ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between identity and pre-reflexive knowledge during disengagement and deradicalisation processes. For this purpose, we draw on an analysis, based on Grounded Theory, of the narratives of thirteen former right-wing extremist men in Germany. The chapter shows how identity-related processes set a disengagement process in motion. The study reveals that the disengaged men found it very difficult to translate or live their newly developed identities in their everyday lives. Their relationship with the social environment continues to be marked by anger, hatred, reactive and appetitive aggression, and outbursts of violence. The chapter interprets these persistent moods as signs of implicit knowledge that guide thinking, acting, and relationships within the social environment but also counteracts reintegration. Here, a change in identity is shown while implicit knowledge relevant to everyday life remains unchanged. In other cases, the disengaged men experienced feelings of fear, powerlessness, frustration as well as shame and guilt, which also had a negative impact on their deradicalisation and reintegration in social contexts, such as family, relationships, friendships, education, and occupation. Building on our findings, we would like to encourage subsequent research to focus more on the relationship between identity transformation and the change of implicit knowledge in the course of disengagement and deradicalisation. Our findings resembled findings that have been described with traumatised, and at the same time, violence-prone perpetrators. A successful intervention approach in that context, narrative exposure therapy (NET) for forensic offender rehabilitation (FORNET), might also be successfully integrated into the professional deradicalisation work.
