When Things Are Not As They Seem: Explaining the Success of Countering Violent Extremism in Los Angeles

Under the Obama Administration, “countering violent extremism” (CVE) described efforts to prevent violent extremism by addressing root causes that lead individuals to radicalize. These efforts promoted community engagement, local prevention programs, and counter- messaging to combat extremism ideology. The local focus of American CVE also led to the creation of pilot programs in Los Angeles, Boston, and the Twin Cities. The American government viewed the Los Angeles program as widely successful and incorporated practices from the Los Angeles framework into the national CVE framework.
This thesis proposes three theories to explain Los Angeles’s success in implementing an effective CVE program. First, Los Angeles has a long history of addressing violent extremism in the form of rioting and gang violence; this allowed for the application of previous experience in law enforcement and community building to CVE efforts. Next, Los Angeles incorporated successful community-based organizations that combat systemic social issues, such as poverty reduction, into their CVE framework. Finally, there is no problem of violent extremism in Los Angeles because there is no population that is statistically vulnerable to violent extremism in the form of Sunni extremism. These findings suggest that Los Angeles appeared successful at CVE because of programs and experiences that existed before initiatives to counter violent extremism. Therefore, can these successes be replicated outside of Los Angeles and is our national CVE model – one that incorporates Los Angeles’s programs – valid?