The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us. As the 2024 United States presidential election approaches, communities across America and around the globe are still struggling to understand how so many people are being radicalized and why they are increasingly attracted to violent movements.

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Cynthia Miller-Idriss will discuss how tomorrow’s far-right nationalists are being recruited in surprising places, from college campuses and mixed martial arts gyms to clothing stores, online gaming chat rooms, and YouTube cooking channels. Instead of focusing on the how and why of far-right radicalization, Miller-Idriss seeks answers in these physical and virtual spaces where hate is cultivated. She demonstrates how young people on the margins of our communities are targeted in these settings, how the path to radicalization is a nuanced process of moving in and out of far-right scenes throughout adolescence and adulthood, and reveals innovative strategies we can use to combat extremist radicalization.

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Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss is a professor at the American University in Washington, D.C., where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) in the Center for University Excellence (CUE). She has testified before the U.S. Congress, has briefed the U.N. Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee, and frequently serves as a keynote speaker and expert panelist on trends in white supremacist and far-right extremism to global academic and policy communities. She appears regularly in the media as an expert source and political commentator, including recent appearances on CNN with Fareed Zakaria, PBS News Hour, MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Today Show, and Good Morning America as well as in global media outlets in over a dozen countries. Her most recent book is Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (Princeton University Press, 2020).

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Moderation: Rolf Büllmann, former Washington Correspondent for Bayerische Rundfunk.

Rolf Büllmann has been a journalist with Bayerischer Rundfunk BR and German Public Radio ARD for more than 25 years. He reported from the Middle East, worked as a parliamentary correspondent in Berlin during the Merkel years and was Bayerischer Rundfunk’s Bureau Chief in Washington D.C. during Obama’s second term and Trumps first year as President. After his return to Germany he joined BR’s current affairs radio shows “Welt am Morgen” and “Welt am Abend” on Bayern2 as host and editor.