As the Biden administration starts work in January, it will face a new raft of national security challenges. Counterterrorism, as with the previous three administrations, will once again be a central concern. The administration will be forced to grapple with old threats, including from the Islamic State and al-Qa`ida, as…
This paper analyses the effects of the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic on terrorism and jihadist-inspired violence throughout 2020. The study begins by identifying the short, medium, and long-term forecasts made by international experts in the initial months of the pandemic. Afterwards, it studies the incidence that the outbreak…
Social media’s role as an environment for social and political activism has become increasingly significant as right-wing movements have embraced these platforms as a medium for organization. The more extreme of those groups have seen their use of social media platforms curtailed, since the spread of their conspiracy theories and…
As the Biden administration starts work in January 2021, it will face a new raft of national security challenges. Counterterrorism, as with the previous three administrations, will once again be a central concern. The administration will be forced to grapple with old threats, including from the Islamic State and al-Qa`ida,…
Since the livestreamed terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, and various subsequent attacks following a similar modus operandi in Pittsburgh, El Paso and Halle, discussions on the ‘gamification’ of violent right-wing extremism have risen to prominence. The perpetrators livestreamed their attacks on Facebook or Twitch, mirroring “Let’s Play” videos popular…
Humour has become a central weapon of extremist movements to subvert open societies and to lower the threshold towards violence. Especially within the context of a recent wave of far-right terrorist attacks, we witness “playful” ways in communicating racist ideologies. As far-right extremists strategically merge with online cultures, their approach…
New technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, can be extremely powerful tools, enabling big advances in medicine, information and communication technologies, marketing, transportation among many other research fields. However, they can also be used for malicious purposes when falling into the wrong hands. The scope of this report – Algorithms and…
After emerging in eastern Libya in 2014, ISIS moved fast to establish a quasi-state in the coastal city of Sirte, amassing just a few thousand fighters at its peak strength. The apex of ISIS-L’s power from 2014 to 2016 may have been brief, and its current threat low, but the…
Nigeria faces immense internal security challenges, including the Boko-Haram crisis in the northeast and violent farmer-herder conflicts in the southwest and north-central states. Across the Nigerian federation, pockets of violent clashes have sprung and escalated in new locales in the last decade. Community responses to these violent crises have been…
The report goes over some of the early commentary on how the pandemic has impacted violent extremism, and more importantly, how that impacts our understand of preventing and countering violent extremism. It discusses social and economic consequences of COVID-19 on violent extremism and what opportunities are further opened for extremist…
This research briefing is based on a project called “Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Far Right and the Populist Radical Right in the V4 Region”, launched in 2020. The aim was to investigate the narratives around COVID-19 and their impact on the political discourse in the Visegrad Group…
The View is a regular panel-based discussion programme from the Radicalisation Awareness Network exploring the challenges we face in preventing and countering violent extremism. In this episode, we look at the ways in which young people have been targeted by radicalisers during the COVID lockdown.
