Julia Ebner is a leading researcher in the area of extremism, radicalisation and conspiracy theories. She’s spent time undercover among incels, anti-vaxxers and neo-nazis, and combines this brave reportage with a deep understanding of politics.
In today’s episode, Julia explains the unsettling trend of kooky and dangerous ideas making their way into the political mainstream, as fringe ideas are repackaged as successful populist weapons. She talks about conspiracy theories such as QAnon, the idea of “identity fusion” which brings together people with a wide range of anti-establishment grievances, the psychology behind conspiracy myths, the anxieties that modern society creates, and the state of US politics.
Finally she talks solutions, promoting four elegant principles of “critical thinking, lateral reading, self awareness and emotional intelligence” — a useful lesson for us all.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Stop the world. When your personal identity
becomes one with the group identity and you essentially
start to perceive your other group members or fellow group
members as family, as extended family, as my brothers and
sisters, my Q Anon family. And this also then means that
(00:24):
you're willing to go all in on behalf of the group.
You're willing to even perhaps commit a terrorist attack or do
something that is really that puts your own life at risk or
your your own career. Welcome to STOP the World, the
SP Podcast. I'm Olivia Nelson.
And I'm David Rowe. Today's guest is one of the most
fascinating researchers working in the area of extremism,
(00:46):
radicalization and conspiracy theories.
She spent a lot of time going undercover among groups like In
Cells, Angie Vaxes and Neo Nazis, and one of the main areas
of her research recently has been about the way ideas that
used to sit on the fringes have been making their way into the
mainstream of politics. Her name is Julia Ebner and her
latest book is called Going Mainstream.
(01:07):
She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of
Oxford's Centre for the Study ofSocial Cohesion, and she's also
a Co executive director at the Institute for Strategic
Dialogue, Germany, among other roles.
She's won awards and hit best seller list with Going
Mainstream and two other books, and she also consults widely
with governments, intelligence agencies, tech firms and
(01:29):
international organisations. Now, Dave, I put Julia's book on
your desk ages ago and told you to read it.
Yeah, you did. And it took me a while to get to
it, but when I did, I inhaled it.
It's a cracker and it serves thebasis of today's conversation,
not least because despite comingout in 2023, it's so spot on
that basically on every page youfind yourself thinking, I think
(01:51):
I just saw an example of that last week.
Yeah, I agree. So that's things like conspiracy
theories finding their way into politics, the phenomenon of
Donald Trump and his political style, the rise of populism and
the way people with different grievances are coming together.
And that one is really interesting because that's
exactly what Mike Burgess, the head of Azio here in Australia,
has talked about in the past couple of years, what he calls
(02:13):
anti authority beliefs. Absolutely.
Julia also talks about the psychology behind conspiracy
myths, the anxieties that modernsociety creates, and of course,
what we can do about it all. And the book includes the most
depressing fact I've heard in a really long time, which is that
our attention span has gone downto an average of 8 seconds,
which is actually a second shorter than a goldfish.
(02:36):
I'm very confident, Dave, that Julia will hold our listeners
attention for a lot longer than that, indeed for roughly 50
minutes. There could not be a better time
for this conversation. So let's go.
Welcome to STOP THE World. I'm here with Yulia Ebner.
Yulia, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me.
So a good place to start is yourmost recent book.
(02:56):
You've published a a number of books, but going mainstream, the
the most recent was published in2023.
It was about the way radical andextreme positions were
encroaching on mainstream politics.
Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and and say it's, it's
fair to to say that your thesis has been vindicated in the time
(03:18):
since. But perhaps just as a way of
introducing the topics that we're going to be talking about.
Tell me, what do you think of the main trend lines that you've
seen in the two years since thenthat either consolidate your
main ideas or have caused them to evolve?
It's a really good question. And I think even the last two
years we've seen such an evolution with a lot of these
(03:39):
extremist movements becoming even more mainstream, the ideas
literally now informing political debates and informing
policies in some countries. I think the main, of course, the
main turning point was Trump's reelection, which meant that
some of the concepts that originated really at the fringes
of society, in the very extreme corners have now to some extent
(04:01):
even made it into the White House.
And I think that was something that was in many ways shocking
to me because that was also not something I expected, even with
Trump in power. So, for example, he has now
adopted some of the same language that the identitarian
movement, the pan European whitenationalist movement, Generation
Identity uses. They have traditionally very
(04:24):
much talked about conspiracy myths such as the Great
replacement idea, which of course was also on the cover
page of the manifesto of the Australian attacker who carried
out the attacks in Christchurch in 2019.
And related to that language like re migration, both of these
terms come from, yeah, the identitarian movement in Europe.
(04:45):
And now Trump has used that language and even has announced
to set up an office of re migration.
So really mirroring that language, mirroring that
political idea as well. And the other trend is that even
with misogynist movements, we see really a mainstreaming of
some of this. And youth radicalization has
experienced a huge uptake acrosscountries across on a global
(05:09):
level. We've seen that young boys and
young men are increasingly beingrecruited into some of these
misogynistic networks, which used to be, again, very, very
small and politically irrelevant.
And now the manosphere and even the incel movement, the
involuntary celibates, they havereally managed to mainstream
(05:30):
some of their language, mainstream some of their ideas.
And perhaps the third trend lineis the global Q Anon movement,
the conspiracy myth movement, where they have of course gained
ground during the COVID pandemicwith some of their anti vax
ideas. But some of the ideas are are of
course completely absurd and tied together a lot of different
(05:53):
previous conspiracy myths. But they have also become
mainstream to the extent that they now also have a Direct Line
into the White House and also into some other mainstream
political parties across Europe and beyond.
I mean, it seems to me the difference between the US and
say Europe or other democracies is that in those other
(06:14):
countries, these ideas and and these these sort of radical
political messages, still, they still kind of feel a bit more
like the insurgency, the rebellion against the
establishment. Whereas in in the US,
increasingly it is the establishment.
I mean, Donald Trump, of course,is this sort of archetype now
of, of turning conspiracy theories.
(06:35):
And you've mentioned those. And I'd, I'd definitely like to
spend a bit of time on conspiracy theories, but an
exploitation of fears into political tools or weapons for a
physics analogy. I know that, you know,
physicists talk about black holes as sort of bending space
and time around them. I feel that that's an analogy
for Donald Trump. He sort of distorts the, the
(06:57):
information reality around him. And to me, the supreme example
is the fact that the whole Republican Party now is forced
to go along with these, you know, these obvious lies about
election theft and the fact thatthe January 6 rioters were
actually persecuted patriots. I'd like your reflections,
Yulia, if you can, on, I guess, the, the distinction between
(07:20):
just conspiracy theories, you know, swirling around in debate
and a whole country or society where a conspiracy theory with
huge consequences, like, you know, the outcome of elections
actually becomes accepted doctrine on one whole side of
politics. It's quite an important
(07:41):
difference. What What are your thoughts on
that? It's a really important
difference, I agree. And it is already influencing,
for example, how the US approaches its healthcare sector
and its health policies with Robert F Kennedy Junior in
power, who's been quite vocal within those conspiracy myth
networks and has bought into some of the the Q Anon ideas and
(08:03):
the anti vax ideas. And so I think that is a huge
game changer because it now means that it is directly
impacting the political sphere and how individuals across the
US might or might no longer haveaccess to specific vaccinations
or specific treatments or even researchers conduct studies on
diseases or on the prevention ofof diseases via vaccines.
(08:28):
I think that is already impacting the US right now.
But of course, there is a whole other even bigger dimension,
which is what you said related to elections and the election
fraud narratives, and also some of these ideas about the deep
state and everyone being complicit in in it.
That can also create so much distrust in the established
(08:48):
democracy and in the cheques andbalances and in the system as
such, that it might mean that itmakes it easier for Donald Trump
to pave the way for a third presidency.
And this is of course something where you're making use of this
and fueling this distrust in existing institutions.
Also getting rid of some of these institutions or attacking
(09:10):
them, all of that is potentiallyhelping paving the path for less
institutional focused governance, more leader focused
governance, and with that a moreauthoritarian direction
potentially. I don't want to obsess too much
about US politics. We will move on to your, you
know, the sort of bigger pictures around your ideas.
But there is just one more thingthat I want to touch on.
And that is the Jeffrey Epstein case, which of course is
(09:32):
absolutely dominating U.S. news at the moment.
And what strikes me about it is that it's a conspiracy theory
that the mega movement and, and Trump himself to some extent
fostered, nurtured, but now has lost control of.
It's like they've been fertilising this this soil and
(09:53):
now it's grown into something like a triffid or a man eating
plant that's that's turned on them.
It's almost like the Frankenstein story of created a,
created a monster. A quick quote that I want to
read is a guy called Mike Benz, who you may be familiar with.
He's a sort of a colourful mega identity.
I think he's a podcaster at the moment.
He used to be a a regular guest of Tucker Carlson's, which
probably tells the audience as much as they need to know.
(10:14):
He was quoted in the New York Times this morning saying you
trained us to go after this issue.
We have been grown in a lab, chemicals have been mixed
together specifically to breed this particular type of person
in the MAGA movement. Who would care about Jeffrey
Epstein Full excavation of all evidence around it?
It'd be grammatically odd, but I'm keen on your thoughts on
(10:35):
what it says about the information environment in the
United States. When I mean, it is such a
fertile ground now for conspiracy theories that even
the people promoting them can't actually control them and that
they could actually just completely turn around in, in a,
in a true viral sense, come backto harm them.
(10:55):
That is very true, and it's a really interesting case in point
because we know from research that conspiracy myth movements
are quite volatile in many ways and they're quite opportunistic
and they can change direction very quickly.
We saw this with Q Anon actually, in the last Trump
presidency. Were even their ideas about, for
example, seeing China as an enemy versus seeing China as an
(11:17):
ally could be turned around veryquickly.
And it seems like this is not even applying to what used to be
really the hero of the movement.Trump potentially becoming
entrenched in this conspiracy with Epstein means that he would
turn from hero to villain potentially.
I'm not saying this is already happening across the board, but
(11:37):
it might also be a point of conflict and divisions arising
within the wider movement as some people feel increasingly
frustrated about him not releasing the full files and him
not being transparent enough about it and also not fulfilling
his promises of publishing everything of the Epstein files.
(11:58):
But there might also be a more loyal core of the movement.
But it will be very interesting to see what happens in the
coming months because it's definitely a turning point for
the movement and something where, as you say, the the
information environment online has been fueling these ideas of
the anti establishment being caught up in the scandal.
(12:19):
And there's so many storylines in this conspiracy myth movement
related to Epstein because they've managed to somehow
connect them all. There's not much truth to a lot
of these like spin off conspiracy myths, but it's all
connected in their eyes. So once something changes,
everything changes for them. Yeah, yeah.
(12:41):
And it just feels like a dangerous time when almost
anything could become accepted as truth or fact.
It just feels like almost nothing is off the table.
You know, nothing is too preposterous to be, to be
accepted. I, I want to talk a little bit
about your, your model of conspiracy theories and what
your studies have told you aboutthem.
(13:01):
But perhaps you can just give usa sort of a snapshot of your
thoughts on their role in radical politics.
I mean, they have these various effects.
They can be used to, to scapegoat certain people.
Like they can have a convenienceto them.
They can simply make the the world more interesting or useful
or exploitative, gives explanations for realities that
(13:22):
are more useful to that conspiracy theorist than what is
usually a banal and and earnest.Tell me about what political
purpose they serve. What are some of the most
dangerous ones that you have seen around the world, and what
are some of the common templatesthat you've observed?
They can definitely be very dangerous when it comes to
demonising and dehumanising entire out groups.
(13:44):
And that's one of the political purposes for which they've been
exploited as well, is to really paint this idea that it's either
the global elite and the the establishment or in some cases
of the conspiracy myth movements, it's my specific
minority communities like migrants or Muslims or of
course, Jews, who then become the key enemy and who are made
responsible for everything that's going wrong in the world.
(14:07):
But also specifically on an individual level, they are
powerful bridge between personalgrievances and collective
frustrations or collective suffering.
And that's also what then creates a very strong sense of
community because people in these conspiracy myth chat
rooms, they feel very strongly connected to other people in the
group because of that perceived shared suffering because of the
(14:29):
shared enemy and out group. And so it's an extremely strong
form of group cohesion that can be fueled through that, which is
very useful if you want to create a bigger loyal movement
that helps you with campaigning like the MAGA movement or Q
Anon. It's an extremely useful
political tool that has been weaponized by, I would say by
(14:50):
many politicians in the past. And of course, Putin has been
very good at at tapping into or weaponizing conspiracy myths.
And there is a book by Peter Palmer and said nothing is true
and everything is possible, which really captures that idea
of also just completely undermining trust in anything.
(15:11):
There's no trust in anything anymore left, which also allows
leaders to act completely arbitrarily and go against
established institutions withoutfacing a backlash.
And Putin has made use of that with the obfuscation of the
information space. But we've seen something similar
now being adopted as a tactic inthe US, but also by other
(15:33):
political movements across Europe.
I think we see it really on a global level that this is
increasingly becoming weaponizedand instrumentalized by
political leaders. And especially when it's
combined with the new technologies that can become
extremely dangerous because now AI and and also social media of
course, can further amplify conspiracy myths and make them a
(15:56):
lot more harmful politically than they used to be.
So I mean, so the truth is whatever the leader, I mean the
the Putin example that you're using, when the truth becomes
whatever the leader says, it is in effect.
Exactly. Yeah.
So also it shifts the trust fromtrust in institutions or trust
in what the establishment towards trust in the leader or
(16:17):
towards trust in just individualinfluences.
So it also it completely changesthe trust landscape and thereby
the power landscape. And I think this is being used
by political fringe movements aswell as by leaders who want to
maintain power or who want to come to power.
Yeah, yeah. And coming back to your point
(16:37):
about the way that a conspiracy theory can unite people who have
a wide range of grievances. I mean, if if, for instance, you
think that Jews are responsible for a wide range of the world
problems, then whatever your grievance is, whether it's your
sort of lack of financial success or whatever personal
issue you might have that you are deeply unhappy and resentful
(17:00):
about, you can join with all of these other people who might
have quite different problems intheir lives and blame it via
this sort of shared conspiracy theory.
Exactly, and I think Q Anon was one of the first big grand
narrative, big complex conspiracy myths that linked up
different people from different also population segments and
(17:21):
could tap into different grievances.
And of course it was also reuniting people who already
perhaps believed in some conspiracy myth.
For example, I don't know 911 having been staged or 911 have
been having been an insider job or that the moon landing was was
not didn't actually have more was staged or conspiracy myths
about Princess Diana's death as well as anti vax ideas and
(17:46):
pharma industry related conspiracy myths.
So all of these were tied together.
They even included things like aliens and NASA activities as
well as Hollywood conspiracy myths.
And it was quite, in a way, quite impressive, also quite
absurd to look at all the different storylines within Q
Anon. But that's the the end result of
(18:07):
this was that they could bring together a really powerful mass
of people who all came from verydifferent demographic
backgrounds, different politicalbackgrounds even, and had
different grievances, but they were united in in this bigger
picture conspiracy myth. I.
Mean as a fabrication, as a contrivance.
It if it wasn't so awful you could almost admire it for the
(18:29):
work of art. But it is because it is so
flimsy. This, you know, some guy called
Q who works somewhere in the deep state and all that is known
about him is that he goes by this initial cue and supposedly
he's, he's fighting to bring down the deep state and bring,
you know, Donald Trump to his his true, you know, position of
(18:49):
leadership he was destined to hold.
I mean, it is just, I mean, it is such a flimsy story and yet
it has it has wielded so much power.
You almost have to admire it. But I'm not saying we should.
There's a line. I mean, well, a couple of
things. One is I feel like everyone is
entitled to their own conspiracytheory.
Mine, mine is JFKI still have this inkling that JFK, that it
(19:12):
was more complicated than it's made out to be.
One of my, shall I say, senior colleagues is confounded by the
fact that the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids on their
own. So he suspects alien
involvement. I think he's joking, but but I'm
never quite sure. There's a quote that I loved
from going mainstream. I'm just going to read it out.
Radical subcultures achieve societal impact by tapping into
(19:34):
widespread grievances while offering a sense of community
and agency and leveraging socialmedia to have a disproportionate
impact on politics. I just feel like that brings
everything together that that you're talking about.
And, and, you know, you can, youcan treat this as a comment or,
or respond to it, but I just, I am fascinated by this idea of,
(19:57):
you know, mixed ideologies coming together in cells.
Anti vaxes, anti climate activists, far right extremists,
etcetera. And the head of ASIO, our
domestic security intelligence agency has said similar things
that the grievances, conspiracies and anti authority
beliefs is is one that he has talked about quite a bit in
(20:17):
public. This, you know, just the idea of
being anti authority or anti establishment is itself a kind
of a shared or, you know, commonidea that people with all these
different grievances can actually rally around.
Can you talk about the psychology of all of this and
your idea of identity fusion, which you've talked about?
(20:38):
So obviously frustrations that people have, economic
frustration, that sense of, of aloss of traditional common
values, isolation, alienation, all of these things that
sociologists tell us are becoming more and more common.
Also obviously disorientation atthe pace of change of the world.
I mean, we all feel that at the moment.
It creates real anxiety and a sense of, you know, feeling lost
(21:01):
and feeling a lack of identity, a sense of feeling left behind.
Just talk a bit about the psychology of it.
Yeah, I, I did quite a few studies on trying.
We're trying to understand what the psychological factors are
underlying radicalization or whypeople start believing in
conspiracy myths and why they might even go all the way to
violence. And I, this was mostly part of
(21:23):
my decision at Oxford University, where we did, for
example, a systematic study of terrorist manifestos, trying to
understand what have all of these violent attackers in
common. And what we found was a
combination of different psychological factors that were
traceable in their language as well, and were, yeah,
statistically significant when you compared it with other types
(21:45):
of writings or manifestos by nonviolent authors.
And so one of these psychological phenomena was
indeed identity fusion, which isa very powerful form of group
cohesion. When your personal identity
becomes one with the group identity and you essentially
start to perceive your other group members or fellow group
(22:06):
members as family, as extended family, as my brothers and
sisters, my Q Anon family. And this also then means that
you're willing to go all in on behalf of the group.
You're willing to even perhaps commit a terrorist attack or do
something that is really that puts your own life at risk or
you pull your own career. And that's what we observe with
(22:28):
people who combine this deep sense of community or or group
cohesion identifusion with a perceived existential threat to
that or metaphorical family froma demonised or dehumanised out
group. And when they also start to
condone violence or to see violence as a justifiable means
(22:49):
to protect their so called family, that's when it becomes
really dangerous. And often this type of identity
fusion arises from shared traumaor from shared suffering.
So what we see is that, of course, in the context of wars,
this is especially something we can observe on both sides of a
conflict. We see a lot of shared suffering
(23:10):
and trauma, which leads to extremely powerful forms of
identity fusion. But we also see it on a
different scale, perhaps with political polarisation and with
that perception that you are on the losing end of whether it's
globalisation or technological developments or just the
economic policy in the country. The people on the even the
(23:31):
market crowd, they then refer tothemselves as deplorables.
And this captured the sense of shared grievance, shared
suffering in a way or being on the losing end of things.
And of course, we have the same when it comes to migrant crimes
or migrant open door MIC migration policies where people
(23:52):
feel that they are directly impacted by that with terrorist
attacks, jihadist attacks, feeding into that, that sense of
we share grievance, we share suffering.
And this can create extremely strong in groups, which yeah,
combined with a very strong out group, demonization can be and,
and a threat from that or a perceived threat from that out
(24:12):
group can be quite dangerous. And are people who are prone to,
I guess, finding fulfilment fromthat identity fusion, from
fusing their personal identity, their individual identity with
the group identity, Have you found that they are vulnerable
to that precisely because they have a weak or I suppose,
(24:34):
unfulfilled individual identity?Is there an absence in them
psychologically? I don't know if that's is that,
Is that something you've observed?
Yeah, there's sometimes there isa kind of an identity crisis and
they might be more in the first step more susceptible to
becoming part of a group, to joining an extremist movement or
(24:54):
a chat group that gives them a sense of belonging.
But I think it's it's also it's,it's more than that.
I mean, it's sometimes also unresolved trauma or personal
grievances that then become shared with the in Group,
perhaps sometimes even indirectly in some of these
online forms where people exchange their traumatic
experiences or their fears and their grievances.
(25:18):
And that can all feed into it. But it's definitely also
specific age groups are more susceptible to this.
And we do see that young people and teenagers seem to be
especially susceptible at the moment to radicalization.
And perhaps one of the, I mean, this needs to be studied
further. But perhaps one of the reasons
is because they have an identitycrisis of some some kind and are
(25:38):
more susceptible or more susceptible to to these radical
movements. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and, and that makes a lot of sense.
What changes are we seeing over time here?
I mean, I suppose social media is a whole category in itself
and you can bring that in as much as you feel you need to.
But I suppose one of the observations that it's easy to
(26:01):
make is that old identities don't play as big a role in
people's lives as they used to. I mean things like, you know,
class your identify your identification with, say, being
a proud working class person or a devotee of a religion,
something even like it, you know, belonging to a Guild for
a, for a trade or a craft, traditional national cultures.
(26:21):
Like, you know, I am a Australian person.
I mean, Australia is a probably not always a great example, but
you know, I'm a French person orI am an Austrian person or I am,
I am a Swiss person. People move physically more than
they used to. They they don't sort of have
roots in communities that endurethroughout their lives.
I suppose political communities provide a sense of connection
(26:46):
and identity. Is that sort of recent
historical change a significant factor in, I guess, leaving
people without an identity that they then need to feel through
these identity fusions and that,you know, radical political
views are actually more powerfulat attracting that than, I
suppose, more earnest ones? I think I think that's there's
(27:09):
something to that. And it definitely is the case
that a lot of these radical and extremist movements give a very
strong sense of identity and also give a strong framework for
acceptable behaviour, give a sense of kind of moral guidance,
even if it's very immoral in many of the cases.
But it's gives a very a very clear world view and a clear
(27:29):
framework for identity. And I do think also the perhaps
to mention here as well, the decline of religious communities
or the decline of religion has played a role in this as well, I
think. And even those who still feel
like they still have quite a strong sense of national
identity or a strong sense of perhaps another layer of that.
(27:50):
And I think many people feel that their identities are under
attack as well because of the pace of change, because of, of
course, demographic change as well as technological change and
how quickly things have evolved,globalisation, but also liberal
progressive policies. So I think a lot of these quick
(28:11):
changes relative and very quick when we look at the entire
duration of human history, it's been extremely quick.
Some of these changes that have quite a profound impact on
people's identities. And I think that has
destabilised a lot of us and andperhaps created some extremely
deep search for identity and grievance about our fear about
(28:33):
losing 1's identity. Yeah, yeah.
And then I suppose technology enables those people to find
each other far more easily across geographic distances than
was previously the case as well.Yes.
Absolutely. This is something we've seen in
the last two decades, that the movements that would have
previously had very little, if any impact globally have now
(28:55):
become disproportionately powerful because they can
connect across the globe. They can run even viral
campaigns. And it's something where they
also get a lot of a lot more oxygen from being on social
media and from cooperating across the globe, across the
world. Just staying with this idea of
(29:16):
sort of mainstreaming extremism,if I can put it that way.
And, you know, I'm, you know, going mainstream, I'm interested
in, well, it feels like, I mean,there's a sort of linguistic
contradiction between mainstreaming extremism and I'm,
I'm curious for your views on the extent to which in some
(29:37):
areas, you know, the, the bulk of public opinion has simply
shifted over time. So rather than it being a case
of extreme views creeping in from the fringes into the
mainstream, maybe the mainstreamis, you know, through its own
dynamics, whatever is fueling them, just gradually adjusting
(29:58):
its position over time. A couple of examples that spring
to mind immediately for me is, is immigration.
I mean, but perhaps, you know, asense of loss of control of
immigration, a desire for more orderly immigration is, is
simply something that that the majority of people have
gradually started to feel more strongly about the uneven
benefits of very open trade and globalisation.
(30:19):
You know, the sense of like, well, my traditional profession
has been offshored and, and I don't have a source of income
anymore. And there's, whereas I suppose
most people accepted free trade as a, as a sort of almost a
shibboleth 2030 years ago. It's, it's, it feels like, you
know, that the mainstream view has changed on that.
How do you, as someone who studies this stuff, I mean, how
(30:40):
do you think about the distinction between sort of self
motivating mainstream change andthat, you know, the malignant
and kind of infection of the mainstream from the outside or
from the fringes? That's a good question because
of course there is a legitimate change just in public opinions
that is on the way because of various, also various crises
(31:00):
usually prompt people to adopt perhaps different opinions and
change their attitudes towards certain policies and certain
global trends. And I think we've seen, of
course, the whole series of crises.
And I would say it started with the global financial crisis in
2008, 9, which we don't really pay much attention to anymore,
but which had a lasting impact. And in fact, journalists back
(31:22):
then were writing a lot of op Edand commentary pieces about the
rise of fascism in the 1930s andhow we would have to brace
ourselves for something similar.But funnily enough, we didn't
really talk about that much anymore in the coming, in the
years after the financial crisis, Although I do think it
had a, it had a really lasting impact already on people's trust
(31:43):
relationship with globalisation,with capitalism, with the what
they thought of as the global elites or the establishment.
And I think then of course we had other crises like the so
called migration refugee crisis in Europe.
We had a security crisis with ISIS gaining power, staging
jihadist attacks across the world, and then of course, COVID
(32:04):
and the economic and inflation crisis, which is still impacting
many people. And I think also the the
security crisis in a way that we're facing now with global
conflict becoming more, more widespread and also just more
impactful, especially in geographies where we thought
we'd overcome times of war. I think especially in Europe,
(32:25):
that's the case. To some extent it's legitimate
and it's understandable that we've seen a change of opinions
and political attitudes. But there is something that with
each of these crises we could witness an exploitation or even
weaponization of theorising grievances.
And of these, whether it's conflicts or pandemics or crisis
(32:46):
moment by the radical fringes, by extremist groups, and then
also by sometimes by hostile state actors who have an
interest in destabilising the EU, for example.
And we saw very clearly a coordination around trying to
tap into the grievance, the newly arising grievances in
different population segments, tailoring content to really
highlight those and offer simplesolutions and also explanations
(33:11):
with conspiracy myths providing very easy explanations for some
of these crises. So I think that's all part of
this idea of moving the Overton window, which was one of the
strategies, for example, that the identitarian movement, the
white nationalist European identitarian movement
highlighted when I was undercover with them in 2017.
(33:33):
So I was in an Airbnb in Brixton, sitting there with some
of the other identitarians who'dcome there from across Europe
and kind of plotting how to maketheir ideas more mainstream and
more legitimate. And they were talking a lot
about how do we move the Overtonwindow, the window of what's
acceptable to say further to theright, and how do we do that in
(33:55):
a sustainable way that we impactpolicies.
And they were very strategic about how to use language, how
to also exploit local tensions or points of conflict, tap into
local grievances. They tailored a lot of their
campaigns around that. And that's just one example of
one movement among many others that did something very similar.
(34:17):
I followed similar discussions, strategic discussions and other
movements that I spent some timeundercover and doing my
investigations. That is such a.
Fascinating insight and, and really, I mean, immigration is
the one that that springs to mind where, for one thing, the
Overton window has clearly shifted, you know, further than
(34:37):
it has in many other areas of policy.
I mean, populist leaders today say things about immigration and
about immigrants themselves as human beings that, you know, 20
or 30 years ago, I mean, would have been actually unthinkable.
So, I mean, to me it's an unsettling thought that those
people who you met in Brixton, Imean, might have had actually
(35:01):
some sort of, you know, subtle or even significant influence
over the change in the Overton window.
I I'm certainly happy to accept that that people are allowed to
have completely legitimate concerns about uncontrolled
migration. And there are plenty of
reasonable people who do have concerns about it.
But at the same time, it's, it'san issue that's so ripe for
exploitation, isn't it? Exactly.
(35:23):
And I think the. Same can be said of some of the
COVID related fears that emerged.
I, I think a lot of these fears were legitimate, understandable
because of course it was a new pandemic.
No one really knew what was happening.
It could have been much worse than it already was.
But I do think that created sucha sense of uncertainty and, and,
and also fears and, and of course also a lack of
(35:45):
perspective, which could then beexploited by these movements.
The same is true for, yeah, related to that, for I think
vaccine scepticism, which many people have to write to be
sceptical towards vaccines, especially I would say in
minority communities, where theypointed to the fact that they
hadn't really been tested as much on minority communities and
(36:06):
they just felt unsafe. But that was exploited and
weaponized to an extent that I think it was no longer just an
organically evolving movement, it was being amplified.
Let's spend the last five minutes or so just talking about
solutions, because we should always try to finish on
something positive. Look, again, I'm I'm going to
quote from going mainstream because I, I did like this line.
(36:27):
In fact, this is I suppose if something jumps out at me as the
the perfect solution that I would really wish that all
governments would devote far more attention and resources to.
It is the reference that you made to in fact, I think I think
it might have been a quote from one of your colleagues who was
giving thoughts on solutions, critical thinking, lateral
(36:48):
reading, self awareness and emotional intelligence.
It just made me think if if we all have that and we become, you
know, the backstop ourselves against conspiracy theories,
disinformation, you know, horrible ideas that are
detrimental to society, then, you know, we're just going to be
(37:09):
so much stronger and more resilient.
I think of the this is a terrible pretentious cliche, but
they're quite attributed to to Socrates that the the unexamined
life is not worth living. And I almost want to make that,
you know, a sort of cool idea again, where people actually
think a bit more about what their own biases are, what their
own intellectual weaknesses are.And I, you know, I, I try to do
(37:30):
that myself, no doubt imperfectly.
But just give me your thoughts on how we can make some of these
ideas cool again. You know, the idea of actually
challenging yourself, making, you know, the dull work of fact
checking cool and sexy. I would honestly love.
That and I wish I had all the answers to how to make that cool
again, but I, I would say it starts very early.
(37:51):
And I think being self reflective is of course a skill
that we all need to learn. And I, I think especially now
also since I wrote the book, there have been a few studies
that came out, including Lear Smigrod's book The Ideological
brain. She's a neuroscientist who in
her book shows that there are also different ways in which
different brains react to, for example, extremist ideologies
(38:14):
and to radicalization and reflecting on or getting to know
ourselves better. Which type are we or which type
are you in? How you potentially become more
susceptible to specific rigid ways of thinking or not.
And those are points that I think should be tackled very
early on in our education pathways that we become self
(38:34):
aware. What are potential points of
exploitation or manipulation that we expose ourselves to?
And combined with that, also a clear idea of how does the
digital sphere change some of that?
How does it potentially make ourpsyche and our our human
dispositions more exploitable? Because there are toxic group
dynamics that are even more amplified in digital spaces and
(38:58):
on social media, and addictions that become even more relevant
with some of the algorithmic infrastructure that we see on
social media platforms or other things like what?
How does our psychology change, or at least it's sometimes
amplified when we enter an online chat room?
What are the factors that we should know about ourselves and
(39:19):
about group dynamics and societal dynamics when it comes
to the online sphere? So I think that intersection of
psychology and digital literacy is extremely important.
Yeah. I mean.
I, I love that. Well, I, I know that my own kids
school is, I don't know how muchthey're teaching it, but they're
certainly talking about mindfulness, for instance.
And I mean, that's a slightly different concept of self
(39:42):
awareness, I think. But you know, but the idea of
actually just paying a bit more attention to your own mental
and, and emotional state. I'm heartened that they are
teaching that as as young as, asprimary school.
But at the same time it's sort of frustrating to that
governments seem to regard it asa little bit too difficult and a
little bit too much of A sort ofcross portfolio investment to
(40:03):
make this a a real sort of. Project of of social resilience.
But I agree and it can also. Help with other issues that we
face on the society? Sure.
Whether it's addictions or anorexia.
Yeah, and drug abuse or substance abuse, or whether it's
just depression and anxieties that can be triggered or fuelled
by social media. I think taking a step back and
(40:24):
trying to understand how does this impact my behaviour or how
do I react to this? Am I now jealous or do I feel
anxious or what does this piece of content or this group do to
me? Yeah, absolutely.
OK, one last question. I, I I just want to talk about
strengthening the political middle.
This seems to be another just necessary thing that we really
all need to work on. And and again, a a point from
(40:47):
the book, I love the point that was made somewhere that that
moderates basically believe thatpolitics is about facts.
And I mean, personally, I feel, I feel like it should be, I
mean, I've, I've think of myselfas a sort of a reasoning
rationalist and, and that democracy should be a rational
process of, you know, through elections and, and I guess you
know, sort of representation andfeedback, translating the
(41:10):
preferences of, of the people asaccurately as possible into
policy outcomes using sort of rational methods and policy
expertise. Unfortunately, politics, as we
consistently see, doesn't work that way.
It it seems to be working less well than ever in that sense.
And until we actually, you know,somehow, you know, evolve our
brains and, and sort of change them so that, you know,
(41:33):
storytelling and appealing narratives are not stickier for
us than relatively dull policy discussions, we're going to have
to accept some hard realities about the necessity of emotion
and storytelling in political messaging.
So I'm a bit torn on this, but Isuppose reassure me or tell me
(41:53):
what you think we can do. And do you sort of agree with
this idea that political moderates need to get better at
political messages that actuallysort of capture emotions as well
as authoritarians and ultra nationalists and conspiracy
theorists? Do I definitely think that?
(42:16):
We need to get well. Moderate politicians need to get
better at understanding how how cognitive biases work as humans.
And I think unfortunately all the, as you say, all the studies
have shown that facts just don'treally work as well as emotions
to in politics, but also now amplified in the in the digital
sphere. They don't even work on social
(42:37):
media. It's not emotional content works
a lot better. It's much more likely to go
viral than fact based content. I think that's just a reality we
need to accept, but then I don'tthink it needs to be necessarily
a negative exploitation of emotions.
I think a lot of this can also mean just reflecting on what the
(42:58):
cognitive biases are actually. Harvey Whitehouse, the
anthropologist, wrote a really fascinating book on this called
Inheritance, The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World.
And he talks about 3 different cognitive biases that we
developed as humans. And that especially
authoritarian leaders have been tapping into an extremist
movements, but moderate politicians haven't really fully
(43:21):
understood how to how to make use of them.
To also to channel perhaps some of these powerful group dynamics
that emerge from that towards collective action problems like
tackling climate change or tackling other issues.
So the three cognitive biases, he talks about our tribalism, an
important one, doesn't necessarily have to be negative,
(43:42):
could be also a global tribe, but also religiosity, not in the
narrow sense of specific religions, but just a common
sense of religiosity and even myth making and ideas that go
beyond the natural. And the last one is conformism.
Or there were even studies that showed, for example, that
leaders who tried to get people to adhere to the COVID rules, to
(44:05):
the lockdown rules were much more effective when they
highlighted conformism rather than just fact based ideas of
why we should all adhere to the rules.
It was more powerful and more effective when they said, well,
this is now how it works. Everyone is doing it.
These are the rules and we all need to conform to it versus
explaining in depth why we now all have to do social
(44:28):
distancing. And the same is true for
recycling policies or policies related to, yeah, to tackling
climate change feeling like a good.
Citizen can actually be a reallywarm and fuzzy thing.
I, I, I found myself feeling proud of, of following the rules
possibly and perfectly. But but you know, when I did put
on a mask and when I did stand 1.5 metres away from other
(44:48):
people, I, I felt like, you know, OK, perhaps slightly
narcissistically. Hey, look at me everyone, I'm a
good citizen. I, you've definitely made me
feel better there. I've always, I mean, the reason
I said I was torn is that to me,I suppose politics that appeals
to emotion rather than reason is, is populism.
And I think tend to think of populism as as being a negative
thing. But as you say, there are there
(45:10):
are ways to appeal to positive emotions and civic mindedness
might be one of them that makes a sort of healthy form of
populism. Yeah, I would hope.
So, but that's I think, yet to be explored because we don't see
much of that yet a real message for the political.
Moderates and centrists out there, then perhaps let's, let's
(45:30):
get cracking on those talking points that will make great
political messages that will actually improve our politics
through the, the judicious use of emotion.
All right, Yulia, look, you've been super generous with your
time. We've gone further than we
usually do with our podcasts, but that's because we just felt
like you had so much valuable tosay.
So apologies if I've talked too much, but having read your book
(45:51):
recently and listened to some ofthe other podcasts that you've
been on lately, I, I, just, I, Ifound, I think I've absorbed so
many of your ideas that I, I felt myself wanting to, to
regurgitate them. All right, Yulia, thanks so
much. Thank you so much for a great.
Conversation as well and thanks for having me that's.
All we have time for this. Week on Stop the World.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another
(46:11):
episode next week.
Stop the world. When your personal identity
becomes one with the group identity and you essentially
start to perceive your other group members or fellow group
members as family, as extended family, as my brothers and
sisters, my Q Anon family. And this also then means that
(00:24):
you're willing to go all in on behalf of the group.
You're willing to even perhaps commit a terrorist attack or do
something that is really that puts your own life at risk or
your your own career. Welcome to STOP the World, the
SP Podcast. I'm Olivia Nelson.
And I'm David Rowe. Today's guest is one of the most
fascinating researchers working in the area of extremism,
(00:46):
radicalization and conspiracy theories.
She spent a lot of time going undercover among groups like In
Cells, Angie Vaxes and Neo Nazis, and one of the main areas
of her research recently has been about the way ideas that
used to sit on the fringes have been making their way into the
mainstream of politics. Her name is Julia Ebner and her
latest book is called Going Mainstream.
(01:07):
She leads the Violent Extremism Lab at the University of
Oxford's Centre for the Study ofSocial Cohesion, and she's also
a Co executive director at the Institute for Strategic
Dialogue, Germany, among other roles.
She's won awards and hit best seller list with Going
Mainstream and two other books, and she also consults widely
with governments, intelligence agencies, tech firms and
(01:29):
international organisations. Now, Dave, I put Julia's book on
your desk ages ago and told you to read it.
Yeah, you did. And it took me a while to get to
it, but when I did, I inhaled it.
It's a cracker and it serves thebasis of today's conversation,
not least because despite comingout in 2023, it's so spot on
that basically on every page youfind yourself thinking, I think
(01:51):
I just saw an example of that last week.
Yeah, I agree. So that's things like conspiracy
theories finding their way into politics, the phenomenon of
Donald Trump and his political style, the rise of populism and
the way people with different grievances are coming together.
And that one is really interesting because that's
exactly what Mike Burgess, the head of Azio here in Australia,
has talked about in the past couple of years, what he calls
(02:13):
anti authority beliefs. Absolutely.
Julia also talks about the psychology behind conspiracy
myths, the anxieties that modernsociety creates, and of course,
what we can do about it all. And the book includes the most
depressing fact I've heard in a really long time, which is that
our attention span has gone downto an average of 8 seconds,
which is actually a second shorter than a goldfish.
(02:36):
I'm very confident, Dave, that Julia will hold our listeners
attention for a lot longer than that, indeed for roughly 50
minutes. There could not be a better time
for this conversation. So let's go.
Welcome to STOP THE World. I'm here with Yulia Ebner.
Yulia, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me.
So a good place to start is yourmost recent book.
(02:56):
You've published a a number of books, but going mainstream, the
the most recent was published in2023.
It was about the way radical andextreme positions were
encroaching on mainstream politics.
Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and and say it's, it's
fair to to say that your thesis has been vindicated in the time
(03:18):
since. But perhaps just as a way of
introducing the topics that we're going to be talking about.
Tell me, what do you think of the main trend lines that you've
seen in the two years since thenthat either consolidate your
main ideas or have caused them to evolve?
It's a really good question. And I think even the last two
years we've seen such an evolution with a lot of these
(03:39):
extremist movements becoming even more mainstream, the ideas
literally now informing political debates and informing
policies in some countries. I think the main, of course, the
main turning point was Trump's reelection, which meant that
some of the concepts that originated really at the fringes
of society, in the very extreme corners have now to some extent
(04:01):
even made it into the White House.
And I think that was something that was in many ways shocking
to me because that was also not something I expected, even with
Trump in power. So, for example, he has now
adopted some of the same language that the identitarian
movement, the pan European whitenationalist movement, Generation
Identity uses. They have traditionally very
(04:24):
much talked about conspiracy myths such as the Great
replacement idea, which of course was also on the cover
page of the manifesto of the Australian attacker who carried
out the attacks in Christchurch in 2019.
And related to that language like re migration, both of these
terms come from, yeah, the identitarian movement in Europe.
(04:45):
And now Trump has used that language and even has announced
to set up an office of re migration.
So really mirroring that language, mirroring that
political idea as well. And the other trend is that even
with misogynist movements, we see really a mainstreaming of
some of this. And youth radicalization has
experienced a huge uptake acrosscountries across on a global
(05:09):
level. We've seen that young boys and
young men are increasingly beingrecruited into some of these
misogynistic networks, which used to be, again, very, very
small and politically irrelevant.
And now the manosphere and even the incel movement, the
involuntary celibates, they havereally managed to mainstream
(05:30):
some of their language, mainstream some of their ideas.
And perhaps the third trend lineis the global Q Anon movement,
the conspiracy myth movement, where they have of course gained
ground during the COVID pandemicwith some of their anti vax
ideas. But some of the ideas are are of
course completely absurd and tied together a lot of different
(05:53):
previous conspiracy myths. But they have also become
mainstream to the extent that they now also have a Direct Line
into the White House and also into some other mainstream
political parties across Europe and beyond.
I mean, it seems to me the difference between the US and
say Europe or other democracies is that in those other
(06:14):
countries, these ideas and and these these sort of radical
political messages, still, they still kind of feel a bit more
like the insurgency, the rebellion against the
establishment. Whereas in in the US,
increasingly it is the establishment.
I mean, Donald Trump, of course,is this sort of archetype now
of, of turning conspiracy theories.
(06:35):
And you've mentioned those. And I'd, I'd definitely like to
spend a bit of time on conspiracy theories, but an
exploitation of fears into political tools or weapons for a
physics analogy. I know that, you know,
physicists talk about black holes as sort of bending space
and time around them. I feel that that's an analogy
for Donald Trump. He sort of distorts the, the
(06:57):
information reality around him. And to me, the supreme example
is the fact that the whole Republican Party now is forced
to go along with these, you know, these obvious lies about
election theft and the fact thatthe January 6 rioters were
actually persecuted patriots. I'd like your reflections,
Yulia, if you can, on, I guess, the, the distinction between
(07:20):
just conspiracy theories, you know, swirling around in debate
and a whole country or society where a conspiracy theory with
huge consequences, like, you know, the outcome of elections
actually becomes accepted doctrine on one whole side of
politics. It's quite an important
(07:41):
difference. What What are your thoughts on
that? It's a really important
difference, I agree. And it is already influencing,
for example, how the US approaches its healthcare sector
and its health policies with Robert F Kennedy Junior in
power, who's been quite vocal within those conspiracy myth
networks and has bought into some of the the Q Anon ideas and
(08:03):
the anti vax ideas. And so I think that is a huge
game changer because it now means that it is directly
impacting the political sphere and how individuals across the
US might or might no longer haveaccess to specific vaccinations
or specific treatments or even researchers conduct studies on
diseases or on the prevention ofof diseases via vaccines.
(08:28):
I think that is already impacting the US right now.
But of course, there is a whole other even bigger dimension,
which is what you said related to elections and the election
fraud narratives, and also some of these ideas about the deep
state and everyone being complicit in in it.
That can also create so much distrust in the established
(08:48):
democracy and in the cheques andbalances and in the system as
such, that it might mean that itmakes it easier for Donald Trump
to pave the way for a third presidency.
And this is of course something where you're making use of this
and fueling this distrust in existing institutions.
Also getting rid of some of these institutions or attacking
(09:10):
them, all of that is potentiallyhelping paving the path for less
institutional focused governance, more leader focused
governance, and with that a moreauthoritarian direction
potentially. I don't want to obsess too much
about US politics. We will move on to your, you
know, the sort of bigger pictures around your ideas.
But there is just one more thingthat I want to touch on.
And that is the Jeffrey Epstein case, which of course is
(09:32):
absolutely dominating U.S. news at the moment.
And what strikes me about it is that it's a conspiracy theory
that the mega movement and, and Trump himself to some extent
fostered, nurtured, but now has lost control of.
It's like they've been fertilising this this soil and
(09:53):
now it's grown into something like a triffid or a man eating
plant that's that's turned on them.
It's almost like the Frankenstein story of created a,
created a monster. A quick quote that I want to
read is a guy called Mike Benz, who you may be familiar with.
He's a sort of a colourful mega identity.
I think he's a podcaster at the moment.
He used to be a a regular guest of Tucker Carlson's, which
probably tells the audience as much as they need to know.
(10:14):
He was quoted in the New York Times this morning saying you
trained us to go after this issue.
We have been grown in a lab, chemicals have been mixed
together specifically to breed this particular type of person
in the MAGA movement. Who would care about Jeffrey
Epstein Full excavation of all evidence around it?
It'd be grammatically odd, but I'm keen on your thoughts on
(10:35):
what it says about the information environment in the
United States. When I mean, it is such a
fertile ground now for conspiracy theories that even
the people promoting them can't actually control them and that
they could actually just completely turn around in, in a,
in a true viral sense, come backto harm them.
(10:55):
That is very true, and it's a really interesting case in point
because we know from research that conspiracy myth movements
are quite volatile in many ways and they're quite opportunistic
and they can change direction very quickly.
We saw this with Q Anon actually, in the last Trump
presidency. Were even their ideas about, for
example, seeing China as an enemy versus seeing China as an
(11:17):
ally could be turned around veryquickly.
And it seems like this is not even applying to what used to be
really the hero of the movement.Trump potentially becoming
entrenched in this conspiracy with Epstein means that he would
turn from hero to villain potentially.
I'm not saying this is already happening across the board, but
(11:37):
it might also be a point of conflict and divisions arising
within the wider movement as some people feel increasingly
frustrated about him not releasing the full files and him
not being transparent enough about it and also not fulfilling
his promises of publishing everything of the Epstein files.
(11:58):
But there might also be a more loyal core of the movement.
But it will be very interesting to see what happens in the
coming months because it's definitely a turning point for
the movement and something where, as you say, the the
information environment online has been fueling these ideas of
the anti establishment being caught up in the scandal.
(12:19):
And there's so many storylines in this conspiracy myth movement
related to Epstein because they've managed to somehow
connect them all. There's not much truth to a lot
of these like spin off conspiracy myths, but it's all
connected in their eyes. So once something changes,
everything changes for them. Yeah, yeah.
(12:41):
And it just feels like a dangerous time when almost
anything could become accepted as truth or fact.
It just feels like almost nothing is off the table.
You know, nothing is too preposterous to be, to be
accepted. I, I want to talk a little bit
about your, your model of conspiracy theories and what
your studies have told you aboutthem.
(13:01):
But perhaps you can just give usa sort of a snapshot of your
thoughts on their role in radical politics.
I mean, they have these various effects.
They can be used to, to scapegoat certain people.
Like they can have a convenienceto them.
They can simply make the the world more interesting or useful
or exploitative, gives explanations for realities that
(13:22):
are more useful to that conspiracy theorist than what is
usually a banal and and earnest.Tell me about what political
purpose they serve. What are some of the most
dangerous ones that you have seen around the world, and what
are some of the common templatesthat you've observed?
They can definitely be very dangerous when it comes to
demonising and dehumanising entire out groups.
(13:44):
And that's one of the political purposes for which they've been
exploited as well, is to really paint this idea that it's either
the global elite and the the establishment or in some cases
of the conspiracy myth movements, it's my specific
minority communities like migrants or Muslims or of
course, Jews, who then become the key enemy and who are made
responsible for everything that's going wrong in the world.
(14:07):
But also specifically on an individual level, they are
powerful bridge between personalgrievances and collective
frustrations or collective suffering.
And that's also what then creates a very strong sense of
community because people in these conspiracy myth chat
rooms, they feel very strongly connected to other people in the
group because of that perceived shared suffering because of the
(14:29):
shared enemy and out group. And so it's an extremely strong
form of group cohesion that can be fueled through that, which is
very useful if you want to create a bigger loyal movement
that helps you with campaigning like the MAGA movement or Q
Anon. It's an extremely useful
political tool that has been weaponized by, I would say by
(14:50):
many politicians in the past. And of course, Putin has been
very good at at tapping into or weaponizing conspiracy myths.
And there is a book by Peter Palmer and said nothing is true
and everything is possible, which really captures that idea
of also just completely undermining trust in anything.
(15:11):
There's no trust in anything anymore left, which also allows
leaders to act completely arbitrarily and go against
established institutions withoutfacing a backlash.
And Putin has made use of that with the obfuscation of the
information space. But we've seen something similar
now being adopted as a tactic inthe US, but also by other
(15:33):
political movements across Europe.
I think we see it really on a global level that this is
increasingly becoming weaponizedand instrumentalized by
political leaders. And especially when it's
combined with the new technologies that can become
extremely dangerous because now AI and and also social media of
course, can further amplify conspiracy myths and make them a
(15:56):
lot more harmful politically than they used to be.
So I mean, so the truth is whatever the leader, I mean the
the Putin example that you're using, when the truth becomes
whatever the leader says, it is in effect.
Exactly. Yeah.
So also it shifts the trust fromtrust in institutions or trust
in what the establishment towards trust in the leader or
(16:17):
towards trust in just individualinfluences.
So it also it completely changesthe trust landscape and thereby
the power landscape. And I think this is being used
by political fringe movements aswell as by leaders who want to
maintain power or who want to come to power.
Yeah, yeah. And coming back to your point
(16:37):
about the way that a conspiracy theory can unite people who have
a wide range of grievances. I mean, if if, for instance, you
think that Jews are responsible for a wide range of the world
problems, then whatever your grievance is, whether it's your
sort of lack of financial success or whatever personal
issue you might have that you are deeply unhappy and resentful
(17:00):
about, you can join with all of these other people who might
have quite different problems intheir lives and blame it via
this sort of shared conspiracy theory.
Exactly, and I think Q Anon was one of the first big grand
narrative, big complex conspiracy myths that linked up
different people from different also population segments and
(17:21):
could tap into different grievances.
And of course it was also reuniting people who already
perhaps believed in some conspiracy myth.
For example, I don't know 911 having been staged or 911 have
been having been an insider job or that the moon landing was was
not didn't actually have more was staged or conspiracy myths
about Princess Diana's death as well as anti vax ideas and
(17:46):
pharma industry related conspiracy myths.
So all of these were tied together.
They even included things like aliens and NASA activities as
well as Hollywood conspiracy myths.
And it was quite, in a way, quite impressive, also quite
absurd to look at all the different storylines within Q
Anon. But that's the the end result of
(18:07):
this was that they could bring together a really powerful mass
of people who all came from verydifferent demographic
backgrounds, different politicalbackgrounds even, and had
different grievances, but they were united in in this bigger
picture conspiracy myth. I.
Mean as a fabrication, as a contrivance.
It if it wasn't so awful you could almost admire it for the
(18:29):
work of art. But it is because it is so
flimsy. This, you know, some guy called
Q who works somewhere in the deep state and all that is known
about him is that he goes by this initial cue and supposedly
he's, he's fighting to bring down the deep state and bring,
you know, Donald Trump to his his true, you know, position of
(18:49):
leadership he was destined to hold.
I mean, it is just, I mean, it is such a flimsy story and yet
it has it has wielded so much power.
You almost have to admire it. But I'm not saying we should.
There's a line. I mean, well, a couple of
things. One is I feel like everyone is
entitled to their own conspiracytheory.
Mine, mine is JFKI still have this inkling that JFK, that it
(19:12):
was more complicated than it's made out to be.
One of my, shall I say, senior colleagues is confounded by the
fact that the Egyptians managed to build the pyramids on their
own. So he suspects alien
involvement. I think he's joking, but but I'm
never quite sure. There's a quote that I loved
from going mainstream. I'm just going to read it out.
Radical subcultures achieve societal impact by tapping into
(19:34):
widespread grievances while offering a sense of community
and agency and leveraging socialmedia to have a disproportionate
impact on politics. I just feel like that brings
everything together that that you're talking about.
And, and, you know, you can, youcan treat this as a comment or,
or respond to it, but I just, I am fascinated by this idea of,
(19:57):
you know, mixed ideologies coming together in cells.
Anti vaxes, anti climate activists, far right extremists,
etcetera. And the head of ASIO, our
domestic security intelligence agency has said similar things
that the grievances, conspiracies and anti authority
beliefs is is one that he has talked about quite a bit in
(20:17):
public. This, you know, just the idea of
being anti authority or anti establishment is itself a kind
of a shared or, you know, commonidea that people with all these
different grievances can actually rally around.
Can you talk about the psychology of all of this and
your idea of identity fusion, which you've talked about?
(20:38):
So obviously frustrations that people have, economic
frustration, that sense of, of aloss of traditional common
values, isolation, alienation, all of these things that
sociologists tell us are becoming more and more common.
Also obviously disorientation atthe pace of change of the world.
I mean, we all feel that at the moment.
It creates real anxiety and a sense of, you know, feeling lost
(21:01):
and feeling a lack of identity, a sense of feeling left behind.
Just talk a bit about the psychology of it.
Yeah, I, I did quite a few studies on trying.
We're trying to understand what the psychological factors are
underlying radicalization or whypeople start believing in
conspiracy myths and why they might even go all the way to
violence. And I, this was mostly part of
(21:23):
my decision at Oxford University, where we did, for
example, a systematic study of terrorist manifestos, trying to
understand what have all of these violent attackers in
common. And what we found was a
combination of different psychological factors that were
traceable in their language as well, and were, yeah,
statistically significant when you compared it with other types
(21:45):
of writings or manifestos by nonviolent authors.
And so one of these psychological phenomena was
indeed identity fusion, which isa very powerful form of group
cohesion. When your personal identity
becomes one with the group identity and you essentially
start to perceive your other group members or fellow group
(22:06):
members as family, as extended family, as my brothers and
sisters, my Q Anon family. And this also then means that
you're willing to go all in on behalf of the group.
You're willing to even perhaps commit a terrorist attack or do
something that is really that puts your own life at risk or
you pull your own career. And that's what we observe with
(22:28):
people who combine this deep sense of community or or group
cohesion identifusion with a perceived existential threat to
that or metaphorical family froma demonised or dehumanised out
group. And when they also start to
condone violence or to see violence as a justifiable means
(22:49):
to protect their so called family, that's when it becomes
really dangerous. And often this type of identity
fusion arises from shared traumaor from shared suffering.
So what we see is that, of course, in the context of wars,
this is especially something we can observe on both sides of a
conflict. We see a lot of shared suffering
(23:10):
and trauma, which leads to extremely powerful forms of
identity fusion. But we also see it on a
different scale, perhaps with political polarisation and with
that perception that you are on the losing end of whether it's
globalisation or technological developments or just the
economic policy in the country. The people on the even the
(23:31):
market crowd, they then refer tothemselves as deplorables.
And this captured the sense of shared grievance, shared
suffering in a way or being on the losing end of things.
And of course, we have the same when it comes to migrant crimes
or migrant open door MIC migration policies where people
(23:52):
feel that they are directly impacted by that with terrorist
attacks, jihadist attacks, feeding into that, that sense of
we share grievance, we share suffering.
And this can create extremely strong in groups, which yeah,
combined with a very strong out group, demonization can be and,
and a threat from that or a perceived threat from that out
(24:12):
group can be quite dangerous. And are people who are prone to,
I guess, finding fulfilment fromthat identity fusion, from
fusing their personal identity, their individual identity with
the group identity, Have you found that they are vulnerable
to that precisely because they have a weak or I suppose,
(24:34):
unfulfilled individual identity?Is there an absence in them
psychologically? I don't know if that's is that,
Is that something you've observed?
Yeah, there's sometimes there isa kind of an identity crisis and
they might be more in the first step more susceptible to
becoming part of a group, to joining an extremist movement or
(24:54):
a chat group that gives them a sense of belonging.
But I think it's it's also it's,it's more than that.
I mean, it's sometimes also unresolved trauma or personal
grievances that then become shared with the in Group,
perhaps sometimes even indirectly in some of these
online forms where people exchange their traumatic
experiences or their fears and their grievances.
(25:18):
And that can all feed into it. But it's definitely also
specific age groups are more susceptible to this.
And we do see that young people and teenagers seem to be
especially susceptible at the moment to radicalization.
And perhaps one of the, I mean, this needs to be studied
further. But perhaps one of the reasons
is because they have an identitycrisis of some some kind and are
(25:38):
more susceptible or more susceptible to to these radical
movements. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, and, and that makes a lot of sense.
What changes are we seeing over time here?
I mean, I suppose social media is a whole category in itself
and you can bring that in as much as you feel you need to.
But I suppose one of the observations that it's easy to
(26:01):
make is that old identities don't play as big a role in
people's lives as they used to. I mean things like, you know,
class your identify your identification with, say, being
a proud working class person or a devotee of a religion,
something even like it, you know, belonging to a Guild for
a, for a trade or a craft, traditional national cultures.
(26:21):
Like, you know, I am a Australian person.
I mean, Australia is a probably not always a great example, but
you know, I'm a French person orI am an Austrian person or I am,
I am a Swiss person. People move physically more than
they used to. They they don't sort of have
roots in communities that endurethroughout their lives.
I suppose political communities provide a sense of connection
(26:46):
and identity. Is that sort of recent
historical change a significant factor in, I guess, leaving
people without an identity that they then need to feel through
these identity fusions and that,you know, radical political
views are actually more powerfulat attracting that than, I
suppose, more earnest ones? I think I think that's there's
(27:09):
something to that. And it definitely is the case
that a lot of these radical and extremist movements give a very
strong sense of identity and also give a strong framework for
acceptable behaviour, give a sense of kind of moral guidance,
even if it's very immoral in many of the cases.
But it's gives a very a very clear world view and a clear
(27:29):
framework for identity. And I do think also the perhaps
to mention here as well, the decline of religious communities
or the decline of religion has played a role in this as well, I
think. And even those who still feel
like they still have quite a strong sense of national
identity or a strong sense of perhaps another layer of that.
(27:50):
And I think many people feel that their identities are under
attack as well because of the pace of change, because of, of
course, demographic change as well as technological change and
how quickly things have evolved,globalisation, but also liberal
progressive policies. So I think a lot of these quick
(28:11):
changes relative and very quick when we look at the entire
duration of human history, it's been extremely quick.
Some of these changes that have quite a profound impact on
people's identities. And I think that has
destabilised a lot of us and andperhaps created some extremely
deep search for identity and grievance about our fear about
(28:33):
losing 1's identity. Yeah, yeah.
And then I suppose technology enables those people to find
each other far more easily across geographic distances than
was previously the case as well.Yes.
Absolutely. This is something we've seen in
the last two decades, that the movements that would have
previously had very little, if any impact globally have now
(28:55):
become disproportionately powerful because they can
connect across the globe. They can run even viral
campaigns. And it's something where they
also get a lot of a lot more oxygen from being on social
media and from cooperating across the globe, across the
world. Just staying with this idea of
(29:16):
sort of mainstreaming extremism,if I can put it that way.
And, you know, I'm, you know, going mainstream, I'm interested
in, well, it feels like, I mean,there's a sort of linguistic
contradiction between mainstreaming extremism and I'm,
I'm curious for your views on the extent to which in some
(29:37):
areas, you know, the, the bulk of public opinion has simply
shifted over time. So rather than it being a case
of extreme views creeping in from the fringes into the
mainstream, maybe the mainstreamis, you know, through its own
dynamics, whatever is fueling them, just gradually adjusting
(29:58):
its position over time. A couple of examples that spring
to mind immediately for me is, is immigration.
I mean, but perhaps, you know, asense of loss of control of
immigration, a desire for more orderly immigration is, is
simply something that that the majority of people have
gradually started to feel more strongly about the uneven
benefits of very open trade and globalisation.
(30:19):
You know, the sense of like, well, my traditional profession
has been offshored and, and I don't have a source of income
anymore. And there's, whereas I suppose
most people accepted free trade as a, as a sort of almost a
shibboleth 2030 years ago. It's, it's, it feels like, you
know, that the mainstream view has changed on that.
How do you, as someone who studies this stuff, I mean, how
(30:40):
do you think about the distinction between sort of self
motivating mainstream change andthat, you know, the malignant
and kind of infection of the mainstream from the outside or
from the fringes? That's a good question because
of course there is a legitimate change just in public opinions
that is on the way because of various, also various crises
(31:00):
usually prompt people to adopt perhaps different opinions and
change their attitudes towards certain policies and certain
global trends. And I think we've seen, of
course, the whole series of crises.
And I would say it started with the global financial crisis in
2008, 9, which we don't really pay much attention to anymore,
but which had a lasting impact. And in fact, journalists back
(31:22):
then were writing a lot of op Edand commentary pieces about the
rise of fascism in the 1930s andhow we would have to brace
ourselves for something similar.But funnily enough, we didn't
really talk about that much anymore in the coming, in the
years after the financial crisis, Although I do think it
had a, it had a really lasting impact already on people's trust
(31:43):
relationship with globalisation,with capitalism, with the what
they thought of as the global elites or the establishment.
And I think then of course we had other crises like the so
called migration refugee crisis in Europe.
We had a security crisis with ISIS gaining power, staging
jihadist attacks across the world, and then of course, COVID
(32:04):
and the economic and inflation crisis, which is still impacting
many people. And I think also the the
security crisis in a way that we're facing now with global
conflict becoming more, more widespread and also just more
impactful, especially in geographies where we thought
we'd overcome times of war. I think especially in Europe,
(32:25):
that's the case. To some extent it's legitimate
and it's understandable that we've seen a change of opinions
and political attitudes. But there is something that with
each of these crises we could witness an exploitation or even
weaponization of theorising grievances.
And of these, whether it's conflicts or pandemics or crisis
(32:46):
moment by the radical fringes, by extremist groups, and then
also by sometimes by hostile state actors who have an
interest in destabilising the EU, for example.
And we saw very clearly a coordination around trying to
tap into the grievance, the newly arising grievances in
different population segments, tailoring content to really
highlight those and offer simplesolutions and also explanations
(33:11):
with conspiracy myths providing very easy explanations for some
of these crises. So I think that's all part of
this idea of moving the Overton window, which was one of the
strategies, for example, that the identitarian movement, the
white nationalist European identitarian movement
highlighted when I was undercover with them in 2017.
(33:33):
So I was in an Airbnb in Brixton, sitting there with some
of the other identitarians who'dcome there from across Europe
and kind of plotting how to maketheir ideas more mainstream and
more legitimate. And they were talking a lot
about how do we move the Overtonwindow, the window of what's
acceptable to say further to theright, and how do we do that in
(33:55):
a sustainable way that we impactpolicies.
And they were very strategic about how to use language, how
to also exploit local tensions or points of conflict, tap into
local grievances. They tailored a lot of their
campaigns around that. And that's just one example of
one movement among many others that did something very similar.
(34:17):
I followed similar discussions, strategic discussions and other
movements that I spent some timeundercover and doing my
investigations. That is such a.
Fascinating insight and, and really, I mean, immigration is
the one that that springs to mind where, for one thing, the
Overton window has clearly shifted, you know, further than
(34:37):
it has in many other areas of policy.
I mean, populist leaders today say things about immigration and
about immigrants themselves as human beings that, you know, 20
or 30 years ago, I mean, would have been actually unthinkable.
So, I mean, to me it's an unsettling thought that those
people who you met in Brixton, Imean, might have had actually
(35:01):
some sort of, you know, subtle or even significant influence
over the change in the Overton window.
I I'm certainly happy to accept that that people are allowed to
have completely legitimate concerns about uncontrolled
migration. And there are plenty of
reasonable people who do have concerns about it.
But at the same time, it's, it'san issue that's so ripe for
exploitation, isn't it? Exactly.
(35:23):
And I think the. Same can be said of some of the
COVID related fears that emerged.
I, I think a lot of these fears were legitimate, understandable
because of course it was a new pandemic.
No one really knew what was happening.
It could have been much worse than it already was.
But I do think that created sucha sense of uncertainty and, and,
and also fears and, and of course also a lack of
(35:45):
perspective, which could then beexploited by these movements.
The same is true for, yeah, related to that, for I think
vaccine scepticism, which many people have to write to be
sceptical towards vaccines, especially I would say in
minority communities, where theypointed to the fact that they
hadn't really been tested as much on minority communities and
(36:06):
they just felt unsafe. But that was exploited and
weaponized to an extent that I think it was no longer just an
organically evolving movement, it was being amplified.
Let's spend the last five minutes or so just talking about
solutions, because we should always try to finish on
something positive. Look, again, I'm I'm going to
quote from going mainstream because I, I did like this line.
(36:27):
In fact, this is I suppose if something jumps out at me as the
the perfect solution that I would really wish that all
governments would devote far more attention and resources to.
It is the reference that you made to in fact, I think I think
it might have been a quote from one of your colleagues who was
giving thoughts on solutions, critical thinking, lateral
(36:48):
reading, self awareness and emotional intelligence.
It just made me think if if we all have that and we become, you
know, the backstop ourselves against conspiracy theories,
disinformation, you know, horrible ideas that are
detrimental to society, then, you know, we're just going to be
(37:09):
so much stronger and more resilient.
I think of the this is a terrible pretentious cliche, but
they're quite attributed to to Socrates that the the unexamined
life is not worth living. And I almost want to make that,
you know, a sort of cool idea again, where people actually
think a bit more about what their own biases are, what their
own intellectual weaknesses are.And I, you know, I, I try to do
(37:30):
that myself, no doubt imperfectly.
But just give me your thoughts on how we can make some of these
ideas cool again. You know, the idea of actually
challenging yourself, making, you know, the dull work of fact
checking cool and sexy. I would honestly love.
That and I wish I had all the answers to how to make that cool
again, but I, I would say it starts very early.
(37:51):
And I think being self reflective is of course a skill
that we all need to learn. And I, I think especially now
also since I wrote the book, there have been a few studies
that came out, including Lear Smigrod's book The Ideological
brain. She's a neuroscientist who in
her book shows that there are also different ways in which
different brains react to, for example, extremist ideologies
(38:14):
and to radicalization and reflecting on or getting to know
ourselves better. Which type are we or which type
are you in? How you potentially become more
susceptible to specific rigid ways of thinking or not.
And those are points that I think should be tackled very
early on in our education pathways that we become self
(38:34):
aware. What are potential points of
exploitation or manipulation that we expose ourselves to?
And combined with that, also a clear idea of how does the
digital sphere change some of that?
How does it potentially make ourpsyche and our our human
dispositions more exploitable? Because there are toxic group
dynamics that are even more amplified in digital spaces and
(38:58):
on social media, and addictions that become even more relevant
with some of the algorithmic infrastructure that we see on
social media platforms or other things like what?
How does our psychology change, or at least it's sometimes
amplified when we enter an online chat room?
What are the factors that we should know about ourselves and
(39:19):
about group dynamics and societal dynamics when it comes
to the online sphere? So I think that intersection of
psychology and digital literacy is extremely important.
Yeah. I mean.
I, I love that. Well, I, I know that my own kids
school is, I don't know how muchthey're teaching it, but they're
certainly talking about mindfulness, for instance.
And I mean, that's a slightly different concept of self
(39:42):
awareness, I think. But you know, but the idea of
actually just paying a bit more attention to your own mental
and, and emotional state. I'm heartened that they are
teaching that as as young as, asprimary school.
But at the same time it's sort of frustrating to that
governments seem to regard it asa little bit too difficult and a
little bit too much of A sort ofcross portfolio investment to
(40:03):
make this a a real sort of. Project of of social resilience.
But I agree and it can also. Help with other issues that we
face on the society? Sure.
Whether it's addictions or anorexia.
Yeah, and drug abuse or substance abuse, or whether it's
just depression and anxieties that can be triggered or fuelled
by social media. I think taking a step back and
(40:24):
trying to understand how does this impact my behaviour or how
do I react to this? Am I now jealous or do I feel
anxious or what does this piece of content or this group do to
me? Yeah, absolutely.
OK, one last question. I, I I just want to talk about
strengthening the political middle.
This seems to be another just necessary thing that we really
all need to work on. And and again, a a point from
(40:47):
the book, I love the point that was made somewhere that that
moderates basically believe thatpolitics is about facts.
And I mean, personally, I feel, I feel like it should be, I
mean, I've, I've think of myselfas a sort of a reasoning
rationalist and, and that democracy should be a rational
process of, you know, through elections and, and I guess you
know, sort of representation andfeedback, translating the
(41:10):
preferences of, of the people asaccurately as possible into
policy outcomes using sort of rational methods and policy
expertise. Unfortunately, politics, as we
consistently see, doesn't work that way.
It it seems to be working less well than ever in that sense.
And until we actually, you know,somehow, you know, evolve our
brains and, and sort of change them so that, you know,
(41:33):
storytelling and appealing narratives are not stickier for
us than relatively dull policy discussions, we're going to have
to accept some hard realities about the necessity of emotion
and storytelling in political messaging.
So I'm a bit torn on this, but Isuppose reassure me or tell me
(41:53):
what you think we can do. And do you sort of agree with
this idea that political moderates need to get better at
political messages that actuallysort of capture emotions as well
as authoritarians and ultra nationalists and conspiracy
theorists? Do I definitely think that?
(42:16):
We need to get well. Moderate politicians need to get
better at understanding how how cognitive biases work as humans.
And I think unfortunately all the, as you say, all the studies
have shown that facts just don'treally work as well as emotions
to in politics, but also now amplified in the in the digital
sphere. They don't even work on social
(42:37):
media. It's not emotional content works
a lot better. It's much more likely to go
viral than fact based content. I think that's just a reality we
need to accept, but then I don'tthink it needs to be necessarily
a negative exploitation of emotions.
I think a lot of this can also mean just reflecting on what the
(42:58):
cognitive biases are actually. Harvey Whitehouse, the
anthropologist, wrote a really fascinating book on this called
Inheritance, The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World.
And he talks about 3 different cognitive biases that we
developed as humans. And that especially
authoritarian leaders have been tapping into an extremist
movements, but moderate politicians haven't really fully
(43:21):
understood how to how to make use of them.
To also to channel perhaps some of these powerful group dynamics
that emerge from that towards collective action problems like
tackling climate change or tackling other issues.
So the three cognitive biases, he talks about our tribalism, an
important one, doesn't necessarily have to be negative,
(43:42):
could be also a global tribe, but also religiosity, not in the
narrow sense of specific religions, but just a common
sense of religiosity and even myth making and ideas that go
beyond the natural. And the last one is conformism.
Or there were even studies that showed, for example, that
leaders who tried to get people to adhere to the COVID rules, to
(44:05):
the lockdown rules were much more effective when they
highlighted conformism rather than just fact based ideas of
why we should all adhere to the rules.
It was more powerful and more effective when they said, well,
this is now how it works. Everyone is doing it.
These are the rules and we all need to conform to it versus
explaining in depth why we now all have to do social
(44:28):
distancing. And the same is true for
recycling policies or policies related to, yeah, to tackling
climate change feeling like a good.
Citizen can actually be a reallywarm and fuzzy thing.
I, I, I found myself feeling proud of, of following the rules
possibly and perfectly. But but you know, when I did put
on a mask and when I did stand 1.5 metres away from other
(44:48):
people, I, I felt like, you know, OK, perhaps slightly
narcissistically. Hey, look at me everyone, I'm a
good citizen. I, you've definitely made me
feel better there. I've always, I mean, the reason
I said I was torn is that to me,I suppose politics that appeals
to emotion rather than reason is, is populism.
And I think tend to think of populism as as being a negative
thing. But as you say, there are there
(45:10):
are ways to appeal to positive emotions and civic mindedness
might be one of them that makes a sort of healthy form of
populism. Yeah, I would hope.
So, but that's I think, yet to be explored because we don't see
much of that yet a real message for the political.
Moderates and centrists out there, then perhaps let's, let's
(45:30):
get cracking on those talking points that will make great
political messages that will actually improve our politics
through the, the judicious use of emotion.
All right, Yulia, look, you've been super generous with your
time. We've gone further than we
usually do with our podcasts, but that's because we just felt
like you had so much valuable tosay.
So apologies if I've talked too much, but having read your book
(45:51):
recently and listened to some ofthe other podcasts that you've
been on lately, I, I, just, I, Ifound, I think I've absorbed so
many of your ideas that I, I felt myself wanting to, to
regurgitate them. All right, Yulia, thanks so
much. Thank you so much for a great.
Conversation as well and thanks for having me that's.
All we have time for this. Week on Stop the World.
Thanks for listening. We'll be back with another
(46:11):
episode next week.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.