Since the pandemic started the plethora of conspiracy theories are taking over more public, particularly media, space but those theories and ideas, some of them delivered as a big package which includes anti-semitism and neo-Nazi ideologies, were always there. The problem right now is that they threaten the health and wellbeing of a large amount of population, while before it was rather considered ´other people´s problem´.
German journalist Dana Buchzik wrote a book aimed at helping to deal with friends and family members ongoing a radicalisation process. It has to do with both women and men, educated or less educated, our mothers, brothers, fathers and sisters took over by the easiness and simplicity of a radical message.
Generally, the key towards change is education and developing a critical mindset. Being informed is not necessarily easy, as the question relies always about the sources of information and the ways in which the information is transmitted and further understood. The biggest mistake is to consider ´radicalised´ people as crazy, mentally unstable or retarded. This pattern unfortunatelly characterizes some takes on anti-semitism nowadays and are completely wrong because it diminishes - willingly or not, for politically safety reasons or not - the extent of radical thought. Those people who joined Daesh in Syria were not mentally unstable, but answered a very simple appeal of an ideology wrapped in the glossy papers of the social media. Even if in the end, the high-tech tool will be used for barbaric snapshots, such as the infamous beheadings copiously shared on social media.
The book is useful both from the point of view of the analysis and content, but also for the practical exercises and advice offered that may help healing some of the people we love of the radicalisation morbus. As a book published in German, it is a very useful tool for those living in the German-speaking realm that claimed for too long being ´cured´ of such deadly fantasies.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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