• 2021: More than 400 Were Convicted of Terrorism Offenses in EU Countries

    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.

  • U.K. Parliamentary Report: “Threat from Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism on an Upward Trajectory”

    “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.

  • Is There a Link Between Mental Health and 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.

  • One Year On: Marking Progress on Biden’s Counter-Domestic Terrorism Strategy

    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.

  • Us vs. Them: Harming the “Outgroup” Linked to Elevated Activity in the Brain's Reward Circuitry

    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.

  • Siege Culture and Accelerationism in the U.K.

    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.

  • Hate Sites: Using the Broader Abortion Argument to Spread Racism, Extremism

    Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists are using the debate around women’s reproductive rights to promote racist and extremist agendas.

  • U.K. Extremists Sentenced to More Than 30 Years Imprisonment

    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.

  • Firearms: Weapons of Choice for Domestic Extremists

    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.

  • Obsessive Passion and Social Alienation Linked to Support for Political Violence

    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?

  • Taliban Faces Growing Armed Resistance Across Afghanistan

    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.

  • Choking Local Funding Prevents 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.

  • Can Reforming Social Media Save American Democracy?

    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.

  • U.S. Sanctions Members of Russian Violent Extremist Group

    The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designating two key supporters of the ethnically motivated violent extremist group known as the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM). RIM was previously designated by the U.S. Department of State as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization on April 7, 2020 for having provided training for acts of terrorism.

  • Al-Shabaab and the Islamic State Networks on Facebook 

    Researchers found that the network of support on social media for al-Shabaab and Islamic State extended across several platforms, including decentralized messaging applications such as Element and RocketChat, and encrypted messaging platforms such as Telegram, as well as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.