Attempting to quit extremism can itself escalate a person into a worse group

Evidence

In a final category, one individual reported that attempts to quit extremism only led him to a more extremist outfit. He noted that he disliked participation in a skinhead gang and so quit and tried to go to college. But he was still dressing and looking like a skinhead and was easily sighted by another skinhead gang near campus. It was this group that sought him out and ultimately recruited him into the NSM. And that participation in the NSM led to a more political and nationalistic kind of radicalization. — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America, 366

Categorization

• QUESTION: flagged by the selector, no supporting note recorded
• XREF: Directly challenges the withdrawal-of-conflict therapeutic hypothesis under test: mere withdrawal from one group here fed deeper entrenchment because embodied markers persisted. — connects to: Many extremists proactively seek out reasons and philosophy to abandon radicalism. — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 443; Disengagement from extremism is a recursive process, not a linear one. — Amy Fisher-Smith, Charles R. Sullivan, John D. Macready, and Geoffrey Manzi, Identity Reconfiguration and the Core…, 320; Anti-terrorist suspicion itself can drive people into extremism. — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 120 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• War-weary extremists who compromise become hated more than enemies #corroborates (0.85) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 824
• Interventions by individual people helped most sampled extremists exit or deradicalize. #complicates (0.85) — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America, 398
• Group hatred targets what a person is, not what they do. #expands (0.80) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1011
• Intense intergroup conflict makes defection to the outgroup unthinkable and sanctioned #contradicts (0.75)