Tag: extremism

Jacinda Ardern takes up leadership and online extremism roles at Harvard

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Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has taken up three new roles at Harvard University, where she will study and speak on leadership, governance and online extremism.
Ardern announced in an Instagram post on Wednesday morning that she was “incredibly humbled” to be joining the university on joint fellowships at the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, based at Harvard Law School. She will focus on the study of online extremism at the law school, and on building leadership and governance skills at the Kennedy School.
The fellowships will begin in the autumn, and will take Ardern overseas for the period of the New Zealand election in October. Ardern said that “While I’ll be gone for a semester (helpfully the one that falls during the NZ general election!) I’ll be coming back at the end of the fellowships. After all, New Zealand is home!”
Ardern has visited Harvard before: last year, she given an honorary doctorate of law and earned a standing ovation when speaking at Harvard’s commencement on gun control and democracy.
The former prime minister will continue her work on the Christchurch Call – an inter-governmental and tech company pledge she developed after the Christchurch terror attacks to prevent extremist and terrorist content being spread online.
Her time at Harvard will include “time spent studying ways to improve content standards and platform accountability for extremist content online, and examine artificial intelligence governance and algorithmic harms,” the University said in a statement. She will also continue her work on the board of Prince William’s Earthshot Prize, which awards five £1m prizes each year for work providing solutions to major environmental problems.
Prof Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Klein Centre, said it was “rare and precious for a head of state to be able to immerse deeply in a complex and fast-moving digital policy issue both during and after their service,” and that “Ardern’s hard-won expertise – including her ability to bring diverse people and institutions together – will be invaluable as we all search for workable solutions to some of the deepest online problems.”
Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf said in a statement that Ardern “showed the world strong and empathetic political leadership”. “She earned respect far beyond the shores of her country, and she will bring important insights for our students and will generate vital conversations about the public policy choices facing leaders at all levels.”

Ardern’s formal titles will be 2023 Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow, Hauser Leader in the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Knight Tech Governance Leadership Fellow, at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, based at Harvard Law School.
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#Jacinda #Ardern #takes #leadership #online #extremism #roles #Harvard
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

April 26, 2023
Kinzinger the ‘homeless Republican’ launches ad campaign against extremism

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“What we’re showing, by the video, is we’ve been programmed so much to believe that there’s only two choices to everything, that the other side is our enemy, that each event in the world should be seen through blue or red glasses,” Kinzinger said in an interview. “And we’re saying there’s a completely different way.”
He said the nationwide campaign’s rollout, which will include TV, digital, billboard and guerilla marketing, will involve spending as close to “a quarter million [dollars] or more.” Shorter versions of the video will be displayed too.
And as an example of what Kinzinger described as “performance art,” people have been spotted around Capitol Hill wearing the all-white costumes from the video. The former congressman said the display was also meant to draw attention to how many lawmakers on Capitol Hill were just “looking for that next social media opportunity, and not actually trying to do what their constituents need.”
“It’s just another way to put that in perspective,” he added. “And it’s a little creepy too.”
Kinzinger broke with his party after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, eventually serving as one of two Republicans on the select panel investigating the insurrection. He now identifies as a “homeless Republican.”
Asked about the select panel’s unfinished business, he said his “working assumption” was that the Department of Justice and Senate Democrats might be able to carry on the investigative mantle from the select panel, which sunsetted at the end of the last Congress.
“The Senate needs to pick up that slack,” he said.
There were still investigative leads to pursue with the Secret Service, Kinzinger said, and with former President Donald Trump’s social media manager Dan Scavino, who had resisted the select panel’s subpoena and was eventually held in contempt of Congress. He did agree, however, that the Jan. 6 select committee had acted correctly in not further pushing former Vice President Mike Pence’s testimony, saying it would have taken up “a ton of energy for probably, as far as we were concerned, probably not a ton of information that’s useful.”

“There’s a lot of those kinds of loose ends that, while I’m impressed at the committee’s ability to put together what we were able to do … if we had more time or infinite time, I think we could have done a lot more,” Kinzinger said.
Kinzinger didn’t close the door to running for office again, though he said it wouldn’t be in the near future.
“There’s a good chance I run for something again someday,” he said. “But I definitely need to take a good breather and a reset and focus on my wife and kid right now.”
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#Kinzinger #homeless #Republican #launches #campaign #extremism
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
We need to talk about extremism and its links to Christian fundamentalism | Josh Roose

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The announcement yesterday that Queensland police now consider the Wieambilla attacks to be a “religiously motivated terror attack” connected to a Christian extremist ideology should constitute a seismic shift in our understanding of the terror threat in Australia.
Middle-aged, middle-class Christian Australians, two of them teachers, ambushed and killed two police officers and a neighbour. This should and must and trigger debate about new directions in extremism in Australia and equally, should stimulate a wider introspection about the increase in polarisation and extremism in Australia.
Christian extremist ideology
It is important to try to unpack, even with the still limited information available, what we do know about “Christian extremist ideology”. The deputy commissioner of Queensland police, Tracey Linford, indicated that evidence pointed towards the attackers subscribing “to what we would call a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system, known as premillennialism”, which drove a direct attack upon police.
Premillennialism may be understood as a form of evangelical Christian belief centred on the second coming of Christ. It has a number of offshoots grounded in different interpretations of text, primarily, but not limited to the Book of Revelation. A period of immense tribulation, defined by corruption and great evil (which some adherents believe is currently taking place) will precede the “rapture”, for many evangelicals, a terrifying event whereby the good will ascend into heaven and the evil be brutally punished. This will be followed, based on their belief, by a 1,000-year reign of Christ defined by peace and salvation.
The deputy commissioner of Queensland police, Tracey Linford, speaks to the media in Brisbane on Thursday. Photograph: Darren England/AAP
While some evangelical Christians view the end times as a metaphor for personal salvation, others believe it’s a literal, physical event for which they must prepare.
In this context, for those who believe the end of days is imminent and who have become radicalised, those deemed evil are considered legitimate targets for extreme violence and terror. Perversely, as with terrorists of other religious backgrounds, they believe this is justified in the name of God. In this particular case, Linford said the attackers saw police as “monsters and demons”.

Moving beyond the ‘other’
New formations of violent extremism are brewing away in the post-Covid context. Rapidly increasing economic inequalities, catastrophic natural disasters, vaccination mandates are some key contributing factors and the rise of social media and encrypted messaging enable the free flow of extremist content.
The Australian far right, which inspired the white Australian Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant, continue to be active in efforts to recruit. Sovereign citizens, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists are also highly active, while misogynists such as Andrew Tate continue to spread their messaging through social media.
These are internationally linked movements that are tied in to racist, antisemitic, anti-democratic and anti-women worldviews. Militant forms of Christianity such as those that have emerged in the United States (for example Christian nationalism) will also be taking hold among some Australians. Notwithstanding the diversity of these movements, many adherents are white, middle-aged Australian men and women.
This requires a deep reflection by both intelligence communities and society in general. The focus on the “other” as the primary source of violent extremism and terror threats is not only outdated, but dangerous. The US is already abundantly aware of this. Queensland police on Thursday referred explicitly to the Waco massacre in Texas in 1993, but we can look at the Unabomber, Timothy McVeigh, Ku Klux Klan and many other terror attacks carried out by white Americans. In 2019, at the height of the Trump years, Congress found that “white supremacists and other far-right extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States”. We saw the result of this at the insurrection at the Capital building on 6 January 2021.
Implicit biases and the need for condemnation
From an investigative standpoint, implicit bias can cloud judgment when examining data. Two of the three Wieambilla attackers were accomplished teachers and educational leaders and all of them identified as Christian. Yet it is known that they had at the very least attempted to accumulate firearms. One of the attackers is reported to have posted direct threats to police and in one video, made posts online referring to himself as a “barbarian”, “savage” and “extremist”. In a similar vein, reports of concerns to police about the Christchurch terrorist’s statements and actions were overlooked by authorities in both Australia and New Zealand.
The even bigger problem, however, is the complete failure to have any sort of reflection or introspection about these attacks from within the community to which they belong. For two decades, Australian Muslims have been required to answer for the actions of an extremist fringe. Yet in the aftermath of the horrific Christchurch attack in which the attacker made reference to the Crusades and historic battles between Christians and Muslims, and now a double police murder, there has been very little, if any, introspection by the wider Australian community, including politicians and Christian leaders alike. There must be a collective acknowledgement and condemnation of the violent potential of intolerance, racism, hate and extremism in all its forms, including that which has become pervasive in our political discourse, media, religious institutions and wider society.
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#talk #extremism #links #Christian #fundamentalism #Josh #Roose
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 17, 2023