美国国家公共电台 NPR Is There A Cure For Hate?

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It is clear from his own words that Robert Bowers 2, the man alleged 3 to have opened fire on that Pittsburgh synagogue, was filled with hate. He posted bigoted 4 statements and conspiracies 5 online for months ahead of the shooting. And during the attack itself, according to a federal indictment 6, Bowers said he wanted to kill Jews. He is charged with 44 counts, including hate crimes, for the murder of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue. NPR's Eric Westervelt looks at what, if anything, can get violent, far-right extremists in America to change.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE 7: Tony McAleer knows something about the mindset of the suspected synagogue gunman, and he knows how savvy 8 racist 9 recruiters can be. He was one of them. McAleer was steeped in the racist invective 10 Robert Bower 1 spewed online, one that sees a cabal 11 of malevolent 12 Jews running the world by proxy 13 through banks, corporations, Hollywood and the media. As a member of the White Aryan Resistance, or WAR, McAleer peddled 14 that conspiracy 15 to attract new members.

TONY MCALEER: I was a Holocaust 16 denier. I ran a computer-operated voicemail system that was primarily anti-Semitic.

WESTERVELT: He eventually renounced 17 his bigotry 18 and helped create the nonprofit Life After Hate, one of the few groups working to help right-wing extremists find an off-ramp. The good news - there are some programs like his that seem to be effective in de-radicalizing homegrown extremists. The bad news - they're small, hard to scale, and there's no consensus 19 on what really works. Overall, it's an understudied, underfunded and neglected area.

PETE SIMI: We haven't wanted to acknowledge that we have a problem with violent, right-wing extremism in this kind of domestic terrorism.

WESTERVELT: Sociologist 20 Pete Simi at Chapman University has researched violent white nationalists and other hate groups for over two decades. We know more, Simi says, about what works to best intervene with American gang members or jihadists than how to combat far-right hate. That willful denial, he says, means many nonprofits, social workers and police today are largely flying blind.

SIMI: There really haven't been much resources, attention, time, energy devoted 21 to developing efforts to counter that form of violent extremism.

WESTERVELT: In fact, the Trump 22 administration in 2017 rescinded 23 funding that targeted domestic extremism, including a four-hundred-thousand-dollar Obama-era federal grant to Life After Hate. The administration instead has focused almost exclusively on threats from Islamist extremists and what it sees as the security and social menace of undocumented immigrants. The programs that best help people leave hate behind, Simi says, are those that address the full range of issues someone swept into a far-right extremist world might face.

SIMI: Some additional schooling 24 or employment trainings. Maybe they have some housing needs. Maybe they have some unmet mental health needs, I mean, substance use problems - what's called wrap-around service approach.

WESTERVELT: But that more holistic 25 model is labor 26 intensive, costly 27 and thwarted 28, Simi says, by America's woefully inadequate 29 drug treatment and mental health care systems. McAleer, the former White Aryan Resistance recruiter, says adherence 30 to racist beliefs, whether as part of a group or as a lone 31 wolf like the suspected synagogue gunman, is more often sparked by a flawed search for identity and purpose than a deeply held belief. From his experience, the best approach is simply listening and connecting to a person's buried humanity. You condemn 32 the ideology 33 and the actions, he says, but not the human being.

MCALEER: You know, think of them as lost. Somewhere along the line, they find themselves in this place. And I can tell you, being in that place is not a fun place to be. When you surround yourself with angry and negative people, I guarantee you your life is not firing on all cylinders 34.

WESTERVELT: But he concedes that inspiring compassion 35 is a challenging one-on-one approach and one that's hard to scale. Eric Westervelt, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF PHILANTHROPE'S "REBIRTH")