared this is an amazing situation beyond comparison. It kind of corrected my feelings that people hated me. Many people have these narratives of redemption, its a stark line between who they were during the genocide and prison and who they are today. You see many examples here. I became a citizen again. I am a new person now. These are important. They point to a couple of important takeaways. The first is the importance of person first language. Many people really struggled with that. It placed the action before the person. They said there is a separation between who they are and their actions. This is important. I heard this time and time again. We have it here in the u. S. Someone who committed a felony, dont talk about them as a felon. This matters and how they see themselves. Many people said they strove to engage in Committee Activities that align themselves. With how they saw themselves. They went to church, they went to meetings, they tried to show their neighbors that they were changed. Its important because it signifies communities have to have space for people to have this type of interaction. It might be voting. It might be community service. Communities have to make space for people to be engaged. They need to live up to this positive view of themselves. Turning quickly to some of the community narratives, having these individuals see themselves is how the community sees them. We talked already about blame and responsibility. Many of the people take responsibility or their actions. Something thats very important in rwanda is there is a complex structural view of what happened during the genocide. While people to take responsibility, many rwandans will tell me, to go back to colonialism and talk about how belgium created divisions between the people. They talk about how local leaders created a structure in which the genocide was possible. They encourage people to participate. This is important. It does not necessarily take away the blame, it does allow people to contextualize actions and allows the communities to understand why people did what they did. They dont just see individuals as bad people. They see them as good people who engaged in bad actions. The actions were shaped by a confluence of factors. Some were shaped by these broader structural factors. This humanized them as they came back. There is a difference between this and shaming. Reintegrated shaming is what we want to strive toward. It reaccepts someone as a member of the community. Recognizing that good people can do terrible things, also that often based on a confluence of a powerful social structure. This is important in the narrative we tell about violence, especially in communities that are accepting and reintegrating people. Finally, i will try to go briefly, this is not monolithic. We talk about reintegration as if everyone is the same. This is not the case. Your social location, your age or gender, this shakes your shapes your experience and it shapes how people view you. In rwanda, let me make two examples. The socioeconomic status and related power. As i talk about these experience people are having, they are being welcomed and having this great experience, its the people who are fairly poor during the genocide. They are better able to lay claim to this narrative that there was a complex structure. Theyre the ones that do not tell stories of people welcoming them. They are having a much worse experience. More importantly, gender. The women in my study are much worse than the men. Most of the men have spouses, most of the women dont. They are far worse off economically. This is tied to ideas about who can engage in violence. In most places, there is the ideas it meant of the ones who can engage in violence. The women who do it are evil or different. I encourage you to check this book out. In this case, the women are seen as different, as evil or bad. They are not benefiting from some of these narratives within society. To wrap up and talk about a couple of takeaways, firstperson first language. First language. Its tremendously important to talk about someone who engaged in terrorism rather than genocide. I heard this from the people who tell me this hurts them on a daily basis, when somebody still calls them a perpetrator. They are trying to disassociate themselves from us. Its important to mark these transitions. We have a lot of markers in society, would people get into a when people integrate into a violent extremist group. We failed to have markers at the other side. Some of these small markers, whether it is a couple of really do something to help them feel like they have made a transition. I have a caveat here that this does not take away their blame. It does situate their actions within a broader social structure. A structure that we know is very powerful. Finally, the experience will vary by location. As we think about programs that aid reentering integration, we have to be thinking about how differences are going to shape how they view themselves and how others view them in a variety of ways and we must keep this in mind as we design programs. Thank you so much and i look forward to our discussion. [applause] thank you so much to everyone. This is an incredibly content filled hour and a half plus. Dont have as much time for questions as we originally hoped. I will ask that people quickly identify themselves and limit it to a question. If it is a comment, speak to our speakers after for commentary. [inaudible] outside of your lane here. Given what you have heard as we think about how we reintegrate people who committed crimes in this country, in your part of ohio even, what have you heard today that you think would make the most sense guiding professional peace builders as we go forward . Other questions . We are trying to take three. In terms of reintegration of programming, what would you say the biggest differences are in the programming from criminal Justice Programs for gang members and other violent offenders. What is the biggest differences . What are the biggest differences . Is there a third . Ok. I want to acknowledge that i feel out of my lane. In terms of thinking about specific language in this domain in terms of thinking about specific sort of language in how people are reintegrated into society and the language to use i dont know if i have a specific suggestion but a lot of my work points to a basic distinction between language and metaphors and narratives that are simplifying. The example for a simplifying metaphor. The solution is very clear, versus more systemic metaphors that situated a broader problem in context so i think one of the take away points that relates here is to think about that distinction, situating a context is critical. A couple of things. For the first question, i will add that when you read this complex narrative of the structural factors could be recognized in the us as well. People engaging in crime in the us based on individual motivation. Often we dont talk about that when talking about the individual. Whether government intended to do this when talking about the genocide i am not sure but they created a complex narrative that recognized there is an interplay and we could learn from that. For those of game members, the question, im not an expert on reintegration here, some of the differences in rwanda that have been striking, one is when we talk about reentering the integration here, we are mostly focusing on the individuals, not what communities think of reintegration. Rwanda and large part because of the massive level of reentry and integration we took the step to prepare Community Members to talk about the fact that people will be coming home and do what they did and it is a large part about why the integration is in part working. This could be adopted in the us. Several programs have done something similar but as far as chronological research i know, not much looks at the community. One key difference that i didnt highlight in the talk would be the importance of jobs. In the rwandan context most individuals have a fairly agrarian lifecycle. We know in the us context, any situation that left them away from their community, having a job is particularly important, for their economic status and to help them feel they are productive member of society. Programs in the us and particularly that emphasize jobs that are really important whereas in rwanda it has been is important because most farmers on their own land, i am focusing on the other factors and i would be remiss if i didnt mention the importance of jobs in similar factors in the us. Two more. Thank you. I am from equal access international. Because of time. Anybody who is involved in this space, examples our Research Identifies critical significance belonging, all of these things, agency is critical factors. If those are critical to engagement, i appreciate the framing around disengagement and not the radicalization, and what examples do you have of effective programs reintegrated rehabilitate off ramping individuals that are assetbased the tap into that need for significant agency belonging, etc. We are not stripping and could pieces that led to this radicalization journey, that are potentially valuable for social transformation. And the chosen path. One of the areas we talk about changing the stigma is government themselves as opposed individuals. And talking about Police Officers and military officials and history of predation. Any specific guidance or suggestions for changing the stigma and the narrative . Charlotte came in, some of you mentioned the use of counter messaging, taking people in this radicalization process to steer them away from that path, and what do you do when there is no other place to go and you are on that path can you speak to the effectiveness of counter messaging for people in a different direction . We will take one more. The need for significance is great in the process of radicalization. The example i know, the sri lanka example, the problem with quick individuals with alternative significance through Vocational Training and a variety of domains, and show them away of integrating into society through professional activity turning to violence. One does not underestimate the importance of violence as a primordial means of getting significance. When individual wellintegrated, worked as a translator providing for a family. We asked how do you feel now that you have integrated into i feel okay but felt better at the side. There is something about dominance that pervades the evolution of the world, little children do it, sophisticated nations do it. Theres something about violence that requires a lot of effort to counteract the alternative means. These alternative means, embraced by the community, the integration that is critical. If you are integrated in the community the community suffers. This is likely to be a factor. Programmatically that doesnt fully exist. There are in geos and people out there doing the work of disengagement and reintegration and an exit program in any real sense of the word. In terms of counter messaging, i did some work with one of the tech companies, working on trying to identify counter messaging that is out there. That might be effective. One of the things that can be effective, particular points very simplistically look at the trajectory, the parabola, focused on the for tax which is actually what i believe to be the most difficult time to get somebody to disengage. For counter messaging to be important, it has to number one, has to legitimize the grievances that are already being felt are beginning to delve into their radicalization process. Lots of material out there particularly in terms of extreme rightwing White Nationalist states does not legitimize the grievances that young white men in particular are already feeling. It blows them off. It misses completely. It had a target demographic. I am a middleaged white woman with no difference being on a tictac. There is counter content that might be hyper effective because that is where young people are. The bad actors are utilizing these extraordinarily effectively. And where and how they are consuming in the first place. It has to be offer an alternative pathway. Most of us know that but it doesnt give them anything to do, to deal with the grievances they have, to find the meaning and sense of community and i think counter messaging can impact particular points on the trajectory. But it misses its mark overwhelmingly. It adds to the counter messaging issue. Counter messaging would not be effective if joined with general elements of radicalization. If the counter messaging is insulting the individuals, labeling them in a way that would be derogatory that is going to miss the point. Of the counter messaging is devoid from the support of the network it is going to be the point. Counter messaging has to be integrated with the other elements, it has to address the need to identify alternative means of the significance of fulfilling basic motivation. And validated by a group. If we address the counter messaging of an individual where the Group Remains untouched, reverts to the old way of thinking. Individuals the groups are systemic authorities for their beliefs. It has to be integrated with the panoply of factors that create radicalization. It is an effective. The attempted the radicalize individuals through a very complex theological argument was ineffective. People who are radicals dont care about the theological intricacies. They care about becoming heroes. It is a crutch, a rationalization of their motivation. It integrated to address peoples motivation and has to be validated. A couple things to add. On the counter messaging point, this is not my area but i would like to point out the messages people receive and the different types of violence we are talking about is quite different or can be quite different. I talked about genocide. The average age participated at the time was 34. A lot of the ages you see for people who participate in violent extremism, it was important because in rwanda, participation in violence was framed as a way to stand up and protect their families and communities. This is a different message than people might be getting in other circumstances. I want to add a note to particular attention to the sides of messaging people received and 2 very whether it is terrorism or genocide or a different type of crime. On the question of governments i must admit i dont have a great answer but i have a couple thoughts. In rwanda the local leaders who were part of the government are not having great integration experiences. The dominant narrative of the violence, blaming the genocide on them. The organization could tell you these structures are timidly powerful as well. There is space to talk about different structural factors that shape leaders actions or the actions of Police People or others engaged in the violence. They made a concerted effort to involve police and in members of the government and the Transitional Justice process and many people i spoke with in the aftermath of genocide said they didnt trust the government at first but were able to engage with people at a more local level in their community and this helps them to regain some of the trust in the government. On the government point, one thing that struck me as important related to that is a leadership issue. If the leadership believes in the government, there is a big uphill battle right now. In terms of the language i could imagine the narrative emphasizing the relationship between the people and the government organizations and how government organizations are just people, representatives of a country. And emphasizing that could potentially break down these barriers. I was going to take another round of questions but we are already over time. I want to take this opportunity to thank my Incredible Team starting with chris and desmond jordan whose brainchild this event was and brought it together seamlessly. Thank you so much for the work you have put into this and thanks to all of my incredible experts that have joined us today and imparted incredible amount of knowledge and information for those who are not working on violent extremism every single day. We have lessons and cross comparative studies we need to bring to bear. So thank you and on behalf of us ip thank you to everyone who has joined today and thank you for participating more in the future. [applause] [inaudible conversations] cspan has live coverage of the 2020 president ial candidates at the iowa state fair starting thursday at 1 45 eastern with montana governor Steve Bullock followed by joe biden. On friday we are live at 10 00 eastern with former hud secretary Julian Castro a later former congressman beto orourke. On saturday we are live at 10 am eastern with governor jay inslee, senator kamala harris, kirsten gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and senator cory booker. Watch the 2020 president ial candidates live at the iowa state fair starting thursday on cspan, watch anytime on cspan. Org or listen live from wherever you are, on the go using the free cspan radio apps. Is a look at live coverage wednesday. On cspan at 10 am eastern montana governor and democratic president ial candidate Steve Bullock will speak at the National Press club about the 2020 president ial race and policy issues like gun violence and Campaign Finance followed by the chair of the House Oversight Committee Elijah Cummings on his committees investigations of the trump administration. On cspan2 at 9 30 am eastern a discussion of the importance of maintaining military air superiority on a global scale