Ali Soufan On Rooting Out Extremism: Dealing With Jihadis Taught Us “What Not To Do” | MSNBC

International hostage negotiator Ali Soufan is the founder of The Soufan Center, a non-profit that has become the leader in studying how domestic extremist groups operate and assessing their threat level. This week, they launched the ‘Mapping Insecurity’ Project, to help track domestic terror in the U.S. He tells Ali Velshi that rooting out extremism won’t be easy because due to the wide and varied spread of disinformation, “one disengagement approach would not fit everyone…and government is not always the most credible messenger.”» Subscribe to MSNBC:

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Ali Soufan On Rooting Out Extremism: Dealing With Jihadis Taught Us “What Not To Do" | MSNBC

61 comments

    1. That sounds good, but be fair in the application. Fine anyone who incites, or tries to justify violence, in any media, regardless of which side they are on.

    2. @Remi Scott I’m going by the same standards as the Democrats. Republicans probably will to if they get enough numbers to impeach Biden. That’s the standard now.

  1. Please let’s not ignore the media industries’ role in US divisiveness and resulting extremism: With no oversight, cable news outlets who decided to just cater to a target market became very good at spinning the news a certain way. No more fair and balanced news. Whether you watch FOX, OAN, MSNBC (sorry), Newsmax, CNN or others, you leave with the idea that those from the opposing political party are either idiots or evil. Over the years many Americans of conscience have been steered either far left or far right, becoming visible examples of disdain by the opposing side and furthering extremism. Some think that this is a ‘divide and conquer’ tactic driven by foreign interests. More likely it’s just an unfortunate byproduct of the for-profit media industries (News AND Social) successful in keeping eyes on screens. Regardless, it is a force we need to fight together. United we stand, divided we fall.

    1. Too much freedom in democracies for fascists to ply their trade of division and oppression. Since the constitution observes freedom of speech the Nazis and communists have free rein to radicalise our society till it destroys itself into dystopia. Dems need to reform media rules!

    2. @Vic Maz Hi Vic, excellent point. With great freedom (speech) comes great responsibility. Education in critical thinking may help, as many of us are too easily swayed by listening to what we want to hear. Maybe a President unafraid to tell us what we NEED to hear could help as well. Either way, simply regurgitating the divisive media talking points at each other is NOT the answer.

    3. @Harlan Jackson – Yes! We have to look at actual facts and events and draw our OWN conclusions from that. Personalities like Sean Hannity and Don Lemon are far too biased and they spend more time interpreting facts for us instead of just giving the facts in their entirety.

    1. @Jock Young It’s called Google. Awesome tool. Try it sometime. Man the cognitive dissonance has gotten bad on the Left.

    2. @Ozark Yeoman
      You made the accusation. You provide the evidence. I don’t really care what MSNBC says. i don’t watch them anyway.

  2. We must also go after those people and media outlets who promote, incite, and recruit these terrorists/extremists for their own personal, financial and political gain.

    1. @Mimzy Jinx Nobody said Trump was a Russian spy, he isn’t smart enough for that. What they correctly said was, he was a Russian asset, a dupe.

    2. @Mimzy Jinx Well, we still don’t know what Trump has discussed with Putin at few of their meeting. We still don’t have Trump’s tax return. No one says there isn’t looting and violent clash at those protesting, there are also lots of arrests and charges. FBI is investigating Biden hunter for over a year now. We haven’t seen any charges yet. Who are you accusing?

    3. @Mimzy Jinx Like Neo-Nazi’s fighting socialism … while Nazi means National Socialist. In fact, too stupid to walk around on this planet, as they are shooting in their own feet.

    1. @goodbodha 500,000 testimonials. You have to register a testimonial before it’s logged on. That was a major point. I’d point to the last year of riots as plenty of evidence of radicals. Biden actually called people showing up to protect their businesses “militias” and blamed them for his supporters’ rioting when he got around to finally “condemning” the violence after 4 months of riots. Just look up “we are trained Marxists” and then you’ll also see the pundits trying to say they didn’t say what they said. “A bit different”. Lol. How’d that work out for Venezuela? As far as election issues, the numbers like 550k for Biden and only 3,300 for Trump are right on the Sec State websites of each state or the conservative media who actually reported it. It’s also widely reported that ballots were illegally accepted late after election day.

    2. @Ozark Yeoman and yet somehow your leaders on the right couldn’t find this evidence you say you have when it came time to present it to a court. Sorry but I call bs. If there had been evidence it would have gone to court, saying something doesnt make it true. The left could widely report something and that doesnt make it any more true either, but the funny thing is that when you go to court you have to show evidence to make a case. No evidence no case. The staggering number of losses shows that the right had no evidence. Was there some fraud? Sure GA had 2 dead voters apparently. Was there enough fraud to tip the election? No. I will grant you a lot of people voted for Trump. Several million more voted for Biden. Perhaps instead of continuing to lie about election fraud you guys can actually spend some time coming up with policies and a platform that will get you more voters. Or you can keep doing this thing where you convince moderates to not vote for you and instead court the white supremacists to make up for it.

    3. @goodbodha If a guy wins at a table full of poker players with a a royal flush 10 times in a row, maybe you can’t prove how he cheated. Imagine if you don’t even know who the player was that cheated. We do know ballots were illegally accepted after election day. We also know vote totals came in decimals (look that up on DuckDuckGo for official sources). In the final counting in PA, Biden got about 550k to Trump’s 3,300. Even majority Dem mail in ballots don’t jive with this. Numbers are available on the videos of the public hearings and each state’s Sec State websites.

    4. @goodbodha Court white supremacists? Lol. They’re begging to be let in and we don’t let them. They’re always mad about it. I even got a death threat from them. So you can buzz off with that. It’s not like Democrats who actually have radicals as their main fundraisers and entire wings of the party.

    1. @Mimzy Jinx
      Some people did that. Some people did go to far. They were wrong. Move on.
      The violence on the 20th was anarchists. They have been a problem in the Northwest for decades.

    2. ​@000 000 Because he didn’t support them. This benefitted Democrats. It was a dream come true from Democrats. Pardon? They are lucky President’s don’t have the power to order summary executions. Democrats did stage a summary impeachment with NO INVESTIGATION whatsoever. The breach started while he was still speaking. Are you even aware of that?

    3. Fusion Centers and Infragard. Supposed to be monitoring domestic terrorists.
      We hear nothing because they don’t really do that.
      They monitor and harass political activists.

    1. @Vic Maz yeah, how did Trump manage to get that by the Republicans who raise their hairs at anything like that? Only for the Republicans. They’ve been playing good cop/bad cop with Democrats for centuries now. Time for expanding political participation of other thought than just two (the good cop and the bad cop).

    2. @Joe Anderson The NRA have popularized the false belief that Americans are entitled to carry firearms, whether part of a legal militia or not. The NRA mission statement is not to protect civil rights. Feel like spending a million dollars defending the belief that breakfast is a civil right?

    3. @Peter Rugh You have a right to self defense, the second ammendment doesn’t grant that right, it is only designed to protect it from government over reach. I carry a firearm with me everywhere everyday, is that your problem? nope it has nothing to do with you.

    4. @Joe AndersonDo you have a problem? What does that problem have to do with me? Am I keeping you from being a mansplaining freshman paralegal studies prude? Miss the point and argue with me, will you? Go home! I don’t make sense do i? You don’t need a gun, you need an education in logic. Go to school! I am tired of checking my grammar with jackholes.

    5. @Peter Rugh Bruh you got triggered to easy. Why don’t I need a gun, who are you to tell me what I need, im not telling you what you need, why not let each make their own decisions.

    1. @Jock Young Then look it up. Chris Cuomo was speaking specifically about riots becoming violent towards communities and police. Pretty clear. He never walked it back either. They were also supportive of Kaepernik and other public figures of the movement who openly called for violence.

    2. @Ozark Yeoman
      I did look it up, and he wasn’t advocating violence; just outrage.
      “”Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful,” he said. “Because I can show you that outraged citizens are what made the country what she is and led to any major milestone. To be honest, this is not a tranquil time.” “Too many see the protests as the problem,” he said. “No, the problem is what forced your fellow citizens to take the streets. Persistent and poisonous inequities and injustice.””
      What do you care about one man’s opinion anyway?

    3. @Sean Concannon The only fantasy land, is people who think that asking for a ”peaceful” protest is insurrection. Only a Democrat could be this stupid.

    4. @Matt Fayne I agree that MSM often has a political agenda, but for you to say news stations that allow opinion based news (Rupert Murdoch gave this title OPINION BASED by the way) to be aired during primetime like fox does Hannity, Ingraham, Judge Judy, and the other blockhead instead of ACTUAL FACT BASED NEWS is appalling and destructive.

  3. The ‘news’ media can be a for profit promotion of antisocial activities. Fox was a Trump enabler pumping out misinformation 24/7 and now there are other for profit sites taking up this formula of misleading the public. Just look at the wealth of the tele evangelists. Their success demonstrates the gullibility of the public.

  4. Hopefully after the main crises of today are on their way to being dealt with Biden and his cabinet can get somebody like this guy working on domestic terrorism, If we can make them shrink over the next 4 years just as fast as they grew over the last 4 years we can get back to 2016, which wasn’t great, but further efforts on shrinking them could eliminate them entirely by 2028.

  5. Fox entertainment needs to pay a price after all they were the key to the overall attempted overthrow of the USA government

    1. I’m hopeful some aspiring tort lawyer is going to get a class action suit against Fox on behalf of every family member of every covid victim. Naming some hosts personally, the corporation and it’s officers personally.

  6. Yeah good luck getting Republican “leaders” on board. They’’re the reason we have this problem to begin with. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤬

  7. I waited 15 min for him to tell us he suggests “upping the education ” ? What a boring talk. Of course the crazies need to be “educated “

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