#deradicalizing

[victusinveritas]

Reminder: you can always just stop hating and being an asshole. You'll probably even feel better about yourself.

[creature-wizard]

Hey folks, something to keep in mind - far right indoctrination runs on a lot of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Promoting and spreading real science and real history is incredibly important, both to help people deradicalize and to prevent people from being radicalized.

[tunneldweller]

[ID: #great job those morons figured out that the lying orange rapist is *bad* #now do they want us to cheer for them or something? fuckers. end ID]

if you don't have the spoons or grace or patience to encourage former magats/far-right believers -- which as a vindictive fuck I totally get -- grit your teeth and do not interact with them beyond a nod.

the result will be better *for us all* than you riding their asses back into the far-right's embrace.

tl;dr: if you can't help, then don't undo the work of those who can.

This is an interesting thing. Looks like testimonies of people who left the MAGA movement- how they got into it and why.

Leaving a cult is really hard, so I really respect the people who are speaking from this place.

[woman-respecter]

a chud left this comment on one of my feminsm posts and i am laughing so hard at how weak this is. things that he imagine would make women’s lives hell are not even mild inconveniences, especially compared to what the average woman ALREADY deals with from men every day. yes, women have to share their location with friends and cover their drinks when they go out to avoid getting raped but G-D forbid someone…doesn’t hold a door for them?

it shows a complete ignorance for women’s lived reality in so many ways. in fact it goes beyond that, it’s clearly an insane delusion sold to him by manosphere communities. reading this is actually very illuminating to how far gone these men really are…

[nachobsns]

Hello - I was impressed and extremely relieved by what you wrote in the post about the cult mentality of the Left RE Israel and accusations of genocide. You mentioned that you bought into the mindset until recently. If it's all right for me to ask, what was it that helped you break out of it? (Please feel free to delete/ignore if you'd rather not answer!)

thank you!! and no worries about asking— i think i put something in my pinned post about how people are welcome to send asks about this stuff, although my story isn’t super interesting. i fell down the typical online rabbithole, a couple weeks after october 7; i knew what had happened, at least vaguely, but the posts trickling onto my dash were all about the (undeniably tragic) loss of life in gaza, with little to no acknowledgment of the hamas atrocities that had started the war, so my narrative was pretty one-sided from the beginning. it just continued to snowball as the months went on and people became more radicalized, calling into question the reality of the 10/7 attacks and the humanity of all israelis. i never went all the way down the pipeline to full-on endorsing hamas or justifying their attacks, at least on a personal level, thank god, but i would reblog other people’s posts referring to hamas as a “resistance movement” and calls to boycott starbucks and mcdonald’s and condemnation of the “zionist media” etc etc etc. what pulled me out of it wasn’t any one thing— if someone had directly called me on my flawed logic and antisemitic biases while i was in this mindset, i doubt it would have done much, just reinforced my belief that i was on the “right side of history” and zionists were aggressors who couldn’t be reasoned with. it was mostly just passive observance and a slow exposure to other perspectives. i’m pretty sure the first post that led me to question my thinking was an ask on jewish-vents, which popped up on my dash in like, late july. this led me down another rabbithole, first scouring every single post on jewish-vents, then moving on to more popular jewish blogs that i had seen on “zionist blocklists” (applesauce42069, xclowniex, and spacelazarwolf were probably some of the blogs that influenced me the most, though i told myself i was just hate-scrolling at first, lol). i felt incredibly guilty seeing all the harm the movement i was a part of had caused to random jews and israelis just trying to live their lives and i realized how it went against everything i believed about how minority groups should be treated. from there, the aspect of actually undoing my thinking and changing my behavior for the better still took several weeks. denial of jewish indigenity to the levant in the face of tantamount archeological and cultural evidence was the first to go, as well as any ambiguity in my feelings about hamas. after that, it’s mostly been a slow process of redefining the idf’s actions from a “genocide” to a “war.” i still believe that what’s happening in gaza is unconscionable and horrific, and that too many innocent civilians have died, but i also understand how difficult it is to fight against a terrorist group that systematically embeds itself in civilian populations, and that the ratio of militant to civilian deaths is incredibly low compared to most urban warfare. i quietly deleted my old blog in early august— if i had directly engaged in harassment against jews, i likely would have kept it to make amends to the harmed parties and put a face to my actions, but as was, i had just contributed to the larger atmosphere of antisemitism on this site, and i felt uncomfortable knowing that i had a blog full of sentiments that no longer matched my values and beliefs. i decided i would be better if i took my endorsement out of the equation entirely, because when you’re looking through the notes of a post, it obviously doesn’t matter if someone who’s reblogged it no longer agrees with what was said— their notes still count as tacit approval, and i did not want approval of this “activism” attached to my online presence. i still have unwanted kneejerk reactions that crop up sometimes, particularly around the fundraiser posts from people “in gaza”; even though i know logically that they have all the markers of scams, there is still a part of me that really wants to believe i could help.

[queersatanic]

[ID: Original image is a Reddit screenshot from the board r/196 of a 4chan screenshot, posted by u/doltagain:

<4Chan screenshot: Anonymous post titled "you fucking liars" with balding sojack in a button-up from Sep. 15, 1023, No.74745239

>be me, 23 year old NEET >get off my ass for once and sign up for community college attend classes in person because I know if I do online I'll slack off >interact with other people for the first time in 5 years (since high school) >nobody talks about sexual market value > nobody cares about bone structure or physiognomy >girls aren't immediately rejecting guys with negative canthal tilt or recessed chins >see other bald/balding people my age socializing and having friends >tentatively ask if I can sit near a group of people (guys and girls) they say sure and include me in the conversation did… did 4chan lie to me about normies? what the fuck?

/4chan screenshot>

u/GrabTechnical7346 NO WAY NORMAL PEOPLE ARE NORMAL???

u/MorganRose99 That's what they want you to think / ID]

And to continue the topic of "praising people for basic decency", something that may be worth making the distinction for is what we mean by "praise".

Absolutely, people need positive reinforcement and to be met where they're at in terms of helping them better themselves and reject toxic ideas. Like, if you avoided getting sucked into something like that, it's not due to some essential quality of goodness about you but the circumstances of your birth and everything that happened to and that you learned. "If you had their life, you would be them." They don't need to be coddled, but they do probably need some support to keep seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and keep heading toward it.

Unfortunately, the targets of those toxic ideas probably aren't the best candidates for doing this work for all sorts of reasons, and people who aren't the targets often aren't discerning enough.

That's where "praise" or "positive reinforcement" often veers into the territory of "celebrating" or "treating as an expert".

Having trouble finding the original essay again, but it was by a former neo-Nazi (as in a young woman brought up in a neo-Nazi, white nationalist organization as a teenager). However, she left it, and therefore now is somewhat known as an expert on "deradicalization".

But what she noticed and pointed out is that most of the people she's grouped in with (sometimes literally/physically for studies or conferences on "deradicalization") often aren't actually that knowledgeable about opposing their previous ideology, and in her telling, the time when an ex-Nazi, incel, terf, etc., is actually most useful is immediately when they make a break, still have access to all of the information of key figures in their past ideology, and share it with people and groups dedicated to taking down that past ideology (who are experts).

The place where praise and encouragement initially need to come in is there, in supporting someone to do that act of betrayal and burning irrevocably the bridge back to what is behind them as an act of sincerity. But after that, what should come next for them is the satisfaction of becoming a better person, and of the quiet, yeoman's work of restoring the targets of harm as much as possible without chasing celebrity or adulation.

If you used to be a dedicated white nationalist or a transphobe or antisemite or misogynist, there are lots of people who rightfully will always be wary of you and never trust you again. That doesn't mean you can never be useful or be praised for anything, but that should be in the back of the stage, not out front. You should not be celebrated or held up over the people who never fell into those things at all and who aren't probably still unlearning so many terrible ideas they once embraced and pursued to the detriment of others.

As a more specific example, we do want school shooters to actually be rehabilitated, to somehow come out of their prison sentences changed for the better and able to live their lives making the world better for others around them. They probably need some encouragement along the way for that. What they don't need is to be "part of the solution" in the sense of going on speaking tours, talking to the press about new shootings, or cultivating a TikTok audience.

Imsane rule

[aqlstar]

Question for Jews and non Jews alike-

Has anyone seen someone go from supporting Hamas/Hezbollah/PFLP while claiming they aren’t antisemitic to understanding why those orgs are in fact antisemitic and changing their position?

Curious not because I think it’s a good use of our time to try to convince terrorist supporters why they’re wrong, but because if it’s a thing that people have had success with we could come up with a guide for well meaning gentiles to be able to deradicalize their friends.

Idk anyone have any ideas here? Open to everybody.

[odinsblog]

The fucking nerve of Netanyahu talking about “de-radicalizing” Palestinians, as he is committing genocide. Somebody needs to de-radicalize Benjamin Netanyahu and the state of Israel.

[krisdreemurrs]

season 2 jinx I hate you with my whole entire being. season 1 jinx please come home. everyone here is scared of you but I miss you regardless

[largishcat]

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, why is there no huge call to de-radicalize right wing women? If we’re gonna talk about deradicalizing people, why not women who have fallen down the alt-right pipeline? Hell, we could talk about deradicalizing TERFs! Reteaching them actual feminism. Oh, you don’t want to do that?

Why? You thought it was a good idea when it was for men

[biorust-art]

My man....dalorian

So recently I read @ryehouses 's 'a simple thing' again and UGH. I love this fic SO MUCH. The characters, the characterization, the heart, the Mandalorian(s) of it all... I love it to pieces. One of my favorite parts is the meeting at Krownest where everyone gets blinded by the embodiment of Manda that is Din Djarin. King of my heart.

These drawings are technically not from those chapters, but inspired by them. I just think Din's pretty with blood on his face and also with snow on his eyelashes. That's all.

[Image Description: Two drawings of Din Djarin from the Mandalorian, inspired by a fanfiction called 'a simple thing'. The drawings are on a gray background and are just the bust. The first is Din smiling, open mouth with his eyebrows raised and a gleam in his eyes as he looks to the right. he has blood running from a cut on his forehead down to his chin as well as a bloody nose. He has blood on his teeth and a bruise on his cheek. He is enjoying himself despite the concussion. The second drawing is him turned to the side looking down in concentration, his eyebrows are furrowed, and his mouth is slightly open as he thinks. There are snowflakes in his hair, on his cloak and on his face. END ID]

[respectissexy]

This is a LONG post about how to combat Incel beliefs online and in the people you know. 

I’ve had a long-term fascination with Incels, and at times have belonged to some online communities aimed at deradicalizing them. Here are some of the facts, statistics, and logical arguments I’ve accumulated in a few years of having these conversations with self-identified Incels.

I want to make it clear that there is no point in having these arguments with the “women should all be shipped to government-run rape camps” kinds of Incels. I’m talking more about the “I’m going to die alone because I don’t have 100k for leg lengthening surgery” variety, who are in the pipeline but not all the way there yet.

Even within that, if you're a woman, don’t bother having this debate with someone who is incapable of having a respectful conversation with a woman – if you catch a whiff of “that’s exactly what a lying femoid would say,” just cut your losses. The people you want to target are people you have a strong pre-existing relationship with (“my little brother has started watching terrible YouTube videos”) and people who admit to being unsatisfied with their worldview (“believing in the Blackpill is making me miserable, I just want to be normal, but I keep getting sucked back in because I find it so convincing.”)

When you’re trying to deradicalize someone, it helps to meet them where they’re at by admitting anything they’re correct about. 

The two Incel beliefs that I freely admit are correct are: it is easier to get sex/romance if you’re conventionally attractive (more on why this doesn’t mean everyone else should give up later) and, there are plenty of hideously sexist and depraved men who get pussy all the time, so it’s obviously not true that the only reason some people are Incels is because they have bad attitudes towards women. (I call this “sex and love are not a meritocracy.”)

Someone who is capable of engaging with you in good faith will usually become much more relaxed and willing to listen if you concede these two points – which, I cannot stress enough, are obviously true. There is no point in trying to sell someone on the idea that respecting women is the true key to getting laid. Anyone with eyes can see that some men who respect women don’t get laid and plenty of men who get laid don’t respect women. 

In only the loosest possible order (roughly moving from the world of provable facts and statistics to the world of more theoretical logical argument) here are some common responses to standard “Incel” or “blackpill” arguments.

The sexual marketplace favors women. Women are all out there fucking Chad while increasing numbers of men are sexless. There are way more virgin men than virgin women.

Between the ages of 20-24, 14% of men and 12% of women self-identify as virgins. This is a 2% difference. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/on-late-in-life-virginity-loss/284412/

It's over for you if you didn't date/have sex in high school or college.

While 14% of men are virgins between the ages of 20 and 24, only 5% are still virgins in their late 20s, and only 0.3% are still virgins by 40 (and this number includes the voluntarily and religiously celibate.) So even if you are a virgin at age 22, your chances of having sex by age 40 are around 99.7%. You are statistically MUCH more likely to be a "late bloomer" than a lifelong Incel. (Source: The CDC quoted in the article above) Also, only about 50% of people have had sex by the time they graduate high school. So whether you do or not, you're completely normal either way. It's a coin flip. Source: The CDC https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2017/201706_NSFG.htm#:~:text=The%20data%20represent%20all%20teens,%2C%20the%20percent%20was%2044%25

The average modern young woman has had sex with dozens or hundreds of men, and an inexperienced man could never satisfy her!

Some women have! But while the average lifetime number of sexual partners for both men and women varies by study, it is consistently fewer than 10. I find this belief is often based on poor statistical reasoning – a friend or acquaintance tells you that she hooked up with a guy this weekend and a different guy two weeks ago, so you extrapolate that she’s been fucking two different men per month since becoming sexually active, and assume her number must be in the hundreds. Most people have a varied sexual career that includes some casual hookups, some FWBs or flings, some dry spells, and some periods of long-term monogamy.

To the extent that the average “body count” may have gone up in recent decades, this is likely less because today’s young people are uniquely promiscuous and more because they tend to settle down with a life partner later – if you become sexually active at 17 and marry monogamously at 30, you will probably fuck more people in your lifetime than if you became sexually active at 17 and monogamously married at 24.

I would add here, it is really important to try to ground people in the statistical reality of typical “body counts” rather than going whole hog on trying to convince them that body counts don’t matter. It’s perfectly understandable to feel that someone who’s had 0 sexual partners and someone who’s had 100 may have different enough attitudes towards sex that a relationship between them might not work out. “You’re actually misogynist trash if you’d be intimidated to date a woman who had 100 past partners” is less effective for our purposes than “It’s possible that you wouldn’t be compatible with a woman who had that many past partners – you may not want her and she also may not want you! – but that’s just one example of the many reasons people can be incompatible that don’t come down to one of them being Bad and Unloveable.” 

Women are much more harsh and shallow than men, as evidenced by the studies where they rated 80% of men as Below Average on OKCupid. Women only message the most attractive men.

That study has been reported in SUCH a misleading way that it actually proves the opposite of what Incels think it proves. Although women WERE harsher in their ratings, they were actually MUCH MORE LIKELY THAN MEN to message users whose photos they didn't rate that high in attractiveness – possibly reflecting that women are more likely to realize that how you feel about someone’s picture isn’t a perfect predictor of whether you’ll find them attractive irl. (Just anecdotally speaking, most women I know report that men don’t take great pictures of themselves, so they may be giving them wiggle room for that.) The percentage of messages that goes to the most attractive women compared to the average woman, is much more extreme than the ratio for men. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJxteLDlJ-ORw_Sw-tDDYhHv0Xnvaco4Vk-d3mPRZg_Cu9ckzOf9FS-vbGz75_mnw7-uyqoldlf7-wEmbLo4KiFsvzkbw9kn9X3qTDZC9-ubfR9EXH54a0QVJ1QkyK1xK8osO_M9mGyNRK-ShWwPoEGt9ROicoGA4bIFnQnRe0cO

If you're not in the top 20% hottest men, no woman will ever want you.

71% of men between the ages of 25 and 44 have been married. It is mathematically impossible for 71% of men to be in the top 20%.

Women spend their youth fucking hot Chads and then settle down with ugly men later after they 'hit the wall'.

People of all genders tend to prioritize attractiveness more in a partner when they're young, their bodies are at Peak Sex Hormone, and their relationships are more about fun and passion than building a life together. People of all genders tend to increasingly prioritize stability, compatibility, and other life-building qualities once they're looking for someone to settle down with and start a family. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s just smart. 

Looks obviously matter! It’s not true that dating is all about personality and respecting women! There is a middle ground between believing that looks don't matter at all and being fully blackpilled. "It's easier to get a girlfriend when you're tall and hot" is straightforwardly true, but so is, "regardless, literally millions of men who aren't tall or conventionally hot get laid and have loving relationships." I always say it like, being super conventionally attractive may mean you get to date on easy mode, but refusing to play the game because you didn't get to play it on easy mode is YOUR choice.

I’m too afraid to actually talk to women, but I can just tell that they all hate me!

It's impossible to judge whether you're actually unsuccessful with women if you never talk to them. If you aren't actually shooting your shot with the women you like, then you are “volcel” regardless of how you see yourself, just the same as how if you were unemployed and never applied to any jobs, that would make you unemployed by choice. Imagine you had a friend who was always complaining about how miserable it is to be unemployed and bemoaning all the things that make him unemployable, but then you found out he'd never applied to a single job -- or applied to fewer than ten before giving up altogether. That's most Incels, as far as dating is concerned.

For what it’s worth, this is why pickup artistry sometimes works much better than you would expect it to. Despite the obvious manipulation and general weirdness of pickup artist tactics, the fact remains that if you take a guy who was previously sitting in his bedroom hoping for pussy to fall from the ceiling, and you convince him to go out and hit on a bunch of women, his chances of getting laid will increase. Going out and talking to the people you find attractive is no guarantee of getting laid, but it is generally a prerequisite. 

I saw a bunch of Tweets and TikToks from women belittling short men and saying they’d never date one! Some of them had hundreds of thousands of likes!

You simply cannot take things that assholes say on the internet personally. I'm a 34 year old woman with Bipolar Disorder and 11 tattoos. Do you know how many heavily-liked Tweets there are about how women over 30, women with mental illnesses, and women with tattoos are untouchable garbage that no self-respecting man would ever entertain a relationship with? And yet... I'm married. Turns out a bunch of keyboard warriors raving about how no man would ever want me didn't actually prevent men from wanting me. You probably would think I was being a little unfair if I told you that seeing those posts made me despise all men, and a little unrealistic if it made me give up on dating. Literally ask any woman with blue hair and a septum piercing if men IRL find her as disgusting as men on the internet say they do.

If you read all this, thank you! And as always remember that I block absolutely everyone who annoys me on my posts, so if you feel moved to argue that anything short of trying to persuade avowed Incels to adopt full-bore sex-positive feminism is capitulation, or that we should just kill them all, or whatever, just remember you'll be arguing with yourself. Peace and love on planet Earth.

[fastwalker]

from what I kow abt cultlike online communities, the problem is the internet in iself, how it allows people to connect with others with the same world views. people always seek out likeminded people, before internet this was much harder, you could not lock yourself in your room and talk to hundreds of other people mirroring and applauding your most toxic views, you had to actually go outside and interact with people who are often very different than you, which keeps your ego in check and your mind flexible, able to compromise to fit in a social group.

people will never willfuly seek out groups and content that actively contradict their worldviews, everyone is just looking for an echochamber to feel supported and seen and agreed with, and everyone can find that online now, no matter how harmful their views. only way to prevent online cults like blackpill and mannosphere is to destroy these platforms. which is simply not possible anymore, they'll always find a new chatroom, forum, messenger etc.

[ranboo5]

Girls the thing about Dream stans is that everybody who was still here after 2021, much less remains now in 2025, is immune to evidence and has been for years. You cannot provide evidence or social analysis or framing of anything because these people do not care about facts. All their held and purported values are subordinate to the axiom that Dream is the victim and in the right

This is not a matter of being uninformed or of just not seeing it the right way! All this information is out there! It is being broadcasted by Dream himself! Anyone who has an opinion at this point has made their choice! Anyone who is looking at those DM screenshots, at the tons and tons of testimonies of people he's hurt, at how many of his associates have denounced him explicitly or frozen him out, at the way the people standing by him act, at the pattern of Dream's behavior and its effects that has been there for years, and still thinks Dream is worth defending is genuinely and actually beyond most external help. There is no more argument! There is genuinely nothing more to say! And again, this has been the case for years!

[boreal-sea]

Look,

If you’re slowly starting to question the extremely radicalized “pro-Palestine” edge of the current conflict, I’m proud of you.

If you’re quietly reading posts by Jews and learning more about the history of the region and it’s starting to change your mind, I’m proud of you.

If you’re questioning the things you believed when you got swept up by the momentum of the movement, I’m proud of you.

If you’re starting to think “yikes, maybe some of that actually was antisemitic”, I’m proud of you.

If you’re listening to more than one voice or one opinion on the matter, I’m proud of you.

You can do this.

Maybe at first you’re just going to quietly delete all those posts where you said “globalize the intifada” now that you know what that actually means. Maybe you’re going to quietly unblock a lot of Jews, and even follow some of their accounts. Maybe you’ll block the non-Jewish accounts that spread a lot of antisemitism and hatred, the ones that got you all angry and radicalized you in the first place.

Those are all good first steps towards deradicalization. It’s kind of scary to pull back from all that, but if you’re trying, I’m proud of you.

[pumpumdemsugah]

People online think deradicalisation can be achieved through the power of friendship and not a years long process that requires introspection, therapy, and sometimes professional deradicalisating services and if you're ever suspicious of someone with a past like that or you're even slightly mean to a white man, you're to blame for neo nazis, you're a fascist and not leftist and you can't play with my toys anymore.

" If someone's changed, you should forgive them or its sin (not leftist)." ok, youth pastor

What do you people think forgiveness is because it doesn't mean people are obligated to be around you. There are literal groups dedicated to deradicalisating people and have been trained to do so. Your white ass doesn't need to try to guilt other people into " forgiveness."

Every day, people on here make it clear they grew up as deeply obnoxious white American Christians and all ideas about community need to function like a fucking church where everyone needs to play nice or they're going to hell...sorry I mean not a real leftist