{"id":27865,"date":"2022-11-18T10:38:26","date_gmt":"2022-11-18T15:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=27865"},"modified":"2022-11-18T10:38:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T15:38:28","slug":"dialogue-and-de-radicalization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=27865","title":{"rendered":"dialogue and de-radicalization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some people argue that the deep problem with US democracy is polarization. I have some doubts about that thesis.* However, let’s assume it contains at least some truth. One possible remedy is direct: recruit people from opposite sides of our political divide to engage in dialogue so that they develop empathy and perhaps discover some common ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This remedy implies a moral equivalence between the ends of the spectrum, which I cannot endorse at a time when one end is flirting with fascism. It may imply a bias toward the political center. And it asks people who are targeted by hate to participate in encounters that may be difficult or even dangerous for them. I appreciated Stanford Prof. Hakeem Jefferson’s response to an experiment that brought representative Americans together across ideological divides:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fair enough, but then how should we go about de-radicalizing people? In a report<\/a> for the Democracy Fund, Andrew Blum assembles evidence from international sources that support eight types of intervention:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Assistance to individuals who want to exit from violent-extremist groups<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Targeted outreach to individuals who are at risk of extremism<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Voluntary codes of conduct for political and community leaders and media figures<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Intergroup engagement<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Setting norms against violence in existing groups<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Peace education<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Documenting and tracking acts of political violence<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Improving police-community relations<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Number 4 on this list encompasses dialogues between people who hold strongly opposing views. Thus dialogue is one of several strategies for de-radicalization that have empirical support. Blum argues that many of these approaches should be combined in a coordinated way, and he offers examples of communities, like Medellin and Oakland, that have done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Similarly, john a. powell argues that dialogue (or more precisely, \u201cbridging\u201d) is a remedy for toxic polarization, but only if the process attends to deep inequalities. People should not be asked to talk under conditions of oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We should address all forms of violent political extremism. In the USA today, I think a large majority of the people who would meet a neutral definition of violent extremists would be right-wingers, but if there are left-wing extremists (or centrist ones), they need attention, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I encountered both sources cited above at an excellent meeting of the Kettering Foundation. See Andrew Blum (2021) The Costs of Political Violence in the United States: The Benefits of Investing in Communities, Democracy Fund; and john a. powell, Overcoming Toxic Polarization: Lessons in Effective Bridging, 40(2) Law & Ineq. 247 (2022), DOI: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.24926\/25730037.645. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    *class inversion as an alternative to the polarization thesis<\/a>; affective polarization is symmetrical<\/a>; the \u201cAmerica in One Room\u201d experiment<\/a> etc. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Some people argue that the deep problem with US democracy is polarization. I have some doubts about that thesis.* However, let’s assume it contains at least some truth. One possible remedy is direct: recruit people from opposite sides of our political divide to engage in dialogue so that they develop empathy and perhaps discover some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deliberation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27865"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27889,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27865\/revisions\/27889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}