This policy brief presents the gender representations theoretical framework to analyse how and why gender is used in the propaganda and politico-military strategies of violent extremist movements. It argues that violent extremist ideologies break down in-group and out-group collective identities into individual “good” and “bad” gender identities, or gender representations….
Digital publishing, sale and distribution of books have contributed significantly to the dissemination and mainstreaming of far‐right extremist (FRE) material in the 21st century. Historical and contemporary books that espouse politically and ideologically motivated violence circulate widely and easily online, in both FRE and mainstream spaces. Such books include, but…
This report seeks to raise awareness of critical thinking and analysis, and meaningful engagement in the digital space, in order to build resilience to violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (VERLT) in South-Eastern Europe.
This short guide explores the impact of COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs on support for anti-government violence and examines whether this relationship was stronger or weaker based on particular personality traits.
This report examines online youth‐led initiatives involved in challenging violent extremism (CVE). It focuses on the 2013–2023 online presence of 13 youth organisations, namely: KRIS (Philippines), Youth for Peace Movement Davao de Oro (Philippines), United Voice for Peace Network Inc. (Philippines), Global Peace Youth (Philippines), Students Against Violence Everywhere, Paiman…
Feelings of collective victimhood have been demonstrated to have a strong effect on ingroup bias, outgroup hostility and support for violence. The use of narratives stirring these feelings in far-right communications is especially concerning given their inclusion in the manifestos of several mass killers across Europe and North America. However,…
The relationship between hate crimes and terrorism remains a significant policy and academic concern. We provide the first empirical exploration of this relationship in New Zealand, drawing upon an original dataset of right-wing violent extremist (RWVE) incidents between 1997 and 2022. Employing analytical models of escalation and reaction we find evidence of connectivity between…
This article makes a case that CTS scholarship is always, necessarily, and specifically paradigmatically violent, even if one adopts CTS’ critiques of “mainstream” terrorism studies and understands CTS scholars to be normatively well-intended. In making that case, this article goes over different violences of CTS scholarship which have important impacts…
The association between 4chan and online extremist subcultures has seen increasing academic scrutiny—particularly following the 2019 Christchurch attack by a right-wing terrorist who frequented the anonymous forums. Gender-based extremism features as one (of many) critical subcultures that commands our academic attention, though few studies to date have sought to capture…
Our paper argues that Agent Based Modelling (ABM) can play an important role in evaluating interventions for counter radicalization and recruitment. Its advantages are due to three realities of research and practice in this area of study. First, field research on radicalization and recruitment raises significant ethical and human subjects…
Psychological theories of mobilization tend to focus on explaining people’s motivations for action, rather than mobilization (“activation”) processes. To investigate the online behaviors associated with mobilization, we compared the online communications data of 26 people who subsequently mobilized to right-wing extremist action and 48 people who held similar extremist views…
Classroom-based surveys are a proven method for studying adolescents since it is relatively easy and cost-effective to obtain a large number of participants from various backgrounds. They are also beneficial for research on youth radicalization and extremism. For example, they allow us to acquire information such as the percentage of…
