The post Lone-Actor Terrorism: An Integrated Framework  appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

I recently had the honor of interviewing my colleague, Dr. Anne Speckhard, on The Influence Continuum. Dr. Speckhard is Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) and an expert in terrorist recruitment and rehabilitation. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University’s Medical School.

The ICSVE was founded in 2015 to provide research, training, and strategic advice to governments, intelligence, defense, international organizations, police, and civilian communities worldwide. The goal of ICSVE is to prevent and deter the threat of violent extremism through programmatic support and developing community resilience.

Speckhard has interviewed more than 700 terrorists, their family members, and supporters, including over 250 defectors from ISIS. She has also interviewed proponents of white supremacy, identifying many parallels between the two. Speckhard often serves as an expert witness in trials of individual terrorists.

Prevention is a Critical Component of Fighting Terrorism

Governments can be notoriously slow in establishing preventative measures. Responding to events that have already occurred rather than being proactive is common. However, combatting terrorism around the world requires effective policies to inoculate people against the sophisticated recruitment activities of terrorist organizations.

The belief that terrorists cannot be recruited through the internet without personal contact used to be an accepted idea. However, Speckhard notes that ICSVE interviews of ISIS travelers showed that 20% made their decision to travel to Syria solely from interactions with and on the internet. The internet also makes it possible for individuals to access hate material that has been banned in their location.

Policies and controls over social media and the internet in general are needed. The proliferation of disinformation is divisive and effectively erodes the stability of democratic societies everywhere.

Vulnerability to Terrorist Organization Recruitment

At my invitation, Speckhard recently presented her research at a meeting of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at Harvard Medical School. Speckhard emphasizes that psychological vulnerability makes people more susceptible to terrorist recruitment. So many people have emotional wounds from their life experiences, including adverse childhood experiences (ACES). Trauma-informed mental health care that is systems-oriented is a critical need as a prevention tool when it comes to terrorism recruitment.

Speckhard’s theory, based on over 700 in-depth interviews of what makes a terrorist, involves what she calls the “lethal cocktail of terrorism.” There are normally four necessary and sufficient ingredients in the lethal cocktail of terrorism: an established group, an ideology justifying violence against civilians, social support for both, and motivations and vulnerabilities on the side of the individual. A vulnerable person is first given attention and support from the group which is already capable of providing an ideology in support of violence, key materials and targetting. Social support and encouragement (in cult recruitment this is called “love bombing”) can come through the internet, giving the person a sense of belonging and protection. By the time the ideology is fully revealed, the recruit has become dependent on the group. Frequently, the actual goal of the recruitment is hidden or misrepresented. Speckhard noted that some people went to Syria expecting to help victims of Assad or to take part in an Islamic utopia, but once there the men were forced to become fighters for ISIS.

Radicalization also happens in prison settings. I have often said that prisons are a “petri dish” for all kinds of destructive ideologies. Speckhard agrees and says that she is currently writing a book about a U.S. FBI informant that spent 8 years in federal prison posing as a jihadist. He reported that many fellow prisoners had come to him saying they wanted to convert to Islam after which many ended up taking on jihadist thinking. The appeal was the sense of belonging and the perception that they would be joining a powerful and huge block of prisoners that looked after each other.

ICSVE has begun to gather data on white supremacist organizations, with 50 interviews to date. These organizations engage in a process ICSVE researchers have named “directed hate.” Antisemitism is the most consistent feature of these groups. Directed hate supports the idea of elitism with skin color and heritage being considered superior. Those who are eligible to join based on skin color and heritage gain a sense of belonging and significance, perhaps even noble purpose. But the emotional cost is obedience to the group and the constant hatred of the “enemy” (Jews, minorities), often even without actually knowing someone from the enemy group. People need to look carefully at who benefits from the recruitment. Who is profiting from sowing discord between groups of people?

Rehabilitation of Ex-Members of Terrorist Organizations and Cults

One of the most effective tools for counter terrorism speech is counter-narrative videos in which actual former members denounce the group as violent, life crushing, corrupt, unIslamic, etc. They can also be useful in supporting exiting such groups. For white supremacists and cult members who are not facing prosecution, stories of people who have left the group provide inspiration and proof that it is possible and there is life after leaving the organization. When people have been seduced by lies and propaganda, they feel isolated and ashamed. These stories help reduce that feeling and contribute to the healing process.

In the case of ISIS specifically, preventing further radicalization in the camps where most of the wives of ISIS members and their children are held is very complicated. Letting them languish in the camps leads to re-radicalization of some. Children growing up in these camp/prison situations are especially vulnerable to radicalization. Boys are often taken away from their mothers by the age of 12 and put into detention situations. When they are 18, they are put in prisons with the male ISIS members Many different nationalities are represented; the laws of their countries of origin vary greatly. Many countries do not want to repatriate any citizen who became an ISIS member or supporter. Deradicalization programs exist but need also to be applied for those left in Syria.

Speckhard and I both advise a compassionate approach to cult members. Making fun of them or being unkind only reinforces their indoctrination. I often tell the story of a man who was kind to me when I was still in the Moonies. It was a hot day and this man bought me a drink. While that act of kindness didn’t immediately change my position, it planted a seed. Speckhard describes the Kurds’ approach to terrorist prisoners. In essence, they say, “You’re a human being, just like me, but we were on different sides. Hopefully now that you landed here in prison, you realize you were wrong, and we can move on.” The conditions in the camps are bad, but the Kurds aim for kind treatment given overcrowding and understaffing challenges.

Everyone can play a role in lowering the temperature in our public discourse and helping reduce the vulnerabilities that lead to involvement in terrorist activities. Advocate for increased and readily available mental health services. Pressure school systems to include teaching about terrorist and violent extremist ideologies and groups that kids are likely to encounter on the internet and may fall prey to. Teach how to understand undue influence. Push legislators to enact regulations and fund programs that counter hate speech and the proliferation of disinformation on social media. Advocate for the prison system to provide practical and appropriate rehabilitation. Most important of all, be kind and treat others as you wish to be treated!

Further Information:

Podcast: Terrorism expert Anne Speckhard on ISIS and White Supremacy

International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism ICSVE YouTube Channel with Escape Hate and Breaking the ISIS Brand Videos

ICSVE Facebook Page

The Turner Diaries

Violent Extremism

The post Violent Extremism: Best Practices for Prevention and Rehabilitation of Terrorists appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

In the current global political climate, the threat of terrorism from both foreign and domestic groups is an important concern. However, many approaches to fighting terrorism lack a fundamental understanding of the cult tactics of undue influence and the techniques of hypnosis that terrorist groups use to recruit and maintain control over their members.

On a recent episode of my podcast The Influence Continuum, I interview terrorism expert, Malcolm Nance. Nance and I have respected each other’s work since 2007 and he has stated how he agrees with my models regarding the authoritarian cults for Al-Queda and ISIS. Nance has traveled to Ukraine and has been informing the world about his take on Putin’s invasion and what to expect.

Nance is an expert on intelligence and insurgency, and he is a counterterrorism analyst for MSNBC. A former US Navy Officer and a thirty-year veteran of the US intelligence community’s program on combating terrorism, Nance has had a wide range of field and combat experience in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Africa. He has been a Middle East policy advisor to the US and international governments on special operations, homeland security, and intelligence.

In his latest book, They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency, Nance uses his knowledge of terrorist groups to examine the active Trump-led insurgency in the United States.

Defining Violent Extremism and Terrorism

A large portion of the United States population is under undue influence and mind control from far-right leaders including Donald Trump. Especially since the January 6 insurrection, it has become clear that the United States is vulnerable to extreme acts of terrorism from far-right extremists.

When discussing terrorism, most people immediately think of Islamic extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS (also referred to as ISIL), but terrorist groups can be diverse in ideology. In the United States, historically, Neo-Nazi and white power groups have committed far more acts of terrorism than Islamist extremist groups.

Violent extremism is a form of undue influence. According to the FBI’s Countering Violent Extremism program, violent extremism is “encouraging, condoning, justifying, or supporting the commission of a violent act to achieve political, ideological, religious, social, or economic goals.” This definition is broad and includes groups motivated by a variety of ideologies, including white supremacy, anti-abortion, nationalism, etc. Still, the terms “violent extremism” and “terrorism” are most frequently used to refer to extreme Islamist groups.

How Violent Terrorists use Cult Recruitment Tactics

Terrorist groups use a variety of cult tactics that are outlined in my BITE Model of Authoritarian control, including deception, manipulation, isolation from friends and family, and love bombing. Increasingly, extremists have relied on online recruiting. Some extremist groups threaten to harm members’ families to keep the members obedient and loyal. Terrorists may even confiscate people’s passports and other important documents to prevent them from moving about freely.

Like in any other cult, members of violent extremist groups are deceptively recruited and indoctrinated. Nowadays, much of this recruitment takes place online on social media. Recruiters target people who “like” certain posts on social media and build rapport with them. Then, recruiters use manipulative tactics to draw people deeper and deeper into the group. They begin by asking recruits for small favors, like sharing a video or post. Slowly, recruiters begin to ask for more and more involvement. They never lead by asking a person to commit violence against themselves or others.

Recruiters for violent terrorist groups attempt to make potential recruits feel like they have stumbled onto a new group of friends who will love and accept them. The recruits are often young people who are searching for a sense of community. This technique is called “love bombing.” Recruiters present people with a contrived, insincere, friendship that is only in effect for as long as it takes to convert an individual into a passionate member.

Trump Cultists Live in a Different Reality

One common cult tactic used by far-right extremist groups in the United States is information control. As a result of the widespread use and effectiveness of this tactic, different Americans are living in completely different realities.

According to Nance, there are three spheres of information, and every American is living in one of them: the Sphere of Normalcy, the Cult Sphere, or the Sphere of Apathy.

The Sphere of Normalcy:

People who live in the sphere of normalcy understand democratic traditions and pay attention to politics. These people are aware of Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy and are aghast at what is going on.

The Cult Sphere:

The cult sphere includes people who have been indoctrinated into the cult of Trump. They live in a false reality. This mirrors Putin’s Information Control within Russia. Trump’s true believers think positively about Putin. Although QAnon has splintered and morphed, the ideology was that Trump is anti-trafficking- a supposed hero who will take down global networks of power. The disinformation campaign demonizes the political opposition and accuses top Democrats of raping, abducting, and murdering babies to get adrenochrome— in a version of the debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

When I was indoctrinated into the Moon cult, a far-right authoritarian cult, I was programmed to believe that Democracy was satanic, and I was trained to use thought-stopping techniques any time that somebody presented evidence that opposed my cult’s ideology. Trump does the same thing to control his followers.

Trump employs information and thought-control techniques to prevent his followers from questioning their mindset. For example, by declaring any piece of information that opposes his ideology to be “fake news” and by calling the press the “enemy of the people,” Trump tells people not to believe anything that does not fall in line with the way that he wants them to think.

The Sphere of Apathy:

People in the sphere of apathy do not care about politics, and they block out any relevant information about what is going on in the world. People in this group unknowingly enable Trump cultists.

How to Help People Who Have Been Indoctrinated by Terrorists

For many people who have friends or family members who have been indoctrinated into terrorist groups, their first reaction is to get frustrated and completely cut off contact. Another common reaction is to yell at them and explain to them why their beliefs are incorrect. These are both the wrong reactions.

It is important to maintain contact with people who are in an authoritarian cult. If they lose contact with all their outside friends and family, they become more isolated and fall deeper into the group. Instead, let your loved ones know that you miss them. Remind them of their values and of the person who they were before they joined the cult.

Bombarding people who are under mind control with facts does not help them leave authoritarian cults. Treating people with love and respect is necessary to help them leave.

Further Resources

Tapstri.org

Malcolm Nance’s book: They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency

Malcolm Nance’s book: Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe

Violent Extremism — Freedom of Mind Information Center

The post Malcolm Nance: Terrorists are Cult Members Who Do Violence appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

Update: January 2021: Dissertation has been published. <https://www.proquest.com/docview/2476570146/>

In 1976, I was deprogrammed from the Moon cult. Since then, I have helped thousands of individuals leave and recover from the harmful influence of destructive cults. I have written four books, published a peer-reviewed article, conducted multiple scientific research studies, and spent decades learning and educating about mind control. The culmination of my life’s work happened yesterday with my doctoral dissertation final oral review, in which I earned my PhD. (The video is linked below.) I entered the doctorate program at Fielding Graduate University’s School of Leadership Studies – in the Organizational Development and Change (ODC) PhD program in 2017.

In March 2019, I published my first peer-reviewed journal article with the help of my research assistant, Mansi Shah. Thanks to so many people, we put up the study on Survey Monkey and wrote up the initial quantitative study with 1044 former cult members. Here is the information on this Elsevier journal article:

Hassan, S., Shah, M.J. The anatomy of undue influence used by terrorist cults and traffickers to induce helplessness and trauma, so creating false identities. Ethics, Medicine and Public Health (2019) 8, 97-107 Elsevier Masson SAS. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2019.03.002

Its genesis began when I gave a talk entitled, The “Anatomy of undue influence used by terrorist cults and traffickers to induce helplessness and trauma, so creating false identities” at the prestigious 2017 Congress of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health in Prague. I blogged about it here.

This study provided quantitative research into issues of destructive cultism. The data was helpful in developing a potential instrument to measure aspects of undue influence. My aim when I entered the doctorate program was to do what I could to help provide tools to the justice systems worldwide. My doctoral dissertation involved a factor analysis on my BITE model. My Influence Continuum, while not part of the quantitative study, offers an easy-to-understand framework to discern ethical from unethical influence. A new construct came out of this research. I call it The BITE model of Authoritarian Control. I looked up the definition of authoritarian and submission to authority and suppression of one’s own free will describes this phenomenon.

When I started this journey, one of my top goals was (and still is) to find ways to expand the current narrow definition of undue influence which has been largely confined to wills and testamentary capacity. It is long overdue that legal systems around the world recognize that human beings are not rational agents and are very suggestible and vulnerable to deception and social influence pressures. My hope is to help be part of the effort to develop models that will help promote human rights and punish those who enslave others.

Today, November 18th, marks the 42nd anniversary of the Jonestown massacre where over 900 people were killed. Most of the people who died were members of the People’s Temple, led by cult leader Jim Jones. Two years ago, in my blog, Jonestown and the Mind Control Cult of Jim Jones: A Survivor’s Story. In it, I shared my interview with Vernon Gosney, who was shot three times on the tarmac near slain congressman Leo J. Ryan and NBC’s Ron Harris along with others. Vernon, as a survivor of the Jonestown massacre, went on to become a police officer who wishes to help others understand what happened when so many people fell under the authoritarian rule of malignant narcissist, Rev. Jim Jones. A BITE model analysis of the People’s Temple was put online by John Collins and myself.

When many think of this tragedy, brainwashing and mind control come to mind. People were recruited into the group largely out of the social justice and human rights activism of Jones’ church. New members were love-bombed and their desire to make the world a better place was exploited. Everyone there was programmed to be obedient and loyal. Yet, they believed they were in full control and exercising their own free will.

One question everyone needs to ask themselves is, would they ever kill themselves or their loved ones if someone, anyone in power, told them things that endangered their lives? Right now, Donald Trump’s administration is putting out messaging that many Americans believe and, it is causing many to get sick and die unnecessarily because of COVID-19.

Mind control is any totalistic system of influence that disrupts an individual’s authentic identity and replaces it with a false, new one. The decisions made by people with this new identity are not always their own, often lacking critical thought processes.

Sadly, this is still happening, decades later. And this is why there is a need for scientific research studies and peer-reviewed articles. The justice system needs to be updated to incorporate this research that explains the psychology of predatory exploitation and factors that can help to identify it when it occurs. And we need to educate the public to inoculate people from the virus of unethical influence. My dissertation will be published in the near future.

I thank everyone who supported me in my endeavor. Please take time to read the abstract from my Doctorate Dissertation and watch my Final Oral Review. And, remember, it is never too late to start a journey of knowledge and growth!

My Dissertation Abstract

The justice system needs to be updated to incorporate research that explains the psychology of predatory exploitation and factors that can help to identify it when it occurs. Too often, people argue that judgments about undue influence constitute a “slippery slope,” or that “People are responsible for their actions once they reach 18 years of age.” It is also said that “One cult is another person’s religion” whenever the topics of brainwashing, thought reform, mind control or undue influence are brought up in legal cases.

This dissertation offers quantitative evidence about the BITE model (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotion) as a potential tool to help evaluate cases involving exploitative control or undue influence. BITE (Hassan, 1988, 2015) offers a clearly defined model based on observable behaviors that expert witnesses can use to evaluate the presence of mind control or thought reform across a variety of settings and groups.

The term undue influence has been used in British common law since at least the 1700s. (Winder, 1939, King, 1934, Sherman, 2008). However, its use has mostly been confined to the area of wills and testaments. The studies of systematic social influence have produced several models to describe exploitative influence over a person or group of people. A literature review was conducted on existing laws that address trafficking, coercive control, and undue influence. An analysis of major models of thought reform, mind control, or brainwashing was done using Robert Jay Lifton’s Eight Criteria (Lifton, 1961); Edgar Schein’s model which includes Kurt Lewin’s model for change (Schein, Schneier & Baker, 1961); Margaret Singer’s Six Conditions (Singer & Lalich, 1995); and the Influence Continuum and BITE Model (Hassan,1988).

Scheflin’s Social Influence Model (Scheflin, 2015) offers an overall framework for expert witnesses to comprehensively evaluate any potential undue influence situation.

Legal systems value quantitative research over qualitative research. A total of 1044 participants took part in this study designed to determine the efficacy of the BITE model in identifying undue influence. The items in the BITE model of mind control were found to have a reliability score of .98, and a Cronbach’s alpha of .93 demonstrated internal consistency and validity. A principal component analysis identified one highly significant factor that captures undue influence: Authoritarian Control. The BITE model offers a look at the dimensions that allow one to predict the presence of Authoritarian Control, particularly where undue influence is suspected in both civil as well as criminal contexts. Implications are discussed.

Keywords: Undue Influence, Thought Reform, Brainwashing, Mind Control, Coercive Control, BITE model, Influence Continuum, Trafficking, Terrorism, Extremism, Dissociative Disorder, Hypnosis, Parental Alienation, Predatory Alienation, Authoritarianism.

Video: Doctoral Dissertation Final Oral Review

The post The BITE Model of Authoritarian Control: Undue Influence, Thought Reform, Brainwashing, Mind Control, Trafficking and the Law appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

Many destructive groups masquerade as religious when, in fact, their DNA is actually political. They are concerned with amassing secular power, wealth and control of government. And, many “mainstream” political organizations, on the left as well as the right, meet the criteria of an unhealthy cult. As discussed in a previous blog about religious cults, it is important to evaluate the major behaviors and characteristics of a group to see if it meets the criteria.

A political cult often has an authoritarian leader who has a malignant narcissistic personality disorder.  Such a person claims to have all of the answers and requires blind obedience. Such a person displays an incapacity for empathy nor an ability to sincerely admit making mistakes or harming others. Such a person is a pathological liar and is therefore untrustworthy. Authoritarians create and run organizations which use ideologies that are black and white, all or nothing, good versus evil and us against them.

Brainwashing and undue influence are a threat from the political groups too, not just religious groups. White Power groups who wish to instigate a race war in the U.S. and other countries around the world dominate the news through the shooting of innocent people. Therefore, the book by Dennis Tourish, On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left is of immense importance in this day and age. “This is the first book to describe the essentials of  political cults on both the right and left and explain their significance for mainstream political organizations.” (Click here for my discussion with Dennis Tourish Ph.D.)

The book Terror, Love and Brainwashing explains how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts. (I interviewed author Dr. Alexandra Stein in a previous blog. She had been a member of a left-wing political cult.)

Destructive political groups use deception to recruit new members and do not give informed consent. Healthy groups disclose to potential recruits what the group is, what the group actually believes, and what will be expected of them if they become members.  It also uses undue influence to keep people dependent, obedient, and loyal.

In fact, there is a continuum of healthy and unhealthy influence. Individual experiences vary within the same organization based on how the individual conforms to the norms of the group. I have developed an Influence Continuum which shows the thematic differences between ethical influence and undue influence. My BITE model (Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotion Control) offers a list of variables that can be easily identified and which quickly show if a group or individual is exercising unethical influence. The more a group uses the components of the BITE model, the more it is acting as a destructive cult organization. Here is a whiteboard animation of the BITE model created Michael Keay, a former Jehovah’s Witness, which is useful in fleshing out the variables.

Terrorist organizations can be state-run, or operated by cult groups. In addition to the usual BITE model, they will use force such as threats, kidnapping, murder, and drugs in order to get publicity and exert political influence. In some cases, they commit terrorist acts in order to get a ransom to help fund their nefarious activities. Here is a link to a CNN interview I did on ISIS as a cult.

Right now, White Power recruiters are actively online trolling for young people, especially young boys and men via violent video games, luring them to chatrooms, asking them to watch radicalizing YouTube videos, in order to program them to do mass shootings. These people can be indoctrinated entirely online with no contact directly, in person with their recruiters. I have been researching this. The current shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio took place within 24 hours of each other. Gun control legislation and talking about “red flag” laws focusing on mental illness are NOT going to solve the problem of cult mind control recruitment on the internet.

I advocate utilizing former white power people like Arno Michaelis to train others to intervene online, as well as in person. I recently met and befriended former KKK nighthawk Christopher Buckley who helped me work with a 20-year-old who was unduly influenced. As a nighthawk, Buckley wore a black hood and robe and was responsible for weapons training and security enforcer. While the young man was on the FBI watchlist, the family was told there was nothing that could be done to intervene and help the young man. See my blog here about Arno.

I also had assistance from a Church of Christ preacher colleague of mine, Buddy Martin, who played a major role in helping. If you wish more information about my method, please read my book on the Strategic Interactive Approach entitled, Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones with Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs.

George Orwell wrote a long time ago, “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” It is easy to be as cynical as Orwell about politics, especially when observing the extreme situation of dysfunction today. Dark money has accelerated the corruptive forces on politicians to be in the pocket of those who fund them rather than be public servants.

I have written a number of blogs about Donald Trump that you can find here. But in this one, I discuss the characteristics that Trump shares with other cult leaders, “Does Trump Display the Stereotypical Profile of a Cult Leader?” I will have an exciting public announcement in the near future about what I have been working on this past year.

Group Information Resource Page

Over the years, group information has been submitted about how well group beliefs and practices fit into the BITE Model, what ex-members say about the group and any information about helpful resources or support groups. We have collected this information into a database and shared it online. Recently, this group information has been published here on the Freedom of Mind website.

The fact that we list a group on our site does not necessarily mean they are a destructive mind control group. They appear because we have received inquiries and have established a file on the group. We also provide links for organizations, even though we don’t necessarily agree with all of their viewpoints or can verify that all of their information is true. We have even included links to sites that we strongly disagree with, but feel that they offer information and another point of view which could prove useful. We invite you to use critical and independent judgment to evaluate each group and resource.

Political Cult Groups

This is a small list of political cults. The Moonies and the Children of God primarily promote themselves as religious. More groups will be added in the weeks and months ahead.  Netflix has a special on the Family (not the cult listed here) which will discuss the group founded by Abraham Vereide, operating in the United States for some 80 years. Vice President Michael Pence was reportedly recruited into this group by Watergate plumber Chuck Colson. Hillary Clinton was quoted as praising Doug Coe, the deceased leader of this group. Needless to say, while the Vereide group says they are religious, they are all about power and influence and money. If you wish to know more about this group, read The Family by Jeffrey Sharlet.

We are always looking for updated verifiable information and if you would like to submit group information, please fill out the form.

Moon Organization

LaRouche Movement

National Labor Federation

The Family International

Video Blog

The post Beware of Political Cult Groups that Manipulate and Control Members appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

I dug up an old OpEd I wrote. Now that Lindh is being released–17 years later– there is a concern that he may not have received proper counseling about cult mind control and brainwashing. My guess is that is correct. Whether or not he is a danger to commit any criminal atrocity, I do not know. What I do know is that the U.S. government continues to be blind to applying the expertise and knowledge of decades of cult experts. Why? In my opinion, if he was properly counseled he would be a huge asset to speaking out against extremism. At least he and his family (I always include working with family members and friends in my approach) would know they did what they could to actually provide specialized assistance.

In any case, here is what I wrote after Lindh was captured and was the focus of all news media. Americans wondered, how could an American be such a traitor?

Steve Hassan

The text of the OpEd I wrote in 2001 entitled:

Saving the American Taliban

WHAT COULD have driven an educated young American from a loving and prosperous family to embrace the Taliban cause?

His parents have said that he was brainwashed. I have not met John Walker Lindh, who was recently captured in Afghanistan, but I believe his parents are probably right. In fact, I had a similar experience as a student at Queens College in New York City when I was 19 – Lindh’s age. I never participated in actual combat, but I was engaged in a holy war on the streets of New York.

In the fall of 1974, I was invited to join a group of fellow students who said they were interested in making the world a better place. Within weeks, I dropped out of school, cut my long hair, and put on a three-piece suit (worn by the group in public, like a uniform). I was told to cut off contact with friends and family, apparently just like Lindh.

I didn’t know it then, but I had been recruited into a front group within a worldwide cult that wants to rule the world with a so-called automatic theocracy led by the group’s supposed messiah. I was programmed to believe that Armageddon would take place in 1977, that Satan loved democracy, and that we were going to be the future rulers of the new kingdom of heaven on earth.

As I was indoctrinated by the cult, I underwent a radical personality change. I was programmed to kill off the old Steve who knew and loved my friends and family. A new cult identity was created. I was trained to shut out any doubts that entered my mind, thinking they were from Satan. Raised in a conservative Jewish home, I hadn’t believed in Satan at all, but once in the cult, Satan was omnipresent, and everyone outside the group was viewed as a child of Satan. To my horror now, I was so programmed that I believe I would have died or killed on command.

Then circumstances changed my life once again. While driving a van, I fell asleep, crashed, and was seriously injured. While recuperating in a hospital, I telephoned my sister, and for the first time in many months, my family knew my whereabouts. They and former cult members then tried to get me out of my cult trance. To my surprise, I wasn’t beaten and tortured by the deprogrammers. They were very nice to me and taught me about brainwashing tactics. After five days, I realized I had been under cult mind control. I was saved by those who could offer me love and concern – my family and the ex-members who cared about me.

Many are now calling for Lindh’s execution as a traitor to his country. There is no doubt that CIA operative Johnny Spann is a hero of the highest level and deserves our praise and thanks. However, I doubt that Lindh is an evil person who deserves to die. I think he is a victim, as I was 27 years ago, and I think it important that his fate is decided in a public trial in US federal court. I believe that with proper counseling, Lindh would be horrified at what brainwashing has made him do. Indeed, it appears that mind control techniques similar to those used by my cult leader have been used by Osama bin Laden and his cronies to recruit, train, and exploit talented people to do their bidding.

Now that Lindh is in American hands, I sincerely hope that mind control experts assist his interrogators, supervising the sessions. Otherwise, we risk losing a valuable opportunity in the war against terrorism. I remember as a cult member how I was taught to block out criticism and doubt with simple chants such as ”Crush Satan, Crush Satan.” I expect that Lindh will do the same.

How can we reach Lindh if he is indeed a victim of mind control? Since coming out of my group, I have worked with thousands of people impacted by destructive mind control. I have assisted former cult members in reclaiming their minds and their lives. It is important that family members and friends be coached on how best to connect with their loved one’s pre-cult identity with love, respect, understanding, and compassion. When counseling people, I talk about my own cult experiences and tell them about other people who have been deceptively recruited into destructive groups. It helps them to know others have had experiences similar to their own.

I believe that Lindh will eventually realize that he was duped into accepting terrorism and murder, which is condemned by the faith he adopted at age 16. For now, he must accept responsibility for his actions. It is my hope that he will provide valuable information about the activities of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. (He already has, according to reports.) Perhaps more important, he might provide a valuable example for future generations about the workings of mind control techniques.

Nothing is more powerful than a personal story, especially one that tells of the journey from slavery to freedom. Such a story – the promise of redemption in the afterlife – is said to fuel the actions of suicide terrorists. The stories of Taliban and Al Qaeda members who reject terrorism and leave their cell groups need to be heard and examined within our culture and within the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The war against the Taliban is nearly over, but the much harder war against terrorism continues. There is an important story behind John Lindh. It may be a key to learning how to help win the war on terrorism.

Please see my webpage on extremist cults and my link to my Youtube playlist on combating extremist groups.

Video Blog

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Peer-Reviewed Article

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On January 18, 2019, during the longest government shutdown in history, I had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Dennis Tourish. He is a former member of a left-wing political group, having left in the mid-1980s. It was during this period that he found my book Combating Cult Mind Control which was the first time he had “read anything about this phenomenon and it just lifted the lights wonderfully.”

Dennis is Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of Sussex in the U.K.. Additionally, he is an author, researcher, academic, and consultant. Professor Tourish has co-written or co-edited eight books. Also, he has published over sixty peer-reviewed journal articles. As a well-respected expert on secular, political, corporate cults and leadership, he has frequently been interviewed on radio, television and in print.

One of his books, On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left, is of immense importance in this day and age. “This is the first book to describe the essentials of  political cults on both the right and left and explain their significance for mainstream political organizations.”

Along with Naheed Vatcha, he co-authored an academic journal article presenting Enron as a corporate cult, “Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron: The Elimination of Dissent, the Promotion of Conformity and Organizational Collapse.”

Professor Tourish is a former member of the left-wing Trotskyist political organization. He draws on his past experiences to educate and warn the public about the dangers of all groups, not just religious ones, but secular, political and corporate organizations. Many groups say they are religious when, in fact, they are political. (e.g. ISIS and Daesh.) Yes, many mainstream political organizations meet the criteria as a cult.

“It was George Orwell who wrote long ago that all issues are ultimately political issues. All issues have the potential to upset and destabilize us, so it’s scarcely surprising that when you think about the big political questions that you find samples of cultism within that.”

Terrorist organizations have very strong cultic anomalies. For instance, there is the absolutism of the ideology and the physical commitment to the group. Members have very black-and-white thinking and only associate with others that share the same ideology and beliefs. These become totems that are impervious to falsification. To them, there is no rational argument or evidence that would shift people’s beliefs. “These are fertile conditions for political cults of all kinds to develop.”

Professor Tourish and I continue our interview discussing falsification, the dangers of ideology, and confirmation bias. Human beings are, at times, driven by emotions rather than rational thought, and cult leaders (including political leaders such as Donald Trump), play into this very well.

Additionally, we talk about the need to educate people on ethical vs. unethical influence, consent, social psychology, group dynamics, and the dangers of charismatic leadership. Please take the time to watch the entire video interview, as it is highly informative and helpful. I was particularly interested in his assessment of President Donald Trump and learn if his opinion mirrors my own.

But, lastly, I will quote Professor Dennis Tourish on the need to hear alternative points of view.

“I also think, in addition to that, more of us need to understand that the bigger the claims that are being made for an ideology, the stronger the evidence must be that it rests upon. Simply charismatic authority and the strength of conviction is not sufficient evidence in favor of any belief system, so I feel very strongly that our education system needs to promote more of this confidence in the value of evidence and facts. We need to encourage people to understand the importance of always hearing alternative points of view.”

Video Interview with Dennis Tourish

The post Political Cults, Leadership, Idealism, and Totalism: A Discussion with Dennis Tourish Ph.D. appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

Cult Mind Control is Being Used on the Internet to Radicalize

On Friday, March 15, 2019, 50 people were left dead in a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. These terrorist attacks should be a wake-up call for every person on the planet. White supremacy hate groups are recruiting online and the danger is international. It is not a phenomenon limited to one city, state or country. Extremists are being manufactured online every day. Former members of these groups are willing to help with preventive education, as well as, intervention work, but they need to be organized, trained and funded.

The approach needs to not criminalize people who have been indoctrinated with these radical ideas. We need to promote love, not hate. After the massacre of 11 innocent Jews in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I discussed ways to combat hate-speech and violence.

What is needed is for all citizens around the world to educate themselves about the field of social psychology, hypnosis, and influence psychology. Learning will help protect ourselves and our loved ones and it will give us the tools to correctly identify what is really going on. It is a fact that human beings can be persuaded to adopt beliefs and participate in actions contrary to who they fundamentally are.

ISIS, white-hate groups, and other extremist groups share a common thread: internet radicalization.  And social media plays a big role as it allows for communities of like-thought, including hate-groups, to gather, as well as, algorithms to target specific individuals. This shooting was live-streamed on Facebook and viewed and downloaded thousands of times before it was reported and removed.

Ideologically-motivated violence is fueled by the Internet and social media. Islamophobia, the fear and hatred against Islamic religions seen as a force of terror, has become normalized. Inaccurate and prejudiced news reports, along with social media posts, have fueled the flames of this type of hatred.

Sadly, in this country (United States), hate-groups have flourished. Unfortunately, President Trump has spread misinformation that Obama is Muslim and wasn’t born in America. He has minimized the growth and danger of neo-nazi white extremist terrorism. He has also bought into the idea that the Judeo-Christian world needs to protect itself from Muslims. He has spoken against immigrants. And the New Zealand shooter actually cites Trump in his 75-page manifesto.  After the event, he has not taken a firm enough stand against these racially-motivated attacks. Trump’s response to the New Zealand massacre highlights his combative history with Muslims.

In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 1020 hate groups across the United States. (You can view the map here.)

What can we do to make sure these acts of violence end? Learning about how mind control cults recruit and indoctrinate is the first step. Law enforcement needs to share information about cults and hate-groups internationally.  And hate will continue unless all countries begin to rely on former members and experts of undue influence. Both of these groups can be tapped for programs to combat radicalization.

Former members of extremist groups who have taken the time to educate themselves and heal themselves are our greatest asset to combat mind controllers worldwide. Arno Michaelis is my friend whom I have blogged about in the past. I interviewed Robert Örell, a former member of the extremist, neo-Nazi movement who currently works with the Swedish NGO EXIT and helps people to de-radicalize. He helps conduct training, as well as, does intervention work on the street level. And countries like the Netherlands have government-funded programs using former members.

Most importantly, we should not let extremist terrorist attacks discourage us from showing love to all. The first victim of the Christchurch shooting greeted the shooter by saying, “Hello, Brother!” We should combat hate-speech and violence by showing love and treating everyone as brother and sister.

My call to action remains the same: former members of destructive cults need to educate themselves and begin to talk with people they know. Respectful, intelligent, strategic engagement is needed. Learning to better understand another’s perspective, along with loving, compassionate and respectful engagement, does work!

How can we create an educational movement where politicians will listen, law enforcement, clergy, members of the media? This past Tuesday, I flew to Washington D.C. to attend the World Mental Health Coalition’s conference at the National Press Club building and listened to a number of outstanding speakers. These included Dr. Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and the editor of the new edition of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. Jerrold Post, Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Painter, Philip Zimbardo, Jason Stanley, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Gar Alperovitz, Scott Ritter, and Joseph Romm were the main speakers. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D- Md) spoke about the setting up of a congressional committee which could potentially be used in the future to implement the 25th Amendment. (The conference can be watched here and please like and share it on your social networks!)

Ultimately, we need to find a narrative that will ensure our survival on this planet. We need to learn to live together; all humans need to coexist on the earth. If you look at three of the world’s major Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they have a common thread: be kind to neighbors and strangers. Abraham was hospitable to all, as shown by his tent being open on all sides and anyone could enter for food or drink. We need to learn to show the same spirit and not have hate and fear as the driving factor in our interactions.

UPDATE: There is suggestive evidence that Trump’s rhetoric matters. Counties that hosted a 2016 Trump rally saw a 226 percent increase in hate crimes.

Vlog

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On February 27, 2019, Dr. Bandy Lee and Dr. James Gilligan spoke at The Program in Psychiatry and the Law (the Harvard forensic think tank). The talk was entitled, “Do we surrender our moral compass to technical rule?” They further discuss the question, “Given our professional responsibility to society, if we see dangers to public health and wellbeing, should we refrain from speaking up in professional ways because of a technical rule?” Dr. Lee and Dr. Gilligan are both experts on violence.  

Dr. Bandy Lee is an expert on violence on the faculty of Yale School of Medicine’s Law and Psychiatry Division who has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization Violence and Injury Prevention Department as well as other United Nations bodies.  Recent calls for her expertise have led to her co-founding and directing the World Mental Health Coalition, which assembles mental health experts to exchange with other disciplines on how we can collaboratively protect societal mental health.  This past January, she spoke about how she came to decide to speak out and eventually edited the amazing volume, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. I posted a blog which included a video of her talk at the Program in Psychiatry and the Law.

Dr. James Gilligan, M.D., is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor in the School of Law, and Collegiate Professor in the School of Arts and Science at New York University. He is a former president of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. He is the author of Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, Preventing Violence: Prospects for Tomorrow, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others and Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others. As a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School for many years, he headed the Institute of Law and Psychiatry and directed mental health services for the Massachusetts prisons and prison mental hospital. He served as an expert witness in the litigation that was the subject of the Supreme Court decision in Plata V. Brown.

The transcript of their talk is posted below. Please carefully read it and reflect. Do you agree?

Also, the updated and expanded book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump will be available on March 19, 2019. This volume features chapters by ten more eminent professionals, including Dr. Jerrold Post.

One of the original contributors is Robert Jay Lifton, who regular readers of this blog know his work on brainwashing, Nazi Doctors, Apocalyptic Cults which all are extremely relevant to this Administration.

In the video on the dangerouscase.org website, Lifton said,  “He has no responsibility to what most of us consider to be reality. I call this solipsistic reality, that is, his reality alone, the sense of what his self alone perceives and needs becomes his entire reality. I would focus on his inability to cope calmly with a crisis but rather to respond to any questioning of his views with a kind of attack mode and a potential for violence and that attack mode and potential for violence is under the category of dangerousness.”

Lastly, there will be a conference at the National Press Club Building on Tuesday, March 19, 2019, in Washington D.C. The conference is entitled, “The Dangerous State of the World And the Need for Fit Leadership.” It will also be the official book launch of the new edition of the book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.  You can sign up here. And view the flyer here.

Transcript of Their Talk

Bandy: Thank you for having me again. Last time I felt incredibly obliged to speak to such an eminent group of thinkers and scholars, some of whom I have admired from a distance for decades, before meeting you. And you have welcomed me with great indulgence. So I return today with a desire to learn from you, as well as my mentor and colleague Dr. James Gilligan, whom you know almost like a family member. The title of this talk is the main question I have: Do we surrender our moral compass to technical rule? Expounding further, given our professional responsibility to society, if we see dangers to public health and wellbeing, should we refrain from speaking up in professional ways because of a technical rule? I wonder, how many mental health professionals would have spoken up if the American Psychiatric Association had not emphatically instructed that we fall in line with the Goldwater rule, including making public statements about me? I’m no longer even a member. My suspicion is, many more. How much did the public expect to hear from experts about the president, before it was told psychiatrists had no role? I’ve learned over time that they expected as much as official public statements. As citizens, do we not have an obligation to share the special knowledge we have acquired through our privileged place in society? 

Bandy: Is expertise to be used to enlighten and empower, or to exclude and then oppress, as I believe the APA is helping this administration to do? As for the First Amendment, is it not specifically intended to prevent tyranny? What is more conducive to tyranny than the control of awareness by imposing silence and, in the process, depriving the people of critically relevant information? Do we not have faith in the usefulness of psychiatric knowledge and the benefits of our clinical experience? The first half of the Goldwater rule that encourages education of the public, tends to be ignored. Even where we are to refrain from diagnosing public figures, the rule is subordinate to the overarching principle that we contribute to the betterment of public health. How do we reconcile a clear, legally-binding duty to protect our patients, but no duty to protect society, and only an obligation to protect the privacy of a public figure who is not even a patient? How seriously should we take our responsibility to society as outlined in the Code of Medical Ethics, which says that our primary duty is to patients as well as to society and as outlined in the Declaration of Geneva, which gives us a humanitarian mandate? And do we take moral agency out of ethical considerations, as the new interpretation of the Goldwater rule attempts to do? These are my questions. I now turn over to Jim. 

Tom: Before that, I want to just make a mention, both Jim and Bandy have avoided being sandbagged with the Goldwater rule, carefully steering away from mental illness and diagnosis. They emphasize the dangerousness of human behavior, which as citizens are certainly allowed to comment on. Jim’s chapter gives a very sequentially, carefully reasoned analysis of why behavior should be an issue, rather than a diagnosis. 

Speaker 4: Tom, just as a technical term, Bandy has no risk from the Goldwater rule, because she’s not a member of the APA. People who voice positions, which are viewed as unethical by the APA in the Conflict Forum, are subject to being criticized by the APA. But Bandy has zero risk from the Goldwater rule, which I believe she alluded to a few minutes ago. It’s not an operative thing for her. 

Bandy: Yet, I do respect the American Psychiatric Association as a purveyor of professional ethical guidelines. I do look to it for some level of ethical authority. 

James Gilligan: Well, let me jump in right on these issues. I thought I’d begin by emphasizing what I do mention in the chapter I wrote for the book that Bandy edited, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. One thing I’m going to start by emphasizing, as Tom also said, that I’m not interested in labeling Trump with any particular psychiatric diagnosis, for many reasons and quite independent of the Goldwater rule. One reason is because mental illness alone doesn’t necessarily make him, or any other political leader, either dangerous or unfit for office. Both Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill have been widely documented as suffering from severe depression. Churchill was, of course, a well-known chronic alcoholic. Another reason is that mental illness and dangerousness are only slightly correlated. Most mentally ill people never commit a serious act of violence. And most violent people are not diagnosed as having a major mental illness. For example, I’ve read that only about 1% of people who have committed murders are found to be not guilty by reason of insanity. It’s really the exception, a rare exception to the rule. 

James Gilligan: So there’s only a slight correlation between mental illness and dangerousness. The second thing I’ve got to say is that most psychiatrists really focus on clinical psychiatry and mental illness. Their job is to treat individuals, diagnose them, treat them for their individual case. That’s called clinical psychiatry. But it seems to me that psychiatry also is a branch of public health and preventive medicine or preventive psychiatry. To the extent that we also I think are in that role, we have a duty not just to individual patients, we have a duty to society. The same way that a public health professional would have a duty to diagnose a flu epidemic, and do what we could to have it stop, regardless of what particular individual has it. A third thing I’ve mentioned is, in assessing dangerousness, that’s quite different from diagnosing mental illness. I’ve spent my career really studying violence, the causes, and prevention of violence. I tried to learn everything I could about it. Regardless of whether or not the person committing it is mentally ill or not. Notice, I ran the mental health programs for the Massachusetts prison system for many years. 

James Gilligan: Then Bandy and I together did a violence prevention experiment in the San Francisco jails. All of these were quite independent of whether somebody was mentally ill or not. We were preventing suicide, homicide, riots, hostage-taking incidents, mass rapes, arson, all the kinds of violence that may or may not be a subject to mental illness. So I’m approaching this question about Trump not primarily from the standpoint of conventional mainstream psychiatry, is he mentally ill or not, and if so, what’s the diagnosis? But, is he dangerous? In terms of mental illness, I think if you took many of the public statements that Trump has made at face value, and you line them up with the criteria for different mental disorders in DSM5, you can say that he … if we were creating a differential diagnosis of the potential diagnosis we want to rule out if we were to examine him publicly, I could come up with eight or 10 differential diagnoses. But that’s very different from giving him a diagnosis. That’s what you would do if you actually examined him in your office, and had all kinds of studies. But that’s not what I’m interested in doing, I don’t think it’s relevant. 

James Gilligan: I’ve really studied dangerousness, the liability of a person to increase the rate of violence in a society, from looking at it from a public health standpoint. Now, we know that most politicians who, we can easily say, are dangerous or have been dangerous, didn’t necessarily kill anybody themselves. I’m not sure that Hitler ever killed anybody or Stalin. They may have, a few individuals, but we think of them as some of the most dangerous people in history because they were responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people. But not done by them, but done by their followers. I’m not saying Trump is Hitler or Stalin, obviously, he’s not. But what I am saying, the general point about a politician, as I speak of Trump of being dangerous, I’m not saying he himself is likely to do what he mentioned he could do, which is walk out on 5th Ave and murder somebody. Which, as he said, he could do without losing a single vote. I’m not saying that is what he’s likely to do. At least I have no reason to say it. 

James Gilligan: But that has little or nothing to do with whether he’s dangerous. My point is that he, like many politicians, incites his followers to be dangerous. He actually boasts about, what I think would be hard to say were not violations of the law, if they were prosecuted by the law when he talked about grabbing women by their genitals, whether or not they agreed to that. But we do know that he has incited his followers to violence. I give multiple examples in the chapter I wrote in the book. I’m not going to take the time to run through all of them. But if you followed him, it’s hard not to know things that Trump did. It’s all over the newspapers. My point is that, from the standpoint of preventing violence and dangerousness, it is much more important for us to take the point of view of public health and preventive medicine, than to get hung up on the issue of clinical psychiatry, is Trump himself mentally ill, or which diagnosis does he have? One thing I could mention is that we know that he tells untruths by the thousands. We know that, not just because of fact-checkers in the media … who Trump dismisses as fake news. 

James Gilligan: But also just from what Trump himself says. Because he has repeatedly, time after time, actually contradicted himself. I mean, he said one thing one day, and the opposite the next. I did this, I did not do it, and so forth. So clearly, just from Trump’s own mouth, I think we can conclude that he’s been telling untruths, just as I said. Not by the score, but by the thousands. That gives us two possibilities, as it seems to me. Either he believes the untruths that he’s saying, in which case I think we have to say he’s out of touch with reality, by definition. Which would be consistent with delusions or psychosis. Or that he knows that what he’s saying is untrue, which would be a symptom of someone who’s called being a psychopathic liar. That is somebody who just constantly tells an untruth, in order to manipulate people for his own advantage. I think you could say there’s an implicit assumption that he’s either delusional or a psychopathic liar. My own guess is, the likelihood is more probably the latter than the former. I think he’s more likely a manipulative psychopath than delusional. On the other hand, it doesn’t even matter. 

James Gilligan: What I’m saying is that the question isn’t so much whether Donald Trump as a person is dangerous, it’s whether what he says and does is dangerous. He says things to his followers, beat up people who protest against me, so badly they’ll have to be taken out on a stretcher. I promise I’ll pay your legal bills. When they did that … actually, some of his followers then were tried for assault and battery, because they had beaten up people so badly. Trump’s only complaint was that they weren’t violent enough yet. He said, in the past, they would have done more, and so on. Of course, when I wrote my chapter it was before this Charlottesville, Virginia incident, where neo-Nazis and other Trump supporters drove a … one of them drove a truck through an audience of pedestrians, as you all know, killing one woman and seriously injuring one or two dozen other people. Trump … again, I’m sure you’re all familiar with this, response to that was, there were good people and bad people on both sides. Kind of creating a moral equivalency between this murderer and the protesters, who were quite non-violent. Certainly, not even approaching in comparison. I outlined my whole position more closely in the chapter in this book. I just want to mention, these are some of the things that I’m involved with. 

James Gilligan: I don’t feel that I’m really … what can I say, either violating the Goldwater Rule or constrained by it. I think that I’m really talking not about, is Trump mentally ill? I’m talking about, is he dangerous? Is he dangerous indirectly through his effects on his followers in the words he uses? I’m not trying to understand his words from the sentiment of, what is going on in his mind when he utters them? That’s never really the question from a public health standpoint. The question is, what effect does that have on people who listen to those words? We’ve seen what the effect is, sometimes it’s murder. There are some things that Trump has said that … I mean, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to understand what he’s saying. Everybody knows that he reminded his followers that they could always assassinate Hillary Clinton if they want to do it. He said, “If she came into power, I don’t know what the judges can do. Maybe the Second Amendment, folks. I don’t know.“ It may be an analogy here to the way Henry II got his knights to kill Thomas Becket. 

James Gilligan: Trump is doing the same thing, not saying directly, “Go out and kill this person.” But saying, “Why are people allowing this person to still be alive?” I think Trump in his indirect way was playing Henry II. To me, that’s a sign of dangerousness. I don’t think I’m misusing psychiatric terminology because, after all, dangerousness is not a mental disorder. It’s a description of behavior. All I’m trying to do is say, I spent 50 years closely observing the most dangerous people our society produces. I hear that same language in Trump. Many people have pointed out that he uses the language of the Mafia. Somebody who testifies against him is a rat, and ratting him out. I heard that in the prisons. You would get killed in a prison if you ratted on one of your fellow inmates, or on somebody in the community. Trump is using the language of the Mafia. He’s using the language of dictators. It’s clear that the political leaders whom he is holding up as his ideal or role models, are multiple murderers. Putin, Kim Jong-un, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. I can go through the list. Let’s say, one last thing. I know there’s a great risk, which is important not to fall into. It’s almost impossible to talk about without some disapproval from the politically left, at some point, somebody again, raising the question of Hitler. 

James Gilligan: That’s too easy because nobody is really comparable. But I do want to at least acknowledge some analogies that I think are going on in our society now. I’ve put it in my chapter. The great German sociologist, Max Weber, wrote a wonderful piece about politics as a vocation. One thing he said was, he thought that he and other professors really should not make any direct comments about a political party or leader. They could talk about politics in general, in the abstract, but I think he was afraid they would be persuading their students who to vote for. But I’ve always been bothered by his saying that. It seemed to me that it may have discouraged many of the leading intellectuals of Germany during the Weimar Republic from speaking out publicly against Hitler when he was clearly giving all kinds of evidence of being dangerous. What I’m saying is, I don’t think the German Psychiatric Association in the 1930’s deserves any credit for having remained silent as Hitler came to power. You don’t have to be Hitler though to be dangerous. 

James Gilligan: You don’t have to be Hitler for the same principles to apply. I’m just saying, Hitler is an example. Because it’s so extreme, and Trump certainly has not done anything comparable to that yet, all I’m saying is I think it’s important to intervene so we don’t wind up wondering what happened. Hitler, after the burning of the Reichstag, declared martial law. Trump has just declared a national emergency. Well, we have a stronger democracy than the Weimar Republic did, but the parallels are so manifest. I think it’s important for us to try to remind people of this. I’ll say one more thing, then I’m going to shut up so people can talk. I do sympathize with the Goldwater rule because I do remember one of the psychiatrists, who was quoted in a magazine at the time, said that Barry Goldwater was schizophrenic. Well, this was I thought really inappropriate and uncalled for. It was a huge mistake. We shouldn’t be going around, flinging around terms like schizophrenia. Goldwater was dangerous in many ways, but I think there’s no evidence that he was schizophrenic. Look at the rest of his life. 

James Gilligan: I do think the American Psychiatric Association did have good reason to say, look, be careful, folks. Don’t just throw these psychiatric diagnoses around. If you disagree with someone politically, say that. But you’re not speaking as a psychiatrist if you do that. What I’m saying is, I’m trying to be very careful about not throwing psychiatric diagnoses around loosely. But I really have made deep studies of dangerousness and violence. I really think I can back up anything I’m saying about Trump as somebody who is dangerous, regardless of what’s going on in his private mind. We have enough data, just from seeing what he has said and done publicly. That’s my point of view. I realize, people can have other opinions, reasonably. 

Male speaker: Two fast points. One is that Dante pointed out that the hottest places in hell were reserved for those who remain neutral in a time of crisis. 

James Gilligan: Excellent. 

Male speaker: So you had a historical precedent. Second point … well, two related points. One is, it apparently has been reported as the view of Trump followers, that they have simply discounted what he says. He’s not going to do that, he’s just trying to piss off the Democrats, or trying to provoke the liberals, and so forth. There’s a double-think down the end. I guess it’s 1984. Right. But the point being, they have a way of managing this situation, where other people are saying, how is he going on? They’re saying, he’s just trying to make waves. Finally, I can’t remember where I saw this recently, but apparently, and this is a very political statement to be making. I apologize for it in advance, that hate crimes go up in Republican administrations. It did so in the Bush administration, it’s doing now to an unprecedented degree. It’s the old notion that we’ve had discussions about here, of the moral atmosphere being established from the top. That license to be bigoted can trickle down in much more than an economic sense. 

James Gilligan: That’s right. 

Male speaker: Jim, I’m making a couple of comments, if I might. I also want to say, I think I’m the only person in the room who’s ever adjudicated in the enforcement of the Goldwater rule. The APA would not object to your saying that toxic speech or unconscionable speech, can have effects, though it’s hardly part of the psychiatric armamentarium. When we say, this individual is delusional … not Trump, I make this up, a schizophrenic who is actively delusional, and who is drinking. It is a part of settled science to say, that person’s risk has been dramatically increased. It’s been increased over what the alcohol would do alone, and over what the schizophrenia would do alone. That would be unarguable. Bandy and others in her group have made the case that this president is unfit for duty, that he’s incapable of serving. Though I personally have enormously strong negative feelings about this individual, I have critical opinions about making that assertion. Because I do a lot of fitness for duty evaluations, and you don’t do them from a distance. You do them after an examination, and no examination has been performed. I think it is reckless to assert somebody is or is not fit, absent having done that rigorous examination. I also think, referring to this as a technical rule is disingenuous. The Goldwater rule is an ethical rule. It’s been alive and well since it was approved around 1970. It has not been restated because of the election of Donald Trump. The wording of the rule has remained exactly the same and has referred to making a professional opinion. So in a public setting where you two say, this guy is either delusional or psychopathic, the APA would reasonably challenge that assertion as being unethical. They would say, in nicer words, how the hell would you know? Where you two assert that he is doing things, which have bad effects on his followers, is a horse with a different color, and they would say, go to it. There is no desire to stifle anybody. I’m going to stop here. 

Bandy: Please allow me to clarify that I have never said that Mr. Trump is unfit for office. I have been recommending that in such situations, where one has shown evidence of dangerousness, that normally we would do an examination, that an examination would be recommended. I have also stated that dangerousness usually disqualifies someone from office because most fitness or duty exams also examine one’s threat to oneself or others. So I have mentioned that it’s a component of the fitness for duty exam. I strongly believe that fitness for duty is ultimately a political decision, just as disability, competence, and unfitness in most situations are legal decisions. So we simply add our medical assessment and recommendations. 

Male speaker: So numerous people in this book have said that he is not fit for duty. Lance Dodes went on record in the paper and in his chapter. You may say that you have not, and why don’t we bypass that? But it is clear that multiple people in that book have said, in the absence of actual knowledge, that he is not fit for duty. I think that’s damaging to the mental health professions. 

Female speaker: It seems like we can avoid this discussion, based on what you said about the inciting people to be dangerous. If people could interview some of those people in a professional manner and find out what inspired them to be violent, then you are actually dealing with a person, and you can provide documented evidence that takes the pressure off you, in terms of whether you should comment or not, and provides illustrations of how it’s impacting. If somebody does a major study of these people and says, this kind of language, which we can then link to the president, is causing people in this country to commit hate crimes and other sorts of things against people. It would seem one way out of this. 

Bandy: Jim and I have always approached dangerousness and violence from a public health perspective. I have made clear that the personal mental health of the president is not of concern to us. But rather whether there is a general atmosphere that encourages violence and increases rates of violence by virtue of the situation, which is, Mr. Trump in the office of the presidency, not Mr. Trump himself. The reason why I call the Goldwater rule a technical rule refers to its interpretation, that it’s taken out the context. We eliminate consideration of the principle that it falls under, which is to participate in activities that improve the community and public health. By simply interpreting the rule, the literal wording of the rule, and then stipulating that there are no exceptions to it, it does become a technical rule, rather than an ethical and moral guideline. That’s what I was referring to. 

Male speaker: The real interesting cases of ethics are when there are two rules, and there seems to be a contradiction. You raised the idea that clearly there are professional social responsibilities. Then there’s this other rule that one should not opine about an individual, absent an examination and a release. Interpreting that conflict doesn’t reduce the rule to being a technical one. It’s what happens when you apply both rules to a specific situation. For instance, Jerrold Post decided that his information was so important about Saddam Hussein, that he would testify his personal and professional opinion that he had formulated for the CIA in Congress. He would talk about malignant narcissism, which he distinguished from the narcissism we see in the DSM-5. So it’s not an established diagnosis, but he wanted to make clear that he thought this guy was really dangerous. Both his employer and the APA thought that he should have kept quiet. That there were employment rules and ethical rules that should have caused him restraint. That’s a matter that reasonable people can debate. 

Male speaker: We’re doing a panel about causation at AAPL. It hasn’t been accepted yet, but we’re hoping. I was a little hung up on the notion of: he’s causing violence. It seems to be inclusive to the idea of an enabler. The person who enables an addiction isn’t causing the addiction. They make it appear. So you have people with already existing racist stuff, who have now become licensed to act based on an enabling concept. 

Terry: If you listen to the testimony that’s going on this morning, he’s making exactly that same point. He said, what he did was, he enabled and required indirectly the action that Michael was taking. It was interesting to listen to, because we all know that’s what’s happening. That he’s able to remove himself from any kind of violence, at the same time that he’s expecting it from someone else. 

Male speaker: Because if you plead peace, he fires you. 

Male speaker: Yes. I’ve got three things. One is, in what I’ve read I don’t see, just sticking with the assessment’s dangerousness, for me the science precedes the ethics. If there are problems with the science, then I think it’s hard to talk about the ethics. I didn’t notice anything that was persuasive for me, and I do agree with the idea of narcissism. There was nothing in what I have read so far that has predictive validity. That’s one concern. Number two is the real absence of historical context. I mean this in a longitudinal sense. Given the fact that you’re talking about personality, and personality is very much context-driven, how do we make all of our decisions on forced choice kinds of things? You’re either for this, or you’re against this, the rhetoric on one side or the other, constitutes some sort of description of causation. This gets to language. I mean, the whole border thing is about immigrants and violence and criminal behavior, going back to Taft and Nicaragua, or even beyond that, to Cuba and the United States. 

Male speaker: We’ve never had an easy way to sort that out. It’s being in Walpole when you work. How do you begin to sort out who is just coming over, who is going to be a coyote, who’s trafficking drugs? Who’s an immigrant, who isn’t? This is such a morass that the split, the forced choice around which a lot of this debate takes place, fits a democracy, but it doesn’t fit the domination of violence. 

James Gilligan: Let me say another thing. In public health, and when it comes to making predictions about epidemiological outcomes, that is changes in the rates of say homicide or suicide in a population, people often refer to the contrast between risk factors and protective factors. I would agree, rather than speaking in terms of causation, I would speak in terms of risk factors and protective factors. I wrote a book called, Why Some Politicians are More Dangerous than Others, in which I’ve used that concept to point out, for example, when the unemployment rate goes up, rates of suicide and homicide go up. When the unemployment rate goes down, rates of suicide and homicide go down. That’s the data we have, going back to 1900. So we have 115 years of data. You can take the charts I did for my book. Again, it’s not a one-to-one causal relationship, but there is such a thing as risk factors, and we can identify them. I would agree that we’re still at the kind of primitive infancy of really beginning to understand violence and predicting it. On the other hand, I think there’s a lot of difference in at least raising these questions. That’s what I’m trying to do. I agree that reasonable people can disagree. I just think I would like to get this on the radar screen of people, so they can think about it. 

Bandy: If I may, I would also add that we’re not trying to do an individual violence risk assessment here. That we are thinking more in terms of probability and prevention, and our knowledge of public health risk factors to violence. We also did a study over the course of 115 years of the political party of the president, and rates of violent deaths. Remarkably, over the span of this period, violent deaths, in other words, homicides and suicides, have gone up, nearly doubled with each Republican administration, and halved with each Democratic administration. Without exception, except for two, which we could explain with their policies. That is, while canceling out the factors of unemployment and economic development—we weren’t sure what that factor was, rhetoric could be an example—but that is a phenomenon that we observed through rigorous statistical testing. 

Burton Chandler: My name is Burton Chandler. I appreciate being here. Unlike all of you, I have no psychiatric background or degrees, or anything like that. I’m a lawyer. I sit around and watch television, like everybody else, and read the newspapers. My little talk here will involve some terms that to you people will be absolutely silly. I know enough to get up in the morning and say, I think our president’s nuts. I’m not really bothered at all by these technicalities that you people are discussing. As I listen here I think to myself that I hear all kinds of intelligent discussions as to how you define mental illness and that sort of thing. But nobody has mentioned, and what do you do after you come to that decision? So if I may for a moment, I’m sitting around, time after time, and I listen to this guy on the television. I think the guy is crazy, and there must be some way to get him out of office. Because, really, if you get over all the other professional hurdles and things that you are obviously all hung up with, what are you going to do about it? I checked around a little, and I found something called the 25th Amendment. I have a copy of that here. 

Burton Chandler: It essentially says that whenever the vice president and the majority of the Cabinet send a declaration to both houses of Congress, saying that he is unfit, and they describe it a little. It’s a very serious point, I think. I think their description of “unfit for office,” would include mental unfitness for office. When they get the declarations from the vice president and the Cabinet, automatically, automatically he ceases to be president. Okay, he isn’t going to like that. One way of handling your problem, by the way, as to whether he’s mentally fit, is to send him a little letter saying, “Would you mind having us mentally examine you to see what do we think? All right?” You know he’s not going to do that. Where do you go from there? I look up, and I find out that the word declaration does not mean a sworn affidavit that says, I personally believe that he is nuts. Therefore, there’s a lot of precedents that say, when you don’t give a standard to the vice president and the Cabinet members, that’s what the ordinary man would say. 

Burton Chandler: I say to myself, incidentally, the amendment itself would seem to indicate that the party plaintiff is anyone of us or some guy off the street who walks into an office and hires a lawyer, and there he is. He doesn’t have to get the permission of Congress. He doesn’t get permission of any human on earth. The lawyer drops, what I would call, a writ of mandamus. I don’t think you’ve ever heard of that? A writ of mandamus is a very solid piece of law, it goes back a long time. It’s not often used, but it’s very respected in the rule of law. If the lawyer and the client wanders into a federal court and apply for a writ of mandamus, to order the vice president and the members of Cabinet to file the declarations, they have to do it. They can appeal it, they can do anything, but before we get on, they have to do it. You would have to do it. If they don’t do it, you go into contempt of court, you’ll end up in jail. That’s section four. Section three of the Amendment 25 is that, if the president is sitting around and thinking to himself, hey, I think I’m losing it, and I don’t think I’m fit for the job anymore, I’m going to send a declaration to both houses of Congress and tell them that, for a while, I don’t think I can handle it. Automatically he loses his job. He knows that. But he hasn’t done that. Everybody’s stonewalling. 

Burton Chandler: Now, one way of handling this situation is to get a lawyer and a client, and hopefully it would be in the District of Columbia because that’s the easiest place to get service, a process on the vice president and the members of the Cabinet. Within a few days, there’s going to be a federal judge…. I think if we get a couple of pollsters, they could all go to federal court and say to the judge, in our professional opinion he’s nuts. The pollster will say that the majority of the medical people in the country think that there’s a problem here. It is sent to Congress, and Congress has 21 days to determine whether the guy is nuts or not. 

James Gilligan: Let me just say, I’ve tried to be clear from the beginning. I think Bandy has too. We certainly recognize that the question of whether Trump is going to remain in office or not is a political question. It’s not a psychiatric question. We’re saying, yes, all we can do is give some ideas. But ultimately these issues have to be decided by people in Congress or his Cabinet, or the judiciary, and so on. We’re not in a position, nor should we be, to decide whether Trump is going to remain in office or not. 

Male speaker: I interviewed a friend of mine who is a former neo-Nazi leader who’s left and is helping people get out. He explicitly said that the election of Donald Trump, it was a dog whistle to all white supremacists, et cetera. Therefore, the Southern Poverty Law Center recently said there was an increase. My question is really about law, and incitement to do violence. My understanding is, the UK passed a law against a cleric that was inciting people to do suicide bombing, and they made it a crime to incite violence. I guess I want to raise that question of what you think about that. 

James Gilligan: Again, I would certainly put that at the least as a risk factor. Another example that I give in my chapter in this book, was that Trump in about 1989 paid $85,000 to put advertisements in New York City’s four major newspapers, urging that five African American young men be given the death penalty, because they had been convicted of the rape of a woman in Central Park. He did that again later, and advocated again for the death penalty, after DNA evidence and the confession by a serial rapist, made it very clear that these five boys were innocent. They had been wrongly convicted. Trump was still saying that they should be given the death penalty. He now is the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. He’s the boss of the enforcement part of our government. 

Bandy: Jim and I have both been consulting with the World Health Organization, which views violence as an ecological problem. In other words, the individual contributions are relatively small compared to the social, cultural, economic and societal factors. So we need to take all of those into consideration. Based on our studies, you can almost predict whether or not violence levels will rise or fall, based on the larger societal factors, whereas with individuals is very hard. 

Male speaker: I want to pick up after your last point, Bandy, about the social determinants that we’re talking about. I think we’ve got two very different domains here that were usually separated and blurred. One is, as Jim started with, a clinical psychiatric assessment judgment gets in all these questions. But the other is really the question of the social ecology. I think we’ve got a couple of handicaps here. One is, a lot of us would contend that psychiatry has become much less socially determined, much more individual-centric in the last 50 years. I just recall, how many of us knew that the Stanton-Schwartz phenomenon, which was really, really big. Today’s graduates don’t know anything about that, or about other contextual influences. If we go back to Durkheim and we think, I’m impressed you’ve got the data you have to say, both in terms of prestige, in terms of ease of understanding, in terms of reimbursement, clinical psychiatry is up here compared to the public health dimensions we’re talking about. I think we just have to keep that in mind through these discussions. 

Tom: I’d like to thank our guests for coming. 

[Applause.] 

Male speaker: Could I raise one more point here? I’m not quite sure how this group works, but Trump, look at his little tweets, his fights, and everything else. He insults dictators and tyrants, and everything else. There are places in this world in which the respect for human life is a lot less than what we have here. I’d certainly like to know what this group would feel if he hit somebody the wrong way in some country nowhere, and the next morning you didn’t wake up because you were A-bombed. Okay? So think about your responsibilities there, because I haven’t picked up a single thought here listening to you people today. I wish you had gone that far. 

Video of Talk

After reading the transcript, you can watch the video here.

The post Dr. Bandy Lee and Dr. James Gilligan: Do We Surrender Our Moral Compass to Technical Rule? appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

This week, I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Stein, a cult survivor and renowned expert on cults and totalitarianism. Alexandra Stein, Ph.D. is a writer and educator specializing in the social psychology of ideological extremism and other dangerous social relationships. She is an academic, having taught at the University of Minnesota, Birkbeck, and the University of London, now teaching at the Mary Ward Center.

Dr. Stein is a Ph.D. sociologist and expert on social psychology. She teaches as an academic but gives talks, as well as, writes books.  Her memoir Inside Out: A Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult discusses her decade-long time in a political cult. More recently, her book Terror, Love and Brainwashing explains how almost anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can be radically manipulated to engage in otherwise incomprehensible and often dangerous acts. When I asked about her use of the word “love” in the title, she explained she meant “love” in the sense of phony “cult love” that new recruits do not realize is not based on true relationships.

Dr. Stein believes that totalitarianism, in all of its different forms, is the second great risk that our world is facing. This would include at the micro-level, very intimate personal one-on-one relationships; at the middle level, groups; and the macro level, the kinds of threats and nations that we see such as North Korea that are suffocating under these totalitarian regimes along with the rising threats from around the world.

Brainwashing and undue influence are not just a threat from religious groups but are concerning from the political stage, too. And, Dr. Stein prefers the use of the word “brainwashing” as many understand that term. She agrees with the “brainwashing hypothesis” of Benjamin Zablocki, with her focus being on the category of totalist organizations, of any size from totalitarian to cult to relationships.  Her work, greatly influenced by Robert Jay Lifton, deals with what these types of relationships and organizations look like, along with how they operate.

Dr. Stein goes into detail about the evolutionary-based attachment theory which looks at the physiology of how dynamic, assault leniency can affect cortisol levels, affecting processing in the brain; with the constant high cortisol levels and no way out, a person can dissociate under those conditions.

Also, there is the trauma bond created from these types of relationships, which creates thought-stopping and blocks the brain from emotional processing, allowing a group or leader to manipulate the actions and behaviors of others, even to the extreme (such as with a suicide bomber). The group or leader wants the primary attachment of the person to be for the interests of the group and not of the individual. This leads to further isolation from friends and family.

Lastly, Dr. Stein discusses President Donald Trump and how charismatic leaders of cults fit the profile of narcissistics, ending on the topic of how social media and the Internet can lead to a lack of community ties, making society very vulnerable.

Video Interview with Dr. Stein

The post Terror, Love & Brainwashing: A Discussion with Alexandra Stein About Extremist Political Cults appeared first on Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

Introduction

The book begins by covering the general and clinical challenges that are unique to Muslims, drawing from an internationally, ethnically, and intergenerationally diverse pool of experts.  The text covers not only how psychiatrists and other clinicians can intervene successfully with patients, but how we as clinicians can have a role in addressing other societally connected mental health challenges arising from Islamophobia. The text addresses three related but distinct areas of interest: Islamophobia as a destructive force, Islam as a religion that is threatened by stigma and misinformation, and the novel intersection of these forces with the field of psychiatry.

Islamophobia and Psychiatry is a vital resource for all clinicians and clinicians in training who may encounter patients struggling with these issues, including adult and child psychiatrists, psychologists, primary care physicians, counselors, social workers, and others.

Editors and affiliations

Table of Contents

General Issues

• Mental Health in the Islamic Golden Era: The Historical Roots of Modern Psychiatry

  Rania Awaad, Alaa Mohammad, Khalid Elzamzamy, Soraya Fereydooni, Maryam Gamar

  Pages 3-17
• Islamophobia: An Introduction to the Academic Field, Methods, and Approaches

  Hatem Bazian

  Pages 19-31
• History and Principles of Islam and Islamophobia

  Khurram K. Durrani, Ahmed Zakaria Hankir, Frederick R. Carrick

  Pages 33-40
• Islamic Perspectives on Psychological and Spiritual Well-Being and Treatment

  Hooman Keshavarzi, Bilal Ali

  Pages 41-53
• Religiosity and Mental Health in Islam

  Harold G. Koenig, Saad Saleh Al Shohaib

  Pages 55-65
• The Social Psychology and Neurobiology of Intergroup Conflict

  Sara E. Gorman, Jack M. Gorman

  Pages 67-81
• Art for a Better World

  Saad Ghosn, H. Steven Moffic, Ahmed Zakaria Hankir

  Pages 83-93
• Symbols and Identity in Islamophobia

  Shridhar Sharma, Sidra Ghafoor, Rama Rao Gogineni

  Pages 95-100
• Cultural Literacy

  R. Cecilia Jefferson

  Pages 101-109
• Psychiatric Cultural Formulation in the Islamophobic Context

  Osman M. Ali, Carol S. North

  Pages 111-121
• Clinical Assessment Tools for the Culturally Competent Treatment of Muslim Patients

  Neil Krishan Aggarwal

  Pages 123-132

Specific Clinical Challenges

• Addressing the Mental Health Needs of African American Muslims in an Era of Islamophobia

  Balkozar Adam

  Pages 257-266
• Islamophobia and Ethical Challenges for LGBT Mental Healthcare

  H. Steven Moffic

  Pages 267-276
• Islamophobia and the Mental Health of Rohingya Refugees

  Salman Majeed

  Pages 277-291

Social Psychiatric Implications

• Muslim Women and Islamophobia

  Fauzia Mahr, Tania Nadeem

  Pages 295-305
• Muslim Youth in the Face of Islamophobia: Risk and Resilience

  Madiha Tahseen, Sawssan R. Ahmed, Sameera Ahmed

  Pages 307-319
• Children, Adolescents, and Islamophobia

  Sana Younus, Ayesha I. Mian

  Pages 321-334
• Caring for Muslim Refugees

  Omar Reda, Sara Maklad, Rania Awaad

  Pages 335-345
• A Case Study of the Political Determinants of Division: Muslim Perceptions of British Combat Troops

  Ahmed Zakaria Hankir, Frederick R. Carrick, Jamie Hacker Hughes, Rashid Zaman

  Pages 347-360
• Community Resilience

  Andrew J. McLean

  Pages 361-373
• Islamophobia and Public Mental Health: Lessons Learned from Community Engagement Projects

  Sara Ali, Rania Awaad

  Pages 375-390
• Psychological Determinants and Social Influences of Violent Extremism

  Ahmed Zakaria Hankir, Steven Hassan

  Pages 391-406

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