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TERRORISM
Ayman al-Zawahiri leaves behind a robust network of strategically aligned but tactically independent al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
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TERRORISM
In a rare counterterrorism operation over the weekend, U.S. forces killed top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was deputy to the terror group’s founder, Osama bin Laden, when they orchestrated the September 2001 attacks against the U.S.
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EXTREMISM
Antisemitic incidents have shown a sharp rise in the United States. There were 2,717 incidents in 2021. This represents an increase of 34% over 2020. In Europe, the European Commission found a sevenfold increase in antisemitic postings across French language accounts, and an over thirteenfold increase in antisemitic comments within German channels during the pandemic. Contemporary antisemitism manifests itself in various forms such as GIFs, memes, vlogs, comments and reactions such as likes and dislikes on the platforms. The continuous exposure to antisemitic content at a young age, scholars say, can lead to both normalization of the content and radicalization of the Tik-Tok viewer.
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POLITICAL VIOLENCE
A new report reveals alarming trends in attitudes toward violence, including political violence, in the United States. The survey is the first of its kind to explore the participants’ personal willingness to engage in specific political violence scenarios.
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EXTREMISM
Political and religious extremism has long been seen as a threat to democracy in Germany. The Counter Terrorism Center is where agencies and police network to prevent Islamist extremist attacks. Is it effective?
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EXTREMISM
Researchers have developed and validated a new tool known as the Extremist Archetypes Scale to help distinguish different psychological traits found among people engaged in violent extremism. Dimensions of extremist archetypes include “adventurer”, “drifter” and “misfit”, among others.
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THE RUSSIA CONNECTION
As Russian attacks on civilian sites are reported on a near-daily basis, pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to officially designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
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TERRORISM
EUROPOL the other day published the European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2022 (TE-SAT). It provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date intelligence picture on terrorism in the European Union. In 2021, European courts convicted 423 individuals for terrorist offenses, while EU law enforcement authorities arrested 388 suspects for terrorism-related offenses.
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EXTREMISM
“The threat from Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism is on an upward trajectory, populated by an increasing number of young people and driven by the internet,” said Julian Lewis, MP, the chairman of the U.K. Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. The committee has just released a detailed report on the threat of terrorism in the United Kingdom.
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MASS SHOOTINGS
There have already been more than 300 mass shootings in the United States this year—the latest at a 4th of July parade in the Highland Park suburb of Chicago. That shooting left seven dead, including both parents of a 2-year old toddler, and dozens injured – among them an 8-year old with a severed spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. As the United States reckons with these increasingly common public massacres, many blame mental illness as the fundamental cause. The reality, however, is that people with mental illness account for a very small proportion of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States, says one expert.
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ARGUMENT: COUNTERING DOMESTIC TERRORISM
Early in the Biden administration, the president instructed the intelligence community to evaluate the domestic terrorist threat – and intelligence officials concluded that it’s severe. On 15 June 2021, the Biden administration released the National Strategy to Counter Domestic Terrorism. Ryan B. Greer writes that now that it has been a full year since the launch, there is an opportunity to review the administration’s progress made toward countering the threat of domestic violent extremism.
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CONFLICT
Humans tend to form groups, which often find themselves in conflict with rival groups. But why do people show such a ready tendency to harm people in opposing groups? A new study used brain imaging to explain why humans are aggressive toward rival groups.
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EXTREMISM
Siege Culture, also referred to as accelerationism, has been on the rise in the U.K. and elsewhere since 2016. Both Siege Culture and accelerationism refer to a violent strategy in which terrorism is used to hasten societal collapse by provoking reactions from authorities and exacerbating existing social tensions.
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EXTREMISM
Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists are using the debate around women’s reproductive rights to promote racist and extremist agendas.
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EXTREMISM
A Sheffield, U.K., court sentenced four extremists who advocated racist violence and the manufacture and possession of weapons to more than 30 years imprisonment.
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EXTREMISM
Every year, extremists overwhelmingly use guns to carry out their deadly attacks. In any given year, more people are killed by extremists who use firearms than those who choose any other weapon. Over the past decade, shootings accounted for 75 percent of the deaths at the hands of extremists.
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EXTREMISM
What underlies violent extremism – that is, support for violence to achieve political, ideological or social objectives — and what drives an individual to exhibit these behaviors in which political violence is a desirable option?
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TERRORISM
Ten months into their extremist theocratic rule in Afghanistan, the Taliban are facing growing resistance in different parts of the country. Contrary to the Taliban’s claim that an atmosphere of calm and security prevails in Afghanistan, there has been growing resistance to their rule, led by the National Resistance Front (NRF), headed by Ahmad Massoud—the son of the legendary Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.
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TERRORISM
New research by supports the use of financial counterterrorism. Terrorists depend on local funding availability, as they struggle to move money around, and we should limit their ability to access financing.
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DEMOCRACY WATCH
When social media exploded in the mid-2000s, retweeting, sharing and liking posts appeared to give average citizens the power to share their opinions far and wide. The problem, according to social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is that online social networks didn’t really end up giving everyone the voice that many thought it would. “It empowered four groups who take advantage of the viral dynamics of social media. That is the far right, the far left, trolls and Russian intelligence,” he says.
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More headlines
The long view
Is Left-Wing Terrorism Making a Comeback in Germany? Analyzing the “Engel – Guntermann Network”
For Germany, the reemergence of more violence orientated left-wing extremist actors has diversified the threat posed by non-state actors even further. Violent left-wing extremism is also of growing concern across Europe. While left-wing violent extremism does not currently represent as acute a threat as currently manifested by jihadist and right-wing terrorist attacks, the recent concerning trend among German left-wing extremists is toward greater violence and transnationalism.