Is He /ourguy/, a False Flag, or Something Else? Debating Breivik’s and Tarrant’s Terrorism on 4chan’s /pol/ Board
Academic literature widely assumes that extremist-housing online forums, like 4chan, uniformly celebrate acts of right-wing terrorism (e.g. via “sainthood memes”), such as those committed by Anders Breivik and Brenton Tarrant. Aside from a handful of exceptions, this body of research typically f...
Conspiracies Gone Wild: A Psychiatric Perspective on Conspiracy Theory Belief, Mental Illness, and the Potential for Lone Actor Ideological Violence
Conspiracy theory belief (CTB) has been increasingly recognized as a driving force of extremist violence. This paper provides a psychiatric perspective on the phenomenon of CTB-driven violence in an effort to bridge the gap between psychiatry and terrorism studies. First, it makes a case for the...
The External Dimension of EU Counter-Terrorism Relations: Competences, Interests, and Institutions
Some very significant policy developments indicate ‘‘supranationalisation processes’’ of EU external relations in counter-terrorism, even in its most significant relationship with the USA. This means that, increasingly, the USA is willing to work with Europe through its institutionalised for...
Deterring the Undeterrable: Coercion, Denial, and Delegitimization in Counterterrorism
This article argues that deterrence theory can be applied to counterterrorism. Doing so requires broadening the traditional concept of deterrence by punishment, expanding deterrence by denial to include defense, mitigation, and strategic hindrance, and developing deterrence by delegitimization to in...
Development NGO responses to countering violent extremism and hat
This paper surveys the state of knowledge regarding development and humanitarian non-government organisation (NGO) responses to preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). As well as delineating the nexus and shared objectives between P/CVE and development/humanitarian NGO frameworks, i...
How terrorist attacks distort public debates: a comparative study of right-wing and Islamist extremism
ABSTRACT Previous research has shown how terrorist attacks attract media attention and influence public opinion and decision-makers. However, we lack a comparative assessment of the extent to which extremist ideologies matter and how they matter. Therefore, this paper compares mass media debate...
Still the absent friend? The European Union’s global counter-terrorism role after twenty years
Over a decade ago, it was claimed that the EU was an “absent friend” in foreign policy counter-terrorism. Much has changed since then, however. Al Qaeda and Islamic State are shadows of what they were. The contribution of this article is to re-evaluate and offer a theoretically-informed account ...
Translating Ideas into Actions: Analyzing Local Strategic Work to Counter Violent Extremism
Despite the growing importance of local action to counter violent extremism (CVE), empirical research on the local organization and management of CVE is scarce, especially regarding public administrators’ strategic work to translate policies and recommendations into frontline practice. Based mainl...
Pain & power: what the pains of counterterrorism tell us about the workings of counter-terror power
ABSTRACT Since 9/11, a vast array of legislation, policies, actors, and practices have emerged under the banner of counterterrorism (CT). This paper conceptualises CT as a distinct social phenomenon, focusing on criminal legal responses as a biopolitical dispositif that deploys “counter-terror pow...
Countering Insurgencies, Terrorism and Violent Extremism in South Asia
South Asia continues to remains a hotbed of various forms of extremism. Indiscriminate violent terrorism with a strong religious overtone claims the highest number of victims, most notably in Pakistan and India. Islamist Jihadi movements backed by external actors keep the state of Jammu and Kash...
Editors’ introduction: critical terrorism studies: reflections on policy-relevance and disciplinarity
The articles in this special issue are drawn from papers presented at a workshop entitled “10 Years of Critical Terrorism Studies” and a conference entitled “Critical Terrorism Studies and Policy Relevance: Beyond Critique”. The workshop and conference were organised by the Critical Studies ...
Application of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) to the case of the Army-Navy recruiting center attacker in Little Rock, Arkansas
We applied the path to intended violence (PTIV) [Calhoun, F. S., & Weston, S. W. (2003). Contemporary threat management: A practical guide for identifying, assessing, and managing individuals of violent intent. Specialized Training Services] model and the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Prot...
GIFCT Tech Trials: Combining Behavioural Signals to Surface Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online
Technical approaches for surfacing, reviewing, and removing terrorist and violent extremist content online have evolved in recent years. Larger companies have added metrics and insights in transparency reports, disclosing that most content removed for terrorist and violent extremist offences is...
National Submissions to the UN CounterTerrorism Committee as Constructions of National Identity: Cameroon, Kenya and Nigeria
This article examines the construction of national identity in the context of the post-9/11 counter-terrorism sanctions regime established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373. The study focuses on the written reports of three member states – Cameroon, Kenya, and Nigeria – arguing ...
White feminism and the governance of violent extremism
Initiatives to prevent and counter “violent extremism” (P/CVE) are often highly individualised and individualising, and function to reinforce negative racialised and gendered stereotypes. Recently, some feminist and other critical scholars have argued that sexist and misogynistic beliefs ar...
A Pacifist Approach to Countering Extremism
How should a pacifist approach both extremism and counterextremism? Through exploring definitions of extremism alongside pacifist scholarship, the paper argues that pacifism itself appears to be “extreme”, allowing extremism to be examined from an extreme perspective. But does counter-extremism ...
Recruitment models and approaches of Islamist terrorist groups: The cases of al Qaeda and ISIS
The recruitment of new members requires delicate secret steps by terrorist and extremist organisations. This vital organisational activity needs to be smart and effective, takes time, and can be discovered by security and intelligence services. This paper shows that recruitment is a flexible multi-t...
Public Perceptions of What Qualifies as Terrorism Across Similar Countries with Diverse Terrorism Experiences
Norway, Sweden and Iceland are neighboring countries that have diverse experiences with terrorism. A right-wing extremist used explosives and guns to kill scores of Norwegians and an Islamic fundamentalist used a truck as a weapon to kill Swedes. Meanwhile, Icelanders have not experienced terror...
A Pacifist Approach to Countering Extremism
How should a pacifist approach both extremism and counterextremism? Through exploring definitions of extremism alongside pacifist scholarship, the paper argues that pacifism itself appears to be “extreme”, allowing extremism to be examined from an extreme perspective. But does counter-extremism ...
Regional Cooperation in West Africa: CounterTerrorism and Counter-Insurgency
The challenges of terrorism and insurgency have continued to attract regional response. A significant aspect of such response is the demonstration of shared responsibilities by various nation states in regional cooperation to stamp out the menace of terrorism. The EU member states for instance adopt...
Critical terrorism studies, victimisation, and policy relevance: compromising politics or challenging hegemony?
This article considers the key contributions Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) has made to our understanding of victimisation, contending that while CTS has greatly expanded our knowledge in certain areas, it has hitherto failed to adequately engage with victims and survivors of terrorist attacks. It...
Gender, insurgency, and terrorism: introduction to the special issue
four-year military operation to flush out the Islamic State from its territory in Iraq and Syria ended as the last village held by the terrorist group was retaken in March 2019 . . . ’.1 In the months that preceded this final takeover in Baghuz, Syria, ISIS was dwindling in strength. Over a thous...
Introduction to the Special Issue: Extremism and Terrorism Online—Widening the Research Base
In 2017, also in a special issue of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, this one titled “Terrorist Online Propaganda and Radicalization,” 1 one of the coeditors of this issue, Conway, made six suggestions for progressing research on the role of the Internet in violent extremism and terrorism.2 ...
Narrative, Political Violence, and Social Change
This special issue is concerned with the development of the study of narratives of political violence and terrorism. While the concept of narrative has become increasingly popular among scholars in the field over the past two decades, this has not been accompanied by an active and critical engagemen...
Towards UN counter-terrorism operations?
The United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operation in Mali (MINUSMA) has become among the deadliest in UN history, suffering from attacks by violent extremists and terrorists. There are strong calls to give UN peacekeeping operations more robust mandates and equip them with the necessary capabilities, g...
Pulling the Brakes on Political Violence: How Internal Brakes Limited Violent Escalation from the Provisional IRA in Pre- and Post-Good Friday Northern Ireland
Under what circumstances do paramilitary groups place limits on their use of political violence? This article considers why one of the most prominent paramilitary groups active during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Provisional IRA (PIRA), exercised restraint and limited their use of pol...
What Is It to Explain Extremism
This article explores what it is to explain extremism. Rather than providing yet another explanation of extremism, it takes a bird’s eye point of view at existing explanations of extremism. What is it that scholars are doing in seeking explanations of extremism? This article answers this questi...
Evaluating Case-Managed Approaches to Counter Radicalization and Violent Extremism: An Example of the Proactive Integrated Support Model (PRISM) Intervention
In recent years there has been the proliferation of counterradicalization programs that incorporate a case management approach involving individually tailored intervention plans. The evaluation of casemanaged countering violent extremism (CVE) interventions is challenging. This article provides resu...
Ghana’s Readiness to Combat Terrorism: Strategies of Security Institutions
Despite Ghana’s non-experience of terrorism amid the internal and external threats, scholars are yet to push this subject into the realm of discourse. Canvasing exclusive knowledge from institutional practices, we investigated the counter-terrorism strategies employed by Ghana’s security institu...
Sex for survival: Terrorism, poverty and sexual violence in north-eastern Nigeria
ABSTRACT This study advances the discourse on factors behind conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Focusing on terrorism-affected north eastern Nigeria, it argues that terrorism creates poor economic conditions that compel women and girls to engage in transactional sex in exchange for money,...
(De)Weaponizing Climate-Induced Recruitment: Prospects of Climate Change Adaptation as a NonKinetic Counter-Terrorism Strategy in the Lake Chad Basin Region
To what extent can climate change adaptation be incorporated into counterterrorism strategies in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) region? As part of the Lake Chad region counterterrorism strategy, we explore how climate change adaptation can be used to prevent local population recruitment into violent extr...
Homegrown terrorism and transformative learning: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding radicalization
Since 2001, a preponderance of terrorist activity in Europe, North America, and Australia, has involved radicalized Westerners inspired by al Qaeda. Described as ‘homegrown terrorism’, perpetrators are citizens and residents born, raised, and educated within the countries they attack. While most...
Depoliticising political violence: state-centric and individualised discourses in the Norwegian counterterrorism policy field
ABSTRACT Over the past decades, emerging focus has been on how teachers in Norway can foster citizenship in their classrooms to strengthen democracy. Yet, in conjunction with rising concerns of homegrown terrorism, a new curriculum in Norway draws on democratic education as a bulwark against t...
Climate Change and the New Politics of Violence
Climate change complicates political violence while producing new forms and scales of it. This has led the climate movement to fail to come to terms with both the violence of climate change and nonviolence as a tactic of resistance. The article begins by counterposing the violence of climate change ...
Synergies between “Hard” and “Soft” Interventions Against Online Extremism: An Agent‑Based Simulation and Cost–Benefit Analysis
This study explores the synergies between two complementary interventions for countering online extremism: deplatforming, a “hard” intervention that involves removing extremist users from online platforms, and inoculation, a “soft” intervention that exposes users to weakened forms of extremi...
Extremist and pro-violence attitudes of Spanish adolescents in secondary schools
t: This article distinguishes between attitudes towards extremism and attitudes towards violence and illegal acts. It operationalizes both groups of attitudes based on the proposed scales by Ozer and Bertelsen (2018), which are validated for the Spanish case. The combination of the two sets of a...
Homegrown terrorism and transformative learning: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding radicalization
Since 2001, a preponderance of terrorist activity in Europe, North America, and Australia, has involved radicalized Westerners inspired by al Qaeda. Described as ‘homegrown terrorism’, perpetrators are citizens and residents born, raised, and educated within the countries they attack. While most...
Modelling Drivers of Grievance-Fuelled Violence
Acts of extreme or mass violence perpetrated by lone offenders have become increasingly common in liberal democracies over the past 20 years. Some describe these acts as ideologically motivated, while others attribute them to mental disorder or criminal intent. This has led to the development of dis...
Perceived Societal Fear and Cyberhate after the November 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks
Fear is one of the negative outcomes of terrorist attacks. Currently, there is a need to understand how societal fear and fear of terrorism might be shaped and induced by social-media discussions. This study analyzed how exposure to cyberhate was associated with perceived societal fear after the Nov...
“It Gets a Bit Messy”: Norwegian Social Workers’ Perspectives on Collaboration with Police and Security Service on Cases of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism
Social workers are a part of the prevention efforts against radicalisation and violent extremism in the Nordic countries. While multi-agency cooperation is not new in Norway, municipal cooperation with the police security service is. This cooperation, particularly its unintended consequences with a ...
Decolonising Global North terrorism studies in Southeast Asian Muslim-majority countries
Over the past few decades, the call to decolonise academia has garnered significant momentum in some Global North and Global South countries and settler states. This shift reflects a growing recognition among scholars that academia perpetuates various forms of coloniality. However, terrorism studies...
Counterinsurgency, community participation, and the preventing and countering violent extremism agenda in Kenya
Over the last six years, the P/CVE agenda has emphasized the need of preventative measures to augment kinetic counterterrorism security approaches. Based on field research in Kenya in 2019, this article analyzes the ‘police power’ of P/CVE, which compels populations to participate in their own s...
Terrorism in Central African Republic: A Mosaic of State Fragility and Abnormality
religious extremism and radicalization have dominated the discourse on the causes of terrorism. however, little is written of other drivers of terrorism, such as economic and social deprivations, which could prompt religious groups to resort to terrorism. scholars have sufficiently analyzed the impo...
Reimagining the Relationship Between Hate Crime and Terrorism: A Case Study of New Zealand
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 ana...
Countering Terrorism in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin: Reassessing the Role of Vigilantism as a Counterterrorism Initiative
Vigilantism is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria. As a state with various “alternatively governed” spaces the country has leant on vigilantes of differing forms as a source of authority where the state has been ineffective. Albeit proving controversial, their successes cannot be unrecognized. This...
Better the Devil You Know? How Fringe Terrorism Can Induce an Advantage for Moderate Nonviolent Campaigns
Fringe terrorism is common during nonviolent campaigns. We examine how this can modify the strategic environment between dissident groups and the state in ways that present both challenges and opportunities to moderate factions. Terrorism is intended to promote violent escalation in a conflict, but ...
Rethinking counterterrorism: targeting organisational incentives, not just attacks
This paper explores the paradox at the core of modern terrorism. Despite years of evidence showing that terrorist campaigns rarely meet their strategic goals, groups keep using terrorism as a primary tactic. The continued use of terrorism is less about its external success and more about internal or...
Understanding Vulnerability to Violent Extremism: Evidence from Borno State, Northeastern Nigeria
This paper analyses the links between socioeconomic concerns and one of the most significant conflicts in the world, the Boko Haram-led insurgency in Northeastern Nigeria. In doing so it centers group dynamics for analysis of how women and youth constituencies intersect with vulnerability to violent...
From ‘evil doers’ to ‘very fine people’: The politics of shifting counterterrorism targets
Over two decades ago, the United States launched the “global war on terror” to vanquish Al Qaeda and associated foes. This counterterrorism campaign was characterized by abusive interrogations, indefinite detentions, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. Today, US counterterrorist doctrine mu...
A systematic integrative review of counter messaging communication campaigns targeting terrorism or violent extremism
ABSTRACT In response to the rise of the so-called Islamic State and its effective use of propaganda to recruit and radicalise followers, countering the communication strategies of a range of terrorist and violent extremist actors has become a significant challenge for policymakers and practit...
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