It is a dramatic turnaround for someone who used to be a member of a far-right gang. Today, he works for Exit Sweden and has spent the last years travelling through Europe and the world to promote the model and to help build similar organisations in different countries. But if our goal is to get people out of violent organisations, he argues, we must be practical in our approach, engaging with a member’s own experiences in order to further motivation to get them out.Ĭonsider the experiences of Robert Örell. Kimmel acknowledges that there are critics of this approach, with many arguing that focusing on non-ideological reasons for people to get engaged lets people off the hook for past or even current extremist views and behaviour. He struggled to get participants to be able to even explain the ideology of the organisations they were part of, with participants instead talking about the importance of being “part of something, part of a group”. He argues that contrary to his initial presumptions ideology is not an important factor for many of the young people who join extremist far-right organisations. In his book Healing from Hate, Michael Kimmel studies, amongst others, two Exit organisations – Exit Sweden and Exit Germany. It may seem surprising, but Exit does not begin the rehabilitation process by targeting the ideology. The process is normally led by “formers” – previous members of far-right organisations – who can act as role models for new clients. Exit works in a confidential, non-judgemental, and non-confrontational manner to find solutions for people to these issues. They work through the array of barriers – social, psychological, emotional, and legal – for someone to get out of the particular organisation. "It’s not enough for them to be looking for a way to cover up their past – they have to show remorse and dedication to changing their ways.”Īfter initial interviews, Exit works with individuals to identify how they can help them leave the far right. The people have to come to us, they have to call us or to write an e-mail or something like that, and we have to check how motivated the person is.
Fabian Wichmann, a case manager at Exit Germany, describes it like this: “The base of all our work is volunteerness. The organisation has now spread across Europe.Įxit works exclusively with people who are already motivated to leave, with most clients of the organisation making first contact with Exit to begin the process.
The project had three primary objectives: “To establish local networks to support the parents of children embedded in racist or violent groups to enable young people to disengage from these groups and to develop and disseminate methodological knowledge to professionals working with youths associated with violent groups”.Įxit provides a peer-to-peer approach designed to examine the social causes behind attraction to far-right organisations, and to use this to help people get out.
Some insights come from Exit Norway, a project established in 1997 by two researchers at the Norwegian Police Academy College. How can you measure what makes a country great.Why we should treat violence like an epidemic.Their insights are often counter-intuitive, but appear to closely match findings from other forms of extremism, including Islamist terrorism. They are doing so by focusing in particular on the root social causes of why some people become attracted to extreme and violent right-wing organisations – and the ways you can guide them on a different path. Events such as those in Charlottesville in the United States 2017, in Chemnitz in Germany in 2018 and the recent terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, have led many to ask the question: what can we do to stop the spread of these extremist ideologies?Ī small number of organisations are now gaining traction in this area. Over the past few years there have been increasing fears about the growth of far right, neo-Nazi and fascist organisations.
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