Political violence has slashed America in the last 12 months, from Manhattan to Minnesota to Utah. Pennsylvania saw an April attempt to burn down the governor’s mansion.
“We think that this can’t happen around us because, thankfully in the U.S., violent extremism is at least rare enough that it’s not happening in our community every single day,” said Aaron Erb, program director at Violence Prevention Network USA, formed in 2022 in Pittsburgh and based in the South Side. “And at the same time, we know in the Pittsburgh area that these incidents can touch us, from the Tree of Life [mass killing] to the assassination attempt on President [Donald] Trump.”
While the data is complex, the trajectory of threats and attacks against public officials and hate crimes appears to be upward.
Violence Prevention Network USA builds on a model used in Germany. VPN operates a help line and, early next year, will train as many as 30 Southwestern Pennsylvania social workers in identifying and responding to signs of extremism in clients. Pittsburgh’s Public Source asked Erb what VPN is seeing and why it’s training human services pros. Here’s what we learned, edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What is Violence Prevention Network trying to do?
Aaron Erb: The idea of the organization is to be able to build a future where everybody can live without fear of targeted violence, no matter what they believe or where they worship. Mostly what we’re trying to do is build a network of organizations and trusted community partners who feel comfortable being able to recognize early warning signs of radicalization, and being able to then intervene, not as experts, but just as people who are building trusting relationships with folks who are showing a susceptibility to ideologically motivated violence.
Q: What is your help line number and website?
A: It’s 412-756-3643, and people can also make contact through the web page for the Restore Project, our effort to connect Southwestern Pennsylvania’s community leaders to address radical extremism. The help line is a chance for a non-law-enforcement response when people are seeing warning signs and are really worried about those signs, might not understand what they’re supposed to do about that, might not understand how they’re supposed to act, and want to call to get a little bit of support and understanding.
Q: Are we seeing heightened need for this?
A: We see these high-profile incidents, and we also know that this region has been a place where antisemitism has seen its day many different times. We know that even among a smaller Muslim population that Islamophobia has also been on the rise, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has a map that shows some of the active, ideologically motivated groups in our area. … We’re not immune to the rise in ideologically motivated violence.
Q: You’re training social workers and human services professionals. Why?
A: In something like 8 out of 10 terrorist attacks, someone’s aware of an individual’s growing ideological commitment to violence. … We know that relationships exist with people who are susceptible to ideologically motivated extremism, and we want human services professionals, who are so often at the front line of a lot of these prosocial engagements in our society, to feel like they have the skill to identify the signs. … When am I actually starting to see the kinds of isolation, the kinds of abstract demonization of entire groups of people, and the fantasies of violence that are really starting to bring about concern?
Q: What will you be telling the social workers?
A: We’re looking at folks who have experience in building trusting relationships with folks who are in trouble. We’re teaching them to be able to not just hear some of these early warning signs, but then to actually intervene, not as a savior, but definitely as a trusted relationship. [They should know when to say:] “I need to call to get a little bit of support from VPN to know how I can handle this. But I know that I’m in a position where I might be able to say something and actually be the kind of listening ear that helps somebody dig into the needs that are being unmet, and the motivations that are being distorted into a fantasy for ideologically motivated violence.”
Q: What are the signs of radicalization?
A: These symptoms overlap. I think a lot of people might have a sense that one of the warning signs of radicalization is an increasing isolation. If somebody that you live with or are working with in a professional sense or just have interactions with is withdrawing in some ways from interaction and from family or friends, that can be a sign of radicalization. A belief in conspiracies — something that is ever-present in a digital world — is a sign of radicalization, but on its own might not necessarily mean that somebody has been radicalized to violence. Those things in tandem — isolation and belief in conspiracies — and pointing to evidence from very, very alternative media sources, starts to paint a bit more of a picture. Having high levels of anger and hate that are kind of abstractly directed toward entities that aren’t super clear is another sign of radicalization.
Q: Then what?
A: We can’t incarcerate our way out of this kind of a problem. There’s a way in which we need to actually engage with people who are being radicalized and not simply dismiss them.
We’re trying to help our network of community partners to build out strategy and tactics for: How do I approach this person? How do I authentically build trust to be able to keep them engaged with me instead of turning them off because I’ve dismissed them as crazy or a conspiracy theorist or dangerous? [Are there] other support systems for this individual that we can pull into the conversation? …If it’s an educational professional calling in with a concern, we want to know who else is in the educational context who might be able to help? Is there a point when, and is there a relationship already established where parents might get involved where that would be helpful?
Q: If a social worker or anyone else calls your help line, what help do they get?
A: We can talk through situations and say, yeah, OK, maybe this one sounds like something to keep an eye on, but is not very concerning or boy, let’s talk about this because you’re starting to see some patterns that are really ringing alarm bells and it’s really important to pay attention to that. VPN’s trained coaches work from the model of preventing and countering violent extremism that VPN has developed, with its own approaches and methodologies. What are some of the unmet needs that are there, and how can you and others who are in this person’s social network help address some of those needs?
Q: When might law enforcement be brought in?
A: There is a situation where that might be necessary. We haven’t encountered that yet in our time with the help line open, but it’s possible that somebody calls in and there’s enough of a clear and present danger to the public or to an individual in question where we would need to make a referral to law enforcement. But non-state actors are really central to success. Radicalized individuals may be much more likely to open up to a nurse at their local doctor’s office than they will to a police officer.
Q: What if we just don’t bother to do this, nobody signs up for training, nobody calls the help line? What are the stakes here?
A: If we don’t address this together and if we’re not more proactive in addressing this, we risk only mourning in the aftermath and trying to catch somebody who’s committed this kind of horrific act instead of actually preventing it in the first place. We know that we’re all in a position where we might be that person who sees something and has a choice to make.
Learning about how to identify those signs, knowing that there’s a resource out there to help, is so important. I can’t overstate it for the safety of our families and our communities.
Q: When will the training occur, and where can someone sign up?
A: We’ll do one Feb. 2-5, and then we’ll do one at the end of March.
Apply here for VPN’s training.
Rich Lord is the managing editor at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at rich@publicsource.org.
