How to counteract hate speech?
How to help someone out of extremism or cult-like groups?
How do you clean up your house before teaching others about democracy?
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| Opening of anew highway bridge in Denmark: Only for pedestrians and runners on the first day |
1.
How to counteract hate speech?
A courageous answer is given by the Danish former member of parliament Özlem Cekic in a TED talk called "Why I drink coffee with people who send me hate emails".
2.
How to help someone out of extremism or cult-like groups?
Both research and many people's practical experience show that the most important thing is that there is dialogue between the individual inside the cult or extremist group and someone outside. Without contact with anyone outside, the isolation becomes total and the group feeds off its internal beliefs even more so.
Nafees Hamid, who researches extremism, writes that the best thing you can do if you know someone who is - or is about to become radicalized - is to stay in touch even if you may experience through several years that the radical views are not up for discussion. One day, your contact may be the way out of radicalization.
Link to Nafees Hamid´s article
3.
How do you clean up your own house) before teaching others about democracy?
There is a need for regular review of the actually functioning rules for communication in contexts in which you are involved. A dialogue can lead you to opening your eyes to something that you have to deal with. At a school where I worked, such a review resulted in a new rule called: "No more eyes turned up to heaven when colleagues you disagree with speak, because here we are always listening and arguing!"
Another example is a new initiative - called a democratic initiative - from all political youth departments in political parties in Denmark (11) from the far right to the far left. These basic values are all under the headline …
"Let us clean up our own house before we teach other countries about democracy”
The agreed set of values goes as follows:
“Five prerequisites for democracies to continue to thrive:
1. Cross-political respect between the parties
2. An open and welcoming public debate with respect for young people
3. Democracy is something we do every day
4. The understanding of the influence of each voice
5. Politics is not just about winning and getting enough votes - it is about developing society and democracy."
Source: “Lad os feje for egen dør før vi belærer andre om demokrati” (article in Danish) (Translation: “Let us sweep around our own front door before we lecture others countries about democracy”)
Recommendations for further reading
Regarding the answer to the question “How to counter hate speech?
Özlem Cekic has started “Brobyggerne” (“Bridge builders”). An association that trains bridge builders, makes events where students in Jewish and Muslim schools in Denmark get to know each other and much more.
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| https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Hate-Through-Dialogue-Understanding_and/dp/1642503762/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0520271440&linkCode=as2&tag=teco06-20&asin=B09L15M2ZN&revisionId=f22fc52b&format=1&depth=1 |
Regarding the answer to the question "How to help someone out of extremism or cult-like groups?"
Nafees Hamid writes: “What this means is that all of us have to engage with our friends and family who start showing sympathy for insurrectionist violence and ideas. (And other extremes (my comment)) It's tempting to attack them in comments sections of their online posts, to unfollow or unfriend them, to block their numbers, or to stop inviting them to dinner parties. But our findings suggest that these actions may do more harm than good. Instead, try to engage them by using the following guidelines from psychological research. …
First, talk to them one-on-one either through messaging, voice or video calls, or best yet, face-to-face. Research shows that people not only form more positive attitudes toward those they interact with face-to-face rather than digitally, but they are also more likely to agree with someone they're talking to in real life. …
Second, instead of telling them what you think, listen to what they think. Research on asymmetric conflict (where one group is materially stronger than another) shows that asking those on the weaker side to take the perspective of the dominant side often backfires. … ”
Source: Link to Nafees Hamid´s article
Regarding the answer to the question “How do you clean up your house before teaching others about democracy?
A concrete tool to ensure political inclusion of youth could be Roger A. Hart's "Ladder of participation", that describes different levels of participation in decision-making processes. It moves from situations where youth is being used as decoration to situations where youth is actively participating in decision-making.
“Participation is the fundamental right of citizenship. … An understanding of democratic participation and the confidence and competence to participate can only be acquired gradually through practice; it cannot be taught as an abstraction.”
Quote from page 5 in Hart, Roger A.: “Children's participation. From tokenism to participation ”
The Danish youth parties' democratic initiatives were facilitated by the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy, DIPD
"DIPD is a community of parties in the Danish parliament, who believe we can make a difference to the development of democratic societies in the world." Source (and further resources)
A concluding reflection
It may seem paradoxical to focus on dialogue and democracy now that an era of peace in Europe is over. We thought we were living in a postwar-period here in Europe, but we must realize that we were living in an interwar-period.
We thought that the Cold War ended with the fall of the Wall in Berlin in 1989. But perhaps we now see the end of the Cold War in the form of the hot war that Putin started in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Anastasia Edel writes in an essay in the New York Times: “For a Russian American like me, whose life has been forged in the interstices between the two cultures, it's a bewildering, sorrowful turn of events. Measures to curtail the Kremlin's capacity of aggression are, to be clear, politically and morally necessary. But the collateral damage is a severing of ties that is bound to revive harmful stereotypes and close down the space for cross-cultural pollination. - More profoundly, the current parting of ways marks the definitive end of a period when Russia’s integration with the West, however vexed, appeared possible — and the antagonism between ideological superpowers was a thing of the past. ... Our post-totalitarian dream of a peaceful, friendly future is over”. Source
The dream of progress for democracy throughout the world has been replaced by a gloomier reality not just in Europe. Lykke Friis, director of the think tank Europa, says:
"In 1989, we thought it was the fall of the Wall that was decisive that year, but it turned out to be the events in Beijing rather than Berlin. At the time, we thought the Chinese would become like us. But that did not happen. Their doctrine of the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square was different from the Western doctrine of the fall of the Wall. For the Chinese, it was a warning that democracy is dangerous.” Source
Although less than 50% of the world's population lives in democratic societies, and although war and conflict are the characteristics of many places in the world today, dialogue and cooperation are still the only hope for the long term - in some places unfortunately only in a very long term.
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Link to the annual democracy index, which research and analysis company The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is behind. Click
Previous Teach GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP Newsletters on simular topics:
No. 20: Border-crossers, Mediators & Go-betweens. Don’t we Need More of Them? click
No. 32: Everyone, Everywhere Should Have Someone to Turn to in Support of Their Mental Health click
Teach GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP Newsletter no. 46
