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Since the fall of the Caliphate, the activities and overall threat posed by Western jihadists has undoubtedly diminished. 1 A recent study released by the Program on Extremism, for example, demonstrated a steady decline in jihadist activity in the United States (US) since 2020. In this three-year period, only twenty-nine Americans have been charged, compared to eighty-two in the previous three years. 2 Similarly, Europe has experienced a steady annual reduction in jihadist arrests from 718 in 2016 to 260 in 2021.3 This is the second period since 9/11 where there has been a marked decline in the ability to radicalize and mobilize people to support the jihadi movement or conduct attacks in the West. 4 Whether or not the cycle of (relative) success and decline will repeat itself depends on a number of factors, some of which are harder to predict than others. What is clear for now is that there remains a pool of committed Western jihadists who are working to keep the movement alive in the US and Europe in hope that future opportunities for mass mobilization may arise. This report investigates how Western jihadists and efforts to radicalize Westerners have adapted to the post-Caliphate reality and the current downward trajectory and complements the Program’s recent quantitative analysis of the Islamic State (IS) threat in the US Some Western jihadi strategies have remained the same, such as the calls to conduct lone actor attacks in the West. However, there have been some marked shifts in strategic communications. For instance, in some cases the discourse about Muslim grievances resembles those that were prevalent during the previous lull in Western jihadist activity, such as a refocusing on Muslim prisoners in the West. The report opens with an overview of how Western jihadists have responded to the online post-Caliphate world in which many of the online platforms popular among jihadists have become increasingly proactive in removing jihadist accounts and content. Here, there is evidence of a reversion to an earlier, pre-Caliphate, era of online jihadism in which much activity and file sharing took place on forums rather than mainstream social media platforms.

The terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011 and New Zealand in 2019 have revealed that the far-right worldwide uses the memory of the Yugoslav wars for online mobilization. Scholars working on memory activism usually deal with the liberal, self-critical memory emerging from the bottom-up activism of human rights groups while neglecting the activism of the far-right. This article fills the gap by addressing the global circulation of two memes, Remove Kebab and Pepe the Frog, as examples of far-right memory activism. In order to address the transnational circulation of memes as memory activism, this article employs the concept of ‘traveling memory’ while relying on multimodal discourse analysis to unveil the processes of memetic transformation, imitation, iconization and narrativization. The analysis reveals an alternative memory of Yugoslav wars that depicts Serbia as the first case of ‘white genocide’ in Europe, reversing the roles of war criminals and victims while propagating violence and celebrating genocide. The article argues that memory studies can no longer ignore memory production of far-right communities and, at the same time, outlines the method for examining far-right digital memory activism, revealing a whole set of mnemonic practices developed among the anonymous fringe communities of the far-right.

Online platforms have banned (“deplatformed”) influencers, communities, and even entire websites to reduce content deemed harmful. Deplatformed users often migrate to alternative platforms, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of deplatforming. Here, we study the deplatforming of Parler, a fringe social media platform, between 2021 January 11 and 2021 February 25, in the aftermath of the US Capitol riot. Using two large panels that capture longitudinal user-level activity across mainstream and fringe social media content (N = 112, 705, adjusted to be representative of US desktop and mobile users), we find that other fringe social media, such as Gab and Rumble, prospered after Parler’s deplatforming. Further, the overall activity on fringe social media increased while Parler was offline. Using a difference-in-differences analysis (N = 996), we then identify the causal effect of deplatforming on active Parler users, finding that deplatforming increased the probability of daily activity across other fringe social media in early 2021 by 10.9 percentage points (pp) (95% CI [5.9 pp, 15.9 pp]) on desktop devices, and by 15.9 pp (95% CI [10.2 pp, 21.7 pp]) on mobile devices, without decreasing activity on fringe social media in general (including Parler). Our results indicate that the isolated deplatforming of a major fringe platform was ineffective at reducing overall user activity on fringe social media.

The exploitation of social media platforms by terrorist threat networks (TTNs) represents a critical challenge to national security that traditional counterterrorism frameworks struggle to address. This study examines how military information support operations (MISO) can be strategically leveraged to counter TTNs’ exploitation of these platforms for radicalization, recruitment, and operational planning. Through analysis of operational data and case studies from 2014–2024, this research demonstrates that current approaches face significant limitations, with response delays averaging 30 days, while terrorist content reaches millions within hours. The study employs a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative analysis of counterterrorism operations with quantitative assessment of social media data to evaluate the effectiveness of current countermessaging efforts. Based on empirical evidence demonstrating a 45% reduction in extremist content through coordinated response efforts, this research proposes establishing a strategic information support operations agency (SISOA) to coordinate countermessaging efforts, supported by advanced analytics and intelligence integration through OSINT, SOCMINT, and PUBINT capabilities. The findings indicate that strategic implementation of MISO, coupled with appropriate organizational structures and ethical guidelines, could significantly enhance counterterrorism effectiveness while preserving democratic values and civil liberties. This framework provides a model for balancing operational requirements with privacy protections in the digital age.

This paper investigates one sub-topic within a right-wing extremist (RWE) movement in India – love jihad, a conspiracy created by Hindutva nationalists alleging that Muslims forcefully convert Hindu women to Islam with allurements of love. Love jihad narratives and digital dissemination tactics serve a nation-building, patriarchal and vote-seeking function for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP and allied nationalist and media organisations have led many anti-love jihad campaigns. However, this study investigates how ­non-elite – ordinary – social media users construct love jihad discourse through a discourse analysis of 188 sub-sampled tweets from February to October 2023. The analysis finds relative congruence in how non-elites, elites, media and nationalist organisations frame love jihad. The invoked themes – Muslim exclusionism, patriarchy, nationalism and post-truth politics – are cross-cutting and mutually reinforcing but can also be categorised based on which appears at the forefront. I use this organisation to highlight novel frames within each theme and their implicit and explicit cross-cutting dimensions. Finally, these findings can be situated in broader discussions around the connection between populism and post-truth politics, and call for reconceptualising online social movements.

Numerous studies have reported an increase in hate speech on X (formerly Twitter) in the months immediately following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform on October 27th, 2022; relatedly, despite Musk’s pledge to “defeat the spam bots,” a recent study reported no substantial change in the concentration of inauthentic accounts. However, it is not known whether any of these trends endured. We address this by examining material posted on X from the beginning of 2022 through June 2023, the period that includes Musk’s full tenure as CEO. We find that the increase in hate speech just before Musk bought X persisted until at least May of 2023, with the weekly rate of hate speech being approximately 50% higher than the months preceding his purchase, although this increase cannot be directly attributed to any policy at X. The increase is seen across multiple dimensions of hate, including racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Moreover, there is a doubling of hate post “likes,” indicating increased engagement with hate posts. In addition to measuring hate speech, we also measure the presence of inauthentic accounts on the platform; these accounts are often used in spam and malicious information campaigns. We find no reduction (and a possible increase) in activity by these users after Musk purchased X, which could point to further negative outcomes, such as the potential for scams, interference in elections, or harm to public health campaigns. Overall, the long-term increase in hate speech, and the prevalence of potentially inauthentic accounts, are concerning, as these factors can undermine safe and democratic online environments, and increase the risk of offline harms.