Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Combating Extremism Terrorism 20240713

The International Security program aims to provide evidencebased analysis of some of the toughest security challenges facing american policy makers and the public. From homegrown american terrorism to United States drone wars abroad and the proliferation of drones around the world to the profound changes in warfare brought by new technology and societal changes. Id like to introduce jesse morton who will begin with a presentation on their new initiative before we jump into the panel information. Jesse was once a jihadist propagandist who ran revolution muslim, a new york city based organization active in the 2000s and connected to a number of terrorism cases. He connected al qaedas ideology and transformed it for america, creating english language propaganda. Morton deradicalized in 2011 following his arrest in casablanca and incarceration in the u. S. Hes now executive director of parallel networks. After jesses presentation, ill invite the rest of our speakers to join me onstage and briefly provide an introduction for each of them. Well address the changing threat land shape, future terrorism prevention practices. Well save the last 30 minutes or so for audience q a. And with that, ill hand it over to jesse. Hand it over to jesse. Good afternoon. So afternoon and thank you for attending todays event. Id like to stress special gratitude to new america for hosting todays event, a Civil Society approach to preventing terrorism and targeted violence. Todays event is important as it announces controlaltdelete hate. It is a magazine in printing and online. Well pass around copies. It is an approach to combatting extremism weve been building out since we got started. You can see the cover of the First Edition which went online this morning but the initiative is more than just a mere counternarrative tool. It is part of our innovative and wholist particular approach to addressing the threat by enhancing and enforcing extremisms here in the u. S. First, a little bit on the projects back ground. Its important to realize its not a standalone initiative. Its more than just a magazine. For over a year now, mitch and i with the assistance of many supporters and in particular the counterextremism project have been working on a comprehensive program that can consist of combatting the mounting threat by far right extremism. In fact my partnership with mitch was announced publicly on june 4th, 2018, with an event right here at new america. Documented the nefarious legacy i once built as a jihadi propagandist and mitch calm batted with the nypd as director of intelligence. Since then we have learned a great deal. After researching, networking, designing programs we launched the ecosystem in which controlaltdelete hate. Victims of extremism, activists, researchers, supporters and others that believe in our motto. Thinking about it started a year ago during a week of flurried activity that made it apparent we needed to get moving and fast. The adaptivity included the tree of life synagogue attacks which occurred and a white supremacist that tried to get into a africanamerican church and shot two elderly africanamericans in a supermarket in kentucky. Things have gotten a lot worse since then but we started at that time to select a team of formers and victims of rightwing extremism that can serve alongside to help us expand into the rightwing space going forward. At the core of our network jeff scoep, myself and others like Brad Galloway who is also here and hope hyder, an africanamerican woman whose father was murdered by a white supremacist and she actually is in contact with the individual that murdered him and provides sort of support and empathy. These have been our interventionists over the past year and at the same time weve supported and informed one another. It is a byproduct of these yearlong efforts. Its the beginning of our answer, particularly in the rightwing space. So id like to talk a little bit about our unique approach to this problem. We believe that formers offer an unrivaled insight, particularly when teamed with a collection of others from different fields. Our efforts draw from a transdisciplinary model that we call the parallel network philosophy. It takes an ecosystemic approach that expands cve activities so standalone help lines with no outreach and little pub lislie in marketing or failed campaigns that cannot reach their targeted audience are essentially ineffective because they are not connected to a Broader Network or movement. Instead of creating an alternative network or movement you might describe it as one that seeks to rival in size and scope and cohesive world view the network that ties extremists together. Only then we believe can you map that networks impact, the parallel networks impact and measure the result of interventionoriented engagement. So it will serve as a cornerstone of these efforts. A bit more on the history and how this template was established. The control alt delete methodology to will be disseminated. When i was a recruiter and propagandist on behalf of al qaeda from 2003 to 2011 i collaborated with several premiere jihadists to have the english jihadist magazines. I wrote the lead article for the first issue. After my new york city based organization threatened the writers of south park for portraying the prophet muhammad, they launched their own called inspire. So over the years these magazines weaponized propaganda in ways unseen beforehand. So mitch and i came up with the idea of taking that template back i once initiated and using it for positive purposes. So we designed a counternarrative product that outside jihadist in Graphic Design and structure. We included articles that deconstructed the jihadist ideology, included the testimony of formers like myself and offered a positive alternative world view that we call our dialogue of civilizations model, equally applicable as we address whats perceived threats on the far right for the ethno state that they categorize as western civilization. A month before the launch, we inaugurated a corehosting hub for control alt delete hate as well and will embed it there. We launched the first issue. Before the launch even got the Counterterrorism Community and jihadist sympathizers to believe that isis was about to launch a new english language magazine. That coupled with a media rollout that generated publicity forced extremist recruiters to respond as we invaded their eco chambe chambers. It is the only counternarrative product that has used where extremists, including the far right, are migrating as a result of efforts by mainstream social Media Companies such as facebook, twitter and youtube, to remove extremist content. When we first launched it, the jihadist preaches were angry. We kept popping up in their closed discussion groups with the magazine because we had multiple moles in their network. That led them to engage me in private discourse where we were screen shotting what we provided. We bumped evidence of the ignorance of their leadership and their ability to respond to their netted works back into the jihadist networks, spamming them against those they hold as leaders. At the same time it connects to interventions. G its not a standalone example. After coming over to threaten me on twitter, ive established good relations and am supporting a prominent individual that caused quite a bit of fan fare when he returned back to the west having joined isis in syria but remains free. Several similar interventions have resulted as a result. So now each article in each edition serves as a standalone piece on the website and is utilized for linking to engagements, sharing over social media and putting into extremist conversation threads online. We also use it for prevention. In 2020 well print hard copies and visiting cities around the United States speaking publicly with our core team to raise awareness and promote our intervention services. Now that weve launched control alt delete hate we can use the same method to domestic collectives while also discussing reciprocal radicalization. So the emagazine becomes not a standalone magazine nor something too insignificant in scope and application to have an actual impact. Next ill elaborate a bit on the holistic nature of the product and how it fits into the ecosystem. Its more than the name of a magazine. Its something that we utilize as a clear paradigm in conducting personal and collective transformations. Based on keystrokes and playing off the popularized altright brand name, it offers a unique framework for story telling and transformation. The first stage, control, is to pause and process when confronted with extremist behavior ideology. As holocaust survivor Victor Frankel once stated, between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So our approach is dedicated to imparting this dedication. Control transitions to alt which looks at altering course. To recognize we need to look not just at the response to extremism and how we react to it but to create alternative courses which address often legitimate grievances. The alt phase turns to delete hate, a phase that asks us all to recognize that in such a tumultuous period, only a whole of Society Approach can address the threat and surrounding issues. Individuals can grasp deradicalization. Collectives can contributing and the message of the magazine has an underlying methodology that can transition into a paradigm in process for individual and collective alteration. Shift hate is the next hate of our ecosystem. This is where oneonone engagements occur which the authors in the First Edition of the magazine and other support staff have facilitated. It stands for support and help by individuals and families touched by hate. Under that umbrella we run a 24 7 help line and have unrivaled access to online extremist networks. Without any marketing or support from government or social Media Companies, weve already conducted 100 interventions. For example, jeff and a young female former far right propagandist are here with us today and offer case studies of those that have benefitted from the parallel network philosophy. We contact those that disengage publicly from extremist movements and offer them support as well. Weve used shift to provide some of the only support services to terrorismrelated offenders returning to our streets after their incarceration and utilized their case studies for recommendations on how to address their concerns in a paper released last year, when terrorists come home, again with the support of the counterextremism project. So the final component of the ecosystem is save hate. If shift hate offers a deficit approach, save hate seeks to build out the network i was referencing that can transform essentially into a movement. Extremists dont simply offer a message, they offer a coherent world view and counterculture, a community built on axioms. They develop ecochambers where opposition is drowned out. Extremist recruiters think multi dimensionally and remain fluid. They adjust almost ingt u. S. Ly. Save hate is an effort to match and reverse engineer the extremist method we know. It utilizes influencers whom we call our shape shifters and concentrates on formulating that parallel network, that network built on principles antithetical to hate and offer a complete world view and alternative to the extremist eco chamber. Though the parallel network ecosystemic, you can see light upon light serves as the core hub. It generates safe spaces free of hate and hosts all of our activity. Each entity, control alt delete hate, shift hate and save hate is there. Its a manner that creates opportunities for individuals and groups to experience the same meaning, significance and sense of belonging extremists offer. Second is research. The understanding today is that evidencebased initiatives with measurable outcomes must precede implementation. We seek instead to learn my doing and then measure outcomes. Extremism is fluid. The lag associated with topdown social science often means the implementation of datadriven interventions that are no longer appropriate in a climate that has already shifted. We first start the growth of the parallel network. Then measure engagements effectively only once the network coalesces and can measured against the contraction or expansion of the extremists we seek to alter. Partnerships is key. Theres currently too much competition and not enough collaboration in the pve cve space. Victims of extremism and shape shifters all do things independently but their engagement with the activity in the light upon light ecosystem allows their efforts to magnify. It becomes less about the individual and more about the movement. Think about the way charismatic preachers and propagandists operate under extremist brands but still become individual icons, representatives that embody the mission of their respective causes and organizations. The control alt delete hate magazine helps us build out positive messaging. That messaging will lead to broader messaging and Public Awareness and save hate will continue to provide a key means of networking to expand the movement. All of these components feed off of and into each other. From a social Service Perspective they are designed to approach violent extremism as a Public Health phenomenon and demar kate each component so it can fulfill levels of education, harm reduction, intervention, countermessaging, Restorative Justice and rehabilitation, the whole social service spectrum. Finally, then, going forward. Now we have to advance and expand the parallel network. Weve only been up and running this for publicly light upon light ecosystem for six months. Well expand it with activity within each of the ecosystems essential components. So well build out more research. We have heavily embedded and are in contact with networks such as antifa, proud boys, where control alt delete hate will be disseminated. Weve contacted several of the hubs of those communities to do so. Our Grassroots Efforts have established sufficient sample sizes necessary for research. Well release a report and pursue other initiatives as well. Well look to form more partnerships. Weve been networking with the peace Building Community and already put together an Impressive Team that will organize a center for the study of trauma in radicalization. Weve collaborated with ideas beyond borders to translate the magazine into arabic and to expand our influence into the muslim majority world. Well take back isis news letter utilizing the same approach. Were looking to expand into australia, into canada, and western europe as well. Well engage social Media Companies and request their support promoting the shift hate help line and make sure users looking for extremist content are provided access and pathways to the light upon light messaging hub. Light upon light itself will increase its coverage of extremistrelated activity. We see a communicate hub and online portal that can host Grassroots Research and journalism, that can advance podcasts, online videos and other media, that can arm public with information and confront coverage and commentary that enhances resilience and offer a world view with a collective nonpolarizing consciousness. As far as shift hate interventions, weve been advocating for a governmental assistance. It might reduce public criticism of cve and government involvement within and provide an alternative to sole reliance on investigation and interdiction. This might add a tool to the counterterrorism toolbox. Mechanisms for society like our own to conduct targeted interventions. We put together a proposal for next year that would ultimately lead to uniformity and internal record keeping, advance an online course to train and empower our key interventionists with information, instruction and skills in communication. We want to replicate essentially the field of Substance Abuse treatment. A field that has evolved to rely on former addicts to produce improved outcomes. As for save hate well utilize our partnerships to increase the number of our shape shifters. Well be looking to present the magazines to 15 different cities in the United States, particularly well speak there, enhance awareness, educate those on the front lines, impart better understanding of risk indicators and in turn well expand the save hate initiative. After our visit well remain contact with those communities so theyll know were available to support their own localized efforts. Now, in conclusion we are very honored to be here today. As a society we need to effectively already pause in that space between stimulus and response, to alter course and recognize that each of us does in fact have a role to play and ability to address the consequences of polarization, hate and extremism. As Albert Einstein once put it, no problem has ever been solved at the same level of consciousness that created it. We seek nothing less than a paradigm shift in the realm of preventing and encounters violent extremism. I look forward to todays discussion. Thank you very much for joining us. [ applause ] so now id like to call everyone to the stage. Ill give some quick intros, so thank you, jesse. So first to my immediate left is mitch silber, the ceo of parallel networks, an organization he cofounded with jesse morton. Hes a founding principal at the Guardian Group and security and intelligence consulting firm. He served adds director of intelligence analysis at the nypd where he was a principal counterterrorism advisor to the Deputy Commissioner of intelligence and was responsible for building out and managing the analytic and cyber units. Then next i have Brad Galloway. Bradley galloway is a research and intervention specialist with the organization for prevention of violence which is based in edmonton, alberta. Recently brad has joined with parallel networks and light upon light to work on initiatives to counter hate and violent extremism in the United States. Next to him is jeff schoep. He was one of the most prominent figures of the neonazi movement in the United States. He was a national leader, commander of the National Socialist movement for over 25 years. It is now jeffs mission to help ending the violence caused by extremism and radicalization. Today jeff is an extremist consult anxiety and works as a prevention and intervention specialist. So thank you all for being here today. So lets start with the focus of parallel networks befory zoom in and discuss policy in the United States. So starting with jesse, can you talk about the existence and similarities of far right, far left and jihadist tactics and pop gra propaganda and how they feed off of each other. For example the new platform called the base kind of ties into al qaeda because in Arabic Al Qaeda means the base. And then also some far right groups have glorified bin laden as a symbol, according to vice reporting. So its a very complicated discuss and one that needs much more research. Effectively you have three primary principals of the objectives in the narrative that interweave between the far right and jihadist and to some degree the far left as well. So really you have this notion that the community is under threat. That the white race is attacked. So that is essentially the demark 8ing characteristic that in order to preserve yourself from the attack violence is justified. Then you have this real issue with the extremist mindset which is resistance to change and alteration and preserves traditionalism as a way to defend themselves from that. We see that with regard to this idea of the white ethno state or returning back to something that is akin to such. With regard to islam, it wants to return back to a caliphate. Essentially the third demarcating thing is this return to a utopian past. But its not a utopian past its gives the framework upon which modernity can be expanded in line with their preconceptions and interests. So what we see really in my opinion is its fascinating for me as someone who was active from 2003 until 2011 is that a lot of whats going on with the far right now that the focus is on them replicates almost to a t the approach we utilize with the jihadists who are the topic of our concern, particularly after 77 when the london attacks were carried out and we realized homegrown violent extremism was of primary import. So the organizations like the base are key because if you look at the images, and i wont get too far into it, but if you look at the images of the people that are pledging allegiance to abu spai Abu Bakr Al Baghdadis successor looks almost identical. Seven or eight people with guns pledging allegiance. If you look at groups that are fracturing and the base, five or six young white men in the woods armed with ak47s. If you watch the propaganda and the videos, they released one framed exactly like an isis video would have been framed at the heyday of the onset. You talked about vice identifying the tatp recipe, which is disseminated frequently. This is a jihadi mast, new kitchen, completely remodeled and teaches one like a cooking show how to produce tatp in their home with basic household items. The group promoted this on the far right and said tatp, its easy to make. Then they had some semblance of bin laden as a resistance figure that they were incorporating into their propaganda. Even with regard to the reaction on the far right for efforts to take them down off mainstream youtube platforms one case of isolated radicalization into violence. Immediately the British Government called for takedown but immediately what we did as an organization was adjusted by my dwrigrating to other platford using youtube in a way consistent with prevented takedown. So thats the same thing the far right is doing today and its a topic you could go on for hours about but its very important to identify this so we dont make the same mistakes we made when confronting the jihadists. Thank you. Does anyone want to talk about some narratives that have been used by any of these groups and then changed a bit depending on another ideology . I think what he was saying about had adamwafn and things like this with the far right, these guys will always fracture each other, the infighting led me right into thinking about how theyre never satisfied with just the one group. It ends up fracturing. These are good intervention points, especially for Law Enforcement and for us as interventionists trying to say, okay, well, this group looks like its fracturing. Lets go see if we can talk to some of these members whether its online or if police wanting to do typical door knocks, just go check in on these guys and see what theyre up upon. Thats where a community can sort of mix with, i think, with the different agencies out there looking into these groups too. I know in the canadian perspective, some of this has been a bit of a challenge seeing these different types of groups coming up, but definitely in infighting thing is definitely leading to these groups falling apart too. So we want to take advantage of those scenarios. Thats helpful. And thats something that stems back many, many, many years in the far right. Its constantly divisive topic between the different groups and the infighting, so these are good opportunities to get in there and try to pull people out. Okay. Thats very helpful. I think also tying directly into your easing, it mentions 954 hate groups that were identified in the u. S. In 2017. So can you give us an idea of whats the nature of these groups . How many of them are violent . How many are still active . So thats a number that was drawn from adl reporting. Its an important one. I think its hard to categorize what is a hate group. So this is the question, like hate is a lot harder to define than violent extremism. In order to hate you dont have to explicitly call for violence but theres an Implicit Association with it. One of the key things that adl points out particularly is that members of these hate groups oftentimes dont act in the name of the ideology or the cause of the movement, but because theyre associated and affiliated with this network that is promoting hate and extremism, they often go on to commit violence in other realms of their life. Domestic violence is very important. These can be anywhere from five groups of guys pamphleteering on a campus all the way up to a social movement. The fact that theyre so dispersed is an indication that there is very far right is harder to understand. Theres a paper released this morning from icct that tried to demar kate between nativism, aen antigovernment and racist groups. What were seeing now is the transnationalization of the ideology evolving around the great replacement theory and its adoption by almost every single facet of the far right movement. Thank you. So, jeff, im wondering if you can talk to us about what drew you into the neonazi movement in the first place and what made you disengage and deradicalize after 25 years. Also, could you tell us what that process has been like and what your experience has been in combatting some of those previous narratives with your former peers . Well, starting out, its something that literally anybody can get involved in. I know a lot of people have a story that they came from a bad home or they had some sort of trauma. I want the public to understand that its something that literally anyone can be recruited into. I come from a middle class home, a normal family. My dad and mom were there. But literally anybody can be brought into these type of movements. And for some, its theyre looking for brotherhood, theyre looking for a network of people to be part of. For others, its ideological based. For me it was more ideological based. But once youre in there and the various tactics that can bring you in there, i mean we used utilized our recruitment tactics under many different ways. If someone was religious, we would use christian identity. If someone was, you know, really into music, wed use music. If someone was into the politics, wed use the politics. You know, someone had a bad experience with someone of another race, wed use that. So theres not one specific tool thats used to bring people in and thats what we have to look at as far as bringing people out too. Its almost like youre inside of a bubble. Youre part of this bubble and you dont see the outside world when youre in there. So to get people outside of that bubble, i think its important that we use kindness, compassion, immersion type of activities. Get them to understand that theres a world outside of that bubble because in a lot of ways, im more referring to it as a cultlike thing now. I know when i was in the movement i didnt like that designation because it a cult is a bad thing, right . When we joined, i didnt join the movement because i hated anybody or because i wanted to impress anybody. I joined it from the sense of im a patriot, i want to protect my country, i want to protect my people. And a lot of people that are joining it are joining for those reasons, not for the reasons that they just systematically hate people. They think theyre doing a good thing. So to unwork that and to get that person outside of that bubble is not just a simple process where you say, oh, well, this person is just hateful and thats why theyre there. The hate came for me later. It wasnt something that drove me there. I didnt have bad experiences with minorities or other people, it was ideologically based. Is that what you refer to as the Counter Culture . You had an article also where you discussed anyone is susceptible to recruitment and you referred to the Counter Culture. Is that the bubble that youre talking about . Yes. And the Counter Culture is in the movement you have to understand, to explain it to people, we had an answer for everything. You know, we had the National Socialist movement was producing video games. We had two different video games that were produced over the years. We had and i think the group still has at least five radio shows, podcasts that are on every day of the week. People can call in, ask questions. There was online chats. There was a forum. There was music and bands. There was family barbecues, lightings, all kinds of things, so its an entire culture all wrapped into one. When you leavee and it goes back to the cult t type of scenario where everybody you no he is in there. When you leave and when youre in there, almost everyone you know, all of your friends, sometimes your family,y, some of the people dont have good d Family Support networks, everyone you know iss inside tht bubble. So to leave youre literally t turning your backs on everyone that you know, every person that you know inside your support network. One of the females that i rainst brought out since ior left, she said, we were kind of rallel brainstorming, what are the re Different Things we do, which ia why im with parallel networks,n because that ideag to go forwar. One of the females, she had said, she said we need Something Like Alcoholics Anonymous but t, for people in the movement because it i offers that fro that simplistic outlook, it impt offers that support. It offers people that have been there, you know, an understanding. And thats why iat thinkion, a important that formers are involved in this. You could have all the education, all the knowledge in. If youre trying to talk to one of those people that have been there, theres going to be a disconnect. Eheyre not going to quite understand. Seem s well, thisnay, person may be seems like they know what theyre talking about, but they dont know what ive been through, my life, and were just predeterminedd almost to r fight against that. To fight against anybody coming in and criticizing the movement or our ideology. Its like with confirmation bias. You believe the answer is what o you wantu to believe. You know, in any type of thing. For example theven if holocaust. You will look at the revisionisu literature and say thats the truth even if you have facts from the other side that are there because you want to believe that what the movement said is the truth. So to break that down, theres not an instantes tim process. Nobody says, snap of a fingers, im out of the movement. It is a long process. It takes time. And formers are absolutely to b critical to this process because simple way to break it down is. Like streetet cred. The formers understand that world. They understand how we got ou si there. F brin and we understand now how to get them out. So you it said that you hav different ways of bringing off dependsdest fo itrhe kindm. On what that persons i guess ha what sparks an interest for l m them. Is that, t one thing is, how do you keep the Movement Together if you have all of these different segments . And then how do you also bring people out knowing that you got them ina atact certain way . Is that a tactic to remove them as well . Yes. With the National Socialist movement, one of the things that we found i crossed into a lot of different groups. I would be invited to speakk at clan gatherings, skinhead st concerts, Different Things like that. So i wasnt just, you know, at the head of the National Socialist movement. I knew people from all of the different groups. S. Soso taking that into consideration and going, this group, like league of the south, for example, this is a group thats focused on neocon fedracy and things like that. They would focus on that and that was sort of their niche. Different groups would have d differentreli niches. The National Socialist movement and a lot of groups would have religion. For us in our handbook, it said religion was for home and family. Because i found that one of the, most divisive things in the movement early on was the religion thing, whether it was between owedinism, christianity, catholics, atheists, creators, all these Different Things, and they would all fight against each other. Not, you know, giant clashes or anything like that like in Medieval Times but ideological r clashes b within the movement, where some of them would tak sa. Civil war breaks out, were going to go take care of these guys because they dont believe in our god. So i saw it as a very divisive. Thing. And for us, we kept it sort of a inhouse. So we didnt have in our structure, our structure was set up more like in a rank mill or taristic type of structure like the army. So you had Different Levels in the organization that would eadg of things. Ose type okay. Thank you. Role so can we talk about spreading of the message . So whats the role of national e and local media in disseminating extremi extremi extremist messages . Just to start us when off, how you use that to your advantage when you were pushing out message points using the media knowing what they could or couldnt t do . I think ill start because we kind of emulati spearheaded tha jihadism. Right is emulating. Some of the stuff we espoused was just tooconc get into the p. They would put us on cnn and fox news. We knew that if theyreness coul the antiislamic bloggers to get more awareness and arm them with the ammunition they needed to. Say that the muslims were coming to implement sharia law we could create polarization. We could confirm our narrative a war. Re wagingthe we could point to Pamela Gellar as our evidence. Mainstream media was great because your website will go to. Getting hundreds of thousands of hits a day. We kind of had mastered that art form. An o and its very interesting the way that media works. Positive because you would think that there would be an overwhelming interest in pro he moeting someo prostive work like the work that were doing. If we were out there, you know, promoting ari rally against, yo know, against one w for white c rights or something, wed have Massive Media lined up today. Nobody wants to cover the positive stories because thats not what sells. Ements its the sensationlism that drives it and the symbiotic relationship, its so easy for us to exploit that and we used to doto that. Immediately what you do then too is what people dont realize, if you can draw media to your website, your number of followers go up but you get up e in the rankings of Google Search engines. Not anymore. Theyve come aroundimport and m even worth without realizingg it. T. But yeah, theres a really important the importance of getting into the Mainstream Media with the activity that you do is key to a had please worke or for us in the National Socialist movement we had a press release department. We had a journalist from before that would write it in the way you would submit it to the press and would send out mass emails to all the press in the area at the time, and wed send it, you know, like in the subject line, nal so put nazi, something thats going to jump out. If you put National Socialist st Movement Press release, a lot of the press wasnt going to look. We became sort of experts in a g sense t on how to manipulate th. We knew it wasnt going to be gt good press no matter what. But that didnt matter. As long as they werent saying really, really badpr things, wed knew that we could reach the ed publish through the press like nothing we ever did before. To so we would do public rallies. Wed announce we were going to be here. G wed sometimes challenge people to debates and things like that. Anything to generate press and w activity, it would focus traffic to our websites, to our shows and things like that. Us, and it would youre going to break through and get to some people no matter what. For us it was, even if we spend the time and energy going to a city and say we only have 20 guys out there, which is a smal number by comparison, if those guys are flying nsm flags, the press is going to come out. If the antifa comes out and is m attacks used even better becaus now threes theres violence and the press has to report on it even if theres been a media blackout. Thats been a tactic. We started wondering why in some areas the press wasnt covering us. Because they are noneventful he vents. If we clashed with the other t, side, guaranteed press. That takes away, looking at it from the side of the left as well, they think theyre going. To stop the movement by initiating violence and hat so attacking people that arert in e movement. It does just thethey opposite. Ie the guys will thrive on that sort of thing. They would say, we did an event in mississippi one time in tupelo, and the police sort of s cordoned off the. Area. So really there was like a handful of peoplee from the downtown area, police and press. And the guys that were there s withit us were national sociali movement and clan. They said this was the most boring rally, uneventful theyve ever done, it was demoralizing from the stand point of the movement. Now other times, like we had a h big street fight in new jersey, why cant we have that again . They knew in the national to socialist tamovement, you coulde attack somebody. It was against our rules. This for 27 years lence total. Never had notat one person from the nationalal socialist moveme arrested for violence at a ere rally, because we knew it was our rules anddefended our guide that you did not hit somebody first. If you were hit you defended ret yourself. But to say that people werent hoping or wishing for that violence would be incorrect. Because that would turn that huw into something that they thrived on. You know, so the left, the far left, thinking theyre going to shut down these groups by punching a nazi in the face or something, doesnt work. Thats what they want. To combat that, whats the strategy . Knowing that you know that natie the number lence is one way to push out messages ins a lot of ways, get that press. Whats the alternative then . If you know that the other side is trying to quell this. What do you do . Theres a few different ways of looking at it. You know, i feel like in this country everybody has the right to protest, whether youre on the right, the you sht to doifl, or wherever in between. You should have the right is t that. And its kind of a complicated i thing. Because in some it was ways like example of mississippi, there was hardly anybodyment f there, was demoralizing to the people n that were coming. Hese guy but the counterargument from the other side is, if you just alloh it, then these guys are going t. Grow because more people are going to come out and hear it. So i think it really depends on the way one looks at it. Peaceful protesting is fine. And peaceful counterprotesting ist is c fine. But the moment it crosses that line into violence, whatever i side itswher coming from, is w. And i think that thats where Law Enforcement needs to come in and typically they do. Typically they do. Theyll separate it, take in ing people that haveve committed cop criminal leacts. And thats good. Ach, ignoring k either completely from were talkins from the street level counterprotester, is that what u youre asking . Uhhuh. Either be 100 peaceful or stay home. Okay. M thank you. So something a slight pivot, im thinking that maybe we could it talk a little bit about gab andr telegram. Just asouone st examples. So it seems like violent try extremist groups are always one step ahead and everyone whos trying to counter that is behind because were trying to change course as we go along. If theyre actively pursuing ways to engage on different platforms, people are trying to counter the narratives or the work were doing, what are we missing . Whats the next thing after gabh andat telegram . . I think that no matter what weof do, theres going to be an echo chaim ber theyre going to create for themselves in some area of the internet. Theyll find some way to do it whether online or offline. But in the online space i thinkn that recently somebody sent me t this thing, it was like 100,000 different videos on telegram of music, hate music. Right . So what is that about . We well, thats just about them saying, screw it, youtube is taking all of our stuff down. Well go here and we can share away as we want. D thats going to beo the way tha its going to go. Erate now which company is going to do what are they going to do, moderate it . How are they going to do remove it . Each company has a differently,y of looking at it. I guess in the sense of gab, obviously these guys want to e it isr a social ingroup. These guys want to socialize. They want to hear from each other about what it is that theyre what the next steps are for their movement, the next steps for what should t theyhi doing . What things did they do bad in the past where they can work on those things . I mean, theres a lot of that talk used to happen on storm front and it would be like regional but now theyve said ne storm front is o a lot of antifodd and Law Enforcement are onn und there. We need to be upd what t on it. The point of having formers involved, we understand what rei these guys aret going to do. Myself, thats what i used to do. I used to recruit online on storm front and these different types ofof platforms andnd soci media when it came out, facebook, all these different oe things. As i think its really important that we keep up to date on these things as formers working in intervention space and especially trying to create som. Sort of standardization platform that, how we work online and the ethics. Thos ive written a bunch in the ethics of trying to engage people online. I think we need to keep up on it. Nvol itsve hard. D these guys are forever trying to stay ahead of the game. I think having formers involvedu definitely, you know, its a positive, positive forward thinking motion for us to be working alongside of all the wr different agenciese doing this work. The future very quickly, were going to go to the centralized web and we need to a understand what thats going to look like five years down the road, mainstream ten years. O telegram will be the one that will continue because its reve designed. We should belaound very wary of is forcing that conversation its around facebooks revelations of privacy. Because whats happening is the migration is true, its on telegram. But because people are migrating and people are following of e sf shop and spend money, they are adapting to things like selfdemolishing story boards that only your friends can watch and they expire after 24 hours. Theyre basically creating telegram with a cryptocurrency but they dont want tonating, t about it but they are aware that thats what they will create. Ido when we were disseminating to people here conduct the the research had to watch a when beheading video because they stumbled across it. Well be talk about that two, three years down thee road. Were in there. B takedown is never going to work in and of itself. Counternarrative work has to follow and be informed by redirect method made video that took two years to launch. Came in, found it was counterproductive. Same thing were seeingng inc n. Cog niftive regulation is am plf fooigs the message for those more prone to progress to violent extremism. Theyre migrating where they ve have lower numbers of tha follo but the grievance, they dont allow us to speak, is harming the narrative, says if you cant speak, act violently in the street. Id like to expand upon that. That was one of the thingseory used as recruiters is say, and u tested this theory myself. On facebook i was banned from facebook justacco because of mye alone. D so we hadad set up accounts and posted just like vacation pictures, nothing with anything pro white or anything like thate and then hacked somebody anone mousily and we were doing counterintelligence work like this all the time on all Different Levels. I could go on for five hours about some of that. At but this is just one little example. On facebook wed set up picturei me and my girl at the beach or family. And, the thenhe send an anonymn message from a different email address and say,y, the head of y naziea party is on here. Why are you guys allowing this . This was years ago beforere the big deal about facebook and th, twitter. Like banned unt was instantly. Now, in another sense of that, l like on twitter, you hadac w would point out like extreme black movements. For example like new black panther party. Theyd have certain people saying things like kill every ne white man, kill every white woman, kill every white child. Wed show that and that wouldnt be bleett deleted. But you posted a white pride worldwide symbol, boom, that account was deleted. So the reason im mentioning these things is a lot of people think and theyve got goodtos intentions. I get it. Et all t they want to send sort of these things and to stop, get all the White Nationalists off of facebook, twitter. But as recruiters in the are movement it did not discourage us. All they did was say look, youre being treated unfairly. Other groups are allowed to promote violence against you guys in the movement. So it was like self it further radicalized them because it gave them that proof. Veryone we could say, look, heres the proof. You cant say this, but aking everybody else can. And im not saying this to defend them. Is im not making an excuse. Im just simply explaining, this is how theyre going to get further radicalized. And if theyre pushed off to somewhere else, there was ways around that. Vk was another one, like russian facebook. Thats where everybody from theu nsm was on there that was off of facebook and everything else. Wed just find you just find different ways of doing that. Fom and it becomes more difficult for our role adds formers and people that are trying to of li counter violentke extremism to prevent. To reach them when theyre not there. Sts sort of like the forbidden fruit. When i was a t he rkid, i remem years old, around 15 years oldl in the rap acts, 2 live crew had come out. They were the ones that started the whole parents against music, pmrc, sen soerg things like hing that. Never in my life did i listen ti rap music. At 15 im watching 2020, nightline, these sort of things. There were no rap stations in rural minnesota where i grew upm you didnt know what it was. Im watching nightline and id id luthero . Campbell comes on and says, youre music was banned in florida. What did i liv edo . I drove to the nearest record store and gothe forbi that 2 li tape. Its like the forbidden fruit. Not to give a bib lickal reference but like adam and eveh in thees garden, forbidden frui. If people say white nationalismc and thinks things are something you shouldnt look and be able to check into it, its going to have that effect where people are going to look intoand th it. You asked me how to get them out and what brings them there, ink believe it or not and this was v something i learned from talking to jesse sinced ive been out, said i think a lot of the people in the movement might be kind of closedminded about certain things. He goes thooh, no, no, theyrea closedminded. Theyre very openmind the. I thought, hmm, i had to think about it for a minute. If i hadnt been more openminded i would have never t gotten into it in first place. So that is one of the key y components to finding the people in there is that some of them, yeah, theyre just closedminded bigots and thats what brought them in there. Those people are maybe in some cases impossible to reach. But the people that came that were openminded and looking at alternative forms of history and politics and theyre tired of the republicans and democrats, those people i think we can reach. Thank you. Ons pr so before we get to audience q k and i hope you all have some questions prepared, i want to t make sure we can zoom t out a little bit and talk about u. S. Policy and bring inin mitch. Canh the u. S. Has a joint terrorism c task force that has taechlz in t 1044 cities across the country. Can they and should they , ih theyas should. There are a couple different factors that have interfered with that. Rnal itly a just hasnt been a polic priority for the u. S. To look internally at the white supremacist threat. I think it obviously is changing in the wake of el paso, pittsburgh, poway and others. S. Then it gets to, unlike al qaeda, the Islamic State, which can be declared foreign could terroristus organizations, givio these fbi particular investigate tools in which they could use to get leverage over individuals, threaten individuals, use intelligence tools, to penetrate organizations, for the most part these groups have not been categorized the same way. Some of these White Supremacist Groups are in fact transnational. One could argue that theyre partnered with a group in sweden, russia. Y comm you could call them an ftl. T in fact i think house homeland o Security Committee has come ou declaring some of these transnationalalterror gro ftos thereby enabling them to have those same tools to penetrate and investigate those organizations. When you getrganizat the strict domestic u. S. Organizations thae dont have an international n presence, then you get to one e level moree complicated because they wont fit into that fto box. And then the question is can the u. S. Government declare it as a domestic terrorist organization. To date there has been resistance to do that because the threat wasnt seen as high e enough but theres another counterveining setavor because it interfere with free speech . If i say i am in favor of National Socialist items and a y pure aryan state and i dont violently act out onther that, r thats sort of in the free invs speech category, and therefore difficult for joint tarelism task forces and fbi to investigate. Theres y been a lot of discussn on how do you get to those type of groups . How do you create the tools forr Law Enforcement . Its an ongoing discussion that hasnt been resolved yet. But people in the obama doj havn talked about some potential guide rails you could use to allow greater investigation of e those organizations. Okay. And in terms of i guess the fto designation, do you feel like that could be a workaround at least for now to at least get people in on Material Support . I mean, are there any negatives to at least starting with that . I dont think so. If its an organization that has a foreign presence, or is alliew with a foreign entity, it seems like it was a very effective tool for u. S. Laurnlt domestically to combat homegrown violent extremists who aspired to be part of Islamic State or al qaeda, i think that should be a tool in the tool kit for u. S. 9 Law Enforcement. That seems to be the easiest first step. I believe some people have. Called for like a 9 11style commission for combating domestic terrorism. Do you thoughts on that or reshaping what the nctc looks like . Maybe. A 9 11 commission is a is it called for and also just is it e more is it more time for study than is necessary since we sort of know the nature of the problem . There are some potential nearterm workarounds, yes. People have talked about adding into domestic terrorism analytic piece to the National Like a l counterterrorism center. That seems like something viable and an addon, a component that you snap intoyou need place lik piece. That seems viable. Im not sure you really need to gog out through theth whole pr8 that would be involved, figuring out whos on the commission, doing the studying with figuring out what the results are, well ludes 18 months just through hat that wholele process. Thats really helpful. Thank you. Ople one last thing i want to cover isrom th lookinge at ukraine ane that means. There have been a lot of people, just one example from a rise. Above movement if youre familiar with them, known as ram, among others have been can . Charged in the u. S. Including in political rallies in charlottesville. Theyve traveled to ukraine to meetransna with the a sofb move. Whats the draw . I think we touchednot paattentif whats the lesson we need to an learn . Is this something were not paying enough attention to in the United States . Hink it so if anyone wants to jump in on that. Yeah. I think its interesting because i think we talked a little bit n aboutds the transnationalizatio of the message. And i think that were going toi see more of it. But i also think its an y of t indication that wehe should sta to worry about the onside sustainability of the world and order we established in post so world war ii. I think we need tore start frag consider the fact that economically, politically, socially, culturally, we are fragmenting in ways we are not recognize be and that are much more grave and serious than we imagined. Think its one of the reasonso e thatmess when we conceptlized t cope of our mission with regard to the messaging of the magazine we had to widen it to include polarization because one can see the social consequences of the , social fabric tearing apart. Apo if polarization enmanses, he can see that happening topdown and bottom up. What we know was that if a very low base rate of radicals are going to become violent extremists, then the only thinga you needt to do is increase th underlying pool of radicals. Ou t this is true across the globe. Once you git a message coherent, you get more support for now the people that are promoting, l theyre completely getting lambasted online by the far right. The newwherea phrase is siege bw calls for leaderless action. I ag when theoi tree of life synagog shooter went in and said screw your optics, im going in, he was talking to the altrights ability to portray themselves as peaceful mass movement. Of the launched in gab they ridiculed him as counterproductive, part of the problem. Now when you speak like that, like daily showa considers themselves radicalization preventers. This is a pod cost that plays off of the words used for holocaust. When theyy say were cha deradicalizers because we dontu support radicalizers. Listen to us. Now the entire chat group goes at them and calls them esto hypocrites and is migrating away because siege build is coming after them. Its been coming expanding and becoming more coherent. Thats a biproduct of that. I think its acceleration. This type of thing involved with this eastern europe, this has always been at least from my perspective when i was working r on thingss . Online, guys were at always talking about is ou how get more european chapters . Ociet how do we go back there . Thats our utopian society that they want toge get back to. Thats the goal. Ll abo so how do we get there . It guess in the group i was in, it was all about take that hey a little micro andve making it a macro thing. So the internet was the first t thing. The now of course they have these different groups that are just e accelerating everythingy across all different aspects of the internet which i think is the u key word here is thats what they want. Anything is an accelerant. They want to use islam. They c they want to use sharia law. They want to use anything that they can find to use. And then actually have guys going over to europe. This is sort of a new phenomenon today to goo fight. But guys at least in our group, they were starting chaptersegin throughout europe, australia, hh uk. That was sort of the beginnings of awe thed sh internetar made available so we can within these movements could share these movementss utved towns ica. The much bigger than just in cities and towns across america. A okay. I could sayre goi about ukrat too, a big part of the reason people are going over there is to get that training, combat tis experience. Theyre not just fighting for azov on the ukrainian guys. Half the guys are on the russian separatist sides. Russian separatists on both sides. Theyre getting training to be h able to fight and train and things likego that. Ar because the thought of the people in the movement is, this is going to break into a civil e war, a race war or Something Like that. And you want that training. Thats why we were s sendingay people into the military all the time, for years and years and years. So id say in there was a confidential fbi report that had come out about ten years ago, and they were talking about the numbers that they knew in the different organizations, how many were in the different groups. They wereut fairly accurate on e nsm in that study. Since then about 50 id say about by the time i left about 50 of the membership had military experience in the past. Which before that were talking like 10 , 15 . By the time i left it was aboutu 50 . Thank you. D, so now to you. E your so you could just raise your hand, please identify yourself and your affiliation for your question. Thank you. It will come on in the back. Cool. I am adam but dow wee. I am a Public Affairs question. I have a question nor jeff but a whoever can answer it. Youll hear liberals, progressives use terms like whiteness, White Supremacy as explanation for membership and eventually moving to violence within the movement. E is n and, you know, but it seems, given what you said today, that they theres some theres not a a lot of utility in those terms. Just o asr co there are interna disputes that seem beyond these abstract or broad labels or concepts. So im wondering what you think of those two terms as their explanatory power. And then also internally, how s White Supremacists or you know again, it seems like theres a lot more complication, complexity what they how they used those terms being used as explanations to their own advantage,e, right . There well, i guess it depends on the individual in the group. Because it is theres a really wide array of different i ways of people looking at it. For example, in the national sp socialist movement and i use that as a Reference Point because thats where i spent most of my lastre not w 27 years, we we k called ourselves a white civil rights organization. Most of the guys said they weree not whiteop supremacists. We gave a pep speech before a rally and told people no racial epithets, no cussing, anybody thats doing that on the microphone, somebody should, not always, but somebody would ecaue normally that would be the w en of that persons speech if they were doingg that. Because we knew that those buzz words were not going to go over well with the public. You know, i dont think in as long as i can remember, i ever called myself a excite supremacist, over this is a word that is used often by the media. There is people in the movements it really depends on the group and the affiliation. It all depends on how thats looked upon as far as the terminology. And i guess the other part ofe your question was, how does the outside how does the outsides world view that . I guess i didnt yeah. Like they seem to again just ht thehe the complexity. But much in the way you said you guys could how the media covers your movement to your advantage, im wondering if those reducktive or those thermz that dont have much explanatory whit power, if you use them . I think all of us are focused on, you know, like White Supremacists or were only mover by whites not by any other tenes motive. And whether or not you used those ever cynically to your in advantage . , well theti necessary hat you thing, yes, because it was all about identity. It was the idea that youre vold fighting for i your tribe. You know, it was something that you would if you were ha involved in the movement, you o werent like, im in this because i hate other people ande i want to hold them down. Yous, look i atsay we a at it fa of my speeches i would say we are at the men at the alamo, on the ramparts, the last line of the white race. Ple, t these are the things that i would say up there to inspire tp peopleeo to get them motivated that. And so i think a lot of them see it as like what brad was sayingn aboutut accelerationism, is thet see it as like an attack on whiteness, as an attack on their solidarity, an attack on their people. Rather than the countermeasure of, like, lets hold down i w hear very few groups in the th White Nationalist movement somt saying hey, wehi want to hold a these people down, bring back slavery. Thats Something Like a bunch on drunken guys at a backyard is gi barbecue might say Something Like that. But thats not thats not the real concern. I mean, theres going to be om l bigots andar hateful people in every thing. They see it from a more larger o picture where its like their race and people and tribe is under attack. Thats why its more difficult r to break. Cause it wasth just systematic racismw that would be, easier to break. But because they see it as more of a world view, thats what o makes it more complex. I want to add one thing. Ne. I worked with Jason Kessler whoi started unite the rightni teone. I was trying to get him out. We had some breakthrough, definite repoir. But when npr put him on the spos in an interview and put him up as a white supremacist, he tried to defend himself with the die logical race argument that were not White Supremacists. We look at the data. It does not mean were superior. It just means that in certain aspects, intelligence in particular, on the aggregate, we outperforms. It provides a justification to have teaching classes. If you go on a platform thats b preserved and you listen to no jarrod taylor, sounds rational, sounds reasonable. Vid the problemeo is theres no counter against it. Jordan peterson videos do not espouse intelligence in race but they have millions of views and the people who are associated at with thation algorithm do espou race and intelligence. O cate europe armed with like white supremacist is the label thats being used to categorize. All thehe White Supremacists ar in danger of becoming neonazis. Its very kin to the similar mistake in narrative and approach to dealing with the reat by jihadism and it moenl made it metastasize and worsen. R. Counterterrorism i work at the department of t counterterrorism bureau. A lot of what you discussed has razenated with me. I aplud the effort. Youve really offered a lot of essential insight that helps us. Phenomenon, ese whatever the mlu, as political social movements. I think thatsin par the right r think about onthem. Phenom there are two things in particular there are a dilemma for allwa of us in trying to i confront these types of nom nan youve discussed. H i want to articulate them a little bit more concretely. One is these ideas of hate and acting in defense of perceived e existential threats, those are not new. They will always exist. I whats different is context that makes those ideas relevant. And so if when youre combating thesepressi networks, combating in context, and the context is s prettyty depressing right now con regardless of where youre looking on the planet. What is your strategy in terms of dealing with the context, particularly, youre talking, trying to almost hititdi progressively many different areas of the world, many l different types of militant groups, and the context. Local level is i think very ano important in reallyne having a chance at reducing the prominence of any one group. And relatedly, and thats very difficult i think in a context where polarization is up, where a lot of these groups essential perspective has become main streamed, as youve articulated. And it leads to the situation where the society is the increasingly use everything in black and white terms as itt were. Thego relautulatted issue that touched on, the phenomenon that governments and other communities have in confronting these groupsitiona in that the f shining additional light on them actually increasing their prominence, right . So slpc made an argument in one of their recent publications n i that with some of these altright or farright groups, once you shine more light on their activities, they actually could youer and reduce in terms of relevance and vibe ransz and what not. Organi but what youve posited is that well organized groups that are seeking to gain greater recognition by virtue of their behavior, violent or nonviolent, they are looking for that objec Mainstream Media coverage as a critical measure of success andf Building Block to further their objectives. So asu governments, as members f Civil Society, as the press, ho do you whats the right i w medium in coverage so that youre not doing the work for them . So ill answer briefly. I think mitch might have something pertnent say based m. Upon some meetings we had this morning. Speak up. Im sorry. T i think you used a very term. Ntf were constantly looking at the Academic Work that goes on in is the field bette of radicalizati fields. The interns on the ground studying this know ten times better. And a loot of the stuff thats e published is so far into the thing, into our experience. But the thing thats always ot a missing ispe context. Ual but and if i want to shape behavior, i cant shape the individual if i dont shape the environment rd it conducive to being able to affect the behavior imt trying to t impact. This is just something thatse never discussed. So 20 20 for us is Crisis Management we are not tryingryi create a paradigm shift in getting people to talk to each other. We are trying to predict what might happen. A right . Thettenwhite overwhelming pointc allocated attention on white oul supremacy is an issue. But the way that its been covered, particularly by groupst splc, unfortunately i have ampf to sayyi that, right, the way tt its been covered is only amplifying the grievance. They havesupr induced a Democra Party thatat has made White Supremacy the key narrative of the election. And so now what we have is proud boys strategically crafting a manipulation of that in conjunction with other organizations that pretend to be nonviolent in the same way that jeffs organizations rules were dont hit back unless hit, drawing like magnets, ant fi, saying why is chris cuomo supporting antifa on cnn . Because hes never been on the ground at a if yorally. We have to understand the context and responsibilities of the sumedia, is if youre goino report on something, at least n get to know the subject. Donttth stand in the green zon baghdad and call yourself a work correspondentent. Thats the easiest way i can describe that. Thank you. And down in front. Aarononde golds, donor advis. Im curious about the connectioe between or the demarcation between rightwing media, n mainstream, and the extremism youre talking about. A lot of whats on fox news every night or talk raidey seems pretty hateful. Ent . Are these clearly different e fd things . Or are they feetiding each othe . To what extent . If they are feeding each other,x thetr polarized rightwing medi is a a major source for prepari the ground for the kind of extremism youre dealing with, s how do you deal withed that . I want to say one sentence. W a lot of whats on msnbc seems incredibly hateful to those that are conservative too. When they start to point that out and think of those terms of yes, but, not just also. Erstan i think thats one of the gh. Things about the misunderstanding of whats going on especially in the far right i right now, is like, want why a only talking about the i dont want to say anyones names here but the info wars and things like that . Media s i dont think theyre worth talking about. And the media spends a lot of time, Mainstream Media spends a, lot of time talking about t breitbart. I would be saying more negative attention, my name is in the news. This is awesome. Time recruit a whole se who bunch of people today. I think were wasting time rist. Talking about these, who would just be a backyard conspiracy theorist, a crazy uncle, if we just dont give him a platform. H its ais way s for them to in way were just like, yes, some i stuff is very weird and kind of like it draws people in and we want to talk about it. But i think just as much on the farright as on the farleft and even some of the real sort of centrist liberal stuff im seeing in canada, it becomes iv problematic because the focus is all goinging pl on oneatfo areaa i think we want to try to be careful with who were giving a broad platform to. Thank you. Ention ims Margo Williams from the intercept. And my question iss about the interventions that you guys do and that youve experienced. T and what is your relationship with Law Enforcement in regards to seeking out people to intervene with . Fbi director wray has given different numbers, sometimes asi a thousand open investigations intosu nestre t domesticto terrorism. Do you bumpmp across the fbi targeting people and how do you . Assure the folks yourere tryin to intervene with that youre nu maintaining theirna privacy andh their own security while you deal withha them . Stig at unfortunately there is no mechanism for Law Enforcement to have an alternative to investigation and interdiction right now and thats largely because of people that report wh arrests that utilize informants as if every case is one of entrapment. When you report like that and base it off a statement of facts that never go to trial,l, you inves dont recognize that thats ohm enough evidence to charge a ina person. It has nothing to doceceof with underlying investigation. Whapz is you get sensationalist reporters that hate the government, want to blame the government for using it as a mechanism but then oppose cbe where it could provide a practical alternative to sending in that informant. Go so theyvernme hinder the very sn to the problem. Fe contact with government. But if t they saw somebody they couldnt open up an where investigation on, they open to us, it would be better here but pef protesters here everywhere. We need government. Unfortunately there is none. No. Do you take government money . No. Seeking to have grants from government agenciesa ifre s they all terpd their ability and had an ability to provide accessct where there would be legal mek nichlgz to err us to conduct intervetions, h probably not. But where theres a serious risk for violence and theres not enoughgh evidence to continue surveillance, i bet you if jeff talked to that individual, the outcome could have been different. We need that mechanism. I i think i can had one thing to this, the intervention space of looking at government vochlts in that. Sto the early the early uk prevent stuff tells us some a different stories, that were not successful inow in this spe butferr ufr houfrl however we n at i know in canada theyve started a referral process thato goes through people who are in a certain space of its this prevention continuum, when bec should Law Enforcement get involved . In the top and w10 . Who knows. At least start to talk about where things become a public. Safety risk and where things are meant for us to be going and h talking to these people, Like Community organizations, whether people like life after hate has been doing this for awhile. Like, its having the mechanisms of the precriminal space. Not every guy who has some radical thoughts or might be part of some White Supremacist Group is going to go do an ngs attack. If we can intervene and have these conversations and begin the dialogue and process well before those things, and Law Enforcement might be doingng soe work on something, and say, oh, this guy is probably, its a very low risk scenario, lets at give ithe to ngos, these peopleo work on, because it makes more sense. Also theres Community Groups that work in the religious communities, things like that that come into play. Thats dependent on different gp stand points, viewpoints, red. Whateverer the extremist narrate theyre trying to present. T i think we need to be cog nif e got should be there but a. Lot of the percentage lies on u as Community Members and doing more like this, learning what we can do to move forward with this. Yeah. Jess. Okay. This is a question for jeff. So jeff, just within the raditin movement, the idea of the white civil rights movement, traditionally when i think of civil rights movements from the past, i think of a certain objective that they had, like desegregation, for example. Within the nsm, what was the objective in terms of what did they want ultimately . The way we viewed it as that the white race was under attackg and that looking at it from the outside looking in, you could en say of course black people, of course all these other minority groups need their civil rights movements and accept when we go backck to like the 1960s when Voting Rights for even before that for women, for blacks and n all tthat, were not the same. , you know, now its almost like in the movement we flipped that. We said, okay, now they have hiring ob,quotas, you know, thae give inn some cases a less ve qualified person art joburn. Whe more qualified white person doesnt get the job, these werer all the thingsed we were tryingo overturn. Hate crimes charges, that was something when i was in the movement i i hammered on that. G, if you get into a crime and you hit somebody or you do somethine illegal or wrong, youre going to do the time for it. Wie but now you have where a white guy with maybe no criminal of record, and ive met with e him, peoples families and things like that that have been in this case, i can think of one im not going to name him, i cann thinka of a young man, 19, 20 years old, didnt have a speeding ticket, nothing. He gets into a fight, and it was caught on tape and he took it too far. Dn hes doing seven, eight years in prince for a fight. Now, he didnt kill the other te guy. He didnt, you know because hate crimes chargessigned were on to that. So those are the things like these were all designed to help other people, to help the other races and try to give everybody equal footing. Hite but in the movement we would cs turn that arounde and say, look these are things that are used to owe proes white people. So they need the movement to pon save them. That was our narrative. Gs so if we take away those talking points, take away the things that the movement is using, and make is a flat, fair type of f thing, you take those things away. Interesting. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Thank you. Hi, im from american university. Thank you very much, first of all. My question is about generational differences withine the movements orre within any o these movements. We talk a a lot, i hear a lot about fragmentation across the movements. But i wonder if you have experience with generational conflicts . Im thinking whencurr youreente on interventions how do you ensure that youre staying current and are able to continue to reach these young guys in the movement who often, you know, wont trustnt of any adults . Period,e are speaking of a pare kids at that age. He right were looking to get the we right ammunition wor and right funding to make sure that some of the interventionists we have on staff are young. And we work with a lot of volunteers online. We have facebook, twitter, groups of people 18 to 22 it. They save me hours every day. Scroll down and i know everything that happened incrui discord that afternoon. And so we have to recruit the young and mobilize them to do this work. Generation if you dont attack and think of countering i violentke extremism, youll hava met aft sis thats significant to the point where people like me, the idea of the caliphate ie the englishh language. So that when the caliphate was pronounced, much more many more people traveled there. And if you look at the data on it, those people that traveled there were heavily influenced by the organizations that i established. , th in very many ways d exactly what happens. One group insults boomers. Sis, atomwaffen is they say its for. Id yotsz. They know how to make videos that look just like isis. Theres that met aftization that i think if we think about it generationally its something mu that bringsm up questions. I was recently at a youth symposium on cve and some of the greatest ideas came from these y 15yearold kids. Theyre like, what do you knoo about facebook . F im like, how many i wanted to know how many of them are actually using it . Me. Many of them dont use that at all. So were behind. E wa we have toy understand that wes behind in the game. Ts. So the way that they were sort of framing their discussions was, we need to teach the adults. We need to teach them how to use instagram, twitter. We need to stay and theirwha abtiveties. What are they engaging in . Esearh what kind of conversations . To e what things are they willing tot share . I think thats lkin fromg a research perspective, thats what we need to be looking at in youth, not just talking about violent extremism in general. We need to be looking at, what i are their routines online . What kind of content makes them go . It memes . Is it what is it . So i think yeah, we can learn ab lot from themas and i think, yo know, thatt sortin ofte shapes w of the things we should be doing in this space when were thinking about doing interventions, especially with youth or vulnerable populations. Excellent. Well, thank you all for coming, and please take a moment to thank our panelists for joiningc us today. Le for [ applause ]accura thank you. Thanks so much. Cyvi. Watch live testimony from jennifer williams, aide to Vice President mike pence. And director for European Affairs at the National Security council, alexander vindman. And kurt volker the special envoy to ukraine and National Security white house aide tim morrison. On wednesday, testimony continues with u. S. Ambassador to the European Union gordon sondland. And then deputy is achbt secretary of defense for russian and Eurasian Affairs lora cooper and david hale. And on thursday at 9 00 a. M. Eastern, the committee will hear testimony from fiona hill, former National Security director for europe and russia. Watch the first two public hearings on our website, cspan. Org impeachment. There youll find transcripts of witness testimony and procedures. Plus a points of interest features that identifies key moments during the hearing indicated by a star in the timeline. Watch live coverage of the hearings on cspan3, cspan. Org. Or listen live with the free radio app. Tonight on the communicates, mark randolf, cofounder of netflix and author of the book that will never work shares