ExtremismViolent Extremism in America: Pathways to Deradicalization
Top law enforcement officials have described violent extremism — especially racially or ethnically motivated extremism— as the greatest domestic threat facing the United States. The Biden administration has requested tens of millions of dollars to fight it. Yet the research on what an effective strategy might look like has too often failed to engage the people who might know best: those who have lived that life and left it behind.
On the afternoon of January 6, 2021, Todd Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, was finishing a report on violent extremism when chanting crowds began streaming past his window. He grabbed his phone and chased after them.
He caught up with a man in an American flag shirt and a Trump 2020 ballcap just outside the U.S. Capitol. “All these trees you see out here, with these big, sturdy limbs,” the man said into the camera of Helmus’ phone, “need to have bodies of senators, Republican and Democrats alike.… It’s time for us to bring our guns and leave our women at the house.” Behind him, the crowd swelled against the Capitol steps.
Helmus is an expert in what pulls people into violent extremism. He has studied efforts to quell hate in Indonesia and to prevent violence in Nigeria. His new report, the one he was writing the day an insurrectionist mob crashed through the barricades of the U.S. Capitol, turns the lens on America. He and other researchers interviewed dozens of former extremists and their friends and family members to understand what drew them in, and how they got out.
“People can escape this; they can find their way out of these extreme ideologies,” he said. “Those who are knee-deep in QAnon conspiracy theories or so radicalized by the notion that the election was stolen—they, too, can escape that. There’s hope at the end of the tunnel.”
Indicators of Radicalization
Top law enforcement officials have described violent extremism— especially racially or ethnically motivated extremism violent extremism (RMVE) —as the greatest domestic threat facing the United States. The Biden administration has requested tens of millions of dollars to fight it. Yet the research on what an effective strategy might look like has too often failed to engage the people who might know best: those who have lived that life and left it behind.
RAND researchers partnered with two antiextremism support groups, Parents for Peace and Beyond Barriers, to change that. They interviewed 24 former extremists, as well as ten family members and two friends who had helped them escape extremism. Most of the former extremists had once sworn allegiance to groups like the Ku Klux Klan or the National Socialist Movement. But the researchers also interviewed former Islamic extremists who had left groups such as ISIS and al Qaeda.
