This filmmaker spent months interviewing neo-Nazis and jihadists. Here's what she learned.

[brooklynite]

Vox

What’s the best way to fight racism and extremism?

The impulse to dismiss extremists as unreachable fanatics is strong and at times justifiable. But perhaps it’s not always the most effective means of combating them. Deeyah Khan, a journalist and filmmaker, has decided to engage them directly as human beings.

In two documentary films, White Right: Meeting the Enemy and Jihad: A Story of the Others (both of which are currently streaming on Netflix), Khan sits down with white supremacists and jihadists (respectively) and tries to understand what’s really motivating them. It’s an attempt to cut through the rhetoric and the ideological trappings and find out why so many young men — and yes, it’s primarily young men — are drawn to extremist movements.

The results are stunning. At the beginning of White Right, for example, she says to Jared Taylor, a prominent white supremacist, “I am the daughter of immigrants. I am a Muslim. I am a feminist. I am a lefty liberal. And what I want to ask you is: Am I your enemy?” Taylor is an old hardliner and so he doesn’t buckle, but Khan’s interactions with other white supremacists go in surprising directions, and you learn quite a bit about who these people really are.

[Johnny2X2X]

1. Amazing

Wow. I think the filmmaker touched on what the cause of today's extremism is, that is the lack of purpose many people feel in their lives.

[marylandblue]

2. That's why "they are all just racists" meme is so wrong.

They aren't JUST racists, they are human beings who went down a dark path for certain reasons. If all we do is condemn them without giving them a path out of the darkness, they will never get out.

[Locrian]

3. people like to believe they are "special"

When in reality they are not really (statistically) all that different from everyone else.
People tend to behave the same way in the same situation - it's the SYSTEM that we need to deal with.

[MountCleaners]

4. I once watched a documentary about a former skinhead

He had no stable, loving family life. And he looked up to this one guy who took him in. That man was a Nazi. And so the kid believed a lot of nonsense about Jewish people. At some point, when he became an adult, he realized that he never really knew any Jewish people. He grew up in a rural place where there weren't many Jews. Everything he had thought about Jewish people he had received from this "mentor" of his.

Hate groups recruit kids from rough backgrounds and tell them that their circumstances are due to Jews, immigrants, or POC. That's how it starts - these white supremacists provide community. I imagine it's the same for Jihadists.

[maxsolomon]

5. And at heart, it's the same ideology.

MY group is under threat; we must defend ourselves.

Also of note: the 3 Monotheisms are essentially the same religion.