Big online platforms tend to brag about their ability to filter out violent and extremist content at scale, but those same platforms refuse to provide even basic information about the substance of those removals. How do these platforms define terrorist content? What safeguards do they put in place to ensure that they don’t over-censor innocent people in the process? Again and again, social media companies are unable or unwilling to answer the questions. Facebook Head of Global Policy Management Monika Bickert claimed that more than 99 percent of terrorist content posted on Facebook is deleted by the platform’s automated tools, but the company has consistently failed to say how it determines what constitutes a terrorist⁠—or what types of speech constitute terrorist speech.

A recent article in the Guardian by Sindre Bangstad, a Norwegian social anthropologist describes Norway as being in the grip of pervasive, far-right nationalism, with violence simmering just below the surface. “Norway is in denial about the threat of far-right violence,” reads the bombastic headline. Kathrine Jebsen Moore, a fellow Norwegian, writes that Bangstad misrepresents and misleads: she motes that the Norwegian Police Security Service still regards Islamist terror threats as the most serious threat to Norway, even if it has upgraded the threat of far-right extremism from “unlikely” to “possible” after an attempted mosque attack in August. But “to see in the upgrading of the terrorist threat posed by far-right groups a general mood of irrational hatred for immigrants and Muslims, and portray Norway as a hotbed for racism, is just wrong,” Moore writes, adding: “Norway, like other European countries, is faced with a new set of challenges as it changes from a homogenous nation to a country with a growing immigrant population” – and that “Norway is coping with this influx a lot better than Sweden. So, is Norway in denial about its far-right problem? Don’t believe it.”

The Uighurs, a Muslim minority ethnic group of around 12 million in northwest China, are required by the police to carry their smartphones and IDs listing their ethnicity. As they pass through one of the thousands of newly built digital media and face surveillance checkpoints located at jurisdictional boundaries, entrances to religious spaces and transportation hubs, the image on their ID is matched to their face. If they try to pass without these items, a digital device scanner alerts the police. The Chinese state authorities described the intrusive surveillance as a necessary tool against the “extremification” of the Uighur population. Through this surveillance process, around 1.5 million Uighurs and other Muslims were determined “untrustworthy” and have forcibly been sent to detention and reeducation in a massive internment camp system. Since more than 10 percent of the adult population has been removed to these camps, hundreds of thousands of children have been separated from their parents. Many children throughout the region are now held in boarding schools or orphanages which are run by non-Muslim state workers.

Prior to September 25, 2001, the United States used two primary tools to designate terrorists. In 1995, President Bill Clinton issued Executive Order 12947 in an effort to provide the State and Treasury Departments the legal authority to designate terrorist groups who were disrupting the “Middle East Process.” E.O. 12947 was narrowly scoped and did not provide the United States the ability to sanction groups or individuals disconnected from violence in the Middle East. Two years later, Congress passed legislation providing the State Department the ability to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act. “Simply put, terrorism designations, much like the threat posed by al-Qaeda, were an afterthought before 9/11,” Jason Blazakis writes. That changed last week when President Donald Trump updated E.O. 13224 to expand both State and Treasury’s ability to wield sanctions against terrorists.

More than 10 million new internal displacements were recorded between January and June 2019, according to a new report. Of the total, 3.8 million were triggered by conflict and violence, while disasters triggered a record seven million new displacements. The fact that the vast majority were associated with storms and floods suggests that mass displacement by extreme weather events is becoming the norm. 

In the last three years, Israel has engaged in a broad campaign to eliminate Iran’s strategic footprint in the Levant, which has grown exponentially over the past half-decade as a result of the Islamic Republic’s campaign in support of the Syrian regime. Iran’s effort has allowed it to establish an expeditionary presence along Israel’s northern border—one that, over the past few years, has prompted a significant Israeli military response.

Extremism has tended to refer to both violent and non-violent forms of political expression, whereas terrorism is predominantly violent. To be an extremist could mean anything from being a nationalist, a communist, to being an animal rights activist – as long as this ideology is regarded as extreme relative to the government’s position. But extremism and terrorism should not be simply interlinked, and it is worrying that more and more the meaning of terrorism is extended to cover both violent and non-violent extremism.

Far-right ideology in the military and among veterans must be stamped out as it has “nothing in common” with the U.K. armed forces’ values, Johnny Mercer, a new defense minister, has said. Mercer, now presiding over the new Office for Veterans’ Affairs, created by Boris Johnson, asserted that many voters feel dispossessed by the political make-up of parliament, and that hard-right groups were trying to attract soldiers and veterans with undeliverable promises. “I get it,” he said, “but going to these people is a fool’s errand and I’ll do everything I can to stamp it out. It’s totally out of keeping with our ethos, values and standing as an organization.”

Sept. 11, 2019 marks the 18th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in world history. It also marks a generational shift, with American children born after that date entering adulthood having grown up with their country perpetually fighting a so-called war on terror. “The events of 9/11 are increasingly a memory, and without education that memory can easily become a caricature,” Daniel Byman writes in Foreign Policy. “Capturing all the nuances surrounding 9/11 is vital, but the proper response today also requires recognizing that terrorism is constantly evolving, and when it strikes again it may not come from an expected or familiar source.”