Early detection and prevention of extremism through community development programmes

Open Access

Abstract

In the context of rising global extremism, questions about countermeasures and prevention become urgent and important not only for security reasons but also for a better mode of living together. Extremism, political as well as religiously-motivated forms, are on one hand an expression of a will to change the current social and political system even by using violence. On the other hand, there are people withdrawn and manipulated by such ideologies and extremist groups. When young people are influenced by extremism, and are joining extremist groups ready to commit violence, civil actors (teachers, social workers, administration, police, etc.) in the field are very important because of their awareness through their direct contact with the concerned individuals and their ability to react and intervene. To do so, they need the knowledge to recognise such affiliations or tendencies early and the approaches they can adopt for effective intervention. Furthermore, they have to be well networked with one another in order to build effective common prevention strategies. The aim of this article is to define the conditions for building such community development strategies based on the experience of successful interventions against right-wing extremism and in a second step to transfer them to the new phenomena of extremism of jihadist radicalisation.