EXPERT: Cynthia Miller-Idriss
Cynthia Miller-Idress is Founding Director of the Polarization Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL), known for her research on far-right movements and how they attract and radicalise young individuals.
She describes how young people are exposed to and groomed by extremist rhetoric, although older demographics are more vulnerable conspiracy theories. Miller-Idriss created a toolkit to help parents to increase their children’s resilience to extremist messages online. Prevention is much easier than deradicalisation, so it’s important to empower parents to detect the signs earlier and build young people’s resilience. Parents must remain alert to extremist influences, and react calmly in order not to drive their children further into extremist subcultures. She also describes the manipulative tactics used by extremist media, and how being aware of them makes them less powerful – and stresses that a variety of interventions into extremism are necessary to protect democracy.