RAN Webinar - Anti-government extremism, experiences and challenges

Aim and background

This webinar focuses on the relatively new topic of anti-government extremism (AGX) and its negative impact on communities, politicians, and democracy. The webinar will delve into the relation between anti-government sentiments, legitimate protest, anti-government conspiracies and radicalisation. It will also examine the concept of AGX ideology and the relevance of stochastic terrorism in a violence-promoting climate.

AGX poses a threat to individual politicians, civil servants, police officers, journalists, scientists, and health staff, and their organisations who are intimidated or even attacked. At the same time, in recent meetings of RAN POL and RAN LOCAL, it has been emphasised that it is crucial to differentiate between, on the one hand, legitimate protest and criticism of government policies, and, on the other hand, extremist agitators promoting conspiracy narratives, violence-oriented extremism, and aggression towards elected politicians, policymakers, and civil servants.

The webinar will disseminate the conclusions and lessons from the RAN LOCAL and RAN POL meeting as presented and discussed by the Working Group Leaders Anneli Portman and Luc Van Der Taelen.

Setup

The webinar will be divided into four parts:

What are we discussing? This is a new form of extremism, that can be quite confusing. The webinar will address its definitions, its hybrid ideology or lack thereof, and overlapping phenomena. 

We will focus on two domains where AGX is particularly problematic. First, democratic protest and public discontent being radicalised by conspiracy extremists. What are the dynamics leading towards a climate that is delegitimising the rule of law and state authority? We will discuss how local governments and law enforcement agencies are challenged by new forms of protest, diverse groups and ideologies, and the increasing radicalisation of events.

Then we will delve deeper. We will discuss the breeding ground and vulnerability of groups in society for the AGX narratives. Why are the agitators able to stir up democracy to a boiling point? In what ways is AGX different from right wing extremism and violent Jihadism? And how are local P/CVE practitioners’ agendas to prevent and counter AGX affected in terms of target groups, interventions and local partners?

The last part of the Webinar will be a Q&A  session.

Practical

If you would like to attend this webinar, please register via this link. The link will redirect you to a WebEx page with a ‘register’ button. Please click on this button and sign up with your email address. Please, use the same email address that you will use to log into the event.

Shortly after your registration, you will be admitted to the event by RAN Staff and will receive an automated confirmation message and a registration link from WebEx which will lead you to the webinar environment. If you do not receive an email, please check your spam folder.

Please note that this webinar is primarily aimed at dissemination and will only allow for limited interaction between attendees and speakers. Attendees will be given the opportunity to pose questions via the Q&A function and/or Mentimeter during the event. All questions will be collected and selected questions will be put to the speakers by the moderators.

If you have any questions related to this Webinar, please feel free to reach out to m [dot] shahhoudradaradvies [dot] nl (Malaz Shahhoud) or s [dot] lenosradaradvies [dot] nl (Steven Lenos)