Research Seminar: ‘Responses to ‘extremist’ communication: From radicalisation to dialogue’

This presentation draws on research with actors engaged in 'extreme-right' milieus to explore the messages they encounter, their responses to them and subsequent trajectories of (non)radicalisation

Location: LT G.12, Clothworkers Building North

The vast majority of people who engage with radical or ‘extremist’ ideas do not pursue radicalisation trajectories to their presumed endpoint of violent extremism. However, empirical research charting engagements with ‘extremist’ actors, milieus and messages that lead not to violence but to partial, stalled or ‘non-radicalisation’ is scarce. This paper draws on ethnographic research (2017-2020) with young people active in ‘extreme-right’ milieus across Europe undertaken as part of the H2020 DARE project. It explores the role of face to face and online communication in drawing people into 'extreme-right' activism and the range of responses of young activists to ‘extremist’ messages and actors they encounter. It considers the unexpected finding that calls for dialogue were a common response to 'extremist' messaging and discusses the experience of conducting a mediated dialogue between activists from politically opposed milieus that emerged from the research.  

Hilary Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester and Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. Originally a specialist in  contemporary Russian society and culture, she was previously Director of the Centre for Russian and East European at the University of Birmingham and Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick.