[Music] extreme listening are two words that don't usually go together but there is no other way to describe what diacon does she made a documentary called White right meeting the enemy where she as a Muslim woman goes and spends time with white supremacists trying to understand what makes them tick and the way she gets through to them is by listening if we all learn learn to listen like Dia it Is Absolut remarkable the breakthroughs we will all be able to make this is a bit of optimism Dia I can't tell you what a treat this
is for me I saw your documentary white right yeah when it first came out oh wow it struck me so hard how you were able to explore that human beings are basically human beings yeah what I loved about it was you went for a dark subject and you found light we should probably say for People who haven't seen it you decided to go and spend time with white supremacists yes and you were actually I won't say marching with but walking with those white supremacists in Charlottesville when all of that went down yes yes which was
insane I mean I had no idea at the time when this white supremacist group said we're going to this rally it's going to be in this place called Charlottesville and I was like oh okay great CU i' had gone to Some of like the Clan rallies before then and it would be like you know four toothless people there and I was like okay well it' be nine people at this one yeah I'll come along fine great I just get to spend more time with one of the guys I was very interested in that's fine and
then of course early in the morning I remember they all gathered in this parking lot and it was so many people and there were so many weapons and there were so many military uniforms And I'm of course the only non-white person there and I've got a camera so that's sort of two strikes against me and I had people come up to me going you know who the f are you and what are you doing here and who are you with so yeah great morning and then they get to the actual parking lot that they were
all sort of getting themselves all ramped up before they marched into Charlottesville and there they had their Shields they had the batons they had their weapons And they're all chanting blood and soil blood and soil and something about starting the deportations that that will happen soon basically and I just remember just feeling absolutely ter terrified walking into the streets with these guys and then of course you've got anti-racists lining the streets shouting and screaming and everybody's throwing stuff and I got pepper sprayed and it was it was all very very intense because the Violence broke
out very quickly and of course I'm looking at some of the anti-ra is going in I'm with you don't throw something I'm just filming but going back to what you were saying earlier in terms of finding light when I think about the films that I make and the topics that I I find myself drawn to I've often wondered you know is there something really messed up in my head the fact that I'm drawn to such sort of ugliness and ugly Behavior the Dark Side Of human beings but you know every film that I do every
dark subject that I touch I'm always looking for the hope I'm actually always looking for the light I'm actually always looking for the love I'm looking for the cracks where some level of humanity might reside so the whole entire process of making the films is trying to understand the darkness but in search of there's got to be more there and there always is I think that by very definition of Hope And optimism it requires you going to the tunnel it requires you going to the dark to find the light in in this case of this
one film when you go looking at White supremacists not to say aren't they horrible people because we know that we already know that we know their behavior is a part we don't need a documentary for that no no but to go and say what is it that we don't understand that we're not doing yeah and the thing that I found absolutely Aston In was that this one gift that you have this one skill that you have of listening that these white supremacists weren't going to change their stripes by being screamed at and yelled at if
anything they're going to dig in even deeper or being told that they're abhorent but rather that very Human Experience of feeling heard all of a sudden the narrative their narrative started to unravel yeah and to watch them Struggle with wanting to hate you because of what they've been taught but actually liking you and trusting you because of how you make them feel heard I was just an amazing thing to watch and I think is so relevant to so much of what we're going through today yeah in this unbelievably polarized nation that we're living in and
the failure of both sides is the failure to listen yeah I agree people always talk about Trump this and Trump that I get it And I agree with it but the one thing that Trump has done is that he has made a segment of the population feel heard feel as if they matter somebody calls you deplorable and somebody says you are forgotten no more who do you think touches your heart who do you think you will sign up with even if everything else he stands for is irrelevant and might even be against your own needs
and your own rights but you just go that's it and when people Look at our societies and we look at our politics and we look at all the different challenges that we have in some ways and I don't actually think this is oversimplifying it it is just about human relationships all of this is about human relationships all of this is about connection or a disconnect a fracture between people all of this is about people and the same way of listening and same way of being there with each other in those rooms that I Found myself
with some of the these guys is the same gestures that we would make towards somebody in our own life but the difference is we care about the person in our own life because we've chosen to be in a relationship with them but the reality is we are all different kinds of people sort of shoved together in all all these communities and countries and expected just to make it work and it doesn't work like that it requires effort even the relationships we want to Be in require effort and even relationships we want to be in are
difficult and our relationships don't want to be in it from time to time but there is a commitment there that we're going to get through this we're going to make it work because we're in this together so we will fix it we'll make it but on a societal level we haven't done that to each other we haven't made that commitment to each other that it doesn't matter whatever convulsions we might go Through as a society but we're going to make it and our leaders certainly are unable to articulate that for some reason and instead are
exploiting the fractures between us but I think if we don't find a way way to make this work the alternative to dialogue is violence and you're seeing it and you're going to see it more so we have no choice in a way where does that violence come from is it just pent up frustration do you get a sense of why it Came out in violence as opposed to civil discourse or debate or uncomfortable discussions what led it to violence is it that these people are predisposed to violence or did the opposing point of view contribute
in some way shape or form to push them towards violence I think it is pent up frustration but I think violence is also easy having a conversation and reflecting and being willing to really be there with somebody else is difficult because you might hear Things and feel things that you don't want to feel and it's about the other person but it's also about yourself when you sit with each other you also learn things about yourself you might not want to face that's difficult so in some ways I think it's easier to lash out in violence
in our societies I also feel like men in particular have also been sort of socialized and trained to understand violence or aggression and anger as sort of the only ways that You're allowed to express any kind of hurt any kind of suffering any kind of Brokenness so I think for some men that's just what you do and it's a legitimate way of expressing whatever feelings and fears that you have also I think a lot of people feel that that's a show of strength that you know people who feel broken or people who feel inadequate or
people who feel like they don't matter once you act out in violence because I've also done Films about jihadis and I found the same sort of traits with them is that the brutality a lot of it came from wanting to sort of mask their insecurities and their inadequacies and their lack of respect for themselves and not feeling like they're good enough and not feeling like they're even worthy of respect so they'll sett for being feared because being feared and being respected sometimes that's a very similar feeling it's a fine line yeah fuz fuzzy line at
The very minimum yeah and do we contribute to the triggering of the violence I do think that when there is nothing but walls everywhere when everyone is hardened everyone's heart is hardened and there's no possibility there's no space there's no Oxygen for anything else then in a way it also makes sense that that's the step that people move towards because they go well this is the only thing I have and this is the only thing the other side also Expects from me there's such a great irony in all of this isn't there because both sides
accuse the other of being judgmental completely missing the fact how much they judge yeah well you know what's really interesting to me is with very few exceptions in our minds everyone's the good guy everyone's the sort of hero in their own head and most people who do awful things in their minds don't think that they're doing awful things they think they're actually Doing the right thing they actually think they're doing the righteous thing they are somehow defending something that is under attack so they are on the side of right not I'm the villain of the
story very few people do reside in that too and and take great pleasure in it but that's very few people do you remember the movie in glorious bastards yes I know the film I haven't seen it unfortunately Kristoff vultz an Austrian actor plays the head Nazi I mean he's Scar good and he he goes on an interview on David Letterman and Letterman says to him how were you able to play evil incarnate so well what did you have to do to prepare for that part and Kristoff volz doesn't understand the question he says but he's
not evil oh my goodness yeah and Letterman says but where inside yourself did you have to go to be able to play this character so effectively And you see the two of them completely not being able to understand each other CU what Kristoff vultz did so well is he played the character believing he was on the side of right yeah because evil is what the other person calls you yes no one Nazis didn't think they were evil no we thought that they were evil and what made him so scary is he wasn't an actor playing
an evil guy he was an actor pretending that he was on the side of right and that's what made it horrific To watch wow and you should now go watch the film I will I definitely that gives me goosebumps yes and to your point evil is a judgment yeah everyone thinks they're on the side of good yeah empathetic listening we don't have even go so far as it to say empathy you don't have to have empathy but empathetic listening is to show up not accusing the other person of being evil but rather to try and
understand where they're coming From exct exactly and that was the whole purpose of making the film was exactly that I wanted to try and understand I don't need to know what a Neo-Nazi thinks I don't need to know what a Clansman thinks we already know that there's no news in that there's nothing I can really grapple with in that so for me it's more why do they think the things that they do why do they do the things that they do why do people behave like this and feel the things that they Feel and and
find it within them to treat others like that so I wanted to understand that I did an interview with the BBC and I got so many death threats from white supremacist because I defended Multicultural societies and that this is a fact and reality and this is just what we're going to have to live with and the interview went viral and I ended up on various very violent racist websites especially in the US and actually the police ended up having to Be involved because of the BBC I sort of laughed it off at the beginning going
this is just stupid I've had this before from the Jihadi side and the threats are the same that everything they're saying is exactly the same just their little icons are different and so I just laughed it off and the police were like no really you need to take this seriously you know stay away from Windows do this do that whatever and at the moment I remember thinking so here It is again so I can either be afraid which I've been afraid of people like this my whole life or I can try to do something different
which is try and seek them out try and see if it's possible to sit with them and can I recognize their human and can they recognize mine is that doable when you sit in person and can I find a way of understanding them as human beings behind the rhetoric behind the chest beating and the ideology and all of that And behind the threats so that's what I wanted to do and I also was quite conscious about how I was wanting to for these conversations to go I did not want it to be I'll tell you
all my politics and all my views and I'll Pat myself on the back for having all the correct views use then you get to shout your stuff and then we all sort of wipe our hands and we all go off and I can get to be the great anti-racist you get to be the great Nazi and you get to sort of Speak to your audience and recruit more people so I was very conscious of the fact that I didn't want the conversation to go there and I also didn't want them to sort of set the
table for how this was going to go so I knew that they were going to try to provoke me I knew that they were going to try to make me afraid and all of that and I was not going to fall for it I'm not going to let them push my buttons even if they did and that I just wanted to listen I'm Just going to listen and I'm going to wait until the human being starts coming out and the very first Neo-Nazi that I met with he's the leader of the National Socialist movement is
the largest and one of the oldest Neo-Nazi organization white supremacist organizations in America and he said he's one of the first people that actually agreed to meet with me because most of them didn't even want to meet with me and he said look you come to this specific Motel you Get one hour and then you basically you need to disappear and I said okay at least he said yes so yes fine I show up there and then of course I suddenly start realizing this is going to happen this guy is going to walk through these
doors what if he has weapons what if he has people with him what if they rob us and it's just me and one other person that do all the filming I don't have security or anything like that and he comes in and he sits down and this is The first guy that you see in the film and we talk for five hours and at the end of those five hours he's the one that said we're going to this rally in this place called Charlottesville and you're welcome to join us and I remember asking him I
said look why did you let me talk to you for longer first of all and secondly why are you willing to spend more time with me and he said look I disagree with everything you say everything you stand for and he said and The and the world view and the picture of the future that you're speaking about he said I actively will continue to work against that because I don't like it but I respect your sincerity he said you are very clearly very sincerely committed to your view but he said I've never been asked some
of the questions that you've asked and he said and I've never had a conversation like this he said I've done so many interviews and he gets to be the big bad Nazi in all of those interviews Which are considered very successful interviews for him and he said typically they go two ways one is either I get to sort of dominate the interviewer and and so I win or the interviewer basically puts me in a corner and so then I get to continue with my Victim story so I win either way I win and he said
this went somewhere else and he said nobody's been willing to listen and no body's shared with me how they feel he said I don't quite know why but I would like to Continue talking and so we have spent a lot of time since and this wasn't in the film because it hadn't happened yet but last year or was it earlier this year lost all perspective of time but he's left he has completely stepped away he publicly speaks for a peace and the opposite of what he used to be I think the the hard thing for
people to reconcile with your strategy is it's unpredictable in time Yeah it's a process yes you know which is we want results and we want results now yeah you know we want black lives matter we want police reform and we want it now yeah and we want to completely change the way cultures have evolved over decades if not centuries now and the reality is violence is the only way to Force something Revolution is the only way to force something to happen immediately but for the fact that there's always a Counterrevolution and it's incredibly unpredictable and
unstable and no guarantee that whatever we change is going to last yeah and so this process of chipping away and unraveling way more stable way more sticky yeah but unpredictable in time could take a year could take three years could take five years yeah if we stick stick with the process it's going to work it's going to work yeah just don't know how long and the fact that here we Have the head of a white supremacist the oldest white supremacist organization in the nation yes volunteering to step down not because of public pressure not because
of Scandal not because of law no but by choice happened over how many years from when you first met him so it would have been 3 years the very last day I filmed with him I was stuck in a car with him for n hours I went to meet him in Detroit and then he drove from Detroit to Charlottesville and after a Lot of time filming together we sort of got to the point where he would tolerate a lot of annoying poking from me and I also realized that I can get away with more and
more and basically started saying that I'm like an annoying little sister for him and you know haha that's fine and whatever and the very very last day he goes to his car I was about to pack up some of our equipment and I ran over to him and I said look is it okay to give you a hug and I want to thank You and I really appre appreciate how willing you've been to just speak and listen and he said yeah and then he hugged me and I said you know I'm sorry for being an
annoying little sister to you and he says you have a brother now and at that moment I knew and I couldn't say this when the film came out because he was still the leader of this thing but I knew in that moment he's this isn't going to last he's going to leave he might leave in 10 years just like you Said he might leave in 10 years he might leave in 10 days I don't know but he is going to leave he cannot keep this up and I also remember the morning after Charlottesville he had
a couple of young people around him who were just so horrible the things that they said and they just so aggressive and awful awful awful to you to to me and to other people and I had it out with one of them and Jeff was there and I remember looking at him going why are you with These people I said you know better than this you're not like this I said you're a decent person I said I know you believe all kinds of garbage but I said you're a decent person I know it I can
see it why are you doing this why are you a part of this uh and he never said anything he just stood there with sort of just you his jaw on the floor and just couldn't say anything I was right he couldn't keep breathing and being Part of that but you also appreciated the stuckness yes which is I've spent so many years building up a Persona position a point of view a reputation that to Simply say I'm out no there's a process it's not unlike being in any relationship where you're in a romantic relationship with
someone that you spent a lot of time investing in that there's lots of feelings they have feelings towards you and you realize this is untenable yeah and rarely do we just Wake up one morning and just break up yeah depending on the the length of relationships it can take months or years to extricate ourselves from these relationships because there's so much there's common friends and there's family and these decisions to completely pull ourselves out of established relationships are not simple and so when the quote unquote opposition demands extrication because we say so on our timetable
Yeah it fails to appreciate just the humanity and the difficulty of this yeah these guys that are part of these violent groups and part of extremist movements their entire sense of self their identity their everything their position in life everything is bound up in that movement in that ideology part of the trick of of extremist movements and any kind of violent gangs is you are separated from your family you are separated from your sort of original Support system and community and so that becomes your only Brotherhood it becomes your everything like you say you know
your relationships are that your identity is that I am this feared tough leader all that stuff and then suddenly what do you do and he still to this day struggles and still you know him and I are in touch with each other and before he even came out he's like they're going to kill me and they're going to kill me on both sides and I was like look from The other perspective which I can also see you also cannot leave and expect everything to be washed off you instantly so I said you also have to
have patience and I know it's very difficult and I know sometimes you're tempted maybe it's easier just to go back because at least I know that and he he'll say things like I don't even know what civilian life is like he said I've been in this for so long I don't even know and he said like I know nobody Outside I have no friends I have no support outside imagine that imagine how hard it is to do that and then you're just getting slapped around from every side your your former Brothers you know want to
now assassinate you because you're a race traitor and then you've got the left saying I don't believe you once a Nazi always a Nazi punch a Nazi you know all that whole thing but to him I said I don't know what to tell you except you're going to have to hang in There and you have to do your time you don't get to be forgiven in two seconds either because the things that you did the things that you inspired and what you stood for has caused a lot of harm and so just saying I'm done
and now hug me is not also a realistic expectation you have to respect the hurt that you've caused so now you do your time and I said and look I'll try to be there for you and others who can will try to be there for you but you're going to have To hang in there yeah some how and it's easy to say that and it's devastatingly difficult to be in his shoes because he really has nothing and nobody this is the irony of belonging yes which is we all desperately seek to feel like we belong
to something and when we are for whatever reason marginalized yeah we still seek belonging exactly it's so so true when I did a film about jihadis people are so kind of confused and also sort of bothered by me saying some of This but I said look what what I've learned from spending a couple of years with these guys and and mind you I have nothing in common with them I have no sympathy for their cause there's no excusing what any of them believe whether it's a white supremacist or that's not the point of trying to
understand is not to justify or excuse these beliefs or even to sympathize with it empathy is not the same as you know sympathy it's just to try and understand It so that we as the rest of society or as individuals can be more effective in doing something about it so when I spent these you know several years with the jihadis what I came to understand this is when Isis was just kind of you know getting really big around whenever it was 2013 something like that 14 and people were saying oh they're driven by hate and
oh my goodness and they're just so evil and they're just these monsters and my goodness and this word belonging Kept coming back also this warmth I said to people that they're actually not driven by hate they're actually driven by love and I know that makes no sense to people when we talk about you know guys who go and behead journalists so I get that but that's still the truth the majority of them were driven by love people who didn't have fathers who didn't have love in their own homes who were rejected by everybody rejected by
other brown people other black people Other white people by every by by women by everybody and then they find this group that says hey you're one of us they put their arm around you and say it's okay you're okay and I'm with you and it's going to be okay and so the Loyalty that's why the kind of grooming process or the radicalization process takes quite a while you know these groups spent hundreds of hours on recruiting just one kid how much time do we spend with a kid that's struggling so We're up against a pretty
tough well machined very human Centric bizarrely movements how good must that make you feel that somebody takes that much time to talk to you and to try to understand you and to try to be with you in your difficulties and try to talk through whatever struggles you're having in your life so the sense of loyalty and love that that builds between that recruit and whoever his recruiter is is unbreakable if that guy then asks this Young person to go blow themselves up or to go do something many of them not all of them but many
of them go and do horrible horrible things for the love of that person and I would witnessed this I had a very strange experience myself I met with this young woman in the UK who was having a very difficult time and I I was just nice to her and I just listened to her and was supportive to her whenever I was able to she'd had a horrible horrible horrible violent Upbringing and I remember we sat on this train back to London at one point and I told her this I said you know working on this
film you know these guys that build this loyalty and then they go and they do horrible things and whatever and they do it for these kind of leaders and whatever and and she looks me dead in the in the face and she said I would do that for you and I said what what and she said I would I would go kill or be killed for You just because you shown me love just because you've been nice to me just because you were there for me when I needed somebody you know and I remember when
I sat with the jihadis they would say you know I've been discriminated against I've been this I felt like this I felt like an outsider I felt broken I felt long long long laundry list and I remember finding myself sitting there going yeah me too wow yeah I I felt like that I went through that I went through Wow okay and then I would always be left with a question well what is it then if all our experiences are pretty much the same and then I'm a woman on top of it so I've had to
deal with all of that stuff too what is it that makes me pick up a camera and you pick up a gun what is that what's the difference then and the only difference that I can sort of identify is who is it that shows up in your life at your most broken at your most vulnerable willing to listen Willing to be there for you who recruited you is the difference exactly exactly so is it somebody that wishes me well and that wants me to flourish and grow as a human being or is it somebody who
takes my pain and manipulates that and winds that up towards their own political game that's the difference we have to point this out which is a big difference and these organizations are so good at this as you said their survival has been built upon it yeah the Al-Qaeda recruiting magazine was called Inspire yeah which is when these young disaffected children in the slums of Paris or wherever yeah are online talking to somebody they think they're talking to the same person but because it's a machine it's a team of people who are who are available at
all hours of the night to talk to this kid whenever he or she is ready to talk in other words it's not necessarily somebody who really cares about not somebody who Cares no it's a machine of people who are there trying to recruit me yes for political gains yes if there's quote unquote evil anywhere that is it it's at the high levels of these organizations where people with political motives know exactly how to manipulate yes broken people and when I say broken by the way I mean all of us yes you know dis disaffected disenchanted
yes how to take that emotion and it'll have a veneer of I'm helping you but in reality you're Helping me helping me and you're just Canon f for my battle and that's the evil that is the evil and that is what I learned too is that the recruiter versus all these young kids that are being recruited there's a huge difference you know the recruiter is being very conniving being very manipulative and knows exactly what he's doing knows exactly what he's doing and very consciously I mean they actively consciously pick people who are Struggling of course
if there's one commonality between both films or both movements for me CU people seem to think it's so different and it really it's it's like I said earlier too it's the same guy it's just a different window dressing but it's the same guy different slogans different flags it is that these movements cynically and also brilliantly fulfill basic human needs that we all have but some of us have ways of fulfilling that and finding ways to fill Those gaps and some of these kids just don't how is it that they have the patients to recruit for
hundreds of hours and for those who claim to care about their fellow human beings seem not to have the patience yeah to recruit them back yeah or prevent them from ever being recruited in the first place but rather demand instant change first of all is that a fair statement I think so that's the gist of what I've walked away with having done both films I actually Started out very pessimistic and didn't really think it was going to get anywhere but I was still going to try to see if if I can understand any part of
this but I left both films hopeful very optimistic and the reason for that was understanding these sort of systems of Recruitment and the fact that it is very very human that it is about human needs and filling those and the reason that gives me hope is that we can do something about I think primarily it has To do with these recruiters they see that they can gain from it these people see the potential they have a lot to gain I think we say a lot of things but I don't think we truly believe that our
society gains and benefits from the Brilliance and the creativity of these people and what they really have to offer so I think their Brokenness is Justified in the sense that we don't look at them we don't show up for them when they truly need us when do these Kids matter when they do something horrible and violent right did we care about what drove them to that point were we there when he was suffering or struggling or cutting himself or what we weren't there so I think just because we say things doesn't mean that we necessarily
believe it these guys don't say it they do it because they know they stand to gain a lot from this human resource so there are two thoughts that strike me in your Idea there one is the unbelievable discomfort of patience yeah the fact that I have to be patient for something that I find upsetting up harm or actually upsets the fabric of a functional society that I have to wait is an unbelievably uncomfortable thought and the uncertainty of the time frame the other thing which I find upsetting is that though manipulative for political gain these
recruiters are finding those Who desperately seek belonging and aren't just trying to help the person they're actually giving them something to belong to yes exactly what do we offer them whereas the counter might want to help them out of humanity quote unquote yes but I got nothing for you to join no exactly I mean I'll talk about civilized society and blah blah blah but I'm actually not inviting you to be a part of anything exactly so so it's actually only half a process and so Until we can offer someone an alternative place to feel like
they belong and feel safe yes we're going to lose exactly and they have to feel like they belong in safe the one thing that I also noticed with this entire spectrum of young people is their sincerity in really wanting to change the world in really wanting to contribute in really wanting not just to be a part of a community but part of a community that matters and accomplishes something and Yes I think the lack of patience is astonishing on our part but I think I always sort of say that you know we are so good
at articulating what we are against we're against Nazis we're against jihadis we're against this we're against that and very rarely do we articulate what we're actually for and that goes to the point that you're saying what is it that we're actually offering other than don't do this and Don't do that well what should you do and Beyond something generic exactly and there are spiritual needs there are human needs emotional needs connection how do we plug into that and give our young people a way to contribute and feel fulfilled and this is not just young people
this is all of us when you look at all these groups they offer belonging they offer a sense of purpose they offer an identity and something affirmative it's not just Being against it's also being for they are only about what they're for pretty much only about what they for that's the difference this is another great irony right it which is these extremist groups that we find apparent are for something yes but those of us who think we're on the side of quote unquote good we're against them against them so so again they're setting the table
actually not us right because the white supremacist their first sort of few lines of what They think or or why they're Associated to this isn't I hate all of you who are different from me because again it's not hate driven as much as it looks like it is they are doing it because they are preserving a way of life they are preserving and supporting and working for their people they are for that the jihadis are working to protect and do something about the suffering and struggling Muslims in all different lands but you realize you raise
a very Uncomfortable observation here which is we're sitting in a black lives matter movement yeah of which a large part of the definition is anti-racist it's against but is it it's a question I'm raising it is a question I am an anti-racist is that for is that against okay so I have spent a lot of time in the last few months or especially since the killing of George Floyd traveling around America and especially actually in Minneapolis bizarrely the sense that I get from all the black lives matter activist that I've spoken to and been around
is not what they're against it's the impression I get and I suspect it is why hopefully this time this movement is going to make even more strides than it has done in the past is that it is articulating a picture of the future that actually includes everybody it is about dignity it is about equality it is about recognizing the full Humanity of everybody so to me from everything that I've understood it is about unity and it is about us coming together for something that is better something that is more just something that is for all
of us so to me that is something that is for something not just against you know language is a tricky thing yes and words have power yeah and when we have the words of anti or against it reinforces the division rather than promoting the solution yeah and I do think that that is a trap that you know a lot of us fall Into when it comes to a wide variety of issues that are very important but just because we sort of miscommunicate the actual essence of it and it's also why every time I speak about
extremism whether it's the Jihadi end or the other end or gang violence for that matter I do try to keep it as clear and as human as possible because that's actually really all it is I find that academics and people that research this and have written hundreds of books about these Types of issues for far longer than I've been around just over complicated and make it something it's one of the reasons why I wanted to make both films is I wanted to get to the human beings and not just stay sort of in these abstract
theories and these big big words that makes you feel hopeless it makes you feel there's nothing there to be done and certainly nothing for you to do in in that picture and to me that takes all power all solution everything Away from all of this whereas we can actually all do something about it I'm reminded of a quote by James Carville the Democratic operative who said the difference between Republicans and Democrats is Republicans want to win and Democrats want to be right wow yeah and I'm struck by the way you talk about the gentleman who
ran the white supremacist organization talking about it doesn't matter whether he's put in a corner and had a microphone turned Off or whether he gets to dominate he wins he thinks about it in binary form yeah right yeah whereas on the left it's I'm going to prove to you that you're wrong yeah yeah so he doesn't actually show up to be right or wrong he shows up to win exactly exactly which I find very interesting whereas on the left they show up to be right yeah and it's very interesting how two people are going to
have now have a productive conversation Where one wants to win and one wants to be right good luck with that yeah and and both walk off with okay I got my part we didn't really talk right I got to State my points and my talking points and you get to State your talking points right and then we shake hands and we go or we go off in a huff and we both go back to our constituents and say did it didn't I do great mission accomplished did you see me exactly did you see the points
I scored exactly one scores Points and one makes points exactly exactly and so what's accomplished nothing Zippo you know you are one of the best listeners in the world I don't know okay for a Muslim woman to go and spend time with jihadis and white supremacists and listen yeah it's not easy so tell us some of the things that you've learned that we can actually apply like how do I listen to someone I have a visceral reaction to I may have judgment and disgust and anger How do I listen well you first have to figure
out why you're wanting to have that encounter for me the reason I listened the reason that was the choice is I want to understand them so that we can do better at countering them and having fewer of them around right and we can't do that until we can understand what makes them actually tick so how you listen is uncomfortable there's no two ways about it if you're going to sit with somebody that you have a viscerally Just a negative reaction to if you're wanting to listen because you're trying to understand what I would suggest is
the way it's been for me is I sit there and I allow for people to finish I allow for people to empty whatever the stuff is and once they've emptied it's kind of like a rag has been rung and finally then you can go okay done now we can really speak it takes time there's that patience again yeah unfortunately patience has to be a part of it I think You have to know why you're doing it I you just have to sit in your disc Comfort I'm sorry it was ugly for me it was very
uncomfortable for me and anytime I would start feeling frustrated or annoyed or angry I would just have to keep that in check because again if I was to lash out I felt in my mind anyway at the time that I'm going to hand them what they're looking for they want me to come off kind of Center they want me to lose my balance and the minute I do that It's back to them again they get to Define how this is going to go and then the understanding part we won't get to that because we'll just
get frustrated and and and I've lost it I think if we don't listen then we don't understand what makes somebody tick we don't understand what value they actually can bring to you and what learning they can actually bring to you there's no reason somebody else is going to listen to you if you're not willing To listen first so I think in order to build a relationship of trust and build a relationship that's based on Dignity and respect somebody has to make that gesture first and and it's most likely not going to come from the Neo-Nazi
first right so somebody has to take that step and that's called leadership yeah it's not the one who's at the top of the organization it's the one who goes first yeah the one who goes first towards the Danger the one who does the uncomfortable thing first but that's also the person that that stands to gain the most because the amount of insight that you get from that the amount of connection that you get from that and the amount of value if you want to put it in those terms that gain from that and the trust
and the Loyalty that you build with somebody making people feel like they matter making people feel heard and seen and valued we all want That it's not just Nazis or jihadis we all want that everybody wants to be treated with dignity and that's the one thing that was conscious for me with all of these guys is just because they dehumanize me I'm not going to allow them to put me in a corner where I feel forced to dehumanize them or I feel compelled to dehumanize them because if I do that what's the difference and what's
the point it's very easy to dehumanize them it's very satisfying to Also I'm right and just look at them and listen to their horrible hor it feels great but what's after that we have to get to the solutions we have to coexist we have to coexist even with people like this so how do we do that are those gestures going to come from them or from everybody else and I understand you know right now a lot of people feel very angry on all sides and very frustrated and people have had enough but you're Going to
have to have these conversations going to have to listen going to have to be there through the discomfort you have to yeah otherwise we don't get past it otherwi the the needle just you know remains stuck here and the anger is the indication of the beginning not the end exactly and it will continue to get more angry and it will continue to get more violent the anger is the start of something and now we have the choice of where we want to go with it Exactly and you can actually diffuse the anger fairly easily but
you have to want to and you have to sincerely want to and that's hard so it should be one of the sort of strategies that we apply towards the challenges that we're faced with and then there's all the other systemic shifts that have to happen the political lobbying that has to happen the Grassroots organizing that has to happen so there's a myriad of solutions that have to be deployed in this current Environment and having dialogue and listening is just one and engaging with the other engaging with your enemy that's one aspect of it then let's
also see what we can gather in terms of information from those people who do go out into the trenches and engage but you learn about yourself I mean what to me has been extraordinary about all of this is that I thought I'm going to learn about them but at the end of it I learn more about myself actually and learn More about what kind of human being do I want to be here's some of the things that I've learned from talking to you one patience is a yeah I mean like oh you know like I
have to keep doing this uncomfortable thing do I have to just when will it end I don't know I have to just keep doing it you know it's like H you know yeah anything worthwhile is difficult and requires patience whether it's getting healthy getting in shape you know it's a Lot of hard work and it's a lot of patience and it's more about process yes than it is about an event yes but you do all these things because you want to and because you actually care so you have to care right and though there may
be events protests activism they're moments they're parts of the process yes the other thing that I find really fantastic and astonishing is it's fine and good to listen and offer empathy but it has to be followed up with giving someone a Place to go yeah it's not enough to say don't worry your life matters I have to be willing to let you into my home I have to give you a safe place to sleep that belonging is not enough to help someone build their self-confidence they have to have a place to go yeah and that's
difficult yes and it doesn't have to be a physical place I assume or maybe it is sometimes but no not really it's more what do you replace that Gap with the Club it needs a new club exactly exactly so what are you for so what do you sign up to instead of that what takes that place and there has to be and I've heard this theme in all of the work that I've done you pointed it love love is the thing yes it's the only thing it's the only thing it really is and the empathetic
listening is less about quote unquote what makes them tick yeah but it's trying to find out what they love yeah because only love would make you Sacrifice parents sacrifice for their children we would sacrifice our lives for our children because we love them we know that we fall in love because we now find ourselves at the point where we would willingly sacrifice our own interests for the good of another human being even in a romantic relationship that we discover love when we discover the willingness to sacrifice and I know from my work with the military
very few if any folks in the armed service is Rush towards the sound of a gun for God and Country yeah it's person to the left and person to the right and it's and it's love even if they don't like them it's love of the people to the left and the people to the right that they're so willing to sacrifice and then the honor is bestowed that they helped Advance the movement if that happens yeah and I find this incredibly hard and such a a worthwhile practice that for me to learn true empathetic listening and
you went To the extremes which is why you're such a good case study of what empathetic listening looks like you know this is a skill that we can we can use on a daily basis with other people but if you've learned to listen to a Jihadi or a white supremacist or to toxic masculinity yeah not putting aside any of your own feelings or judgments that's what I find so interesting you actually are listening sometimes with judgment yeah yeah but it's the sincere desire to Understand the thing they love and then and as you described so
beautifully allow the towel to be rung allow the the bucket to be emptied and only at the point of the empty bucket when they've had the chance to say it all now a conversation can start yeah the listening allows for the platform to begin there can be no conversation until there is listening first extreme listening extreme listening and this word love that you're saying I always Say that and most people roll their eyes or shrug their shoulders a little bit and go isn't that nice and mushy of you to use that word and it's not
nice and mushy it's very practical it's very fruitful it's very strategic and it is at the center of everything everything I know this for a fact now I used to feel it and felt that that would be true but I know it for a fact I have sat with some of the worst of the worst quote unquote people people Who have done horrific things convicted terrorists all sorts of people and really it all always comes back to love and the second they sense any feeling that even resembles that from you they are willing to sit
there in that discomfort with you they are willing to sit there and put their entire life in your hands I mean I've sat with some of these guys and some of the things that they've shared with me and put in my hands even I've sat there going Shouldn't tell me this you really shouldn't tell me me this you know because whatever I don't know I can't include so don't they're like no I trust you and so without love truly there is nothing truly it's not hate it's love did you learn in all of this to
love your enemy yes I mean I've become friends with many of them I'm in touch with many of them many of them will probably stay with me till I take my last breath or they do yeah I have Learned to do that one of them was being kicked out of the University that he went to because they found out what he does and he also had the swastic unsh the big gun and stuff like that and I wrote to them and I said look you have to give him a chance you cannot give up on
people he really needs to be in a place of learning he really needs this he's not going to shoot up the school but he might if he's got nothing Les left to live for we cannot give up on Each other we cannot give up on people and most of these people have given up on themselves most of these people have given up on us and so I refuse to do that I refuse to do it doesn't matter how far gone somebody is doesn't matter how ugly somebody's behavior is I will try to stick it out
for as long as I can bear it because that's what's needed you know and that's what we would need that's what you and I would need when we break that's what we need is that Somebody doesn't give up on us somebody doesn't turn their back on us right diakon you are an inspiration and as you always do in all your work we entered a dark place and came out to the light and found the light I'm so grateful thank you so so much thank you I'm very grateful thank you so [Music] much if you enjoyed
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