Yesterday, I saw an alarming post on Twitter by Dr. Danna Young, professor of Political Science at the University of Delaware. She said her teen son remarked that almost every white middle school boy is in the alt-right pipeline until something, or someone pulls them out.
Scary stuff. I also ran into this phenomenon as I did research for my upcoming book, SHADES OF FEAR. The term radicalization by gamification was foreign to me until I did some digging and came across a CBS report where a young man discusses how he gradually became radicalized online through video games and chat rooms.
At least since the 1990s, extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and Isis have used games, music, forums, and chat rooms to recruit and indoctrinate Islamic fighters. Now, white nationalist groups and other extremist organizations have caught on and are doing the same thing.
Vulnerable boys and young men, isolated with few or no friends, find a sense of belonging in radical chatrooms and forums. Far right groups make it appealing by offering badges and other entitlements for participants.
You may wonder how it can get so extreme that teens and young men commit atrocities such as mass murder with a weapon of war (AK-47 or AR-15). The answer is by dehumanizing. On a video game, using an HD helmet camera, the player shoots a target, racks up as many kill shots as possible. Once out in the real world, they see minorities and ethnic groups as targets to eliminate. In March 2019, the shooter of two mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand livestreamed on Facebook his first attack, which inspired the shooter at El Paso to kill twenty-three at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas less than five months later.
Parents, pay close attention to your child’s online presence. Ask questions and inform them of this risk.
Photo credit courtesy of Antoni Shkraba/pexels
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