Extremism Experts Say Things Could Be About to Get a Whole Lot Worse

In early 2020, ASIO director general Mike Burgess released a statement detailing the current state of extremist groups in Australia. Neo-nazis, he said, were presenting an increasingly challenging security risk.

“The character of terrorism will continue to evolve and we believe that it will take on a more dispersed and diversified face,” he said.

“In Australia, the extreme right-wing threat is real and it is growing.”

This year, Mike Burgess returned for his 2022 report with a key finding: the internet, especially over the pandemic, had exacerbated radicalisation even more, especially to a cohort of younger men.

“The number of minors being radicalised is getting higher, and the age of the minors being radicalised is getting lower.”

“A few years ago, minors represented around two to three per cent of our new counter-terrorism investigations. In the last year, the figure’s been closer to 15%. Perhaps more disturbingly, these young people are more intense in their extremism.”

Since 2013, $69 million dollars has been pumped into programs to counter extremist groups in Australia, and last year the Morrison Government instigated new powers for police in the Counter-Terrorism Amendment Bill. At the end of 2021, the Australian Government had 27 terrorist organisations listed under the criminal code. That included the entirety of the Lebanon based Shia terrorist group, Hizballah, and the newly added neo-nazi group, The Base. 

Yet discussion around the increase of extremist activity has existed, and has been getting louder, for the last decade. From the rise of internet-born incels, to violent pockets of right-wing extremists in the West, to threats in the Middle East – it’s a global problem rather than one designated to any particular culture or geographical location.

As our population grows and our views grow evermore polarising, what is the future of extremism? Who is the most vulnerable to it? And how can we counteract it?

VICE talked to two experts in search of answers.

Arie Kruglanski is a heavy hitter in the world of terrorism and extremism and is currently a Professor of Psychology at The University of Maryland. He’s attributed to creating the 3N model of radicalization which includes “need, narrative and network” as the base ingredients to extremism. The second is Steve Barracosa, Senior Manager at the Countering Violent Extremism Unit for Youth Justice in New South Wales, Australia.

We spent time with both Arie and Steve, asking questions about the current state of extremism and where it’s heading in the future.

Arie Kruglanski: We find that the motivation is the quest for significance and dignity. So, especially when people feel that they were humiliated, or their group was discriminated against or they feel that they were diminished, that they lost dignity, lost significance, they need to regain that significance. That becomes the underlying motivation. 

The maintenance of significance, or the attainment of significance, is then allowed through a narrative that a given group pedals. For example, you will be significant if you fight for your country, or the immigrants are the enemy and you've got to find them. And if you do that, you're going to be important. So there is a narrative supported by a network that allows people to satisfy their motivation for significance. And the motivation for significance is, in most cases, their underlying motivation to do extreme things.

I think from a psychological perspective, radicalisation and extremism have a broad definition. 

The psychology of extremists is being able to do something while suppressing everything else, or having a one track mind. It’s being ready to sacrifice your life, your family, your career, for that one thing. Very often these behaviours are very rare in society, because it's very difficult to suppress all your needs, so very few people in general are capable of extremism.

Ari Kruglanski: The internet allows you to find a network that will accept you, no matter what your views, no matter how crazy the narrative. You'll find chat rooms and echo chambers that will allow you to express these views and belong to that network. In the past, to find people who would support an extreme narrative, it would be difficult – because most people around you will be moderate. 

Now, with social media, you can find them very easily. Social media has emphasised the idea of social worlds, how many friends you have, how many likes you get, so that idea of becoming socially worthy has been propagated by social media. And it encourages people to find groups or ideological groups that tell you how to become significant or how to have social worth.

Steve Barracosa: There's no way of hiding from the fact that the internet is the domain of younger generations, they're the most proficient users of the internet. The internet without question is a really pronounced factor. 

From social networking, social media and other online and digital platforms, it's a big part of all of our lives. So it’s not surprising that extremist group’s movements have embedded their ideas and their messages in those domains. And we're talking about things like the way that they're packaging up extremist materials and propaganda materials and using a lot of youth subculture. So things like video games, or cartoon images. 

Steve Barracosa:  The New South Wales government, in partnership with the Commonwealth and in partnership with all states and territories in Australia, have worked towards designing information packages and training platforms that are really geared towards supporting people to understand what some early indicators might look like. When it comes to youth justice all young people will have their own individual journeys towards extremism.

Vulnerability is really our baseline in understanding what the soft spots are. What are the weak spots in young people that might leave them open to being exposed to something extreme and influenced by something extreme? And how can we flip them around and turn those vulnerabilities into strengths and protective factors and safeguard against the exposure of extreme materials or individuals' consumption of extreme messages. But all young people are vulnerable in different ways. 

There's no one size fits all approach. And if you jump from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, there'll be nuances that reflect different environments. Tailored approaches tend to be the go-to go.

Arie Kruglanski: There are large societal forces at work that a lone psychologist would be powerless to reverse. What needs to happen is that a person has to find an alternative way of satisfying their significance. And an alternative network to belong to reinforces that. 

We have done research with the German neo-Nazis and we looked at people who left. Very often they left because they struck up a relationship with somebody in the mainstream, they became friends, or they became romantically involved with somebody outside of their group. And that social connection drew them away from the extreme network to a moderate network and that's how they became deradicalised. 

We have studied the terrorists from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. They were radicalised systematically in detention camps for years and that was unsuccessful because the war was won by the Sri Lankan military. Violent extremism was no longer an option on the table. But then, alternative ways of being significant were provided to them. They gave them vocational education. They tried to find them jobs or immerse them in networks that would support moderation.

It's a societal issue. We believe what other people, whom we respect, believe. So it's very difficult for just a psychologist to deradicalise a person, it has to be a much broader societal effort.

Arie Kruglanski: I think it has increased tremendously. There were several things that affected the world in the last several decades. There was globalisation that left millions of people behind, feeling that they were forgotten or abandoned. There was the financial crisis of 2007-2009, from which the recovery was very slow. Then there was a pandemic, of course. Before that was the immigration crisis. By now we have 100 million displaced people in the world. And the number is growing because of climatic events or climate change. All of that introduces a great deal of uncertainty in people's minds, and uncertainty, or a diminished sense of significance and empowerment, makes people want to regain their sense of power. 

And that is provided by radical ideologies, populist ideology, ideologies that identify somebody responsible, some culprit. Be it the elites, be it the immigrants, be it people of colour, be it Jewish people, (or for conspiracy theorists) reptiles. And these populist ideologies are satisfying people's sense of significance. For example, “Make America Great Again”.

These ideologies lead to vulnerability to authoritarian leaders who speak with one voice and who do not tolerate dissent and disagreement. There is a process in the world today toward greater autocracy and a retreat of democracy because of these uncertainties and instabilities that have swept the world. So, Trump in the U.S., Marine LePen in France, and on and on. These autocratic leaders try to get significance, and they promise significance to their followers, and they become very competitive. So there is an interesting intensification of international competition that can lead to armed conflicts. So I think the world is at a very dangerous inflection point, because of the psychology of it all.

STEVE BARRACOSA: The reality is, we're at a point in time, where I think it's broadly accepted across much of the Western world that young people are engaging in extremism in different ways, but in larger numbers than ever before. 

Extreme groups and movements are, I guess, more aggressively and more effectively targeting young people than we've maybe previously seen. There's real intent from extreme groups and movements to get the attention of youth and to inspire youth to be interested in their messaging. And, as a result, I suppose the reality we're seeing in Australian youth, in particular, is them engaging in different extreme ideas and behaviours than we might have seen previously. I think what comes next is just increased complexity.

Certainly in New South Wales, and I think we can say other states and territories in the Commonwealth level as well, we saw evidence of youth being engaged in religious extremism in recent years. When you throw in a global pandemic, where all of us spent extended periods of time isolated, often at home and for prolonged periods online, I suppose youth became a cohort that was particularly pronounced. 

Arie Kruglanski: There’ll be a retreat of democracy. Democracy speaks with many voices, and therefore, there is no “one” voice. It’s the one thing that extremism needs; that would demand the sacrifice of everything that democracy offers; plurality, multiculturalism and diversity. There may be more of a focus on nationalism that creates the readiness to sacrifice all and to die for your country. And that is the recipe for wars.

So I think that it could become worse. I think we’re going in a direction that autocratic regimes may arise, and extremists are going to cultivate it. There's also a prediction that by the year 2050 there'll be a billion displaced people because of climatic events. And that kind of number is going to exert tremendous pressures on host countries around the world. And that, in turn, can lead to further radicalisation. So we’re living in interesting times.

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