Analyses
Although widely perceived to be weaker than and largely reactive to the Buddhist nationalist movements they oppose, interfaith peace movements “constitute important counter-voices” to these movements, finding creative ways to challenge their narratives and activities even within existing constraints.
Although arrests and a proposed Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation worked in dismantling the Atomwaffen Division (AWD), the immediate rebranding of the group under a new name undermines the success of the law enforcement response.
No single factor explains why people withdraw from high-risk activism or political violence; disengagement typically happens because of growing disagreements over time as opposed to singular triggering events.
Although participation in violent extremism is often thought of as ideologically driven, it is better understood as driven by a need for identity and belonging.
Peer-reviewed research on radicalization and violent extremism identifies a “basic structure of the process of radicalization” where an individual has “real or perceived political grievance(s),” perceives participation in violent extremism as somehow appealing or beneficial, and has a “personal vulnerability” expressed as certain personality traits or a mental health concern.
Racism has a significant impact on favela residents’ daily lives, visibly through police killings but also invisibly through everyday interactions of discrimination and distrust.
Rural villagers understood girls’ access to education and women’s economic opportunities outside the home as indicators of everyday peace.
The turn from the GWOT to CVE, with its focus on prevention, broadened the monitoring mandate of security agencies, enabling them to apply tactics based on the assumption that anyone (but mostly the most traditionally marginalized) can be a potential “terrorist” or “extremist,” thereby justifying surveillance, intelligence gathering, and other civil rights violations of so-called suspects.
Violence prevention policy-making must start from an understanding of the lived experience of communities most affected by the GWOT in order to not be complicit in harmful and structurally racist policies.
The backlash of retaliatory transnational terrorist attacks experienced by coalition countries demonstrates the Global War on Terror did not meet its key objective of keeping citizens safe from terrorism.