Episode 19: Radicalisation - how minds go to extremes, and how to turn them back
Rafael Behr talks to the cognitive scientist and radicalisation expert Nafees Hamid about what makes extremists tick and how to change their minds.
Rafael Behr talks to the cognitive scientist and radicalisation expert Nafees Hamid about what makes extremists tick and how to change their minds.
Rafael Behr talks to Cognitive Scientist of Political Violence, Nafees Hamid, about what makes extremists tick and how to change their minds.
Nafees discusses the conditions that push people towards extremist ideologies and whether a martyr's mind is wired differently to the rest of us.
Along the way, Rafael and Nafees explore identity, sacred values, devoted actors, and how extremists can be walked back from acts of violence.
Nafees Hamid is a Fellow at ARTIS International (https://artisinternational.org) and an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (https://icct.nl) in The Hague.
His research focuses on the psychology of radicalisation and social fragmentation in Western countries.
His methods include ethnographic interviews, survey studies, social network analysis, and psychology and neuroscience experiments with mostly Western members of extremist organisations, their friends and family, supporters of such networks, and the general communities from where they originate.
This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm
Rafael Behr is a political columnist for the Guardian. He is a former Political Editor for the New Statesman, Chief Leader Writer and Online Editor for The Observer, a business news reporter for BBC online and a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, based in the Baltic region and Russia. Rafael is a regular contributor to Prospect Magazine, a guest on BBC and Sky News and a speaker at UK think tanks. His book, Politics, A Survivor’s Guide, is published by Atlantic. He hosts the Politics on the Couch podcast. Before becoming a journalist, Rafael was a political risk analyst covering countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He studied modern languages Merton College, Oxford and took a Master’s degree in Russian Studies at the School for Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He lives in Brighton with his family. He plays the guitar and harmonica, sometimes simultaneously, not always melodiously.
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