I want to reflect on how societally we can reduce the disinformation-terrorist nexus after publishing today’s new pod w/ @QanonAnonymous. (Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2hQidTDtsFocxf9KpJ3gFX.) The first and most important order of business to deradicalize was done by social media days ago.

Moreover, law enforcement and politicians woke up. Trump/GOP and QAnon social rhetoric have, for years, posed an existential threat to civil society. In recent months, they converged in virtually identical criminal incitement and terrorism, which should be punished.

Now let’s talk about empathetic intervention on a human level. Deradicalizing is about “smiles and cries” (H/T, Training Day, 2001). In my own words, it’s about aspirations and resentments. It’s about understanding the source of people’s convictions & how they arrive at them.

It’s about causation and correlation. Most people have a collection of real-life events that lead them to think and draw conclusions in the way they do. It’s fundamental to understand the source of people’s aspirations and resentments.

This requires genuine patience, intellectual honesty, and preparedness to venture into the depths of human emotion. For those who are willing to work toward fact-based exchange, despite seemingly irreconcilable differences, this tactic may be the best we have.