World apart but common paths to extremism

In the months before he was charged with storming the U.S. Capitol, Doug Jensen of Iowa was sharing conspiracy theories he'd consumed online. But it hadn't always been that way, says his brother, who recalls how he once posted the sort of family and vacation photos familiar to nearly all social media users.

A world away, Wahab hadn't always spent his days immersed in jihadist teaching. The product of a wealthy Pakistani family and the youngest son of four, he was into cars and video games, had his own motorcycle, even studied in Japan.

No two ideologues are identical. No single light switch marks the shift to radicalism. The gulf between different kinds of extremists in religious and political convictions, in desired world orders, in how deeply they embrace violence in the name of their cause is as wide as it is obvious. But to dwell only on the differences obscures the similarities, not only in how people absorb extremist ideology but also in how they feed off grievances and mobilize to action.

For any American who casts violent extremism as a foreign problem, the Jan. 6 Capitol siege held up an uncomfortable mirror that showed the same conditions for fantastical thinking and politically motivated violence as any society.

The Associated Press set out to examine the paths and mechanics of radicalization through case studies on two continents: a 20-year-old man rescued from a Taliban training camp on Afghanistan's border, and an Iowa man whose brother watched him fall sway to nonsensical conspiracy theories and ultimately play a visible role in the mob of Donald Trump loyalists that stormed the Capitol.

Two places, two men, two very different stories as seen by two close relatives. But strip away the ideologies, says John Horgan, a researcher of violent extremism. Instead, look at the psychological processes, the pathways, the roots, the experiences.

"All of those things," Horgan says, "tend to look far more similar than they are different."

The American

America met Jensen via a video that ricocheted across the Internet, turning an officer into a hero that day in the Capitol.

Jensen is the man in a dark stocking cap, a Black "Trust the Plan" shirt over a hooded sweatshirt, front and center in a crowd of rioters chasing Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer, up two flights of stairs. One prominent picture shows him standing feet from an officer, arms spread wide, mouth agape.

When it was all over, he'd tell the FBI that he was a "true believer" in QAnon, that he'd gone to Washington because Q and Trump had summoned "all patriots" and that he'd expected to see Vice President Mike Pence arrested. He'd say he pushed his way to the front of the crowd because he wanted "Q" to get the credit.

He'd tell his brother the photos were staged, how the police had practically let him in through the front door (prosecutors say he climbed a wall and entered through a broken window) and that some officers even did selfies with the crowd.

William Routh of Clarksville, Ark., had an unsettled feeling about that day even before the riot and says he cautioned his younger brother. "I said, if you go down there and you're going to do a peaceful thing, then that's fine. But I said keep your head down and don't be doing something stupid."

In interviews with the AP after his brother's arrest, Routh painted Jensen — a 42-year-old Des Moines father of three who'd worked as a union mason laborer — as a man who enjoyed a pleasant if unextraordinary American existence. He says he took his family to places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park, attended his children's sporting events, worked to pay for a son's college education, made anodyne Facebook posts.

"I have friends that I speak to constantly that have conspiracy theories," Routh said, "but this was a shock to me more than anything, because I would not have thought this from my brother Doug, because he's a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values."

A Justice Department memo that argued for Jensen's detention cites a criminal history and his eagerness to drive more than 1,000 miles to "hear President Trump declare martial law," then to take it into his own hands when no proclamation happened. It notes that when the FBI questioned him, he said he'd gone to Washington because "Q" had forecast that the "storm" had arrived.

His lawyer, Christopher Davis, countered in his own filing by offering Jensen up as a dupe, a "victim of numerous conspiracy theories" and a committed family man whose initial devotion to QAnon "was its stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society."

Six months after the insurrection, the argument resonated with a judge who agreed to release Jensen on house arrest as his case moved forward. The judge, Timothy Kelly, cited a video in which Jensen referred to the Capitol as the White House and said he didn't believe Jensen could have planned an attack “when he had no basic understanding of where he even was that day."

Yet less than two months after he was released, Jensen was ordered back to jail. Though barred from accessing a cellphone, he watched a symposium sponsored by MyPillow Chief Executive Officer Mike Lindell that offered up false theories that the presidential election's outcome was changed by Chinese hackers.

Just when Jensen came to absorb the conspiracies that led him to the Capitol is bewildering to Routh, who says he took him under his wing during a challenging childhood that included foster care.

When Jensen was questioned by the FBI, according to an agent's testimony, he said for the last couple of years he'd come home from an eight-hour workday and consume information from QAnon. In the four months before the riot, the brothers communicated about QAnon as Jensen shared videos and messages that he purported to find meaning in, but that Routh found suspect.

It was a period rife with baseless theories, advanced on the Internet and mainstream television, that an election conducted legitimately was somehow stolen in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. "It was just out there. It is on the internet everywhere," Routh says.

Routh, who says he's a Republican who supported Trump, maintains his brother and others like him were frightened by the prospect of a Biden victory. Before Jan. 6, Routh says, "We have been being told for the last what? seven, eight months that if the Democrats get control, we're losing our country, OK?."

When Routh looks at the photos of Jensen and the group he was with Jan. 6, he doesn't see a determination to physically hurt anyone or vandalize the building. And despite the QAnon T-shirt and statement to the FBI that he was "all about a revolution," Routh insists his brother was more a follower than a leader.

"He had a lot of influence from everybody else there," Routh said. "And he has always been the kind of kid that says, `I can do that.'"

Two days after the riot, back home in Iowa, Jensen walked 6 miles to the Des Moines Police Department after seeing he was featured in videos of the chaos, an FBI agent would later testify. There, the FBI says, he made statements now at the center of the case, including admitting to chasing Goodman, that he yelled "Hit me. I'll take it" as the officer raised a baton to move him back and that he profanely bellowed for the arrests of government leaders.

Though prosecutors say he had the coherence to delete potentially incriminating social media accounts from his phone, he also seemed confused. As officials questioned him, according to the FBI, he said words to the effect of, "Am I being duped?"

The Pakistani

Wahab had it all. The youngest son of four from a wealthy Pakistani family, he spent his early years in the United Arab Emirates and for a time in Japan, studying. Wahab liked cars, had a motorcycle and was crazy about video games.

His uncle, who rescued the 20-year-old from a Taliban training camp on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan earlier this year, asked that his full name not be used because in the northwest where the family lives, militants have deep-reaching tentacles. He agreed to be quoted using his middle name, Kamal.

Kamal is one of five brothers who run the family-owned import/export conglomerate. Each brother in turn has groomed and primed his sons for the business. Wahab's older brothers are already running overseas branches of the family business.

Wahab's future was to be no different. Being the youngest son in a society that prizes males, he was spoiled. Other than school, Wahab had few responsibilities.

His uncle blamed his slide to radicalization on the neighborhood teens Wahab hung out with in their northwest Pakistan hometown, not to mention video games and Internet sites.

Wahab's friends introduced him to dozens of sites, his uncle said. They told of Muslims being attacked, women raped, babies brutally killed. The gruesomeness was horrifying, though Kamal says there was no way to know what was true or if any had been doctored.

"He felt like he hadn't known what was going on, that he had spent his life in darkness and he felt he should be involved. His friends insisted he should. They told him he was rich and should help our people," his uncle said.

To his uncle, Wahab seemed to become increasingly fixated on violence with the hours he spent playing video games.

Suddenly, earlier this year, Wahab disappeared. Wahab wasn't the first in the family to flirt with extremism. His cousin Salman had joined the local Pakistani Taliban years before. But he was different: Salman had never been interested in school and was sent to a religious school instead. The family had long given up on him.

Salman swore he hadn't seen Wahab and knew nothing of where he might be or if he had even joined jihad. Suspicion then fell on Wahab's friends. Family members were certain the friends had induced him to defend against attacks that Wahab and his friends were convinced were being waged against Muslims.

The family finally located him at a Pakistani Taliban training camp, where Kamal said Wahab was being instructed in small weapons. Such camps also are often used to identify would-be suicide bombers and instruct them in the use of explosives.

When Wahab's father discovered his son was at a training camp, he was furious, said his uncle. "He told the people, `Leave him there. I don't accept him as my son anymore.' But I took it on myself to bring him back," Kamal said.

His uncle told Wahab he was getting another chance — his last.

Today, Wahab is back in the family business, but his uncle says he is closely watched. He isn't allowed to deal with the company finances and his circle of friends is monitored.

The path

Moral outrage. A sense of injustice. A feeling that things can only be fixed through urgent, potentially violent action.

Those tend to motivate people who gravitate toward extremism, according to Horgan, who directs the Violent Extremism Research Group at Georgia State University. He says such action is often seen as necessary to ward off a perceived impending threat to one's way of life and to secure a better future.

"Those similarities you will find repeated across the board, whether you're talking about extreme right-wing militias in Oklahoma or you're talking about a Taliban offshoot in northwest Pakistan," Horgan says.

The world views driving extremist groups may feel fantastical and outrageous to society at large. But the true believers who consume propaganda and align themselves with like-minded associates don't see it that way. To them, they possess inside knowledge.

Research shows that people who espouse conspiracy theories tend to do poorer on measures of critical thinking. They reduce complex world problems — the pandemic, for instance — to simplified and reassuring answers, says Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychiatrist and expert on extremist beliefs at Cornell University.

"It gives us answers," he says, "that are much more appealing emotionally than the real answer."

That's where the stories of Jensen and Wahab seem to intersect. Both were seeking something. Both found answers that were enticing, attractive and distorted versions of reality.

"For reasons he does not even understand today, he became a `true believer' and was convinced he (was) doing a noble service by becoming a digital soldier for `Q,'" Davis, Jensen's lawyer, wrote in a June court filing. "Maybe it was midlife crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the message just seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to an exalted status with an honorable goal."