 Good morning How's it going? My name is John Horgan. Thank you so much USIP and resolve Network for bringing me back We spoke a few months ago, and if I recall correctly used you asked me to Talk about everything. I think people ought to know about terrorist psychology and reset the priorities in seven minutes No problem. Here we go I Really thought carefully about this idea of resetting priorities and what it means and you know Because it's always a danger of of of saying well Why don't we just cast it all aside and move on and and and you know try to tell a different story? I think there's a great danger in that so it is critical to take a very careful look at where we've come from and to Get a sense of what we have achieved There are three major themes that I think have have have really cropped up time and time and time again in The last 50 years of research on terrorist psychology 48 years to be precise What do terrorists have in common? broadly What distinguishes them from? people who don't engage in terrorism and far more recently So what does all of that mean is There enough for us to pull from what we know about those questions so far For us to use that knowledge in any way that is realistic and Actionable and it's that final question that I really want to focus on for for most of what I want to present today This of course has been our bugbearer our obsession for the past 15 years Lots of definitions out there, but by and large this word refers to the process whereby people Change to such an extent that they are willing to become involved in Violent extremism Perhaps one of the most Concise if not elegant Summations of what we know from that research came from our Colleagues just around the corner from here at George Washington University's program on extremism and this quote really is Significant to me for a few reasons It's not just because it happens to support my own thesis But they say the profiles differ widely in race age social class education and family background And then here comes the understatement their motivations are equally diverse and defy easy analysis The significance of that quote for me is that it doesn't if this is not about terrorists writ large. It's not about Making the statement to apply to the variety of different kinds of groups out there this assertion Seamus and his colleagues were pointing to is evident even in Extremists who wanted to join ISIS from North America This diversity and complexity It is What we have found I've spoken to policy makers some policy makers Who feel that that this kind of statement? If it is an accurate reflection is a stunning indictment of us in the academic world Having not really made a lot of progress if that's the outcome then wow The other view is that well That's a very naive statement because the other view is no this is the outcome of some of the best research We have out there This is the reality and we just can't shy away from it. It is diverse It is complex that is the nature of terrorism and perhaps the true challenge then is to figure out How we channel that complexity into solutions? Easy peasy right Radicalization remains a hard problem for two reasons now I'm not the first person to point this out Heidi Ellis new I'm Ibu Hanna and a whole bunch of radicalization scholars have been here before Multifinality and equifinality aren't just two wonderful words to casually throw into dinner conversation every now and again But if you want to quickly quickly explain why radicalization it will always be a hard problem Use these two concepts. Okay The first multi-finality is where one factor can lead to several outcomes All of you study radicalization will know what I'm talking about here We're all worried about exposure to violent extremist content and what it might mean Yes, it might be a factor in leading someone down the road to terrorism unquestionably It also might lead to protest it also might lead to mobilizing someone into taking action against this kind of content It might lead to self-harm. It might lead to multiple different outcomes The second issue it might seem similar, but there's a key difference here And that's when the same outcome can come from multiple predictors And let's not even talk about terrorism for a second Let's talk about having radical views or having extremist views What are all of the kinds of things that might factor into that and fuel that? it is everything from Following a certain Twitter account to religious indoctrination to foreign occupation to you name it I Firmly believe that we are in the golden age of terrorism research I think we have come so far in the last 20 years that we are no longer searching for the drivers of Anti-extremism we have all of the pieces of the puzzle in front of us. We just don't know how they all fit together One of the greatest challenges for us in the research world is to figure out the nature of that sequence the sequence of radicalization And how those bits work Also faced with the dilemma that the sequence is not going to work The same way for every single person even within the same group It's far easier to answer the question of what terrorists have in common The problem here and to go back to a Michael and JM's presentation at the beginning is that we get so caught up in the Ideology the content of the ideology that we missed the bigger picture here. I Don't care if you are a violent incel a member of a white nationalist extremist group ISIS al-Qaeda even some of the old the Red Army faction the IRA. This is what you have in common There is genuine legitimate Moral outrage at some injustice perceived or otherwise. It doesn't really make any difference in the eye of the believer So I'm you this this this should not be This should not be new to you Terrorists have to work hard to convince themselves and others that what they're doing is just it's necessary and it's urgent this is one of the Powerful features of ideology as a mobilizing power and I mean all kinds of ideologies. They provide an urgency to action talk of imminent invasion is very powerful in terms of Convincing someone that if we don't act now it will be too late and and and your way of life will be fundamentally at risk And the one thing that all terrorists have in common They all believe that their actions will help bring around or bring about a better future Again, this is this is across the spectrum of groups for for all of the time I've been studying terrorism I have been loathe to think about a sort of an overarching grand theory of terrorism But I think if we strip away the ideologies the content of the ideology We're onto something far more meaningful Now resetting priorities Well, look the reality is different forms of terrorism are going to come and go They go up they go down whatever metaphor whatever analogy waves or something else we want to use that's not going to change I'm not so naive as to think that especially in the policy world that there aren't going to be discussions around well What do we call our response? What do we what? How do we characterize our responses? Let's call it CVE. Well, let's not call it CVE. Let's call it something else now We'll call it perhaps PVE Perhaps we'll call it something else now again, you know terrorism to an academic. It doesn't really matter We're still going to have to address these issues. We're still going to have to come up with actionable solutions Where I think we really ought to be going is this and this is a this is uncomfortable ground for an academic because we're not used to I'm no shame in saying this. We're not used to speaking to policymakers. We are especially uncomfortable at offering Perfect information and in perfect knowledge if we think it's going to be used in some way And I think that's the thing that we struggle with and I think that that is one of the things We're going to have to somehow address through uncomfortable, but necessary and overdue conversations This issue of the radicalization process and its sequencing I mean, I don't know how long it's going to take us to crack that if at all, but we can't wait until we do So the question is what do we do in the meantime? I think it is well within our grasp to identify Intervention stages based on what current knowledge and and tools we have at our disposal a few years ago with some funding from the National Institute of Justice my colleague Mike, Mick Williams, and I found that those best Position to spot the signs of growing radicalization weren't Religious scholars. They weren't parents. They weren't teachers. They were the peers of people themselves So we spent two years talking to those peers to try to figure out well if your best position Why aren't you doing anything about it? And we found that well They're actually very very people are peers are very very reluctant to report concerns about radicalization. I Unfairly thought it was because well, maybe they just maybe they just hate cops Maybe they just hate law enforcement Wasn't that at all the overarching reality was that this was the reason for this bystander effect had to do with fear Now that to me seems to be a non ideological bipartisan grounds for thinking about CVE that addresses the problem in a far more practical way Then perhaps we have been alluding to in recent times And just a simple example that I just put out there to say that sometimes we do lose focus What we actually can do so thinking about Anonymous convenient solutions to reporting to reporting concerns But here's what I want to really leave you with today I'm all for resetting priorities. Don't get me wrong But before I simply you know give you a shopping list of look here's all the things I would really love to see funded in terrorism research for the next five ten years. I can do that trust me These are some of the bigger issues that I think are going to pose us pose much much bigger problems for us in the immediate future And I mean short to medium-term future I I'm going to disagree with my learning colleagues from this morning I see very little evidence that we're taking prevention effort seriously at all Certainly domestically. I think we're so far behind. We don't even know it We are in the midst of not just a national Epidemic of extreme right-wing Violence, this is we're seeing a global resurgence in with this And I don't think we have any clue of just how insidious this really is. I mean present company excluded, of course But this is this is not something that's going to go away This is something that is is is serious on levels that I don't think we have really grappled with yet There is decreasing Public faith in both government solutions to this and in scientific answers People don't want to hear that it's complex. I Can't tell I can't give you any other story other than it's complex because this is this is what I do Might mean that I need to go off and find a different line of work, but I can't Simplify the radicalization process in any other way It is complex and and that's the reality of it We're seeing increased polarization and nonviolent radicalization. I mean this is not again This is this is this is surely not news to you and more worryingly We are seeing a return to simplistic ways of thinking about terrorism So the question is what are we going to do about it? I'm going to I know I'm out of time I'm going to finish with what I started with I think terrorism research has never been in better shape There's a debate a number of years ago in academic circles It sort of seeped out a little bit about you know, whether it we've gone stagnant or not I completely disagree with that theory. I think it is better than ever before The evidence the evidence base is better. The quality of data is far far better than we've ever seen The question is now how do we move that research imperfect as it might be? Interactionable knowledge. I think that is the challenge Before us. Thank you so much