Since the early days of research on violent extremism back in the 1970s and even earlier, one of the main research questions has been why people become extremists or terrorists. However, the flip side of the question was not asked: why and how do violent extremists quit? For a long time, it was taken for granted that these activists remained involved in violent extremism until they ended up dead or in prison. There was hardly any interest in whether some of them possibly disengaged from violent extremism in other ways – even if such knowledge would be of great relevance for prevention and intervention of violent extremism.
When I worked on my doctoral dissertation on “Racist and Right-Wing Violence in Scandinavia” (Bjørgo, 1997) during the mid-1990s, I interviewed many active, but increasingly also many former activists from the neo-Nazi scenes. I soon realized that the common wisdom that “once a Nazi, always a Nazi” was simply not true. Many participants – including some of those who had been highly ideologically committed and deeply involved in violence – had eventually left the movement and tried to find a foothold in “normal” society. Some succeeded quite well in reintegrating with jobs and families, whereas others struggled and ended up at the margins of society.
Searching for better understanding of processes of disengagement, deradicalisation and reintegration has been a main research topic throughout my academic career. As a pioneer, I have contributed in establishing this field on the international research agenda. Together with my colleague John Horgan, we developed a much-used conceptual framework with the distinction between deradicalisation and disengagement as two linked – but loosely linked – processes (Horgan & Bjørgo, 2009). I also introduced push, pull and barrier factors to understand processes of change into and out of extremist groups (Bjørgo, 1997; 2011; 2025). Based on my doctoral research, I established the very first Exit project in Norway in 1997, a model that inspired similar Exit projects in Sweden, Germany and eventually in many other countries. During the last 20 years, deradicalisation and disengagement have become main goals in P/CVE policies.
Interviewing former extremists has been a main source of data in my own research in understanding processes of engagement and radicalisation, and deradicalisation, disengagement and reintegration. Many researchers and students want to get access to former extremists to make their own interviews, but few formers are willing, often because they find it stressful to have to recount again and again traumatic and shameful parts of their lives. Together with Robert Örell – himself a former who has led Exit programmes and Exit training for almost 20 years – we decided to use our extensive networks of formers to make a collection of interviews that could be made available to other researchers, students and P/CVE practitioners. We interviewed and developed a dataset with transcribed interviews (at present 15 but growing) for researchers and students, as well as a series of podcast interviews available to the public.
Read more about the Formers project, the dataset and the podcasts here:
https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/resources/formers/index.html
To hear more about my own story on working with former extremists, please listen to my podcast:
https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/research/podcast/episodes/podd_toreb.mp3
References:
Bjørgo, T. (1997). Racist and Right-Wing Violence in Scandinavia: Patterns, Perpetrators and responses. Oslo: Tano Aschehoug.
Bjørgo, T. (2011). Dreams and disillusionment: Engagement in and disengagement from militant extremist groups. Crime, Law and Social Change. Volume 55, Issue 4 (2011), pp. 277-285.
Bjørgo, T. (2025). Conceptualising diversity among violent extremists – a typology and a model for explaining change. In: M. Obaidi & J.R. Kunst (eds.). Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Violent Extremism, Cambridge University Press.
Bjørgo, T. & Horgan, J. (2009). Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement. London: Routledge.