Folk studies are not a source of analysis often used in the P/CVE space. However, the field is littered with cases that highlight how collectively told narratives can shape and drive human behaviour from online engagement to offline participation with violent consequences. The clearest example of this phenomenon occurred in 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, when twelve-year-old Anissa Weier and Morgan […]

This Insight is part of GNET’s Gender and Online Violent Extremism series, aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. This Insight will analyse the monetisation strategies employed by online extremist actors to generate profit by promoting misogyny and violence against women. It investigates the financial dynamics at play, focusing on key actors, the narratives they deploy, […]

The Pakistani state and Afghan Taliban forces recently clashed along the Durand Line—one of the world’s most volatile borders. This development followed Pakistan’s airstrikes in Afghanistan, carried out amid Islamabad’s growing frustration with the Taliban government over continued terrorism emanating from Afghan territory. Pakistan has repeatedly urged the Taliban to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghan land to launch attacks […]

This Insight was published as part of GIFCT’s Working Group on Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization (AYRM). GIFCT Working Groups bring together experts from diverse stakeholder groups, geographies and disciplines to offer advice in specific thematic areas and deliver on targeted, substantive projects. The following Insight is published as part of Next Wave, The International Center for Children and Global […]

This Insight is part of GNET’s Gender and Online Violent Extremism series, aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Despite the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2019, IS’s online caliphate continues to expand in tandem with the ever-evolving digital communications landscape. Social media has offered transformative opportunities for the jihadist […]

In his latest assessment to Parliament, Jonathan Hall KC, the UK Government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, warns of the “terrorist chatbot”: the risk that extremists could turbo-charge processes of radicalisation by creating chatbots with the express purpose of seducing users into extreme beliefs. Rather than being lured by propaganda or groomed by the already converted, individuals might self-radicalise through […]

In July, the UK Government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, relayed his annual assessment to Parliament. Hall’s most recent report is his sixth to date, and would likely not have garnered much attention beyond a cadre of security wonks were it not for its thematic focus: artificial intelligence (AI). The report’s tone is set early with a […]

Following the 2019 Battle of Baghouz, which marked the Islamic State’s territorial collapse, IS-affiliated individuals flooded into camps run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Although there are continued efforts to repatriate foreign nationals, the UN has described the camps as an “urgent humanitarian and security situation [that] threatens stability in the region and beyond…with more than 30,000 people, including […]

This Insight is part of GNET’s Gender and Online Violent Extremism series, aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Stormfront.org, called the “murder capital of the internet” by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, is the longest-standing far-right extremist forum. Founded in 1995 by white supremacist Don Black, the website has served for nearly three decades as a […]

This Insight examines the return of 325, an insurrectionary anarchist zine, and the renewed prominence of anti-technology positions in its 13th issue, titled “Back to Basics.” This 76-page-long document, originally released in March 2025 with the PDF online version circulating later in September, articulates a worldview that regards advanced technologies not as neutral tools but as a totalising system of […]

This Insight is part of GNET’s Gender and Online Violent Extremism series, aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Content warning: This Insight contains discussions of violence against women, rape, and racialised violence. While grappling with increasingly volatile political and social contexts, preventing/countering violent extremism (PCVE) research often neglects the concept of Intersectionality, which renders gender […]

This Insight is part of GNET’s Gender and Online Violent Extremism series, aligning with the UN’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. Content warning: This Insight contains discussions of rape. The use of religious arguments to legitimise radical ideology has been a long-standing extremist tactic. Both Islamist and far-right actors have employed culturally valued religious arguments from Islam and […]

For over a year, neo-Nazi networks have been exploiting readily available AI voice-cloning tools to produce English-language versions of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, circulating them on TikTok, X, Instagram, and YouTube. These AI-generated videos have collected over fifty million views according to a report published by ISD in September 2024, subtly normalising extremist ideology by recasting Hitler as a misunderstood leader […]

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a UN-designated terrorist organisation and statistically the deadliest terrorist outfit in Pakistan, has undergone extensive ideological, organisational and operational transformation since 2018. Notably, evolution in the group’s propaganda production, dissemination and multilingual tailored messaging has been at the core of this transformation, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Recently, however, TTP has used satellite images in a propaganda video […]

This Insight was published as part of GIFCT’s Working Group on Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization. GIFCT Working Groups bring together experts from diverse stakeholder groups, geographies and disciplines to offer advice in specific thematic areas and deliver on targeted, substantive projects. In the last decade, Latin America has witnessed a profound paradigm shift in youth radicalisation linked to ISIS […]

On 14 August 2025, Thomas Daveson – identified as Thomas D. by the media – was arrested in Badhoevendorp, in the Dutch province of Noord-Holland. The 24-year-old suspect was accused of planning a terrorist attack and of possessing firearms. Thomas D. stated that he was part of the Dutch nationalist and identitarian youth organisation Geuzenbond. In a 2024 Bellingcat report, […]

On 2 October 2025, all eyes turned to the shocking events unfolding at a synagogue in Manchester, United Kingdom. The attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation claimed the lives of two Jewish congregants after the assailant drove a car into worshippers and proceeded to stab them. Footage, images and commentary of the Heaton Park Synagogue terrorist attack began filtering down […]

Pakistan has faced the devastating impacts of climate change in recent years, with flash floods between June and October this year claiming over a thousand lives across the country. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, already grappling with militancy, was the worst hit, reporting 509 deaths. The floods also damaged 3,222 houses in the province, many of them partially destroyed. Punjab, the country’s […]

In 2020, at the launch of its first “Supporter’s Security Magazine” on the pro-IS Rocket.Chat server, the Electronic Horizon Foundation (EHF) – a pro-IS non-institutional media house – described information technology as “one of the most important tools of our time,” and as the “language of the age that runs most [online] work fields.” Today, this statement endures as a […]

The gaming sector is becoming increasingly relevant in efforts to understand contemporary forms of extremism. Extremist actors of various ideological backgrounds, including right-wing extremists and jihadists, are seeking to exploit gaming in various ways. This includes the production of bespoke propaganda games, the instrumentalisation of commercial video games and in-game communication features, the appropriation of gaming aesthetics and gamified elements, […]

This Insight is published to coincide with Global Media and Information Literacy Week to highlight positive interventionist technology tools in the P/CVE sphere. Terrorist groups are increasingly using digital assets to move money outside traditional financial oversight. These same channels – blockchain networks, stablecoins, and encrypted apps – now underpin a wider illicit economy that spans cybercrime, sanctions evasion, and […]

Terrorist and Violent Extremist (TVE) actors are known as early adopters of emerging technologies. There is growing evidence that TVEs have used AI, for instance, to translate manifestos into various languages, create propaganda images, and mask TVE content to avoid detection. TVE actors are also exploring the use of AI chatbots as synthetic actors that foster radicalisation in human-AI interactions. […]

Over the last several years, extremist and terrorist groups have begun using cryptocurrencies in a myriad of operational capacities. Hamas has used a crypto-financing network to solicit donations via encrypted messaging groups and on the Al-Qassam Brigades’ website, while the Islamic State and its branches have turned to crowdfunding through digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Tether and Ethereum (ETH). […]

Digital sex crimes such as South Korea’s molka (hidden camera) phenomenon and the Nth Room case are frequently described as criminal acts or cultural aberrations. However, these practices warrant deeper recognition as manifestations of gender-based violent extremism that exploit digital infrastructures to scale, monetise, and normalise misogynistic harm. These crimes are technologically mediated and transnational in scope, and ideologically coherent, […]

The digital bulletin, Light of Darkness, was originally conceived as a supplementary component to Voice of Khurasan and has gradually consolidated its status as an independent and specialised publication produced under the auspices of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Its principal objective is not the dissemination of propaganda directed at external audiences. Instead, it prioritises the internal dissemination of […]