ICSR's Peter Neumann @ The White House Summit
ICSR have provided an abbreviated version of Peter R. Neumann remarks at the CVE Summit:http://icsr.info/2015/02/icsr-insigh...-house-summit/
He highlights three issues, cited in part:
Quote:
Parents are our strongest allies, they need to be helped and empowered.
The internet is the most powerful tool that ever existed for promoting ideas – good ideas and bad ideas. But right now, we’ve handed over that tool to the extremists.
There’s an uncomfortable truth for my European compatriots. However different the foreign fighters that my colleagues and I have found, what many, if not most of them, had in common is that they didn’t feel they had a stake in their societies. They sometimes felt that, because of who they are, how they look and where they come from, they weren’t part of us, that they’d never succeed.
Nonsense about terrorism's 'root causes'
Well The White House CVE summit has set off a host of comments, Peter Bergen's piece for CNN for example:http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/19/op...ses/index.html
Quote:
Indeed, New America has
studied the backgrounds of some 250 U.S.-based militants since 9/11 who have been indicted in or convicted of some kind of jihadist terrorist crime. They are on average middle class, reasonably well-educated family men with kids. They are, in short, ordinary Americans....Post-9/11 research demonstrating that Islamist terrorism is mostly a pursuit of the middle class.
So if it's clearly not deprivation that is driving much Islamist terrorism, what is?
Two ladies in a Lebanese jail
Unusual report from the Lebanon:
Quote:
Armed with their black veils, open ears and expertise in forensic psychology, two young Saudi-raised Lebanese sisters spend hours each week tapping deep into the lives and minds of terrorists of the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda and other groups imprisoned in Lebanon's notorious Roumieh prison.
Link:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/orig...h-prison.html?
Is Flawed Terrorism Research Driving Flawed CT Policies?
A provocative article, which opens with:Link:http://justsecurity.org/21823/flawed...rism-policies/
This is not a problem confined to the USA.
The short podcast with Arun Kundani is worth listening to.
Here's What the Social Science Says About Countering Violent Extremism
This week the UN Security Council held an open session on radicalisation, amidst the official and academic speakers was Scott Atran, whose work has been cited on SWC before.
Link:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-...b_7142604.html
Countering the terrorists narrative: what actually works?
A provocative WoTR article by a former USG CVE SME:http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/cou.../?singlepage=1
Quote:
In a CVE context, pushing back on terrorist narratives makes intuitive sense ― it’s a way of exposing falsehoods in a very public forum. But does it work? Research has shown that when you’re trying to convince people,
facts don’t matter. We seem to understand this in domestic politics, but not in CVE. Appealing to an individual’s value system is the most effective way to change opinions and spur people to action. This is because humans have evolved to
push “threatening information” away in favor of information that confirms their own beliefs. In this way, humans apply the same concept of “fight or flight” to the intake of information. And there are
neuroscientific explanations as to how this happens: When humans feel stress or feel threatened, the blood flow in the brain moves away from the neocortex, the site of higher-order thinking, and toward the limbic system, the more automatic and primitive site of our thinking. The movement of blood flow in this situation renders humans physically less capable of thinking in more nuanced and complex terms, and this has further consequences.
Conflict is more likely to ensue when individuals process ideas only in black and white.
So what does all this mean? Efforts to undertake mass counter-narrative initiatives don’t achieve their intended effect ― and might even work against us. Ad campaigns, online or otherwise, that attempt to dissuade individuals from traveling to join groups like the Islamic State by
pointing out the realities on the ground are missing the mark by failing to appeal to each potential recruit’s value system and his or her own personal motivations. And any counter-narrative campaign attempting to dissuade potential recruits by ridiculing terrorist narratives is most certainly missing the mark because of the human tendency to internalize ridicule as a threat to their beliefs ― leading them to double down on or harden their beliefs.
See a similar themed SW Journal article:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...orism-strategy
What we’ve learned about radicalisation since 7/7?
The full title is: What we’ve learned about radicalisation since 7/7 bombings a decade ago, which comes via the emailing of newly published research from:http://www.radicalisationresearch.org
A leading article as per the title:http://www.radicalisationresearch.or...a-decade-ago/?
Plus podcasts and texts on other papers:http://www.radicalisationresearch.or...on-briefings/?