Exiting White Supremacy: Life-histories of Former Racial and Political Extremists

In this paper, we use 47 in-depth life history accounts of former members of extremist organizations to document the entry, participation, and exit from violent extremism. The study provides a rich analysis of the lived experiences by identifying risk factors (e.g., trauma, substance abuse, mental health) contributing toward membership in racial and political extremism. The accounts identify multiple paths into and out of extremism (and hatred) that are viewed through social identity theory to demonstrate the construction and deconstruction of new and old self-identities. Former racial and political extremists depicted their struggles with exiting extremism as related to disillusionment, dissatisfaction, and disorganization. These struggles motivated individuals to seek alternative lifestyles that required developing new social networks, new ideologies, and new self-identities. Our findings show that developing new ways of viewing the world and the self are nonlinear. This sort of identity change is typically a process that unfolds over an extended period of time, has several setbacks, and results in various levels of cognitive transformation. The processes involved in exiting extremism can be viewed through and contribute to criminological theories of desistance.