Violent Extremism

By Shannon Zimmerman Last Saturday, a man armed with a large knife entered the Westfield shopping centre at Bondi Junction in Sydney. He proceeded to attack over a dozen people before being killed by a policewoman. Video footage appears to show the attacker avoiding men and targeting women. Five of the six people killed in ...

By Francisco Javier Saavedra Macías, Universidad de Sevilla In May 1097, during the siege of Nicaea, crusaders catapulted the severed heads of prisoners over the walls surrounding the city, with the aim of terrorising their enemy. The strategy worked. On June 19 of the year the crusaders captured the city. However, only those who lived ...

By Lindsay Hahn Terrorists killed more than 20,000 people in 2019 alone. According to the Global Terrorism Database, more than 900,000 actors were responsible for directly perpetrating over 200,000 terrorist attacks between the years of 1970-2019. Countless additional actors are likely to have indirectly helped the groups plan their attacks. Although it might seem reasonable ...

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 Jonathan Kenyon As society has embraced the Internet, opportunities for those wanting to use the online space for terrorist purposes have also grown, resulting in the spread of violent extremism and extremist ideologies within communities. Radicalisation is viewed as becoming increasingly covert, causing problems for security and intelligence services tasked with tackling this threat. ...

This article summarises a recent study published in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. By Ryan Scrivens, Amanda Isabel Osuna, Steven M. Chermak, Michael Whitney, and Richard Frank. Although many law enforcement and intelligence agencies are concerned about online communities known to facilitate violent right-wing extremism, little is empirically known about the presence of extremist ideologies, ...

By Saimum Parvez Bangladesh is an often overlooked country in violent extremism research.  At least 40 pro-secular writers and activists, foreign nationals, and members of minority religious groups were murdered in Bangladesh by violent extremists between 2013 and 2017. On July 1, 2016, Islamic State-affiliated violent extremists stabbed to death 20 hostages, including Indian, Italian, ...

By Sian Tomkinson, Katie Attwell and Tauel Harper In May 2020, a 17-year-old boy in Toronto was charged with an act of terrorism in the alleged killing of a woman with a machete – the first time such a charge has been brought in a case involving “incel” ideology. Also in May, a 20-year-old man ...

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 Dr. William Allchorn In late January this year, the outgoing director general of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency, Sir Andrew Parker, suggested that technology was one of the biggest challenges facing the UK’s Security Services. Sir Andrew said he was particularly interested in artificial intelligence “because of our need to be able to make sense of ...