Abstract
Nowadays, the increase of adolescent and youth extremism and terrorism is associated with the next change in the civilizational mentality of humanity. Over the past two or three centuries, this has been universally moving from a religious to a scientific worldview. Starting from the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and reformation of the Church, the ethnic groups, and people of Europe, and then of all the other continents, began gradually, but steadily, to switch from the norms and rules prescribed by the Holy Traditions of paganism and the Holy Scriptures of monotheism to independent rule-making and living according to legislative systems which are the result of their intellectual activity. The mentality of many ethnic groups and people, on the one hand, still cannot move away from religious ideas and beliefs, on the other hand, it is forced to change due to the forced transition to new norms and rules of life. Those acts that in the scriptures and traditions referred to the most serious sins and to “lawlessness,” in the modern world, among an impressive part of ethnic groups and people are no longer such (for example, gay marriage). In the conditions of the most powerful migration and integration processes, it is the education systems of all countries of the world that have to form a fundamentally new mentality, which must be connected with the scientific worldview, with its typical tolerance to the most diverse opinions and positions, to the lifestyle and thinking of other people, with pluralism of views, concepts, and theories. The current surge in extremism and terrorism among adolescents and young people is associated with low legal awareness and legal nihilism, the authors argue, as well as with the loss of value orientations of modern societies. It is the education systems that should form value orientation, legal awareness, and legal obedience skills for adolescents and young people.
Top1. Introduction
The fact that adolescent and youth extremism is by no means an accidental and sporadic phenomenon is evidenced by the data published by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, which show that over 450 adolescents and youth extremist and terrorist groups were recorded in Russia. The total number of their members is already approaching 20,000 (Klintsovsky Industrial Pedagogical College, 2019; Ministry of the Interior of Russia, 2020).
Also, in Russia, there are more than 30 religious organizations, which are classified as “terrorist“ by a court decision. They mainly consist of young members (Information and analytical center “SOVA,” 2018).
Very significant is the fact that psychologists paid attention to “youth extremism,” which was characterized by “views and types of behavior of young people based on the cultivation of the principle of force, aggression against others, up to violence and murder” (Central Administrative District of Moscow, 2020).
Against this background, we should mention the general moral situation in Russia, where drug addiction and child and youth prostitution have recently become widespread. Thus, the number of drug addicts increased and, by 2020, exceeded two million. About 140,000 of them are adolescents and youth (Osipova, 2020). All of the abovementioned negative phenomena in the country exist against the backdrop of a demographic crisis.
In 2018, the birth rate decreased by 5.2% in comparison with 2017. The population decline in Russia from January to September 2018 amounted to 173,000 people. For comparison, over the same period in 2017, the decrease was 106,000 people (Novyye izvestiya, 2019).
Hence the extreme urgency of the problem of adolescent and youth extremism and terrorism. Before outlining the ways, means, and methods of solving the problem, it is necessary to understand the origins of adolescent and youth extremism and terrorism and the reasons for its appearance, of which there are many (Ministry of the Interior of Russia, 2019; Klintsovsky Industrial Pedagogical College, 2019; Information and analytical center “SOVA,” 2018). Identifying the origins and causes of this phenomenon not only for Russia but for the whole world, we can see that the main hope of solving this problem lies in strengthening the role of educational systems of all states of the world community and in the formation of legal awareness and obedience to the law in the younger generation.