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Welcome to Volume 9, Issue 1 of the VOX-Pol Newsletter. INTRODUCING ARC The Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC) is a cross-sector collaboration of researchers, practitioners, analysts, and journalists who are dedicated to understanding and mitigating the threat posed by accelerationist terrorism. VOX-Pol Researchers feature among the Board of Advisors and ARC Fellows. Find ARC on Twitter @TheARConsortium or check out their website. TASM CONFERENCE 2022 ...

By Elisa Orofino A “proto-state”, a “socio-political movement, the ”beast“ – all names given to a single group that, at its height, seemed to embody the west’s worst nightmare. Islamic State appeared to be a motivated, well-led insurgency group dedicated to building its own “caliphate” in conquered areas across the Middle East. Now, the recent violent ...

by Elizaveta Gaufman Russian far-right watchers might have not paid much attention to Vladislav Pozdnyakov – next to neofascist Alexander Dugin or late neo-Nazi leader Maxim Martsinkevitch, he seemed to be a marginal character, attracting 155k supporters on Russian social network Vkontakte at the height of his fame. However, Pozdnyakov and his now banned organization “the Male State” need ...

By Ben Marshall The term ‘behavioural analytics’ means different things to different people and is often banded about loosely. In many cases, it is used as a catch-all term for the analysis of ‘big data’ that is considered to represent ‘behaviour’ in some form or another, such as social media posts or website clicks, often ...

By Lisa Kaati One of the most challenging threats towards societal security is attacks from so called violent ‘lone offenders’. These individuals are said to act alone or with minimal help from others, without any economic incitements or direct orders from violent extremist organisations. Between late 2018 and early 2020, several violent attacks in New ...

By Joel S. Elson, Austin C. Doctor, and Sam Hunter The metaverse is coming. Like all technological innovation, it brings new opportunities and new risks. The metaverse is an immersive virtual reality version of the internet where people can interact with digital objects and digital representations of themselves and others, and can move more or less freely ...

By Jakob Guhl, Moustafa Ayad and Julia Ebner How Islamist extremists and the violent right wing interact and influence each other The interplay between Islamist extremists and the violent right wing has raised fears among policy makers and practitioners about a vicious cycle of escalating tensions between extremist movements. These dynamics do not merely present ...

By Antonia Vaughan The use of internet data in academic research without informed consent (covert research) is subject to a number of ethical quandaries. Here, the particular considerations that researching the radical right imposes are teased out, such as whether terms of service can be taken as a form of consent; whether internet data is ...

By Tech Against Terrorism Since the 2000s Ireland has emerged as the preferred destination for many leading tech companies, and for many members of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) – including all founding members: Meta, Twitter, and Microsoft1 – to establish their EU headquarters. This concentration of tech headquarters in Dublin places ...

This is part two of a two-part series. Read part I here [Ed.]. By Anne Speckhard And Molly Ellenberg In the summer of 2014, Khalifa got married to a Somali woman from Kenya whom he met online. She was studying medicine in Sudan before traveling to Syria. At the time of the interview in 2019, Khalifa ...