Countering Violent Extremism

By Robert Örell How do violent right-wing extremists exploit the online space? Violent right-wing extremists (VRWE) use the online space to spread their ideology and to reach vulnerable individuals to recruit online. The online platforms operated by extremist groups oftentimes help these vulnerable youngsters form new relations and build a new identity online. They report ...

By Anne Speckhard “If I was going to die at least I could die helping children. [It’s] illogical that you are entering a war zone that you don’t know anything about … I felt if I did something good it would overwrite the bad that had happened.” — Canadian 46-year-old Kimberly Pullman, speaking about her decision ...

By Nery Ramati The need to develop legal tools in order to cope with the dangers of online extremism and terrorism has been an issue that has kept legislators, government officials, and security forces around the globe very busy in recent years. In liberal democracies, the legal challenges are intensified due to the obvious dangers ...

Deplatforming terrorists from messaging apps may damage existing networks, but those who remain often double down in their beliefs. By Amarnath Amarasingam Earlier this week, a fellow terrorism researcher and friend sent me a text which stated: “TamTam is amazing. I missed all the early ISIS stuff on Telegram. Now I feel like I was ...

This Blog post is a lightly edited version of a report prepared by the EU Internet Referral Unit in Europol and circulated to law enforcement agencies and member states in October 2018. It is appearing here publicly for the first time, at the request of Europol. [Ed.] Key Takeaways Non-violent material is integral to terrorists’ propaganda ...

Building upon the Melbourne (2016) and Bangkok (2017) conferences, the third edition of the Addressing the New Landscape of Terrorism international conference series took place from 22 – 24 April 2019 in Rabat, Morocco. VOX-Pol Academic Advisory Board member Dr. Brigitte Nacos (Columbia University) delivered a keynote presentation at the event. Her address provided a historical overview of the ...

On 20 March 2019, VOX-Pol and the Security Distillery hosted a symposium in Dublin City University titled ‘Extremism: Online Networks and Offline Violence’. The Security Distillery is an initiative from young researchers for (young) researchers, with the aim of turning complex issues into simple matters in order to provide quality, accessible information for students and ...

By Anne Speckhard and Ardian Shajkovci With the collapse of the so-called “Islamic State” in Iraq, and much of Syria, an immediate corresponding and steady decline occurred in ISIS’ strategic communication and online propaganda activities. However, the group’s “virtual Caliphate” is rebounding and still remains very much alive today – it continues to create new content, ...

VOX-Pol contributed to the inaugural Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) Civil Society Empowerment Programme (CSEP) campaigns event in Brussels this week. We therefore thought we’d share some insights from a previous RAN event focused on online CVE. [Ed.] Introduction It is an essential part of extremist propaganda and outreach to not only communicate their messages to ...

By Mehwish Rani Daesh and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are two competitor militant organisations in Pakistan. Although, Daesh has no organisational presence in the country, small groups inspired by it have carried out attacks in the name of the organisation. Both organisations publish propaganda magazines to, amongst other things, gain new recruits. While Daesh published approximately ...