Lucinda Garthwaite, ILI Director

As I write this, it’s days away from the end of a horribly violent year.  Sometimes, when I’m quiet, it seems as if I can hear a million hearts breaking. I imagine hundreds of seeds of retribution planted with each friendship and family shattered by violence. I hear and read story after story of lives reduced to endless grief weighted down by despair, with hardly a sliver of room for joy.

And I think, all this heartbreak and despair, all this retribution - for what?  And what’s to be done about it?

There are glimpses of answers to be found in the global work of countering violent extremism. CVE, as it’s known among its practitioners, is active in both government and non-governmental initiatives, in grassroots activism, and in research.

That research indicates, contrary to much conventional wisdom, that socio-economic conditions do not reliably push people to extremist violence. Neither does religion. Factors like abuse, trauma, and discrimination can leave individuals more vulnerable to recruitment to extremism, but they do not cause it.

What does drive extremist violence, globally and domestically, is perceived existential threat.

Researcher Tamara Kharroub writes, “The most recurring and robust theme in the accounts of those who join extremist violent groups seems to be alienation, marginalization, group-based injustices, and persecution.”   People join extremist groups because they feel unsafe, because they believe that some people would have them gone. Often that belief is based on unassailable evidence, historical and current.  Sometimes it’s rooted in insecurity caused by changing societal roles and norms. Throughout human history those who seek power have recruited the fearful to violence on their behalf.

I could go on for pages with recent research and historical evidence that when people believe others would have them gone, they are prone to horrible violence.

And yet daily I hear cries of distain for violence, and condemnation of those who commit it, from the same people who indulge in bigotry against those with whom they disagree, and the naked wish that some groups of people would just disappear. 

That is, as my good friend and colleague Elizabeth Minnich might say, nonsense.

And it’s dangerous nonsense. Disastrous, even, insofar as it affirms existential fear and strengthens the hands of those who manipulate it.

Uncovering this nonsense provides an opening though.  I hang great hope on this, because it’s not that hard to gather the lessons of countering global extremism, along with the research of many other fields, and the aggregate wisdom of changemakers through the ages, and replace the nonsense with effective action.

Anyone can integrate compassion, accountability, curiosity, grace, and steadiness into their daily practice, and there’s strong evidence that these behaviors strengthen relationship, counter alienation, and both real and perceived marginalization.

There’s plenty of evidence that restorative and responsive relationship can allay the existential fear that drives much of political action against inclusive school policy and curriculum.

There’s plenty of evidence that inviting behavioral change and systems building, rather than requiring adherence to particular ideologies, can profoundly shift organizational culture so more people thrive, without inflaming existential fear.

There is not a lot I can do to stem the tide of extremist violence in the world at large, but I can more intentionally align my own behavior with the possibility of a more peaceful world in which more people thrive. Along with my colleagues, I can deepen the impact of our work in schools, communities, and organizations.  I can write these reflections, and trust that our thinking together will support readers’ work in their circles of change.

So in the coming year, when I hear another million hearts break, watch more seeds of retribution sown, and witness unbearable grief, I’ll drag hope from those ashes, and I will not succumb to despair.