Countering Violent Extremism Through Public Health Practice Proceedings of a Workshop (2017) / Chapter Skim
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2 Understanding Violent Extremism
2 Understanding Violent Extremism
Pages 9-20
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From page 9... ...
Many participants proposed that to better understand violent extrem ism, it is necessary to examine the shared characteristics of individuals who exhibit violent extremism. In this chapter, speakers discuss the origins of violent extremism and the challenges surrounding collecting empirical data about violent extremists.
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From page 10... ...
Jensen outlined the three objectives of the EADR project. First, it is designed to provide policy makers, CVE practitioners, intelligence analysts, law enforcement officers, researchers, and the public with representative data on extremism in the United States, including information on key radi calization mechanisms and processes.
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From page 11... ...
SOURCE: Jensen presentation, An Empirical Assessment of Domestic Radicalization, Sep tember 7, 2016. gies, and Islamist.
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From page 12... ...
Jensen contended that the problem faced today, despite what is por trayed in national media, is much broader than the issue of Islamist extrem ists, asserting: "So far our efforts in the CVE and counterterrorism realm have been disproportionately focused on one end of the spectrum, and there is a lot more going on that we need to pay attention to." Warner Anderson, assistant professor in military and emergency medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences remarked that from a public health perspective, violent extremism should be considered in context of a national epidemic of violence. However, he expressed concern that interven tions in the CVE space are drifting from where the evidence base recognizes the threat, which is in far-right wing and white supremacists' groups, and into terrorism motivated by Islamic ideology.
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From page 13... ...
Although lone actors may be acting alone operationally, most are deeply embedded in strong social networks and thus are not alone in a practical sense. Online networks can mobilize behavior in a very real and expedited way, he explained, and true lone actors -- those who have no interaction with anyone else with extreme views -- are the outliers, not the norm (see Figure 2-2)
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From page 14... ...
Individuals who were embedded in radical social networks were 2.5 times more likely to engage in politically violent acts based on database analysis. Jensen added that individuals in the database with either a clinical di agnosis of mental illness or whose friends or family members believed them to suffer from mental illness were twice as likely to engage in political vio lence.
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From page 15... ...
Jensen observed that such isolated networks may serve as a breeding ground for further engraining those cog nitive biases and making them increasingly difficult to overcome. THE HYPOTHESIZED ROOT CAUSES OF VIOLENT EXTREMISM Transforming Grievances into Violent Action Multiple panelists explored the constellation of personal and societal factors that can drive an individual's progression from personal grievances, to radicalization, and eventually to violent extremism.
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From page 16... ...
She noted that these "pull" factors were connected to broad systemic forces: lack of socioeconomic opportunities, marginalization and discrimination, poor governance, violations of human rights and the rule of law, prolonged and unresolved conflicts, and radicalization in prisons. Mark Stainbrook, assistant chief of the San Diego Harbor Police and senior fellow at the Potomac Institute, presented a list of 10 motivating factors for joining a gang or a terrorist group, derived from his academic research as well as his personal experience with individuals involved.
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From page 17... ...
efforts to address violence against women and girls internationally, which exposed linkages between violent extremism globally and its relationship to gender.1 Stewart cited work by Valerie Hudson (2012) that examined data from more than 100 countries, finding that after controlling all other factors (e.g., religiosity and poverty)
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From page 18... ...
.5 On the individual level, she highlighted prior exposure to violence, in particular, as contributing to impulsiveness, substance abuse, and perpetration of violence, which in turn feeds the cycle of violence. According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study on toxic stress,6 she explained, exposure to violence in childhood affects the archi tecture of the brain and body.
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From page 19... ...
While high levels of exposure to trauma in childhood may indeed be related to committing violence later in life, Heidi Ellis, director of the Refu gee Trauma and Resilience Center and associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School, noted that there are many other potentially sig nificant factors that contribute to the overall burden of adversity that some children face. In her experience with refugee youth and families, Ellis has observed a wide range of developmental trajectories among children who have experienced similar types of adversities.
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From page 20... ...
Bob Griss, director of health care policy at the Institute of Social Medicine and Community Health, suggested that technology has made it easier for populations not to assimilate, particularly among refugee and immigrant communities who would have been less isolated and more con nected to their physical communities in the past. Technology has made it possible to be part of any virtual community and adopt any value system, he noted, which can be problematic from a standard public health or com munity perspective.
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