This Woman Turned Away From Violent Right-Wing Extremism

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- “Sarah” was bad news. In high school she fell in with a group of skinheads. When the group split between anti-racists and neo-Nazis, she sided with the neo-Nazis. She tattooed herself with swastikas and got in fights. Whenever she sensed herself faltering, she said, “I literally made a point to go out and recruit more people and, you know, to be more hardcore and start more fights.” The time her boyfriend robbed a store and severely beat the owner, she was the lookout and getaway car driver. The police eventually caught up with her for that crime, and she went to prison.

There’s a happy ending. In the prison, non-White inmates showed her kindness despite her swastika tattoos, even giving her cigarettes. She reciprocated, teaching some of them to read. “You know, it, it … very simply, it was like breaking a bad habit. You know, I trained myself to think that way, so I had to kind of untrain it,” Sarah said. “And to do that when I noticed myself having thoughts like that, I, I would literally stop and talk to myself and say, ‘Why did you think that? What, you know, what about that person made you think this?' And really try to engage, you know, that way. It's kind of ironic that I used to be, you know, this bully and used to beat people up.”

At a time when fringe groups such as QAnon, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers are sucking in more and more Americans, it’s reassuring to know that the door to extremism isn’t one-way. Some people who are drawn in, like Sarah, find their way back to mainstream society. It’s just as important to understand deradicalization as it is to understand how people become radicalized in the first place. 

Sarah’s story appeared in a 2017 issue of Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, in an article by John Horgan of Georgia State University, Mary Beth Altier of New York University, Neil Shortland of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Max Taylor of University College London. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate and coordinated through the U.K. Home Office. Sarah’s name was changed, and identifying details were suppressed to give her anonymity. The authors concede that her story “is of course partial, idiosyncratic and limited,” but they argue that it’s nonetheless revealing.

Sarah’s doubts began long before she managed to extricate herself. She was shocked by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the famous photo of a 1-year-old’s bloodied body being carried from the wreckage by a firefighter. “I think it, it finally started to seep into my conscious mind, you know, like, ‘What are you doing? Do you want to be the bomber? Do you want to be, you know, that person that, that does this? Is it worth it? Is, you know, this the ultimate price I'm going to end up paying for what I'm doing?'” she told the researchers. “And there were those times that I would have, you know, the little voice in my head saying, ‘You're a [expletive]. You know, there's something better.' But I would always do more drugs, drink more, become more involved to kind of, you know, push those thoughts away.”

Conviction and imprisonment are what finally changed her for the better. Her plea bargain required her to accept responsibility for her actions, which she said she had never done before. Incarceration kept her away from the bad boyfriends and others who exerted a hold over her. “You know, I went to prison this racist, horrible, violent person, and my whole life changed. It was like being reborn, but not in like the religious sense. When I came out of prison, you know, like I experienced things differently. The colors looked brighter,” she recalled.

“Prison is often viewed as a space for radicalization, but our case here illustrates that when it provides physical separation from the group it can also play an important role in disengagement and de-radicalization,” the authors write. They also suggest that Sarah’s experience shows that others trapped in extremism could benefit from acceptance and commitment therapy, a form of psychotherapy aimed at behavioral change and psychological flexibility. 

Of course, Sarah’s rehabilitation cost a lot of time and money and occurred only after she had done real damage. That’s why it’s better to prevent radicalization from occurring in the first place, through programs such as “off-ramping,” and the Redirect Method, a project of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and others that uses targeted ads and YouTube videos to “confront online radicalization.” Still, as we continue to reel from the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, it’s good to know that a lost soul doesn’t have to remain lost forever.

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