Joanna Schroeder has
a rather strident booklet-article in the New York Times Oct. 12, 2019, “Racists AreRecruiting. Watch Your Sons.” There is a tagline, “Parents need to understand
how white supremacists prey on teen boys, so they can intervene.”
Caleb Cain would later relate on his recruitment and then
deradicalization on the David Pakman show. I think I've used his video ("Faraday Speaks") on YouTube before. It did not seem that the views he had been exposed to were all necessarily extreme, at least in the beginning. But he added that teens generally aren't mature enough to see the flaws in how they are being manipulated (but neither do alo of adults).
Schroeder pointed out one specific technique, calling boys “too
sensitive” to specific remarks about people who are less competitive.
On the other hand, you can point out that other teens (more
likely some PoC) can be recruited by similar techniques into conventional gangs,
or sometimes the far Left. It all depends
on the circumstances in the home and surrounding community.
Teens who do accomplish things in school or family-connected
or sometimes faith-based activity (scouting, sports, music, drama, science
fairs, etc.) can build a sense of personal identity and resist “tribal”
pressures to please their peers. These
things have to happen at least partly in the real world apart from the
Internet.
The other thing is the ability to do abstract thinking (like
that starts with math). That happens
much sooner for some teens than others.
That’s what you notice about the Parlkand teens, for
example, how they could abstract from what happened and build a movement on
their own.
Picture: Tennessee Civil War park SW of Nashville, my trip, May 2014/
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