The Weatherproof Process: The Education System’s Role in Preventing Alt-Right Radicalism

ABSTRACT:

In response to contemporary questions about the appropriate response to a rise in alt-right ideas amongst young people, this article argues that the education system has a responsibility to counter the factors which make the alt-right appealing to young people in order to prevent radicalism. Primarily, the alt-right gains traction through a falsified sense of political and intellectual credibility, its ability to evade political responsibility due to a societal tendency to dismiss extremism which does not fit the idea of a ‘foreign other’ and their use of dark humour and irony to reduce social empathy between its members and those minority groups which it opposes, allowing a sense of distance between the groups which makes violence and hate more probable. Through schemes which promote social empathy, a refreshed idea about what classifies as an ‘extremist’, ensuring young people have access to accurate and unbiased information and taking a firmer approach towards bigoted behaviour in schools, the education system has both an opportunity, and a duty, to instil young people with the empathy and information required to make them far less likely to be radicalised by alt-right ideology