Translator: Theresa Ranft Reviewer: Denise RQ
Once there was a young boy who had a miserable time at school.
He went searching for identity and belonging,
a community to fit into.
The young boy had a lot of difficulties, he got in trouble with the police.
And from there,
the road to radicalization and violent extremism went very fast.
When engaging in violent extremism, he felt he came home.
He felt a sense of belonging, direction, and meaning.
Every day and wherever we are
we hear about violent extremism in the news.
We hear about the horrifying attacks of ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
We hear about bombings and shootings, of lone wolf attacks.
We hear about right-wing extremism spreading in Europe.
And what they all have in common is spreading violence and fear.
All of them claim to represent the truth, the only truth,
that's so sacred that it validates the use of violence.
I work for an organization
that helps people to leave violent extremism
and come back to society.
People who have been involved in right-wing extremism
and are motivated to make changes and come back to society.
We also meet people who are on their way into radicalization,
and sometimes we can help them get back to society instead,
to finding a link back.
The people we work with are mostly men, some of them are women.
They're in the ages between 14, 15 and up to 40.
And what they all have in common is they're motivated to make a change,
they're motivated to leave hate, violence, and extremism,
and get back to society.
If we want to understand violent extremism,
if we want to prevent young people from going there,
if we want to help people to leave
we need to understand the mindset of violent extremism.
What do people go through when they're going to that movement?
How does it influence their way of thinking and reasoning?
And how do people change?
What happens is you get disconnected from your social environment.
You get disconnected from friends, family,
and you get disconnected from society.
In fact, you get disconnected from yourself.
Extremist groups, independent of their nature or ideology,
use different recruitment strategies to spot vulnerable young people,
to help them to get meaning, community, future, belonging.
Often they spot people who are in difficult situations in life,
who are victims of bullying, victims of crime,
who are traumatized,
and they help them to find meaning and a new direction.
So the extremist mindset...
let me explain three different perspectives
that can help you understand how you get influenced by violent extremist groups.
So first of all,
there's a black and white thinking in violent extremist groups.
You have a clear distinction between "us" in the group, and "them".
"Us" who share the same ideas, think alike,
and "them", who are different, the others.
We're right, they're wrong. We're pure, they're impure.
We're good, and they're bad.
So you divide the world into good and bad, black and white.
There are no gray scales, or nuances,
which also makes it very clear.
You have a higher cause, you have direction.
So, by the end of the radicalization process,
your mind is totally influenced by this way of thinking.
But what's then the gain from this perspective?
Well, for young people going into violent extremism,
you go from living a life that feels aimless,
to having goals, to having structure,
something to work for, direction.
The second perspective is the feeling of superiority.
It derives from black and white thinking,
because it helps the members of the group to feel superior to others,
people outside of their environment and the group.
There's a clear "us and "them", once again; it divides "us" and "them".
It gives moral superiority for us, in our way of thinking,
in perceiving the world towards them.
It creates a distance where you feel, in our group,
there's just too much difference if compared to the others.
We can't understand you, we can't relate to you,
we don't talk the same language, we don't think alike.
There's just too much distance between us.
And this justifies the highness of the group.
So, what's the gain?
Well, the gain is, if you have negative feelings about yourself,
a hurt self-esteem,
you regain self-esteem, you regain a sense of power, of belonging,
a community.
The third perspective I'd like to talk about is dehumanization.
So violent extremist groups use
the notion of dehumanization in their narratives
to deprive their enemies of human qualities.
This enables them to commit violence towards others.
If you want to hurt somebody
is difficult to do so if you feel you're on an equal level.
It's much easier if you create a distance with the black and white thinking,
and the feeling of superiority, and then dehumanize others.
It's much easier to commit violence against people who are not even human.
So they use the dehumanizing narrative in calling their enemies:
cockroaches, pigs, infidels, etc.
It promotes violence and justifies violent actions.
So what's the gain?
Well, from feeling weak and helpless
you feel strong, you feel in power and in control.
So with these three different perspectives,
by nature, violent extremist groups lead to isolation.
It leads to isolation from your social environment,
from your friends and family, and from society.
You tend to only hang out with people
who share the same type of views and ideas;
people who think alike, people who talk alike.
The only people you hang out with in the end
will be people in these violent extremist groups.
So it isolates you and prevents contact with those who you feel are inferior.
The "others".
So it disconnects you from your social environment and from reality.
In Sweden, where I'm from, there are various extremist groups.
There's violent right-wing extremists, violent left-wing extremists,
violent Islamic extremists,
but also similar types of groups like criminal gangs, or religious cults,
or even football hooligans, who have a similar type of structure and patterns
in way of relating to others.
One woman who was arrested for perpetrating a terrorist crime,
and who later on left the right-wing extremist movement,
explained very precisely the process of going into the movement and leaving,
when she said,
"When I went into the movement I was served a package.
I got a toolkit of who I was,
what type of views I had, what type of music I liked,
what type of style I had.
And when I left, I had to rethink all of these choices.
I had to rethink who I was. What type of views did I have?
What type of style did I want? What type of music did I like?
What type of clothes do I like to wear?
And she also stated very clearly
that when she started to distance from her violent extremist friends,
it was impossible
because of the distance and differences in the way of thinking and relating.
Another woman who was involved in violent extremism and left,
stated that when she started over,
she had to rebuild her identity and social connections,
because her old friends didn't want to hang out with her, because she left.
And when she started getting new friends, she felt they were very judgmental.
They couldn't really understand or accept
that she had been involved in violent right-wing extremism.
So she was left in the middle.
This type of isolation is very usual when you leave violent extremism.
Let me share some principles and practices that we work by.
When supporting individuals
to transfer from violent extremism back to society,
we look at a lot of different needs.
We look at social perspectives, psychological perspectives,
emotional perspectives, financial ones; it could be legal.
So there's a need to look at a lot of different levels
when you want to help somebody leave very closed, violent extremist groups
and go back into society.
The problem is multidimensional.
We apply a systematic and multidisciplinary approach.
We have highly trained professionals, social workers, psychotherapists,
psychologists for traumatic treatment, and lawyers.
Tattoo removals, if you have Nazi tattoos.
So we have a lot of different competencies that work in a team.
And we work by confidentiality;
safety for both the practitioner and the person leaving.
We apply a non-judging and non-confrontational attitude,
because people leaving these groups are used to confrontation.
We also use "formers".
Formers are people with their own experience of violent extremism,
who successfully left,
and now can use their wisdom and experience in helping others to leave,
as role models, as motivators, but also as a very practical support,
knowing all the different steps you have to go through when leaving one group,
and coming back to society.
Formers know what it means to leave this type of environment,
what processes are involved when you want to shift back.
One of the people that we work with involved in violent right-wing extremism
and was convicted for a violent crime,
got in contact with us when he was in custody.
We met up with him and started to work with him once a week.
We listened to his situation and his problems,
and tried to help him to structure his experiences;
what he had gone through, as part of the violent extremism group,
both as a perpetrator and as a victim.
How had the violent extremist movement
shaped his way of thinking and way of relating to others.
And we tried to help him to build a new identity
and form new ways of thinking and acting,
new strategies to deal with different things.
We helped him to think about where to live.
Was it safe to live where he used to live?
We helped him with finding a job.
He got a training, actually, when in prison.
We helped him to think about connections with family and positive friends.
He had a Nazi tattoo, and we helped him to get rid of it with laser.
And in the end, he put in a lot of work
and did a very good progress in his recovery,
and made it out from violent right-wing extremism very successfully.
There are several organizations like the one I work for:
Exit Fryshuset in Sweden,
that helps people to leave violent extremism.
Many times, we're the first ones to give hope
to people who want to disengage and leave violent extremism.
But sometimes we're not the only ones.
Many people who left violent extremism
talk about the unexpected kindness from others.
So people in violent extremist groups
are in conflict with everybody else around them,
and they experience unexpected kindness from people
that they perceived as their enemies,
which helped them to find motivation, to rethink what they were doing.
To help them find a new way of thinking about their lives.
So the role of unexpected kindness is very powerful:
to be met without condemnation and fear, but instead with respect and curiosity.
But successful reintegration takes two.
It requires individuals engaged in violent extremism to be motivated to leave,
to have the courage to take the steps to actually leave,
to take action to leave their community.
But it also takes society
to be open and willing, motivated, encouraging
to let people back in;
to be open and help people to get back from violent extremist groups.
So the question is...
this comes up to all of us:
are we ready to let people get back?
Do we have the courage to help people with open arms
to get back from violent extremism groups?
Well this is really a question for us all. What type of society do we want?
Do we want to let people have another chance?
So, why am I standing here talking about all of this?
Do you remember the young boy at the beginning of my talk,
who had problems in school, and got in trouble with the police,
and got radicalized into violent extremism?
Well, that young boy used to be me.
I was engaged in violent right-wing extremism for several years,
taking part in demonstrations and riots, meetings and events.
And I left.
I successfully left after many years.
And today I've been working 15 years
helping others to leave violent extremist groups.
I've met hundreds of formers around the world
who successfully left violent extremist groups.
I'm even asked to help the European Commission
to lead a practitioner network to set up Exit programs in Europe.
And standing here now, I tell you it's possible to make a change.
It's possible to leave violent extremism behind.
Thank you.
(Applause)