Important new online resources aimed at tackling extremism and disinformation in the community have launched in Western Australia.
Created by Curtin Extremism Research Network (CERN) with funding from the U.S. Consulate General Perth and Curtin University’s Faculty of Humanities, the free learning modules provide awareness training to help community and business leaders, educators, law enforcement and young people understand and address the challenges posed by the growing threat of extremism.
The modules feature five 15–25-minute audio episodes that explain the contemporary context of extremism and provide practical tips for people to identify and manage situations involving extremist behaviour.
The modules also include teaching slides and reading lists for participants to learn more about the topics, including conspiracy theory, disinformation, racism and the manosphere.
Community access to accurate information is vital
CERN Co-Director Dr Ben Rich says it is increasingly important for the community to have access to open-sourced materials addressing extremism and disinformation, which pose a threat to the safety and cohesion of our society.
“Many people dealing with these issues find themselves feeling isolated and without guidance or support. Our goal is to ensure they have resources to draw upon that help them better understand and respond to situations,” Dr Rich says.
“Whether it be conspiracy sentiment, racial and religious extremism or the growth of online misogyny, it is important for community members to understand where these issues are coming from and know how to respond to this evolving challenge.”
Data shows a societal shift to extremist beliefs
Dr Rich told EducationDaily there is “a veritable deluge of data, expert testimonials, and practitioner accounts out there – all indicating a societal shift towards growing extremist attitudes and concerning amounts of political polarisation”.
“This tracks with anecdotal evidence we at CERN have seen from our engagement with numerous stakeholders and government departments here in WA,” he says.
“What used to be primarily the realm of academic debate has very much shifted to being the day-to-day experience of many regular individuals – teachers, business leaders, family members, the list goes on.”
Teenage boys who feel alienated are at risk
Dr Rich told EducationDaily that, when it comes to concerns around specific age groups or demographics of young people in Australia who were proving more at risk of succumbing to the dangers of absorbing disinformation, “there is a real concern around teenage, impressionable boys who are increasingly feeling pessimistic about their future”.
‘We are living in a deeply uncertain time in which we are seeing some massive transformations, be it climate change, growing social isolation and alienation, economic uncertainty, artificial intelligence, and the reconceptualisation of certain ‘hard truths’ like gender and identity,” Dr Rich says.
“Young men seem to be particularly affected by this and the simplifying narratives offered by many extremist world views can act as a kind of cure all, providing a sense of certainty, belonging, purpose and, most importantly, a villain behind all of the perceived ills.”
Watching out for warning signs
Dr Rich says the resources were developed through CERN’s research into the deeper social, political and economic factors that “have led us to the current situation, rather than just viewing the problem from a counterterrorism and national security perspective”.
Watching out for warning signs can be “tricky” he told EducationDaily, “because youth are always going to want to test boundaries, push against what is acceptable and act irreverently”.
“I certainly expressed plenty of attitudes and positions that today I would find pretty insufferable,” he says.
“First and foremost, we need to disabuse ourselves of a tendency to catastrophise. Just because something expressed makes us uncomfortable, doesn’t necessarily mean the individual has fallen into these spaces. At a broad level, however, when we start to see major, consistent shifts in social behaviour – especially social withdrawal, combined with the expression of attitudes prevalent in some of these extremist milieus – we may need to start thinking about how to engage in positive, empathetic interventions that seek to provide targeted, needs-based support.”
Engaging in conversation matters
For parents and educators who believe young people are succumbing to misinformation-driven beliefs and ideologies, Dr Rich says that, as much as possible, adults should “try to engage in a way that makes the person feel seen and recognised”.
“A knee-jerk tendency when dealing with racial or misogynistic attitudes is to immediately shout down the individual expressing them. It’s a natural reaction and many of us will default to this – quite rightfully. At the same time, however, many of the stories around these same ideas are inseparable from a grievance narrative that emphasises the victimised nature of the believer,” he told EducationDaily.
“Simply telling them how wrong/bad they are is unlikely to get them to give up such attitudes – instead, confirming the narrative and further getting them to buckle down. A strategy that focuses on empathy, seeking to both understand what the conditions surrounding the individual are that led to believe in the first place (a break-up, bullying, losing a job, etc, etc), as well as one that humanises the target of their ire, is likely to produce far more sustainable and positive results in the long run.”
Educational package offers deeper understanding
The goal of the CERN team, he says, is to create an educational package that offers everyday individuals access to a deeper understanding of the various extremist ideas and ideologies that are floating around at the moment – including their origins and the conditions that have led them to be so appealing.
“The idea is that this will help them 1) Be able to recognise them when first encountered, 2) understand the context that they have emerged from and why they might appeal to a person, and 3) offer some simple techniques and strategies one might adopt in trying to push back against them, be that in the workplace, the classroom or the home,” Dr Rich told EducationDaily.
“We don’t claim this will be a silver bullet, but it’s our hope that they will give the average citizen a bit more confidence and support in confronting the wider climate of extremism we see growing every day.”
The creep of extremism cannot be ignored
Fundamentally, Dr Rich says he views this current challenge as one of public health.
“I think the social unrest that occurred during COVID was a real wake-up call for a lot of people, in understanding the impacts of these issues when they go unaddressed for prolonged periods,” he told EducationDaily.
“The reality is that decades of political, economic and social misgovernance and exploitation – and the alienation this has engendered – have served to seriously weaken our shared communal bonds and our agreed-upon reality.”
In the growing cracks of that edifice, Dr Rich says “it’s natural” that extremist ideas and ideologies which fundamentally propose to smash the current system will gain traction.
“When times are OK we can kind of get away with ignoring the implications of this, but during times of crisis, the reality can set in,” he told EducationDaily.
“COVID, for all its challenges, was a relatively mild catastrophe in the grand scheme of things. The thing that keeps me awake at night is the idea of a much more intense pandemic, or a climate-induced crisis that impacts food stocks. During those scenarios you need a society that can effectively pull together, work collectively, and fundamentally trust one another. We’ve got a long ways to go in building that back up.”
The quest for a brighter prospect
At the local level, Dr Rich believes there needs to be more investment in “needs-based approaches that can really calibrate themselves to the individual”.
“Bureaucracies and institutions absolutely love one-size-fits-all models, but we’ve seen time and time again that these simply don’t work, especially in our hyper-individualised societies,” he says.
At a broader level, creating a brighter prospect, he told EducationDaily, needs to be about much more than simply competing against everyone else for diminishing resources.
“Unless we start to take this broader structural seriously and start acting more decisively, counter-extremism initiatives like ours will be contending against an endless hydra.”
