In the last 0.03% of humanity's existence, there are some interesting social behaviors that have begun that didn't necessarily happen before. Blame, guilt, shame, antisocial behavior, competition, status, enforcement, isolation, alienation, retaliation, revenge, causes, and movements. A lot of people bring up war. But you might be thinking, man, well, okay, this is a part of man's nature. This is a part of how man was supposed to be, right? You know, man can be violent. Man can get angry. Man can blame. Sure, these things could have happened, but we didn't hold on to them. You know, and cultural totalitarianism did not happen. In fact, a lot of you guys are fans of probably like Richard Dawkins and all this sort of stuff. There's a whole bunch of information in the Q&A. We can talk about books that explain all this sort of stuff. But there was a certain, as they say, thought virus, or meme that kind of took hold out of the fertile crescent. And actually, in the Americas, you can see more evidence of it. But human beings did not act in certain ways that were, that how we're seeing them now. These behaviors did not become a definition for us. They were not the norm. They were not the absolutes. And think about this. Like, I know more people that could have attributes, actually, I'll back up, of like, let's say, antisocial behavior. That's a pretty intense thing. I know more people that have that than who are healthy with their bodies or living in the expression of their bodies. That's crazy. That's crazy. I know more people, and maybe this is just because of me, because I kind of work in this field a little bit, but I know more people with drug problems. I know more people with bipolar than who are healthy. That's pretty crazy. You know, I'm a member of plenty of gyms. You know, I work out and train all this, like, different jujitsu, martial arts. I know a lot of people that are pretty, you know, quote-unquote healthy by society standards, but I know people that are living, like, outside of that natural state.  And sure, there could be stuff like, hey, we got angry. We may have blamed, but we didn't hold on to it to the same level. But these are all things that we've always seen. Now, think about that. Minimum 250,000, 250,000 years. Yeah, I got that right, I think. And most of the existence was an expression of this. Sure, there were plenty of problems. Nature only needed us to live to 15 or 20, you know?  But that's what we saw, and that's our true nature that we forget. So fulfillment, this is kind of an interesting thing. And you know, I started off talking about fulfillment. Man, fulfillment comes off of two things. It comes off of expression and exchange, okay? These are two things that we lose sight of. And when we backtrack to some of the things that we were born to be, we were born to be healthy, do we see it as expression? You know, do we see it as an exchange with the world around us and our bodies? When it comes to being social, do we see it as expression? Us. Do we see it as us communicating us and exchanging with who they really are, right? Do we see that? You know, everything we were born to be is fulfilled by this. So our bodies, our minds, our physiology, everything. Our expressions of exercise, our expressions of even how our bodies work need an expression and an exchange to have meaning. That's actually, it's kind of simple, but that's all you need to do, okay?  It says a ton of different things. Happiness and fulfillment. That's why we're here. And we hear all this life hacker stuff and we hear all this dating and relationship stuff, the stuff that I work in. Man, let me just say, anybody standing on this stage who gave a presentation is one of the best in the world. I mean, hands down. But in our culture, we hear solutions to all these things. Happiness and fulfillment. It's achieved. It's a sense of status. It's an image. It's a process. It's something that we do. And it's something that is not within you. It's something outside of you. And that's what our culture says. Our culture says, being healthy, it's a physique. It's an amount. It's the how fast I run a mile. It's a quantifiable measurement. How much weight I can lift. How much I weigh. The percentage of fat on my body. The percentage of muscle on my body. It's a status. It's an image. It's something outside of you and not something within you. Being social. Social hierarchy. Dominance. Gossip. Social exercise. It's performance. How other people see you. That's what being social is. It's a series of events that are going to make you happy. It's something that, because you don't have it in you, it's something outside of you. Being sexual. An orgasm. It's a story to share. It's being an entertainer. It's shame. It's being fake. It's being pickup. It's being porn.  It's something outside of you. It's something that you have to get.  Your image. In order to have that, you've got to fake it until you make it. You've got to have a facade. You've got to be somebody else. You've got to be like that other guy that's like, you know, you don't have a point of reference. You know, we've got to have this image to follow because guess what? You weren't born with it. You've got to work for it. It's outside of you. Okay. And here's the thing. Humanity. Men and women. Okay. What we've done with our culture is we have taken the force of nature that is already within us. That everything is working towards us. Or everything is working for us. It's almost flawlessly within moment by moment millions of things happening with your body. And that even goes into your decision making. We all have free choice. We absolutely have free choice. We get to decide. But the motivation to choose, the draw of what we choose between, the things that we want, how we connect. Man, that's already happening within you. And what we've done is we've taken it and in our culture we've gotten so far from how we've been born to be because we've been able to sustain so long. That we've become confused to the point where we can't find a solution. And how many guys have been there with that? With women? With your body? With when you try something and fail? Man, I'm confused.  I don't know what to do. Jesus. I've done everything.  Man, it must be me. So-and-so looks good to do. It worked for somebody else. And it became this massive battle. The war within us becomes the war around us. So the myth of the alpha male. It's kind of a long building up to this. But check this out. The hero. The king. The warrior. The superior man. The person that you can be. All these things.  Guess what?  All of our evolution never had this. I don't know if you guys remember this, but way back when in those old school like David D'Angelo discs, they'd say, oh, well, the king had women around him. Social proof. And mystery said all this stuff about pre-selection and social proof. That did not exist and how we evolved. That did not happen. You did not need any of this. You did not need any of these titles. People fought. People probably were leaders. People probably did do something heroic. But it was an action. Just like they probably did blame. They probably did get angry, but they didn't hold on to it. They did not build it as a part of their identity. And I am of this culture, and we'll probably talk about this later, but these are huge things that I have struggled with and struggled with on a daily basis. But we never had this. How we evolved as a species and 99.97% of our evolution. That's on the low end. Basically, emotionally, mentally, sexually, socially did not have any of this. All right, so let's get into some things here. Where we see this happen all the time is in the seduction industry, and we'll go through a few things. But look, we've had hundreds of thousands of guys, maybe millions, I don't know. I've had a lot of dudes that I've worked with. But we learned a skill. We learned a method. And as we had said before, at least I believe, actually maybe we didn't. But nature does not need science. Man needs science to understand nature. This is kind of like big concept that we have with TSL and VA, the VA evolved side that I have. But man needs method. He needs balance. He needs a way of seeing how the world works. Nature doesn't need balance. Nature doesn't need a method. We may see it within there.  Nature does what it does, right? So we have all these guys going through this, but how many of them have become socially and sexually fulfilled? How many of them become socially and sexually healthy? And let's break that down, because there can't be a definition. I'm never a guy that says, hey, you're good with women when you have A, B, and C done. It's more like, are you happy? Are you fulfilled? I mean, Jesus Christ, I work in kind of a slow mode. I built a skill set to meet a lot of women, but to be happy to know what fulfillment was took me a long time. You know, it took me a long time. A lot of experiences that were not so great. You know, if we all watch Socrates' speech, I've hit every corner of that graph, and maybe even a little bit off of it. We can talk, but, but man, I mean, anyway, I'll stop there because I don't want any calls from attorneys. Okay, so we see this happen. And how many people, you know, really reach true friendships? You know, and ask yourself this. It's not that, it's not that our culture meant to be bad, but this starts to happen, right? It's not that any of these people are malicious. This starts to happen, right? How many people learn to have a relationship?  Monogamy is totally unnatural, but we've decided that because that's what we've decided, right? But who do I call? Seriously, who do I call? It's like, oh, Maria's upset with me.  Who do I talk to? Who do I talk to? You know, that's a tough thing. You know, and to be honest, I talk to people outside of it, or I talk to people in the different groups that I work with. But, you know, how do we learn about love? You know, what that really is? We've got to have that different experience. We've got to have that dialogue happening. How do I learn that the potential of humanity is more than a transaction? I mean, jeez, actually another quote from my buddy Skip. He's like, man, this is the funniest thing. I remember when he said it, but it's kind of similar to this and kind of where I got it from. But he said, man, for years and years and years, I thought that love was a transaction. All my friendships, all my connections were a transaction. So anyway, when we look at success and ambition, bettering ourselves, hey, we're going to be entrepreneurs. You know, I get caught in this big time, man. I get crazy. I get obsessive. I get, I want to control things. I want everything to be efficient.  Scarcity, lack of resources. Oh my God, dysfunction. Boom, I got to be more dominant. I got to be more alpha. Okay, I got to work harder. I got to do more. And then what happens? Our identity becomes dependent upon this myth that culture and society has given us. And our day, you know, to be happy becomes a set of actions, a ritual, something that we have to force ourselves to do. And I do these things. I'm a culture guys, you know, but we've got to realize the potential of what we are born to be rather than a lifestyle, rather than just living. I have a checklist. I have a schedule. I have all these things of how I want to improve myself. And so we got to understand this, man. We have to have balance and sorry, a little bit's cut off here, but look, our goal is to have balance of what we were born to be and integrate into this culture, okay? I've had, man, I've had these thoughts. You can talk to me a lot about them for like 20 years, man.  Huge part of my life and it totally influenced like everything I did in the seduction community. But you know, massive, massive influence of me. In that time, the one time it made sense was when I started to look at the paleo stuff, okay? Wait a minute. Our physiology was born to be this way. Let's start eating that way. Let's start trying to sleep that way. And what was so interesting about what James was talking about is that once again we exaggerated in order to have our culture like it, in order to justify doing it. Maybe the motive is to sell it, but really to justify doing it. It's got to be complex. It's got to be crazy. It's got to be, you know, because it's going against what I've been taught to believe and what I've been raised of. So I've got to have a reason for it, you know? I can't just say, hey, this is already happening. This is my nature. So look, here's the thing. In nature, sex of course needs no method. You know, nature needs no balance. Nature does not need science. Man needs science to understand nature, okay? That's what we need in order to see it. But fulfillment is simple. You know, fulfillment derives from expression and exchange, okay? And all things. How you are fulfilled, how you get meaning, how you get assasinated. You know, what did they say in Paleo? You tell your foal, what? You can't do that, you know? And not to, I'm bringing that up as an example. I'm not trying to promote one way. There's, I know plenty of people who have all sorts of different diets and achieve a very healthy and happy lifestyle with it. But man, it was the first time. It was like, let's look at how we evolved and actually do it, you know? But how do we express ourselves and how do we exchange? And everything that we do. Everything that we were born to be. All those things that I wrote down and there's probably more of them. How can I just express and exchange with that? And it may not be too sexy, all right? So the solution basically is that we mix culture with our natural urges of how we are to express ourselves, right? Now, so I teach in the social dynamic scene, but let me tell you something. One at this point, all around the world. I believe he was actually one of two, or maybe even the only speaker in 2012 who spoke at all three events held in that year in London, Texas and Australia. So please give you a warm welcome to Steve Mayeta, founder of The Sexual Life. Hey, thank you. Thanks, man. Man, what an honor to be brought on stage by Anthony Johnson. I mean, we all know he's done so much to shape and influence men, but look, I want to start this off with something a little bit different. Standing on this stage who gave a presentation is one of the best in the world. I mean, hands down. Higher level of things are more involved in it 10 times. I mean, there's like 20 hours where we are interacting and talking. I started that, but man, all the ideas here come from those guys. I mean, it's amazing. It's basically what we do. I love teaching that way. There's no hierarchy.  I'm like, man, but I don't believe in that.  I'm never going to be Skyler Tanner or Socrates. I'm never going to be Nick. I'm never going to be James and James, but I'm going to be an expression of myself. You know? We can't be other people. We just have to be who we are. Anyway, that's kind of what we teach, but we teach in this template of like, we're going to start with some basics.


Good morning everybody. My name is Alistair Reed and I'm a new executive director of the Resolve Network and a senior expert for the program on Vine Extremism at United States Institute of Peace. I'd like to welcome everyone to the fifth annual Resolve Network Global Forum and say a bit about Resolve's work and introduce today's event. The Resolve Network is an international consortium of organizations and experts committed to better research, informed practice and improved policy on Vine Extremism. We provide key insights through establishing global connections and asking critical questions to enhance and inform work in this field. Our work spans thematic and geographic themes with projects focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, the Western Balkans, racially and ethnically motivated Vine Extremism and building expertise on Vine Extremism research. For more of our work and to get involved, please visit our website and follow us on Twitter. USIP is proud to house the Resolve Secretariat, made possible through partnerships with US Department of State, Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the Global Engagement Center and the US Agency for International Development. We would like to recognize and thank them for their consistent support, partnership and commitment to Resolve and for championing the importance of research and the growing evidence base for policies and programs. USIP's dedication to addressing Vine Extremism as a core peace and security challenge dovetails seamlessly with Resolve's objectives. Through Resolve's incredible network and research projects, frontline peace builders and policy audiences alike benefit from a deeper understanding and local nuance of dynamics and complexity of Vine Extremism. I would like to offer a special thanks to Leanne Egbers-Deadman, the Director of USIP's program on Vine Extremism, who served as Interim Executive Director of Resolve. Lan had us resolve through strategic development in the past three years and ensured seamless collaboration with USIP and the professional community working on preventing and countering Vine Extremism. This fifth annual forum is very different from all the previous ones. The Center for Daylong Conference this year we've prepared a series of virtual discussions spread throughout the coming months. This is the first of those discussions focusing on the place and role of Vine Extremism in 2020 and beyond. So please be on the lookout for upcoming events in the 2020 Resolve forum series. Today's discussion is designed to be a collective reflection. 2020 ushered in rapid shifts in the global security landscape that altered the threat perceptions and global priorities. Amid threats from COVID-19 global public health crisis, climate change, and simmering conflicts, Vine Extremism remains a significant challenge for our global systems. Much research has been done on the past and current threats, but what are the emerging Vine Extremist threats percolating just below the surface today that will likely manifest themselves over the next few years ahead? Are there ways that policy makers and government officials can get ahead of a threat? Can we apply lessons from our experiences to address emerging threats and dynamics in the 2020 landscape? Today, we are three incredible experts who will give their insights and perspectives on the lessons learned and the challenges that lie ahead for countering Vine Extremism. Dr. Clark is a senior research fellow at the Seafin Center and assistant teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Clark will moderate today's discussion with Mary Beth Altier and Amonath Amarasingh. Dr. Altier is a clinical associate professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. The recent work centers on the reasons why individuals support and participate in Vine's especially terrorism in developing democracies. And it's the author of an upcoming publication as part of Resolve's Vine Extremism Disengagement and Reconciliation Project. Dr. Amonath Amarasingh is assistant professor in the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. His research interests are in radicalization, terrorism, diaspora politics, post-war reconstruction and the sociology of religion. During today's event, we encourage you to ask questions to the speakers. You can submit your questions on the USIP events page where you're watching this webcast on USIP's YouTube or on Twitter using hashtag ResolveForum. The session moderator will incorporate cylinder questions into the broader conversation with speakers. As a reminder, the event is on the record and will be available on USIP's YouTube afterwards. Thank you to all of you who have joined us today and don't forget to join us on Twitter at ResolveNet and at USIP with the hashtag ResolveForum. And with that, I would like to hand over to our moderator Colin Clark. Thanks so much, Alistair. It's a great pleasure to be back with my friends and colleagues at the Resolve Network for the 2020 Global Forum on Violent Extremism in 2020 and beyond. I'd like to start by thanking the amazing team at Resolve for all their hard work in making the event happen. They're true professionals and just a pleasure to collaborate with. So many thanks to everyone involved. 2020, where to begin? What a year this has been. We're in a place where we're still continuing to deal with the aftermath of some of the major challenges we've faced over the past several years. But we're also staring down an entirely new set of issues, even as we attempt to look beyond the horizon to identify and prepare for new forms of violent extremism and how those will manifest in the future. Resolve began five years ago, right at the same time as the peak of the Islamic State. And in late 2020, where things stand today, the physical caliphate is in ruins, although ISIS continues to rebuild its network throughout Iraq and Syria, maintain a steady operational tempo of attacks, and flush with enough cash to indefinitely wage a low level campaign of sabotage, ambush, targeted assassinations and terrorism for the foreseeable future. But even as the world might prepare to move on, it's not that simple. Thousands of fighters remain in prisons and detention camps, while tens of thousands of their family members languish in camps like Al-Hul, vulnerable to further extremism and radicalization, and with few countries eager to repatriate their citizens. We're lucky to have experts with us here today that can speak to the importance of reintegration for promoting disengagement, the limits to reintegration in the current political context, and how the failure to reintegrate can fuel radicalization and recruitment throughout the world. We'll also have the opportunity to hear about some possible ways forward, including practical recommendations that government officials and policymakers might find helpful. A second theme we'll discuss throughout the forum is the COVID-19 pandemic, and specifically the second and third order effects of the pandemic that might not always be apparent or obvious, but which can be both insidious and corrosive in the short and the long term. COVID-19 has revealed an increasing lack of trust in expert systems, as well as a pervasive and growing sense of enemy. Do the global consequences of COVID-19 provide a glimpse at what could happen with other global shifts in the future, including climate change? And how will these shifts with the potential for cascading effects the world is unprepared to handle impact violent extremism and fuel new global trends that will destabilize countries and possibly entire regions. Lastly, we'll speak about the concept of cultural loss and how this concept is being manipulated by ideologues and extremists. The concept of white genocide and the need to protect Western civilization and values while promoting a white ethno-state has fueled the global expansion of far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and violent white supremacists. We've seen this across North America, Europe, Ukraine, and Australia. There is also the majority with a minority complex, especially prevalent throughout parts of Asia, given what we've witnessed in India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and China with its anti-Muslim violence and campaign to harass and imprison ethnic Uyghurs and Muslims in Jinchang province. The common thread running throughout all these issues is the challenge posed by violent extremism, which is constantly changing and assuming new forms. These are hard problems, which is why we've chose to focus on them at this year's global forum. And the research being conducted at the resolve network is uniquely positioned to help understand evolving trends and dynamics in the violent extremist landscape. Thank you so much for joining us today and let's get started. I'm going to open up the discussion with a question for Ammar. And I alluded to this in my introductory remarks about how things have changed over the last five years. We've all been working on this issue for a while and to think back to where things were in 2015. There was definitely a different sense of panic almost into the Islamic State taking over large swaths of territory in the Middle East. How has the threat posed by ISIS changed to where we are today? What's the current situation in Iraq and Syria in particular? I know that you've been to the region and you've conducted field work there, so you have a unique perspective that I think many people working on this issue, including many researchers lack. So what's your takeaway? Yeah, I mean, it's an ongoing question, I think. I mean, if we just think back to how where we were just a few years ago, Mosul, the kind of de facto capital, if we can call it, of the Islamic State was taking back in July 2017. Raqqa, which was a massively important, again, de facto capital of the Islamic State was taking back in October 2017. And you had kind of the final villages of Bagus and Shafa and all these other villages in the region taken back by March 2019. But as I think a lot of research is starting to show, including a report from ICCT yesterday, Iraq and Syria still remain the main site of attacks by the Islamic State. The numbers of attacks that we're seeing, sleeper cell activity that we're seeing is still very much a kind of ongoing concern. If you look at the Rojava Information Center's reports that they put out quite regularly, they kind of note that the sleeper cell attacks have decreased in October. But the vast majority of those attacks, even as they go down, are happening in the province of Deir ez-Zor, and kind of sleeper cell raids are continuing to happen well into just last month, right? And so, on the one hand, Syria and Iraq continue to be kind of the main concern for continued activity of sleeper cells in the Islamic State. Then there's the added issue with the fall of Bagus in March 2019. Everyone that came out of these final villages were taken to a series of camps and prisons, as many people know, and they remain there, right? So all the men were taken to prisons in northeastern Syria, and all the women and children were taken to a series of camps that some have closed now, but many remain active. And I think those two things, the kind of sleeper cell activity that we're seeing in Syria and Iraq, as well as the consequences of what's happening in these camps. And just to, I mean, just to talk about one camp in particular that everyone kind of recognizes, Al-Hul Camp, as of last month, still contains 64,000 people. And 53% of those are children, right? And this is one of the main things that you notice when you drive up to Al-Hul Camp is that it's a sea of kids. They're under every rock. They're beside every tent. It's just a sea of children, and all of them are under the age of 12, and not about a thousand of these children are unaccompanied. They're not with their parents, and they're remaining in these basically makeshift IDP camps since March 2019. And so there have been 16 or so murders inside Al-Hul Camp. They've been in four COVID cases inside Al-Hul Camp. There's chronic malnutrition, violence almost daily. And so it's a kind of untenable situation to keep these camps active, particularly Al-Hul Camp. And so you have, I think, both of those things are going to stay with us well into next year and probably year after. Yeah, thank you for your remarks. It's depressing to hear about it, but this is the reality that we're dealing with. This week, the Sufran Center held its Global Security Forum, and we were lucky to have Ambassador Nathan Sales from the State Department, Counterterrorism Bureau, to give some remarks to Peter Bergen in a fireside chat, and Ambassador Sales spoke at length about the situation and almost used the same words as you. It's an untenable situation, and he spoke about the importance of repatriation. I'm wondering if, Mary Beth, can you talk to us about the importance of reintegration for promoting disengagement and relatedly what some of the limits to reintegration might be? And so first of all, thank you to the Resolve Network for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here today. When I look at where we are with ISIS now, what I see is very emblematic of what we see repeatedly in the so-called war on terror, and that is that, you know, we're really very good at achieving these clear military victories, but we're very poor at planning for what comes after. And I think that's really evident in the camps. So you have the destruction, right, we have the military victory and the destruction of ISIS's physical caliphate, we have the ideology and the members living on. And as Amara mentioned, right, we have over 64,000 people just in one camp. So I have been working with the Resolve Network and USIP. I've been very fortunate to work with them to think about how we promote the disengagement and reintegration of those individuals. And I do have, as Alistair mentioned, a report coming forward that draws primarily on the DDR literature to think about how we can best facilitate their reintegration. And by DDR, I mean the disarmament demobilization and reintegration literature. So for a long time, if you look at how governments approach repatriation and reintegration, they're very focused on individuals, right? What is the risk that this individual poses? We shouldn't bring these individuals back because they might, you know, launch an attack. And they're not really clear on how to best facilitate their disengagement and reintegration because if they were, then it wouldn't be such a security risk to bring them back. So what can we learn from the DDR literature, which takes this sort of whole of society approach? I'm just going to highlight some of the high-line findings here, and I would encourage you to read the whole report when it comes out. It's quite lengthy, but I think there's a lot of information there that we can use to help us promote the disengagement and reintegration of those individuals. So first, in terms of thinking why it's important to reintegrate these individuals and not detain them in camps, the DDR literature shows quite conclusively that when ex-combatants are detained for a long period of time, post-conflicts, particularly in inhumane conditions, and as Amar described the camps, they're very inhumane and insecure, that that feeds a discourse of resistance against the state and that these individuals are more likely to join armed groups when they leave. They're less likely to see the legitimacy of the state or whichever external actors are holding them or detaining them. So that's one problem right there. These camps, obviously, I think it's pretty intuitive, are probably having a radicalizing effect, even for individuals who maybe weren't committed to the ideology to begin with. The second issue that's highlighted in the DDR literature is that the longer that you detain individuals, the less likely the community is to accept them. So it stigmatizes them, right? So these are former ISIS fighters, they're ISIS supporters, and so what you see is that it really impedes their acceptance by the community. It also makes it harder for them to see themselves in a pro-social role. So the longer they're detained, the more difficult it is for them to see alternatives for themselves outside of their involvement in terrorism or their support in terrorism. And this is really important because a lot of the research that I've done and interviews with former violent extremists show that many of them are deeply disillusioned with their involvement in terrorism. And when we look at ISIS, and I'll perhaps talk about this a little bit later, you know, many of them were coerced into support or involvement. So, you know, you have to imagine there are individuals there who are deeply disillusioned and who are looking for a way out, and if they don't see any alternatives, if their time and detention isn't contributing to the reintegration, so you could imagine you could be detained in human conditions, perhaps learning a skill set.  And this isn't to say that individuals shouldn't be prosecuted, absolutely individuals who have committed crimes should be prosecuted, but when we think about the reintegration of those individuals, we can't prosecute or who have not committed crimes. The third thing I will say is that detaining these individuals in camps, and I've seen this firsthand, and not releasing them for so long, and not repatriating them, feeds I think radicalization of recruitment in the West. So, about a year and a half ago, I was in the UK and I was speaking with, you know, a Islamist activist, and he kept saying, well, you know, the failure to repatriate these Muslims just shows that we're second class British citizens or we're not considered British citizens, and you can imagine them going around and using those to radicalize and recruit to their cause. And then the last thing that I'll say that's highlighted in the report, the resolve report, is that we need to think seriously about the economic, political, and societal situation into which these individuals are reintegrating. So, again, a lot of the existing literature, especially recently on disengagement and recidivism focuses on individuals, their motivations for involvement, and things like that. But, you know, we don't really think seriously about, you know, what are these individuals reintegrating into. So if they want to have, you know, one of the ways in which you can foster the development of pro-social ties is through employment, right. But in some places, if we think about Somalia, for instance, there aren't really a lot of economic opportunities for individuals or conflict disrupts the economy continuously. So it's really hard for individuals to obtain sustainable livelihoods. The DDR literature also shows that individuals for reintegration to be sustainable and disengagement long term, this requires a certain level of security, mutual trust and political will and society. So individuals need to feel safe, right. If they're reintegrating into Syria and they don't feel safe, they may seek out armed groups to protect themselves. Same thing with mutual trust, right. When I think about the Sunni Shi'a divide in Iraq, for instance, there's not mutual trust between these, these groups, right. And so they may have, you know, incentives to return to an armed group or to support an armed group. And so I'm not really optimistic. You know, when I look at the situation right now in Syria and Iraq, you know, sure, we definitely can absolutely reintegrate individuals. Certain individuals may reintegrate, but just thinking long term, if we're still in the same place politically, there are these incentives for individuals to go back to violent extremism or armed groups.  So the DDR literature shows quite clearly when these certain political conditions are in place that we are likely to see rearmament long term. And when I look at Syria, for instance, right, I mean Assad is still in power, the grievances that, you know, led to rise about Nusra and part and ISIS are still there. Same thing with Iraq. We have Iranian Bakshi and militias. If I was a Sunni in Iraq, you know, I would be concerned about my security and there's definitely not mutual trust. So, and there's also stigma. So if we look at the reintegration of these individuals into Europe, for instance, they face a certain level of stigma that can actually preclude their reintegration into society, their political reintegration and their social reintegration. And so there are questions, maybe I'll talk more about it later, about how we combat that stigma. And just one more thing I'll add is that I have a paper and the stigma is very real. So I have a paper that's a working paper and it basically shows that if we look at support in the United States using experimental research for prisoner reentry programs, if an individual is convicted of murder and support of a criminal group, support for prisoner reentry is much higher than if that individual is convicted of support or convicted of murder and support of a terrorist group. And then if you just look at terrorist offenders, support for prisoner reentry programming is much higher for far right terrorism offenders than for Muslim or Islamist terrorism offenders. So there is a clear stigma there. Wow, that's some fascinating research, both the forthcoming resolve paper as well as the working paper.  And I think a really great breakdown of a difficult topic, which is going into the DDR literature and pulling out, you know, kind of best practices and lessons learned. You know, much of it, when you hear it seems like common sense right the longer someone is detained, the more stigma will be attached the more they begin to see themselves as, you know, not being able to be salvaged. So, you know, I think it was Ali Sufandou, who said when you take some you know when you make someone stateless, you're giving them one option and that's to become a citizen of the Islamic State. I don't think about that quite often, but much of what you talked about, including the political will and the political context, particularly in Europe right now. I think is is highly interesting in my senses that Kobe 19 is going to actually make it more difficult to to move folks back to their countries of origin. We're going to be on the Islamic State for now. And Amar, can you give a brief overview of what you see as the future of ISIS. I mean, are we going to be having the same conversation, five years from now. Yeah, I think so. I think what we're seeing now is, you know, as you know, kind of increased attacks that we've seen in Afghanistan and the Afghans region, a kind of real scaling up of attacks in parts of West Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and so on. And it's not just the Islamic State, but a variety of kind of jihadist groups that are active in the region. We saw Mozambique just a few weeks ago or a week ago, you know, there's a beheading of 50 people in the country. And what I think is common in a lot of these different regions is that the local grievances and kind of local movements that existed are either willfully attaching themselves to these kind of more international brands if you will like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Or and or ISIS itself is seeing kind of avenues for recruitment on the ground by addressing some of these local grievances like lack of economic opportunities, consequences of climate change that arise from things like food shortages and so on. And so these larger organizations international organizations are making inroads into some of these more local grievances and local conflicts that are much older by tapping into some of these, tapping into some of these local grievances. The other thing that's important is of course what's happening in the West and what's happening in the online space we've seen attacks in Vienna France the UK over the last little while. We know that ISIS in particular was kicked off of their kind of prime, you know, application of telegram in November 2019. And they're kind of moving into different different platforms as they go but I think there is the kind of what we can call a caliphate nostalgia I guess why some of these supporters who are looking to this kind of state that existed as a kind of, you know, inspiration and prime inspiration for a lot of their current activity and current propaganda and so that is not going to go away just because you take away property or you take away land in Mosul and rock up. And so a lot of that kind of momentum I think all of the propaganda momentum that was built up over the last five years is something we're going to have to contend with going forward. We've already seen some young people in Canada in the US and elsewhere be inspired by this content and they're not doing anything at the moment but it's still something that's part of what they're reading and consuming and so on we had one case in Canada. And they recently tried to go to Syria and join the Islamic State well after the entire border region between Turkey and Syria was taken back. And so, I don't know where he thought he was going, but he but you know, he would have been picked up by the Kurds pretty quickly but you see that the ability to kind of inspire is still very much part of the ISIS repertoire and so I think that we're not going to be, you know, not talking about this in a little while I think. Yeah, some really interesting points I think you know the, the willingness now of ISIS core to consider groups in Sub-Saharan Africa where maybe several years ago. You know, there was less of a need because the caliphate was perceived as more successful now there's this outreach. And you see these local groups acting in almost a parasitic manner of kind of glomming on to to the Islamic State you mentioned Mozambique. I think also the concept of caliphate nostalgia. In fact, a few years ago, myself and horror ingram wrote a piece on that exact topic we call the nostalgia narrative and speculated how is this going to play out particularly in Europe. You know if you are nine year old, you know who's older brother went and fought and died in Iraq and Syria, you then become a teenager. How are you treated in in your neighborhood in London Brussels, Paris. Does that give you kind of street cred as it were. And does that kind of then encourage other people to continue with it. You know the propaganda momentum that's a really, I think, apt way to characterize what what we've seen with the Islamic State. Mary Beth, we've had a fairly depressing conversation. I think up until now. Can you offer some hope. What are some possible ways forward, even a glimmer. Yeah, so I'm probably the best person for this question because I'm pretty pessimistic about, you know, the future like a mar, you know, especially given the political circumstances we have a proliferation of fragile states and things like that so. But what I will say is and what I often tell my students. When we look at ISIS, you know, at least during the period of the insurgency, a lot of their supporters were coerced or intimidated so I do see that that larger support base as very shallow when compared with, you know, other groups so I think you know if we do focus on, you know, facilitating the reintegration of those individuals I think it's very possible I don't think many of them wanted to join ISIS to begin with or wanted to support ISIS to begin with.  So, I think, you know, and this isn't to say a lot of former violent extremists that spoke with you know they'll still continue to spew the ideology because that's what they're taught maybe in the camps they're protecting themselves from the group. So I think there are individuals who are deeply disillusioned do not want to be involved and are looking for a way out so. How do we facilitate that, you know, given as I mentioned earlier the kind of dire political context since you're in Iraq. So, one of the sort of glimmers of hope in the DDR literature is the promotion of community based projects, which, you know, in that region would be really important, especially post conflict where individuals can, you know, work with communities on a project that, you know, shows their commitment to a shared future helps combat the stigma that exists in the community shows that they can be pro social gives them a sense that they can be pro social. So that's sort of where I see the glimmer of hope. Good, let's hope that you know some some governments, you know, consider this, you know, very practical policy advice, because I think if, if, if they don't and if there's not some kind of political well mustard we will be back here in five years having this exact same same conversation. I'd like to switch gears here just a little bit and talk about coven 19, and how you both think it will, or maybe won't impact the changing nature of violent extremism and I'll start with the more. I'd like you to address the question of what it means to have. We've seen a widespread loss of trust in expert systems. Certainly we've seen that in the United States. And there's a number of reasons why but I think that's been a worldwide phenomenon relatedly it feels like there's a growing sense of enemy. Can you speak a little to both of these issues. I mean just in the interest of time I won't get too crazy but I think you know there's been a lot of literature going back 3040 years looking at the consequences of what they call late modernity right and so this is this is where the risks that we experience are largely unidentified you kind of need science to work on its full capacity to even know that climate change is happening for example. These risks tend to be kind of transnational or universal you know forest fires in California cause ash to fall in Vancouver. And so you're not really protected by national boundaries as was in the past. And these risks are largely kind of irreversible right and so vaccines are good example GMO foods that people used to be concerned about and still concerned about or another example that once it's out there. You can't really call it back. If it starts to cause harm and so on and so you know just to quote Donald Rumsfeld I guess the late modernity means that late the unknown unknowns are quite plenty and what this often leads to is a requirement that we have increased trust in these very expert systems medicine science social science and public health and so on to solve and kind of make us feel better make us feel like somebody at least is taking care of these just kind of increased risks that we see. But what happens when there are these kind of flash points like COVID-19 is that the trust in those expert systems is questioned is kind of thrown thrown into flux. And so it's just kind of catch 22 that people talk about where just when we need increased trust in these systems to survive these major moments in history like pandemics is also the time when trust gets eroded right and and just in Canada for example we saw one of these in terms of violent extremism we saw one case of a man named Corey Huron basically drive his truck through the gates of Rideau Hall before he had done that he posted about what was known as event 201, which is a kind of pandemic response exercise that was done before COVID and so obviously it's made its way into conspiratorial literature quite heavily. He wrote a kind of I don't want to call it a manifesto but he wrote a letter basically talking about, you know, great financial distress that he worried his truck was going to be repossessed that Canada because of its COVID response is turning into a kind of communist dictatorship that he felt he was under house arrest that his world is falling apart. And I think this is this is the consequences that we're going to see going forward right is and there's been a lot of people talking about, you know, increased pressure on public health officials to address increased anxiety and things like that. And so, I think we forget how much kind of these institutions and normalcy help root us in our communities help root us in our families. Just very simple things like where are your kids going to go in the morning is now up in the air right is now something you have to negotiate and think about. And so these kind of taken for granted aspects of your life the kind of wallpaper of our lives that make us feel like we're part of something that were that were rooted somewhere. The pandemic things like the pandemic come and throw that for a loop. Some people thrive in that environment you know they pick up the piano or they learn another language or something but I think for a lot of people. They're deeply disorienting and can cause a lot of consequences right and so I don't think it's a surprise that we saw a kind of huge spike in conspiratorial thinking a huge spike in conspiracy activity right around the lockdown period, related to anti mask movements related to QAnon and a whole host of other fringe kind of ideas, because I think the pandemic came and said everything that you thought was fixed and normal and moving at kind of moving in cruise control is now up in the air and up and up and flux. And so people kind of react in very harmful ways sometimes a lot of time itself harm but as we've seen in some instances it can be pointed out words as well. Thank you there's a lot there to unpack I mean, I completely agree with the deeply disorienting nature of COVID-19 I mean, I think if we were to be honest everybody's experienced that feeling over the past several months. Even those who are well equipped to deal with it you know financially emotionally it's taken a toll on on everyone. Needless to say the most vulnerable among us have been impacted to, to a greater degree, the rise in conspiracy theories and its overlap with real world political or ideological motivated violence I think is going to be something that's with us for for quite some time. I think a lot of this, for me, reminds me how fragile society can be how we're, you know, kind of always teetering on the brink there and when you have an event of this magnitude, it could it could really tip us into a bad place. I'd also just like to say I, I appreciate this that this event is being recorded, because we now have you on record as quoting Donald Rumsfeld in a talk so that's something that I'll, I'll never forget I appreciate that. Mary Beth, can I, getting back to, to the discussion. Can you talk a little bit about the impact on state capacity that that COVID's had and we know that's kind of dovetailed. It's really kind of state capacity at the same time that inequality has been exacerbated. How does that kind of come together to contribute to a rise in violent extremism. Yeah, sure. So when we think about the second or the potential second and third order effects of coded. One of the things that we've seen is that the pandemic has disproportionately affected the working class, as well as minorities. So, this can contribute to we've already had growing inequality in developed democracies, especially, but I think that COVID will exacerbate that, as well as rising unemployment. And so, we know that ideologies these sometimes these extreme ideologies often think about Robert Bowers, right it helps them make sense of a personal crisis helps individuals make sense of a personal crisis, as well as a societal crisis. And so, you know, when you think about growing inequality and unemployment and sort of the larger effects of COVID individuals are experiencing personal crises as Amar mentioned and there's a clear societal crisis so we can't say for sure yet but these ideologies might might resonate more. And so we might see that contribute to violent extremism. So, it's a great capacity, I mean, it's, it's pretty obvious but you know states are going to have to divert resources to deal with the pandemic so I would expect fragile states and we already have a proliferation of those to become more fragile. So this will make it easier for violent extremists to operate. It also opens up opportunities for violent extremist groups to engage in what we call rebel governance or the provision of services. So, if you remember after the pandemic there's all this discussion about Hezbollah, you know, issuing go guidance about COVID having mobile hospital units I saw pictures of them sprained on the streets the Taliban ISIS as well. And I think, you know, so there's discussion that this could help generate support or at least you know favorable feelings towards these groups. But I do think that we need to also keep in mind that it actually sometimes this need to provide these services can become a burden for these groups so if you look at a group like ISIS it's very wealthy for a violent extremist group but it's very poor for a state. And so I just know from my own research on Northern Ireland in particular that you know providing these services is something that these groups sometimes don't want to do it's demanded by the population so it's not always a win-win for them I don't know how it's going to pass us out. And then the final thing I'll say is that, you know, we have seen increasing authoritarianism and I do think that we are seeing states, you know, sometimes very innocently expand their powers in the interest of public health, but also exploits the public to increase surveillance measures. We saw this with Hungary with China. And I guess my worry is that even if that's done very innocently that these things could become sticky and be part of this larger trend towards authoritarianism so even if we look at, you know, United States and even with the Patriot Act, the UMF, I mean these things are still, you know, they stick, they stay around. So, so I worry about those effects as well and we know that, you know, these authoritarian policies can, you know, create grievances and radicalize individuals. Absolutely. The, the, I'll start with your last comment first which is the increased surveillance in the name of protecting public health and the concern that that becomes the new normal and a new way of life right this is the kind of creeping measures of the slippery slope. I still remember having this conversation with Aaron Zelen. It must have been over a year and a half ago not COVID related but this, you know, the Trojan horse of technology right and we were talking about China specifically, but then, you know, discussing also how that model could be attractive to a other countries certainly authoritarian countries, but even countries, you know that that we didn't we don't necessarily consider authoritarian right because if you're if you're sold on this helps with your with your terrorism problem. We've seen what lengths countries are willing to go to, including our own to to at least mitigate the the opportunities for terrorist groups to conduct strikes. You mentioned ISIS being a wealthy for a terrorist group and poor for a state and that that really resonates because of my own research on ISIS financing I think we focus so much on the group's credits. We focus very little on the debits right so when you have money going out the door to sustain that state that's something too. And then you also mentioned Robert Bowers and that hits home for me personally, because I was living in squirrel hill the neighborhood where the Tree of Life attack occurred. When that happened I lived in squirrel hill for 10 years. And so I, you know, I've followed his case very closely. And, you know, living in Pittsburgh now and somebody that was, he was raised out here and had had this individual radicalized and how many more people like him are also out there harboring these grievances. And that leads me to the question of, you know, when you have these pre existing conditions or grievances as it were, layered on top of COVID-19. Can we can you guys talk to a little bit about how COVID-19. What impact has it had on racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism. We'll start with them are and then we'll go to. Sure, yeah, I know it's a good question I think I mean immigrants and refugees are always coded as security threats or health threats or financial threats long before COVID right I mean we had Tamil refugees arrive in Canada on boat a few 10 years ago and even mainstream media was asking things like are they bringing tuberculosis to Canada are they you know are they are they terrorists are they this and that. So I think that that kind of looking at immigrants through a kind of securitized lenses is very much part parcel of what we do here. But what's happening more and more now is of course you have far right political parties like the AFD in Germany and others who are using COVID as a kind of I told you so moment right and they're pointing to COVID to say hey look you know we warned you about immigrants we warned you about the kind of diseases that they're going to bring etc and I think that is feeding into some of their own propaganda. I think what I'm worried about though even more casually is whether COVID you know COVID is kind of tilling the soil, even amongst the quiet people that that that will allow later anti immigrant arguments to resonate a bit more right and so if they hear anti immigrant arguments from political parties. So I think the impact on anti immigrant sentiment I think is going to be less obvious than we might imagine it's not going to be crazy far right people yelling about it on the streets even though that'll happen but I think the long term impact might be that. How did it kind of till the soil for anti immigrant sentiment going forward, but I think that that still remains to kind of be studied. Absolutely Mary Beth do you want to weigh in on this the same question what impact. COVID-19 has had on racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism. I think it's very hard to say anything for sure right now, in terms of the impact that it's had. You know I think, when I look at rising racially and ethnically motivated violence I see it as part of this longer trend of, you know a backlash to globalization rising populism authoritarianism so you know COVID is definitely probably exacerbating that, but it's really hard to say for sure that it is having you know an impact so I know sometimes when I my social science brain turns on you know I think at night like I think. Well, if COVID wasn't here with the rise in racially and ethnically motivated violence be the same right we have had this increasing trends and maybe you know to a Mars point maybe. There'd be other grievances that these groups would be a you know drawing on to motivate people so we've talked a lot. You know just in the scholarly community about side switchers and so I just wonder, you know if individuals you know if it wasn't COVID or the shutdowns if it would have been the migrant caravans but we don't hear about those anymore so. So just really hard for me to say anything definitively I mean it's probably exacerbating things but you know it's just hard to get data to say for sure. I think that's one of the challenges right as social scientists we're always looking to measure evaluate assess and we need the data to do that and frankly you're right it's still too early to make any kind of definitive draw any definitive conclusions there. I always see a lag effect with these types of things right so what's happening right now what's percolating under the surface will manifest 234 years from now, it will then appear obvious of course, you know, there was a huge boost in recruiting for far right extremists, because everybody was at home, everybody was online, right everybody was, you know, stressed out and looking for explanations to help them understand how we got here, right, how did we get to this situation. It was, you know, immigrants, it was this cabal of elites whatever, you know, helps people kind of deal with their own worldview or reality and I think we are likely to see that in our global security forum earlier this week. The EU counter terrorism coordinator, Jill de Kerkhoff called COVID-19 an accelerant, right, he said, you know, they really, as you mentioned, Mary, but there was these trends that were already kind of moving in one direction, and this probably accelerates those even even further ahead. And so to your point on kind of how even political parties have really been trying to seize COVID-19 and use as an opportunity, you mentioned the AFD in Germany and I'll just use that as an opportunity to plug my resolve paper with coauthored with Jason it's called from paramilitaries to parliamentarians, disaggregating the global far right and we're going to be looking at this kind of global landscape and how there's this interplay or the spectrum between far right political parties all the way down to kind of street level movements and beyond. I think the focus on the far right and whatever you call it, you know, rem v rem t. It leads us to this concept of cultural loss, right so white supremacists have focused on this notion of a white genocide of the Islamization of Europe, and have really tried to offer this grievance fuel narrative that at least seems to be resonating with supporters and new recruits. I want to kind of talk about this in terms of countering violent extremism and CVE, which, you know, from my purview, the last 20 years of the global war and terrorism, that's always meant jihadis right even when it was occurring in other kind of realms to me that what I saw the while the lion share met how are we going to deal with this threat of, you know, primarily Sunni inspired terrorism. Now we're left with, you know, race racially and ethically motivated violence. In terms of CVE are we prepared to deal with current and future rem v threats. And can we get better at anticipating threats before they metastasize. Mary Beth I'd like to start with you on that. So, in terms of anticipating threats before they metastasize, I think, you know, I think we tend to be as you mentioned column we tend to be reactive rather than proactive. So I think a lot of that is driven as as researchers and potentially maybe CV up CVE practitioners. I think a lot of that is driven by by funding by media demand for commentary on certain things. I think, you know, if researchers researchers could think a little bit more independently about, you know, not where we are now but you know what's on the horizon drawing on, on theory. So for me when I'm trying to make sense of the world I find going back to those, those good old theories of terrorism studies like Martha Crenshaw Paul Wilkinson I find that those things are actually much more helpful than granular analysis so obviously need empirical evidence. And that's sort of where I see, you know, or just the time I know certain government agencies do do provide the time to think about these sort of long term trends and threats and I think it's absolutely critical. You know, to be focused or to have the time and the resources to focus on those things so we don't miss them in terms of cultural loss. And I know Mar is going to speak a little bit about that. But I think when I look at cultural loss and the rise of remedy you know we do see it as this sort of, you know, back as I mentioned earlier this backlash to globalization to the loss of, you know, white privilege in society. I also see cultural loss when I look at other terrorist groups or violent extremist groups so I'm absolutely not an expert on the Middle East if anyone, if anyone is please correct me. But my understanding there right is that we did have this, that the rise of Islamism was this backlash to secularism right this idea of cultural loss region Western intervention. So when I look at groups in Northern Ireland so loyalist paramilitaries. There wasn't so much about cultural loss but the loss of one's privilege status within the political system which is what I think we see a lot of renvy or far right terrorism, embodying so. Thank you yeah I mean you you covered a lot of ground there and I think your rights absolutely pull in outside groups right groups in the Middle East groups in Europe. You know I've noticed maybe in the last year as there's been more of a focus on rem V rem T. Again, you know different terms depending on what government agency you talk to what part of the world. You end up operating in, but for a more and this will be my last question before we open to the audience. I want to focus on the E and rem V, which is ethnic right. Can you talk to us about what the majority with a minority complexes and what the consequences are, and I believe we've seen this most most pointedly throughout parts of Asia. So Sri Lanka Myanmar and elsewhere can can you talk a little bit to that. Sure yeah I mean, going back to what Mary Beth was saying I mean this is largely a response, particularly in the current period to globalization and kind of a transnational awareness of what's happening abroad right and so it feeds into a lot of the propaganda. And it has to be said anti Muslim propaganda specifically that feeds into a lot of these countries that kind of arises from what Stanley Tambia with a with a focus on Sri Lanka called the majority with the minority complex. It's this idea that even though you're the majority in the country or the ethnic religious cultural majority in the country. There's something about your place in that majority or place in that society that is making you is turning that identity, which should be fairly comfortable into an embattled one right it the sense that you have a minority complex that you'll always feel like you have to continuously claim as the majority have to pass policies that are majoritarian that you have to keep minorities under your thumb that minorities particularly Muslims in a lot of these countries that we're talking about are this kind of sinister fifth column who are secretly plotting to take over secretly plotting to become the majority, and so this fuels a lot of these policies that we're seeing, you know the Hindu movement in India, the treatment of Uyghurs in China, the treatment of the Tamil community and the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, the treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and a lot of the kind of white civil rights as well as you mentioned white genocide that this kind of sense of white civil rights that that that popped up a bit in the US under Charlottesville and so on. This idea that you know we're the in group a kind of increased attachment to the in group. The in group is being eroded, and that we need to do something to rejuvenate make people proud of that identity, and then fight back against whatever they seem to be pointing to. And so a lot of the if you look at a lot of the propaganda across these kind of diverse countries it's remarkably similar right and there was some. A lot of the circulated on Facebook and Twitter a while back in with with respect to India and Sri Lanka and Myanmar in particular that Muslims are, you know, are plotting to have a lot of children that they're using sterilization tactics against the majority to keep that population down that they're plotting attacks and so on and so the propaganda bizarrely from Myanmar Sri Lanka China India Western Europe actually talked about very similar things throughout and so this is why I think that this sense of kind of in group identity being eroded. When we're talking about future threats is going to be with us for some time because it's getting it's getting much more heightened in the current in the contemporary world and then then I was expecting. It's a great answer and it actually goes a long way toward answering the first question we had from the chat, which is how to far right movements in the West compare with other far right movements, such as the anti Muslim rhetoric we've seen in India and China. So I think you touched upon that directly and I think, you know, a good amount of that comes back to this propaganda around the demographic time bomb, right warning people that, you know, they are now shifting into this other reality where they no longer enjoy the rights of a majority. And that is, it's quite damning for for a lot of people. The next comment, sorry, then the kind of common thread between the kind of golden age and the utopian future, you know, it's quite common throughout, regardless of these cases as well so that's something to watch for. And in your in your sense is there a lot of hyperbole that surrounds that or a lot of kind of revisionist history pointing to a greater time that maybe wasn't that great to begin with. Yeah, I mean I think it's all nationalist, all nationalist movements do they they pick and choose from history the things that they want to be part of their movement right and so they kind of whitewash a lot of the nuance and a lot of the diversity and a lot of them complexity that existed in the past for the take of kind of making a very nationalist argument in the present. And so this golden age of the past that probably didn't exist. And it's supposed to set it set you up for this utopian future that you're probably never going to get to. But it'll it animates a lot of activity, political and violent activity in the contemporary world. It also strikes me as you know what you just described. It reminds me of what was going on in the Balkans right in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s right a kind of whitewashing of papering over some of the positive aspects of living together in multi ethnic communities and only focusing on the negative aspects, and you know, some, some politicians and military leaders reaching way back into the past to find examples where they could, you know, sell to their supporters that their, you know, other ethnic groups were, in fact the enemy. I'd like to move on I have a question for, I think for Mary Beth and someone from the audience asks, what are examples of effective methods to destigmatize former fighters, as they are reintegrated back into their communities of origin. So in terms of the methods I don't, you know, with very few exceptions I don't think any of them have been rigorously and empirically tested so that's something where we need more research but I can say what has been done in the DDR context. And so some of some of the things that have been at least you know shown at least qualitatively to be effective is preparing communities so preparing communities that these individuals well will return, either through messaging through discussion groups, and you know just spreading information within the community so like take ISIS for an example, you know just spreading information that you know not all of these individuals joined willingly some of them were coerced explaining the motivations for their involvement, you know they're not all horrible people that those sorts of things can increase, increase communal acceptance shared projects which I mentioned earlier are, you know, seem to be especially pivotal in doing that. Individuals sometimes don't even need to reveal that they were a former member usually that happens over time but it, you know, it embodies this commitment to a shared shared future and helps develop those those pro social relationships. Great, I'd like to stay on this topic because the next question and it doesn't specify exactly but my sense is that this question maybe grew out of some of the information we know in the aftermath of the attack in Vienna. The question is, for both of you, how do we better balance the need to protect the public from those who've, quote unquote faked their way through de radicalization and the need to reintegrate those who've truly given up extremist ideology. So you want to, we'll start with you and then we'll move to Mary. Yeah, that's a very, very difficult question and kind of an ongoing policy debate I think for that that links up to repatriation as well is that are these people choosing to go through these programs or are they kind of mandated to go through these programs and and what does that mean on the on the other side. I do think this goes back to something I wrote about a long time ago on kind of the different kinds of people that are coming back right I think Colin and I wrote a piece on this as well that not everybody is going to be trained in dispatch to come back to the west to kind of launch attacks there's going to be kind of other cohort of people who I think we called disengaged but not disillusioned who are you know for a variety of reasons. Yeah, a variety of reasons disengaged from the movement, whether it's battle fatigue or they had a family or whatever it might be but of all the ones that I've interviewed and who've come back from Syria. If you ask them a question like if there's another, you know, foreign fighter mobilization in a couple of years, what would you do and they'll say I'll be on the next plane out right so they're still kind of attached to this broader social movement, but for a very few reasons. They've been disengaged from the current conflict and so I think, figuring out a way to disaggregate and deal with some of those questions might be an answer but it is. I mean it's an impossible question in many ways because you're, it's like asking people to read minds right and I don't envy law enforcement and a lot of these NGOs who are working on in the prevention space and the disengagement space that have to navigate probably outright lying in order to kind of just make it through the program and then do whatever they have to do but I think it's an impossible question but I think it's one that a lot of people are struggling with. Well I think you've given us some good ways to at least kind of start piecing the in answer together. Mary Beth. Yeah sure so I think I'm sort of based on my own research I think it's important to remember that for most people to radicalization is a very long process. Sort of in my experience it's years, maybe even a decade.  So some individuals may, and I think it's also important to note that some individuals who are in that program may not be even radical to begin with right maybe their involvement was motivated by friendship and they may see the ideology but they may not actually be motivated or believe in that that ideology so I think those are two important things to remember so if we do have individuals I mean you'll never know if someone's faking right you can you can say whatever you want so there's no way to actually know whether someone is without. Obviously there's certain intelligence methods you could use to see what else they're doing but I think one of the things you can do is you just focus on promoting their disengagement right so promoting, you know, even if you have these ideas or you have these grievances. You know, if some programs are doing this in Europe how do you channel those non violently right so if you're upset about what Assad's doing to children in Syria, can you channel that into, you know, it's a protest activity non violent protest. So those are some of the things that I think you can do and you can create these protective factors right through the development of those pro social ties within the community right through employment. And those pro social ties service protective factors and they also, you know, they change people's calculus in terms of the alternatives they have available to them and then over time over those years.  And then the other thing I would say is that I do think that, you know, the programming has to be adequately resourced so again because it is this sort of long term process. I think that individuals should be checked in on, you know, in terms of, you know, from a social safety net as well as a security net and I think a lot of times these programs you know six months one year they're just they're just very under resourced. You know, most of the money goes into sort of hard CT measures. I think one thing to keep in mind is how we define radicalization right because I think what we expect I think at least from some of the social media conversations I've seen is that if some of these guys come back particularly the women and they continue to wear the gown in a cove or the men come back and continue to be kind of moderate Salafi in outlook. We still call them radicals right.  What's going to happen with a lot of these guys are going to come back and continue to be religious continue to be conservative in a lot of their outlook and so understanding, as Mary Beth said, you know, they might be channeling a lot of their pro grievances and pro social ways, but expecting them to look a certain way and coding that in your mind or interpreting that in your mind is what rat DRAT looks like is going to be a problem because they're not going to probably fit that mold that you're looking for. And this is true from a lot of the women, some of the women that I interviewed in Syria is that they've, they're not ISIS in the camps wasn't telling them to wear in a cove they're wearing in a cove because they're religious.  How are you still radical etc. And so that's going to be, I think a conversation we have to have more honestly than we're having now is what are our kind of pre existing assumptions about what do radicalized person looks like. And this is true in the white nationalist space to I mean some of the farmers that I've interviewed in the in the white nationalist space have just gone from kind of white supremacist to white civil rights right and then just kind of taking a step down out there preaching multiculturalism and diversity and pluralism they've just taken it down a notch. And so what does that mean right is that are they still committed to the movement. And so I think these are difficult kind of transition people are making and as Meribeth says they take decades sometimes to work this out for themselves and some of these agencies and organizations that are trained to help them work it out are funded for a year or two.  Then that also builds grievances as well because they'll come back and say that you know people I've been abandoned I'm unemployed and and and so this is a, I think having a much more mature conversation about what that looks like is important. Sorry. No, I think what this kind of back and forth has has reminded me of is really. Maybe we take for granted, the field of radicalization and de radicalization this is we're still in the nascent stages of attempting to understand these concepts. Even though there's great research out there and if you look at some of John Horgan's work, Jim burgers work on extremism. I think we don't fully really I think a lot of people don't understand differences between discrimination and disengagement, right and Julie turnovers done great work on disengagement of Indonesian jihadist so, and then lastly, in talking to scholars like Bart Skerman, who is looking at why some people radicalized but actually never go on to commit acts of terrorism. Sometimes we treat those things synonymously right we say this person is radicalized, and we assume that means that they've either committed or intend to commit acts of terrorism and that's not always the case. I don't know what what the data says but I'll be curious to to see Bart's work once that starts coming out so there's a lot there. We don't really understand even though as scholars we've been working on these issues for some time. And then what differences exist between jihadis what is and the far right or other forms of violent extremism. I want to ask about, we've got a question in the from the audience here that asked about has psychology or behavioral science been at the apex of CVE programs and I think, you know from where I sit for a while. The CVE almost looked like a cottage industry right people were coming up with all sorts of kaka maybe you know proposals. It seemed like there was a lot of money in the space so you had people kind of coming out of the woodworks, claiming to be experts.  You know where you have these guys draw a couple of pictures of their feelings and are released back into society and we wonder why those things don't work. Can you talk a little bit about the the psychology and behavioral science that goes into thinking about CVE programming. Let's start with Mary Beth and then we'll go to. Yeah, so again just from my, you know, brief, brief knowledge working with with practitioners. My sense is that some of them I mean the ones who reach out are really interested in having an evidence based approach to this and so they are consulting psychologist and behavioral scientists, you know, to try and inform their policy and programming but I think, I think you sort of hit the nail on the head calling that there is a lot of CVE programming that is not informed. My sound social science became kind of a cottage industry and I think we saw a lot of development programming being rebranded as CVE just to secure funding so and I will say that those programs that do try to take a sound social science approach and consult with academics and researchers, often what we would recommend to them is just not feasible financially. So what I've seen is, you know, here's what we would recommend, but, you know, we don't have the money for, you know, two years of cognitive behavioral therapy for 64,000. You know, so, so there are clear limits on the financial capacity of governments or NGOs to implement some of these things. Yeah, I mean, I don't work in the CVE space that in that capacity is I'm not too sure but from my interviews with community members I can say something kind of what Mary Beth touched on is that I think the CVE framing the CVE framing does have massive impact and negatively in communities right and so even in Canada we had not so much anymore but in the past we had several instances where because of funding if you were a after school mentorship program or if you were just running a basketball camp. Your funding was very likely to be cut but if you reframed what you were doing as not just basketball for, you know, disadvantaged youth but basketball for radicalization or basketball for prevention. All of a sudden the money came right and what that did was it did two things one, it turned a lot of everyday kind of community organizations into kind of security organizations right with security oriented organizations.  And that kind of was obvious to them and that had an impact on how they saw themselves as kind of did the state only cares about my well being if I'm either trouble to troublesome. Right and so it wasn't that the state and everybody was concerned about me as a young person in their country but it was more so how do we make sure that they don't do anything from a security perspective. And so I think how we frame CVE in that way can have a lot of second and third order consequences I guess we want to go back to that term, almost by accident if we're not careful. Right yeah I think a lot there that I've observed as well. We are wrapping up on time so I will save the easiest question for last. And if you guys could just give you know very brief thoughts here.   What should they remember about violent extremism, whether it's kind of correcting conventional wisdom dispelling a myth. It's going to take away we'll start with Amar and then marry deaf. Sure. I mean, the main thing I think that is still a kind of common assumption is that these people they tell we used to talk about criminals back in the 50s right that they're that they're kind of these unique individuals out there in the world they have horns if you can just kind of figure it out, or you know them from society, everything will be fine and I think not so much in the scholarly in the scholarly community but in the public I think that's still an ongoing assumption that the terrorists or radicals are of a particular sort and I still get questions from community members and journalists and others about what is the kind of risk factors what are the vulnerabilities how can we, how can we kind of pick out people who are vulnerable and when you tell them, you know, there is no, you know, the usual point there is no common pathway there is no typical pathway everyone comes at this differently everyone has different push factors poll poll factors are also quite different. It's not a satisfying answer to most of these people so they kind of often revert back to their stereotypes and and that I think is an ongoing challenge of a lot of academics who work in this field to have this conversation with the public because because what the consequences of that of course a lot of anti Muslim policy a lot of surveillance a lot of interference in the community, a lot of monitoring of mosques, which used to happen a lot in Canada and that I know particularly well because you would have a one individual from a mosque leave to go to Syria and law enforcement would come in and basically interview every single person in that community. And, which was massively harmful, and goes back to what Mary Beth was saying earlier is that when if this individual comes back, we need that community to reintegrate this person.  We don't want my kids monitored we don't want our kids followed by law enforcement because they've made friends with this guy. And so, I think, getting rid of some of those assumptions that these are somehow, you know, crazy people. And one of us that treating them in that way and understanding the policy questions in that way I think is the biggest lesson but it's also also not the lesson that's been learned. Very well said, really well said, Mary Beth. I agree completely completely with Amar but I will I will add, I guess for me, it's that these tactical victories that we've had in the war on terrorism are short lived so as it going back to what I said earlier if we failed to plan for what comes after and I think where we see widespread violent extremism. We're talking about, you know, the isolated Ted Kaczynski or where we just have you know smaller groups. But when we see widespread violent extremism and endemic violent extremism I think we need to sort of step back from this focus as Amar mentioned on individuals right and it's not to absolve them of the wrong doing, but say that you know that there's a great article by Luigi Binante all the way back to 1979 in the journal Peace Research and he says that terrorism is a symptom of a failing political system right there's something wrong in the equilibrium or the status quo in this political system that needs to be solved and so I think we need to think about violent extremism and terrorism as a political problem that requires political solutions so there has been a clear shift to focus on military strategy and less focus on political strategy and diplomacy and so I think that diplomacy is going to help us in the long run those are the things that are going to help, you know, resolve the problems that are contributing to violent extremism. Well, I hope you're right. And I would just like to take this opportunity to thank both of our panelists, as well as our audience and everybody at resolve for really what was a dynamic forum, and I think, you know, I certainly took away quite a bit, got a couple of pages of notes here. And I hope you did too so let me turn it back over to Alistair Reed, and he'll close this out. Thank you so much, Conn Mary BFMR for a really engaging and fascinating discussion, and sure give us plenty of food for thought in the coming days. And let's say a big thank you to everyone who joined us today. We hope that you enjoyed the part one of the 2020 resolve network global forum series, and we'll be reaching out to you via email and Twitter with a quick follow up survey. We appreciate you taking the time to join us and for sharing your feedback with us. Please stay connected and check back for the upcoming events in the 2020 resolve forum series. Our next event will be co hosted with the International Center for counterterrorism, the Hague on December 1 focusing on past present and future trends in right wing extremism, featuring Liz Pearson, Jay and Berger and Donald Holbrook. Thank you again to the US Institute of Peace to the program on violent extremism, our partners in the US government, and all members of the resolve network who make this event possible. Stay in touch on our website at resolve net.org and our Twitter at resolve net where you can find all of our publications and upcoming events. Thank you everyone, and have a great day.