Online Extremist Threats: A View from the Trenches
The Kids Are Not Alright
Because of the obvious link between youth culture and the internet, concerns about online radicalization and recruitment of youth have been voiced for some time. Two trends are making the situation worse. First, individuals are engaging in extremism at younger and younger ages; it is common now to see youths as young as 11 and 12 active on these platforms. One group, the National Partisan Movement, expressly recruits and has a membership that is predominantly between the ages of 14 to 19 (Hermansson, 2021). Second, professionals perceive a change in the youths’ mindset: they are no longer afraid of law enforcement.
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“Individuals are engaging in extremism at younger and younger ages; it is common now to see youths as young as 11 and 12 active on these platforms.”
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While a simple visit from the police once would have been enough to deter many youth from worrisome behaviors, this is no longer the case. This points to the need for more nuanced thinking about prevention and intervention and a better understanding of how online platforms can function as gateways that draw youths into extremism.
Whither Ideology?
Traditionally, the motivations for terrorism have been conceptualized according to relatively distinct categories, such as ethnic nationalist, religious, and secular ideologies (far right and left). Recently, these boundaries have become blurred. Variously referred to as mixed, composite, or salad-bar approaches, individuals are increasingly driven by more personalized and idiosyncratic “ideologies.”
This has resulted in a host of complications, starting with “what are we even looking for?” and ranging to “how do we explain it in court?” More generally, it is very difficult to explain these motivations to policymakers.
Accelerationism: Everything Everywhere All at Once
At the same time, we are also witnessing other forms of criminal violence, such as child abuse, sex abuse, and bestiality, bleeding into terrorism. This confluence seems to represent the worrying spread of “accelerationism.”
Accelerationist narratives are increasingly underlying the broad spectrum of extremism, present across the far right, anarchists, jihadists, and incels. In essence, there are growing numbers of extremists for whom the end goal is violence for the sake of violence: they want to “see it all burn.” In the absence of identifiably political, ideological, or religious goals, it is much harder for national security professionals to articulate the nexus to terrorism.
Cooperation Challenges
The increasing internationalization of online extremism necessitates ever greater cooperation across jurisdictions, but this is challenging in practice. For example, Britain recently became the first country to ban Terrorgram. As a member of the Five Eyes, it would be prudent for Canada to follow suit.
However, it is unclear whether its current listing regime is able to deal with an entirely online entity. If decentralized networks such as Terrorgram represent the future of online terrorism and extremism, efforts to harmonize legislative responses will need to continue apace.
CSIS. (2022). Protecting National Security in Partnership with All Canadians. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, Government of Canada. www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/2022/Protecting_National_Security-DIGITAL-ENG.pdf
Hermansson, P. (2021). For the future, by the future. In State of Hate, 2021 (pp. 68-73). Hope Not Hate. hopenothate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/state-of-hate-2021-v21Oct.pdf
Home Office. (2024). Terrorgram collective now proscribed as terrorist organisation. GOV.UK. www.gov.uk/government/news/terrorgram-collective-now-proscribed-as-terrorist-organisation
Garth Davies is director of the Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security at Simon Fraser University. Mackenzie Hart is a PhD student in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. This article is published courtesy of the Center for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST).
