Bum-Rushing Extremists From the Military Might Not Help – By Todd C. Helmus, Ryan Andrew Brown and Rajeev Ramchand (Defense One) / Mar 17 2021
Interviews with a former neo-Nazi indicate that pre-discharge education and deradicalization might hinder extremist groups’ recruiting efforts.
To extremism researchers like us, there is no more interesting type of intelligence than first-person accounts from insiders or former insiders: a renounced suicide bomber, an al Qaeda recruiter, or an ISIS fighter. They provide insights into the workings of terror organizations and offer new paths to their dismantling.
Today, the military is fighting extremism — including white supremacists and violent anti-government radicals — in its own ranks. In this moment it is de-radicalized former extremists — colloquially referred to as “formers”— who can provide crucial first-hand intelligence on recruitment.
For a forthcoming report, we interviewed 24 such people, whom we found with the help of Jeff Schoep. For 25 years, Schoep led the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement; he quit in 2019 after a change of heart. He now runs Beyond Barriers, an organization that helps people walk away from white supremacism, and has since worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the U.S. government, and other institutions on deradicalization efforts. In the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, we reached out to Schoep to discuss military and police involvement in white supremacist organizations.
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