Online hate groups have the perfect tools for radicalizing and recruiting your teen.
–––
Our nation is still in shock in the wake of the murder of nine people at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina Wednesday by 21 year-old Dylann Roof. Based on the gunman’s comment during the shooting, “You rape our women. And you’re taking over our country. You have to go,” this shooting is clearly a hate crime.
Although there little information yet available about what led to this young man’s murderous hate, he has been photographed wearing slogans characteristic of white supremacy hate groups. Anybody who has spent time on the Internet knows that you only have to go to your nearest keyboard to see frightening evidence of flourishing hate and racism.
The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are currently 784 known hate groups operating in the United States alone, a 30% increase since 2000. When one considers that the Internet is world wide, the potential for online hate is staggering. Because of an immature self-identity and limited experience and problem solving skills, youth are particularly susceptible to influence and are the most common perpetrators of hate crimes.
Internet platforms are the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control.
|
The most frightening aspect of today’s online recruitment techniques is that they’re so sophisticated. No longer do hate groups and cults have to rely on interpersonal contact, newsletters, and rallies for recruitment. Now potential members can be groomed slowly and deceptively from the illusory safety of their bedroom. Websites and social media publicity is easy to design and inexpensive, allowing big reach and total control over content. Internet platforms are the perfect tool for grooming, behavioral manipulation, and coercive thought control. By the time a teen is ready to pack their suitcase to join the group, they have been expertly brainwashed over months to adopt a radicalized web of beliefs.
It’s particularly frightening for a parent to consider how easy it would be for their confused or angry teen to get radicalized and recruited. As a clinical psychologist I can attest to the fact that teens often have online lives that would shock or horrify their parents. There is no better day than today to teach resilience.
How might a parent inoculate their teen from this kind of susceptibility?
- Filter and block access to inappropriate sites for younger teens (which we all know is easier said than done.)
- Provide emotional safety and educationally enriched and diverse experiences to decrease susceptibility due to fear, lack of experience, and overly simplistic thinking.
- Teach your kids how to recognize signs of online grooming and brainwashing.
- Stay engaged and aware of your kids’ off- and online activity and build assertiveness and reasoning skills with increasing challenge over time. Encourage your kids to think for themselves and research opposing positions.
Parental supervision is increasingly more challenging due to unregulated availability of online information and easy access to strangers on the Internet. GetKidsInternetSafe (GKIS) was designed to offer three types of free content to help parents close Internet risk gaps. These include tips on how to powerfully connect with your kids so you are their go-to person when they need help, resources and strategies for sensible filtering and monitoring. And, most important in the context of this article, GKIS offers strategies to maintain safety by educating kids about Internet risks and helping them build protective assertiveness and reasoning skills.
In service of building awareness, what should kids and teens look for in order to identify hate group and cult recruitment strategies?
- Sensational messaging based on deception and false facts that trigger intrigue, suspicion, and paranoia (e.g., “Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. was not a legitimate reverend?”)
- Attempts to isolate the subject by exploiting emotional vulnerabilities and destabilizing friend and family support
- This isolation starts with probes that assess susceptibility (e.g., “Where is your computer?” “Are you alone?”) and attempts to validate emotion and join (“I know what that feels like.” “You can trust me.”).
- Once the victim shows interest and openness, the recruiter will start to challenge their belief system and attack the credibility of family and friends. If the recruiter can tap into fear and insecurity, they can then start to target blame (e.g., “Do your parents overlook and dismiss you?” “Do you feel lonely and misunderstood?” “If they loved you, they would not control you like they do.”).
- Promise of a cure for emotional pain in the form of service and secret sanctuary (secret intimacy, romantic unconditional love, belonging to a community, wealth, fame, power over others, escape, a spiritual “answer,” and protection)
- Intense unrelenting pressure to build trust and a sense of belonging
- Online blogs are highly effective to nurture belief change with long narratives dispersed overtime that serve to form cyber communities bonded by belonging, shared values and practices, and eventually a fierce sense of elitism and pride.
- The goal is to tempt subjects into slowly sacrificing free will and becoming increasingly reliant on the group to do their thinking for them.
- Hate groups thrive through members who are willing to hop on a radical bandwagon based on personal ideologies rather than factual or scientific evidence and will actively cyber bully or censor members who don’t agree with their message.
- Teach your child how to recognize confrontational, combative, and abusive comment threads as well as exploitive threats (“If you don’t, I’ll show your friends and family the texts and pictures you’ve sent me.”).
- It’s not only the teens who have a high desire to please others who are susceptible, bold teens, convinced they are too tough to influence, also fall victim. Kids who feel their parents are too intrusive or controlling may also rebel, suggesting that authoritative rather than authoritarian or permissive parenting strategies are best. The truth is, nobody is safe from the charm of a skilled recruiter.
- Marketing techniques and products designed to be attractive to targeted population segments (like youth and women)
- Inducing guilt by providing offers of friendship and gifts to develop a sense of reciprocity right from the beginning leaves subjects feeling that they owe the recruiter and must give back.
- Hyped meetings, branding, and merchandizing support the power and exclusivity of the group (e.g., slogans, symbols, colors, mascots, music, video games, and customized slang).
- Tests of loyalty and intimidation, inducing guilt for opposition in order to achieve blind obedience (e.g., “We have direct authority from a divine power.”)
- Invitations and offers for travel
◊♦◊
When I was a little girl, I was shy and eager to please. As a tween, my dad would say sensational (and even offensive) comments to provoke me into argument. We would then engage in heated debates littered with respectful confrontation and presentation of evidence. It wasn’t until I was much older when I realized that he was teaching me assertiveness in the face of authority. Although he required obedience, he made it clear that blind obedience was never acceptable and provided me a safe place to experiment with critical thinking and speak up with questions and complaints. Most importantly, he taught me that there is no shame in standing up for what’s right and in risking failure. That is the kind of loving, fun, and safe training ground every child needs to build resilience.
If you are thinking only older teens are susceptible to online recruitment, think again. Many hate group websites include a kids’ page with coloring pages, puzzles, animated mascots, videos, and downloadable music and video games (sometimes with racially intolerant content like torturing or hunting the target populations of their hate) for early grooming.
It is not unusual for teens to launch into a quest for individual identity, even if it means joining somebody else’s civil war.
|
Perhaps you’re thinking government surveillance and regulation will keep your family safe? Unfortunately regulation to block hateful cyberconduct is only in its infancy. It is not unusual for teens to launch into a quest for individual identity, even if it means joining somebody else’s civil war. Rolling Stone recently wrote of three Muslim teens who were taken into custody at the airport on their way to join ISIS after a long period of online grooming, all without their parents’ awareness. Currently it is impossible to know how many young people have been radicalized through Internet content, and those prosecuted are protected by sealed records due to minor status.
With the developmentally healthy teen spirit of idealism, omnipotence, and egocentrism, our youth will always be at the forefront of the fight for social justice. Teens seek simple answers in a confusingly nuanced world. It’s important not to dismiss their powerful need for spiritual fulfillment, meaning, and a sense of belonging. Furthermore, just as too much parental pressure for academic and athletic perfection can backfire and lead teens to seek promises of solace, so can a lack of authority or structure.
As parents, our best hope that burgeoning ideals do not lead to danger is to provide our teens with a loving, enriched, and protected environment where they don’t fear marginalization and failure. If we accept our children through their search for independence and identity, they’re less likely to seek the mentorship of dangerous others. Love and safety builds resilience, not oppression and lectures. Love to the families and friends in Charleston who are hurting today from a horrifying crime. And strength to all the parents out there to raise citizens that will make this world a better place full of love instead of misguided hate.
–––
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetYourKidsInternetSafe.
Onward to More Awesome Parenting,
Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com
Image courtesy of the author
I tend to agree as far as recognizing that the child is in a bad situation and should get out. I can see Dr. Bennett’s point too. If you’re suggesting that you can out con the con man, that’s a game you’re almost always going to lose. It’s better not to play the game.
@ Rob…I agree with your view. It is the blocking and filtering vs educating children that gets them in trouble and makes them easy targets.
A book burning is a book burning, regardless of the how’s and why’s.
It’s within a parent’s rights to censor, not the government’s.
Ah ha! There’s your point. Thank you Tim for helping Rob focus on an issue instead of vilifying my character. Rob, I think your point about over controlling and limiting access to information to kids is legitimate. If you read the article, it is clear that I am encouraging parents to discuss content with their kids and teach skills through education, with appropriate developmental discretion. Moderate parenting empowers the child and builds resilience, the opposite of tyranny and cult indoctrination. Parenting with extremist over control or permissiveness is asking for trouble. Eight year olds eating their cereal to hardcore online… Read more »
If one is truly parenting (as in directly, and not by proxy), the kids’ exposure to “that kind of content” will be digested and rejected by the nature of the child’s character. I can immerse my kids in KKK-type content all day long. At the end of the day, their conclusion will be “wow! those haters are truly messed-up.” If you are not raising children with the power of discernment and a good heart, then yes, you Do in fact need to filter their environment. But to imply that internet content is going to make a child gay, turn him… Read more »
Thanks for clarifying, Rob. I’m afraid the internet is in fact persuasive on impressionable minds, however. Youth have always been impressionable. And parents have always feared what might happen to their kids when they come across some persuasive (yet disagreeable) influence. Socrates was executed for leading Greek youth astray–for teaching there wasn’t a Pantheon of gods, of all things! Yet today we hail him as one of the greatest teachers in the history of the world, a martyr of sorts (for liberal mindedness?). Anyway, so I’m thinking Tracy’s points still stand. It’s within a loving parent’s rights to place boundaries… Read more »
@ Rob
I think part of it is we already put our kids in groups. Did you raise her Catholic then maybe abortion is a sin? What about liberal / progressive then my body my choice? Each group even has it’s own fancy slogans. Some are more socially acceptable than others.
So, Rob, I’m not completely tracking. How does a call to provide our teens with loving parenting (Tracy’s “unfounded” conclusion) fan the flames of a Third-Reich mentality? Or are you suggesting that Tracy’s observations about the internet’s abilities to propagate a Third-Reich mentality are bogus?
Love is the way forward, Rob, not hate. Tracy seems to have that figured out.
they block my replies
Rob, I appreciate the intensity of your emotional response to my article, despite the level of contempt you seem to have toward its writer. I agree with you that this content is designed to alarm the reader. It was intended. Often times it’s easier for parents to bury our heads or blame others for misfortune, easier to think that only the deserving or vulnerable will stumble into trouble online. It’s the Internet’s fault, the kids’ fault, the parents’ fault. But the truth is all teens have vulnerability to online influence, especially if it’s expertly crafted and executed secretly over a… Read more »
People like you are frightening in your approach to crisis. You go seeking a monster in everyone other than the actual monster. You think that tearing-down the things and people you don’t understand — isolating them, vilifying them, will somehow magically create your desired outcome. The Third Reich, Mao’s China and The USSR were all built upon your very mentality and philosophy as the mortar to the walls of hate. Your generalizations and leaps to unfounded conclusions do nothing short of fanning the flames of misunderstanding after you dump the gas on the issue. Your assumed premisses belong nowhere beyond… Read more »