Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report

Interesting reading and good that behind the huff-and-puff of government politicking, there is some serious work:

Of all the approaches being explored by the federal government to prevent radicalization, the one showing the most promise is community outreach and engaging young people in candid conversations about violent extremism, newly released documents suggest.

However, the briefing documents, obtained by the National Post through access-to-information legislation, also point to the need for public safety officials to be careful to choose trusted community leaders as partners in prevention.

“Reaching out to the wrong people — self-styled leaders and spokesmen who have no real credibility — can exacerbate the very tensions that (prevention) strategies are trying to alleviate,” one of the documents states.

Over the past year, public safety officials have visited cities in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, to talk to young people, aged 17 to 30. Participants at the town hall meetings are shown ripped-from-the-headlines narratives depicting radicalized Muslims or converts, right-wing extremists, Sikh extremists or “eco-terrorists,” then they are asked to discuss what could have been done to intervene.

Presented in the first person and in the present tense for maximum effect, the case studies have generated an enthusiastic response from the 500 youth who have taken part.

“Often, audience members expressed knowing someone ‘just like’ the characters from the narratives,” according to the briefing notes prepared by Public Safety Canada last fall.

Most participants said they walked away from the sessions “better able to recognize the signs someone is going down the wrong path.”

But whatever form community outreach takes, it must not be bogged down by complicated legal jargon, the Canadian documents emphasize.

“Material that appears to have been prepared by middle-aged bureaucrats will almost certainly fail to engage.”

The briefing notes indicated other narratives about Buddhist and Israeli extremists were being developed, but a government source said Wednesday those ideas were dropped because they were not deemed to be as relevant.

Careful community outreach most promising means to counter extremism: government report