Using shocking hidden camera footage from schools, media outlets, houses of worship, and eyewitness accounts, the film, Kids: Chasing Paradise by the Clarion Project shows how terrorist organizations rob victims of childhood, indoctrinating them to become the next generation of Hamas and other extremists.
The movie’s producers, based in Washington, DC, said they were motivated by the chance their work could force policymakers to address the problem.
“These atrocities against children are enabled by our own complacency,” said Ryan Mauro, national security expert and director of the Clarion Intelligence Network. “This infrastructure of hate and abuse is not an inevitable problem. It is manufactured. And the hate factories can be dismantled."This problem can start being decisively addressed relatively quickly and with minimal expense or risk,” he continued. “If the US and its allies focused on this root cause, President Biden could have major, measured impacts by the end of his first term.”
The film features dynamic stories of several individuals: a former extremist, a mother whose son was radicalized by ISIS, a Islamist summer camp attendee and many others, each telling his or her personal experience.
Former white supremacists, anarchists and anti-Muslim radicals share how they were brought into the ideologies, why they left, and how adherents of these ideologies are targeting youth.
“How much progress toward peace in the Middle East or anywhere else can you really make if the next generation believes they are obligated to continue that violence?” said Clarion Project CEO Richard Green.“How much progress can you make in improving homeland security? Or hate and intolerance more generally, or school shootings, or bullying? What about PTSD and mental health issues and what results from that? We can’t possibly count the ways that this abuse affects the victims for the rest of their lives, and how that then affects other people.”