How Has COVID-19 Changed the Violent Extremist Landscape?
The Weaponization of COVID-19
The promotion of conspiracies and disinformation can be understood as a form of attack. For those who seek to escalate violent conflict, accelerate civil unrest, and enhance social and political polarization, COVID-19 has been a swiftly weaponized gift, for example, by encouraging followers to deliberately spread COVID-19 as a means of hastening the collapse of civilization or the elimination of hated others. These efforts have been significantly aided by the shift to extensive online social interaction as well as information-gathering to make sense of the upheaval.
This is particularly the case for young people who are arguably bearing a disproportionate pandemic-related burden in terms of disrupted schooling, dwindling or precarious employment, isolation from face-to-face culturally diversified social settings, and mental health and housing challenges (Lowe, 2021). Under these circumstances, the vulnerability of young people – already a generation of digital natives – to the online social harms of violent extremist conspiratorial ideologies can intensify.
Addressing the Intersection of COVID-19 and Extremist Ideologies
A key question raised by the impact of the pandemic on drivers toward violent extremism is whether these impacts are likely to be acute or chronic.
Will the cessation or moderation of the pandemic, driven by increased global vaccination rates and the restoring of individual liberties and movement, see extremist conspiracy uptake subside? Or will the longer-term social, economic, and political impacts of the pandemic, which may well outlast the immediate public health crisis, provide fertile ground for continuing political and social polarization that extremists can channel toward violent action?
While we may not be able to answer this question yet, we should be prepared for both scenarios. A key response for policymakers is to recognize and address:
1. The role that conspiratorial thinking plays in processes of radicalization
2. The emergence of conspiracist movements as critical extremist actors (AVERT, 2021)
3. Whether strategies for inoculating or “pre-bunking” against conspiracist-extremist appeals might be effective (Banas and Miller, 2013; Braddock, 2019).
Our approach needs to become part of, but also go beyond, preventing violent extremism (PVE) strategy and programming. Policy settings need to redress:
· The post-truth environment in which conspiracist thinking flourishes
· The economic inequalities that fuel its potency
· The social divisions that nurture its narratives
· The technological affordances that drive its dissemination
· All of these are critical areas of investment in mitigating how violent extremist movements can weaponize COVID-19
References
AVERT Research Network. 2021. Submission to Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Inquiry into Extremist Movements and Radicalism in Australia. February. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/ExtremistMovements/Submissions
Banas, J. A. and Miller, G. 2013. Inducing resistance to conspiracy theory propaganda: testing inoculation and metainoculation strategies. Human Communication Research 39(2), 184–207. https://doi.org/10.1111/hcre.12000
Braddock K. 2019. Vaccinating against hate: Using attitudinal inoculation to confer resistance to persuasion by extremist propaganda. Terrorism and Political Violence. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1693370
Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies. 2021. Submission to Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security Inquiry into Extremist Movements and Radicalism in Australia. February. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Intelligence_and_Security/ExtremistMovements/Submissions
Europol. 2021. European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021 (TESAT). June. https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/european-union-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-2021-tesat
Federico, C. M., Williams, A. L., Vitriol, J. A. 2018. The role of system identity threat in conspiracy theory endorsement. European Journal of Social Psychology 48(7): 927–328
GNET (Global Network on Extremism and Technology). 2020. What is QAnon? https://gnet-research.org/2020/10/15/what-is-qanon/
Lowe, P. 2021. Young people and violent extremism in the COVID-19 context. ASPI Counterterrorism Yearbook 2021. Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 101–106. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/counterterrorism-yearbook-2021
Khalil, L. 2021. The impact of natural disasters on violent extremism. ASPI Counterterrorism Yearbook 2021. Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 107–112. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/counterterrorism-yearbook-2021
Khalil, L. 2020. Cross-promotion. GNET Insights. July. https://gnet-research.org/2020/07/22/cross-promotion/
Silke A. 2020. COVID-19 and terrorism: Assessing the short- and long-term impacts. Pool Re Solutions Report, 5 May. https://www.poolre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/COVID-19-and-Terrorsim-report-V1.pdf
Sprinzak, E. (1991). The process of delegitimation: towards a linkage theory of political terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence 3(1), 50–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546559108427092
Wilson, J. 2020. The neo-Nazi symbol posted by Pete Evans has a strange and dark history. The Guardian. 24 November. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/24/the-neo-nazi-symbol-posted-by-pete-evans-has-a-strange-and-dark-history
Further Reading
Amarasingam, A. and Argentino, M.-A., “The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making?” CTC Sentinel 13, no. 17 (July 2020), 37–44
Amarasingam, A., “The Impact of Conspiracy Theories and How to Counter Them: Reviewing the Literature on Conspiracy Theories and Radicalization to Violence,” in A. Richards, ed., Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses (London: I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2019), 27–40
Berger, J. M., Extremism (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2018)
Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Anti-Government, Identity Based, and Fringe Political Conspiracy Theories Very Likely to Motivate Some Domestic Extremists to Commit Criminal, Sometimes Violent Activity,” U//LES FBI Bulletin, Phoenix Field Office (Phoenix, AZ: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 30 May 2019)
Michele Grossman is Research Chair in Diversity and Community Resilience, Deakin University. This article is published courtesy of the Center for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST).
