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This article explores the links between internet radicalization, access to weapons, and the current threat from terrorists who have been radicalized online. The prevalence of domestic terrorism, domestic hate groups, and online incitement and radicalization have led to considerable focus on the tension between counterterror efforts and the First Amendment. Many scholars recommend rethinking the extent of First Amendment protection, as well as Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment protections, and some judges appear to be listening. Yet the Second Amendment has avoided this consideration, despite the fact that easy access to weapons is a necessary ingredient for the level of threat posed by online incitement. This article clarifies the way these civil liberties interact to create the threat, suggesting that pro-democracy rights such as protections on speech and privacy should not bear all the burden of compromise for the sake of protection from terrorism.

This report analyses memes propagated among three online socio‐political groups drawn from sample datasets pulled from social media sites often used by adherents of each group. These groups include those connected to the India‐based Hindutva, US‐based neo‐Nazis and those engaging in pro‐Rittenhouse communications in late 2020. The authors chose the groups based on similarities in their ideological goals, race‐based nationalism and their close association with political violence in their respective countries.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

VOX-Pol Blog post.

From a technical standpoint, Islamic State (IS) videos are demonstrably superior to those of other groups. But as time goes by, their aesthetic is migrating downstream as other groups attempt to copy it. Specifically, IS has turned to video games, regularly mimicking and even directly copying the aesthetic and design of First Person Shooter games, most often Call of Duty, in their videos, and other groups have followed suit. This specific aesthetic offers a way to recruit young, technologically savvy, men while sanitizing the violence they were being recruited to participate in. This study offers an instrument for tracking the IS aesthetic as it moves to other groups as well as its evolution over time, and offers a case study of a specific group that has copied the IS aesthetic, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS.)