#deradicalisation

" If someone's changed, you should forgive them or its sin (not leftist)." ok, youth pastor

What do you people think forgiveness is because it doesn't mean people are obligated to be around you. There are literal groups dedicated to deradicalisating people and have been trained to do so. Your white ass doesn't need to try to guilt other people into " forgiveness."

That is the problem with ideologues. To be an ideologue, you have to replace your entire natural worldview that is based on what you observe with some dogma, and you start seeing the world from that lens then. It's such a weakness of the human mind how easy it is to be misled. Certain frameworks and philosophies, when learnt, can really feel so true and real and they insidiously take root in every corner of your mind. You suppress your voice of reason, of truth, and only realise how bad it is when you're in too deep, when you're anxious and scared all the time because seeing the truth that once registered naturally now threatens your very sense of self. No wonder people kill themselves.

The basis of Coherence Therapy is the beliefs that traumatise you actually feel completely coherent in your own mind. They're deeply rooted with reasoning you can explain and feel with so much conviction and actually make perfect internal sense, but you're still traumatised and you only heal once you juxtapose them with empirical evidence that disconfirms them and let yourself feel that contradiction, no matter how much it hurts.

The people who are deepest in are often the ones who've built the most elaborate defences against that juxtaposition. They have explanations for every contradiction, thought-stopping clichés for every moment of doubt. They surround themselves with people who reinforce the belief system so they never have to sit alone with the disconfirming evidence. The internet makes it even worse because it keeps one busy all the time and one is never even forced to listen to what one's own mind is screaming.

Smart people are especially good at this because they can build incredibly sophisticated rationalisations. They can explain away anything, make any evidence fit their existing framework if they try hard enough. They're both the most trapped AND the most defended against escape. You can lead them to the feeling of juxtaposition, but if they're committed to suppressing rather than feeling, they'll just build better suppressors.

That's why you can't correct people with arguments. You can bring them to the feeling of cognitive dissonance between their beliefs and reality but you can't force them to make the choice of feeling that pain instead of suppressing it. Arguments stay in the intellectual mind but change happens in the emotional and somatic realm where you have to FEEL the contradiction between your model and reality. Essentially, you can take a horse to the river but you can't force it to drink.

That's why ideologues, people believing in anything that contradicts truth, are hopeless unless they choose to accept the truth. They have to see that the cost of upholding the lie is eating at them, and that it's better to accept the truth and feel all the hurt one time rather than for the rest of their lives and lose anyway.

I've fallen victim too ideology too and it was the only time I felt true despair. Unlearning all ideologies felt as if I'd been drowning for years and finally found land and air again. Now I shall always make sure not to let ideologies brainwash me again.

Video essay about the bridges between hateful feminists and right-wing women, the trend of elevating 'civil debate' over rejection and protest, the effects of deradicalisation from hate movements,... 

Hello. No idea if any of you ‘remember’ me but I do seem to have a fair few followers on here. I managed to access the login information for this account and it is safe to say this blog is dead. I denounce everything I stood for on this stupid shit. 

I’m writing this because it’s what the blog deserves. Not looking to be dramatic, not looking for sympathy, in fact I think i’ll get a bit of backlash for this but bring it on. 

The past and the present- a summary

I had this blog when I was 14, unfortunately way too young to have a social media presence (one which carried any responsibility like this one anyway). No matter what age I said I was, no matter how I portrayed myself or how you, my followers interpreted me, I was a sad young trans guy desperately hoping to look big, cool, masculine and stoic, and that manifested in the most toxic way possible. 

I’m 17 now, still very very young, and after developments in my life, especially pursuing my medical transition and becoming happy within myself, I no longer hold such toxic beliefs as I once did. I am happier with myself and no longer feel the need to sacrifice others’ dignity, respect, and unfortunately sometimes on this blog, privacy, for my own. I was a very insecure, stubborn, and ignorant teenager, who dealt with a lot of denial. I’m not blaming the way I treated people online on other factors, but of course external factors came into play. I was dealing with bullying and insecurity, with parental problems, and with loneliness and depression. I seeked some sort of community, and I wanted to push myself away from the ‘weak’ trans community (the way I viewed it at the time). I wasn’t in denial personally, with the fact that I was trans (being gay is a different story- I was in complete denial with the fact that I’m gay), more just with the way other people viewed me (I will expand on this). I could elaborate on the way in which I viewed other people and the way that projected onto my conduction online, but it is a complex and confusing story. I have completely changed my viewpoint on trans ‘discourse’, I am open minded, I am close friends with people I would have turned my ignorant nose up at years ago. I am so proud to say that I am a completely different person now. I grow every day, it seems, and I can assure that I will never return to this ignorant mindset.

Growth

With experience, I have grown too. Obviously, from 14-17 i have become more mature. I have different experiences now as well, for example, I don’t bind often at all really anymore, because its more comfortable and can sometimes make me more dysphoric to know I am binding. I’m bringing this up because I bet you back when I was active on this blog, I would’ve laughed at the more mature, tolerant me, and probably went on a tyrade about how I was a fake trans guy or less of a man for not binding. I often wonder what ‘old me’ would think of ‘new me’. Now obviously, three years isn’t a hell of a big difference, but to a 17 come 18 year old it is. I understand I am not an adult yet, but I’ve always taken pride in conducting myself with a sense of maturity and articulacy, and for this post and platform especially I feel it is appropriate.

The Truscum Mindset

Back when I ran this blog, I was in an echo chamber of like minded people, which didn’t help my ideological development. I watched youtubers like Blaire White and Kalvin Garrah, who I thought gave me a balanced, moderate, and fair opinion which is clear is not the case. Back then I would’ve scoffed at the idea of Blaire and Kalvin and other similar people as being radical or a gateway, but I urge you, if you feel you are slipping to obsession with those ideologies, to seek to widen your opinions and associations. I understand it’s a fairly niche discourse topic, but for me it opened a wider rabbit hole into the alt right. From wanting to fit into the lgbt and wider communities as a masculine male, this opened up the black hole of the alt right, I browsed (now deleted) subreddits and 4chan boards, and forums that put me in a very negative and dangerous place. If you’d like me to make a post elaborating on this, I am more than happy to, but this post is to address conservativetranny.

Denial and owning up to responsibility

Back in 2017/18, I was very much in denial of certain aspects of myself, especially my sexuality. I am gay. I thought that this was, and especially as a trans guy, a demasculating quality. I still deal with those feelings sometimes, as a lot of young gay guys do, but thankfully it does not manifest itself as toxic as it once did. I just wanted to portray myself online as how I thought I wanted to be viewed-I didn’t want to be viewed like ‘any other trans guy’. I wanted to be different, but now I can appreciate individuality and I can also embrace being trans as well.

I used to think that having alt views was the coolest thing ever, which contributed to my slip into the alt right, something on which I’ll elaborate on in later posts. I am now an advocate for deradicalisation, and being rational, truly rational. I’m also an advocate for maturity and owning up to your mistakes.

I have hurt people, especially in my personal life, throughout my time as a stupid, thoughtless immature teenager and i am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for that. I now respect the hell out of those people and unfortunately, but definitely rightfully so, they have lost their respect for me. I don’t blame them, because as I said, up until very recently I was a horrible, toxic person. With maturity, in the past half a year I have been able to own up to my mistakes and I am now taking responsibility for that. No excuses, because I was a shitty person. Of course there is a line between excuses and justification, and I hope those which are reading this can distinguish and appreciate this difference.

Self Hatred and Truscum

Back when I ran this blog, it was very easy to tell I was self hating. Everything I wrote on here, pretty much, was hateful except for the odd two posts that were about something unrelated to my ideology. I was extremely dysphoric and in a bad place when I wrote these things and certainly projected my insecurities onto others. I wanted to find a community of different thinking people that would accept me, and this community was certainly the wrong turn. I had a feeling that it was wrong at the time, but I was too naive and cowardly to own up to it and seek a way out. I kind of just naturally fell out of it, a a lot of things happened in my personal life in late 2018 that forced me out of trans discourse and into much more toxic places like the alt right and true crime fandoms, and I think I’ve only recently ‘found myself’ in the past year or so. I might make a post on self growth on the future as I intend to keep this blog to elaborate and voice my opinions on deradicalisation and highlight the importance of owning up and self awareness.

Don’t fall into the rabbithole

I’m not too acquainted with trans discourse anymore, so I’m out of the loop on this one, but I’d imagine that there’s still ‘transmed vs tucute’ ideas. Kalvin Garrah’s community comes to mind, I haven’t watched his videos ‘as a fan’, if that makes sense, for a while now but I am aware he has a large fanbase of young trans teens that were in a similar mindset to where I was back when I ran this blog. I would love for this post to reach his opposers and supporters for that matter, as a means to show them that they don’t have to fall into this cycle of hate which can be very damaging. I used to be an avid fan of Kalvin, and Blaire White, amongst others. I watched exclusively their content alone and formed my opinions around theirs. If you’re doing that now, I urge you to consider other people when you do. Think about the people like Brennan Beckwith, people who were severely impacted and hurt by hateful rhetoric. Those people are human too, and with maturity you will learn that people with different experiences and views are, at the end of the day, the same as you, and they have feelings as well .I’m going to make a post in the future about Kalvin Garrah, certainly, but maybe Blaire White as well.

Why now?

You may be wondering why this post is being made now of all times, and that is a question that has every right to be asked. I feel as if this timing is right because I finally possess the level of maturity needed to own up to my mistakes and tell you that I was wrong and it was certainly wrong to post those opinions and mistakes online for all to see, and put people in my real life on blast like I did.

I had completely forgotten about this blog, and forgot about the rude and ignorant words I had written towards the people in my real life, until chance had it that I was in contact with one of the people mentioned in this post. [https://conservativetranny.tumblr.com/post/169351517511/no-one-pretends-to-be-trans]

I’m not going to go into the nuances of the conversation we had, but it turns out they had, for a while and definitely rightfully so been hurt by the fact that I had mentioned them, by name, in this post. And while I’d of course still like to keep these people anonymous and will not sacrifice their anonymity in order to tell a story or ‘save myself’, this post is quite funny to read back on as I am good friends with the people referred to as ‘P’ and ‘Shadow’ now.

(deradicalization anon) I've already factored in short- and long-term trauma responses for both torturer and torturee, so I'm more interested in accounts of the process of deradicalization than the psychology. First-hand accounts about trauma symptoms/sources that draw from them are still welcome, though.

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The honest response is ‘not enough data’.

 But it also depends on what you mean by ‘deradicalisation’. Because I’ve seen discussions that focus on it in the sense of encouraging people to leave extremist groups but I haven’t seen it in the sense of discouraging torture specifically.

 My impression is that most of the time it isn’t seen as a priority. Remember that while some torturers are part of terrorist organisations or guerilla groups most of the time we are talking about established, mainstream organisations.

 We’re talking about the state military, the police, jails, the local hospital, schools. The bastions of acceptable mainstream society.

 Basically the last place any concerted deradicalisation program will go.

 The types of people torturers are drawn from are not typically viewed as radicals by their society. Because people whose views are seen as radical are generally screened out of military and policing organisations and those are where the majority of torturers are operating.

 My personal view based on the interviews I’ve read is that torturers can come across as racist, misogynistic, homophobic and so forth. But they often aren’t expressing hate to a degree that would seem unusual in their culture, time period and society.

 I guess part of what I’m questioning here is whether there are actually any ‘radical’ views or practices at work in a typical torture scenario.

 My impression of modern global society is that rejection of violence is a radical position. Condoning it, excusing it and participating in it are not. In fact they seem to be (mostly) accepted parts of modern life.

 Which does not make it right. The fact that a proportion of people are willing to accept torture does not change the fact that it’s a brutal and pointless exercise.

 But it does make the idea of a concerted deradicalisation program of any kind less likely. It also means that a lot of the time these conversations… aren’t necessarily being approached in the way I think you’re imagining it.

 I think it is really likely that some torturers stop without being arrested. But we can’t examine that data set. Because without a trial and a conviction you can not easily ‘prove’ those people were torturers.

 And if they’ve already stopped they’re less likely to talk about what they’ve done in the past. Partly because it could be incriminating (I imagine the mental health problems torture causes are also a factor).

 All of this makes examining them in any meaningful way really really difficult.

 Circling back a little bit, I have talked before about torturers stopping because their mental health problems become severe enough that they’re sacked. I think it’s likely that a portion of them quit because of their mental health problems.

 There may also be a much smaller group of people who participate in torture for a short time then quit whatever position they had. I think it would be within the realm of possibility.

 But I’ve never read an interview like that so I can’t say what it would be like.

 Based on the handful of cases where torturers have quit/been sacked over mental health problems I don’t think there is necessarily a straight-forward deradicalisation process.

 It’s unclear how many torturers come to reject torture. We really just don’t know.

 I can tell you that it’s possible. I have read interviews where torturers have expressed regret (albeit limited and self-centred). I’ve also read interviews where torturers said they believe torture was wrong and they accomplished nothing.

 But the thing is… some of them say they believed that while they were torturing people and it didn’t stop them. Once again this is systematic abuse by government officials we’re talking about, that is a definition of torture; the environment is the major factor over everything else.

 None of this means that I think this is a bad story idea.

 Though I would strongly recommend that you don’t have this character get useful information from torture. Torturers aren’t equipped to ‘sift through the lies and garbage’. And torture fundamentally can’t ‘extract’ useful information. (Take a look at the links for more information.)

 Having said that I get the impression what you’re more focused on here is the idea that this torturer is learning to see the ‘enemy’ as human. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that idea.

 I think we should tell stories about people leaving these kinds of toxic environments and rejecting violence. Even if we’re not quite sure what the reality of that looks like.

 Stories are (or can be) about exploring human nature. I don’t see any harm in you exploring what you think this kind of character arc would look like. In ten years we might have more research. And it might say you were wrong, it might say you were right. But you were working with what you could access at the time.

 The most recent major piece of research I’m aware of on torturers is this book by Sironi. It’s in French. No there isn’t a translation. (I’m working on getting a translation for myself but legally speaking I would not be able to share it.)

 Before that… you basically have to go back to Fanon’s examination of two torturers in 1965 The Wretched of the Earth.

 As always Rejali is a useful source. But torturers aren’t his sole focus.

 There are interviews, like this one, with torturers. But it can be hard to draw conclusions from these. Partly because they’re just talking to one person so they may not be typical. Partly because the interviewers are often going into the situation with a lot of assumptions that colour the piece.

 I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a more definite answer.

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New Video: EP5 • Spotlight – Sufism: A Natural Antidote to Extremism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez88ITGr-4U

The fifth episode of the Tuesday Spotlight with Reverend Steve Bell continues on with the vast subject of Sufism: A Natural Antidote to Extremism.

Returning to the panel are Burhan Naqvi, a criminology student, Imran Gohar of the Universal Sufi Order. Imran Mati, who has served in the Pakistan Army, also gives his unique perspective on this crucial topic.

On this show, Reverend Steve Bell and his guests highlight different issues and how to tackle them in light of Sufism.