Why deradicalisation programmes are needed for the far right

A study of 200,000 articles in 80 different languages found one-quarter of stories about attacks by far-right perpetrators mentioned the word “terrorism.” This has a detrimental effect on public perceptions on terrorism.

Erin M. Kearns, from the University of Alabama, reported in a study titled “When Data Don’t Matter: Exploring Public Perceptions of Terrorism” that, from 2006-15, far-right extremists, such as white supremacists and anti-government militias, were responsible for approximately 50% of all terrorist attacks in the United States. Kearns’s research stated that discussing white supremacist discourse in the mainstream is sympathetically distorted.

White supremacist discourse can only be tackled if governments institute effective deradicalisation programmes that are so readily available for Islamist terrorists.

Read full article published in The Arab Weekly