theduggfather

My definitions would be...

Conservative: Someone who believes in the political value of preserving culture, tradition and customs, history, and institutions. That change should be incremental and gradual.

Alt-right: Someone who believes in the ideas of the far-right, like white supremacy, but without adhering to the large monolithic political ideologies connected to it, like Nazism. Rather they are part of a fractured online body, that uses irony and memes to communicate their ideas.

If this is of further interest 'Kill All Normies' by Angela Nagle is a textbook and has been indispensable for me.

I haven't ever done this - talked someone out of radicalisation, but I would say empathy.

It's what I use when interviewing people who are verbalising extreme views. Often times you're facing the same question but ending up with a different answer EG Why can't I get a job? Or why can't I attract a romantic partner?

Is that the fault of immigration or something else?

Understanding that these people are just looking for a way to rationalise a world that is cruel, unfair and heartless and arrived at a simple logic.

So I would say be kind. Which is difficult when you're talking about people who adhere to hateful ideas.

I spoke to a world-leading expert in the psychology of extremism, Arie W Kruglanski, as part of the research for the film.

He told me it's actually very common for extremists to change the ideology to which they are an adherent. EG many former Neo Nazis go on to work exposing the far-right because it gives them the same kind of meaning and significance that they were striving for as a part of that movement.

This is a section I quote in the written piece: "You can be radical on the right, you can be radical on the left, you can be radical religiously, in your lifestyle, sport. You can be addicted to love.
"There are many different kinds of extremism that differ in their content, but what extremism usually means is focusing on one thing. Mother Theresa willed one thing, to be a good person, a humanitarian. A person on the far-right is focusing on a far-right narrative that fears the purity of their country is in danger.”
"The question is, what is the motivation here? It is the mother of all motives, the motive that makes the world go round, what I call the quest for significance - the need to be somebody, to have respect, to have dignity.
"This need is a major political force. It underlies the Proud Boys, it underlies Black Lives Matter, it underlies the suffragette movement, the gay movement, it underlies all the major revolutions that transformed world history. It underlies to some extent Brexit.
"It also fuels extremism of the kind you're talking about.

"And if you become disenchanted, if you feel they’ve betrayed you, that you're gay and they're anti-gay, you leave,” Kruglanski continues. “But people who are extreme... will look for some alternative ideology that promises significance and then will gravitate towards it.
"By the way, several of my friends who research the far-right movement are former Neo Nazis, who are now leading the fight to bring people out,” he adds. “They gain tremendous significance from this."

The latter

So a year or so ago I actually interviewed the woman in that clip, Afua Hirsch, and asked her about it. The point she made was that white people who critique the UK are rarely asked to leave the country, whereas ethnic minority commentators are often told "If you don't like it here go somewhere else" and she, I think rightly, says that comment is racialised, that because of her blackness she is somehow less British or less entitled to live here. So we included it to demonstrate the point that far-right ideas are bleeding over into mainstream culture, not so as to say that Ferrari is far-right because he, clearly, isn't.