As @milleridriss hilights "you can’t tackle domestic extremism by only paying attention to the fringe you also have to pay attention to what’s happening in the mainstream."
This speak to the fact that there needs to be a shift in how we look at extremists washingtonpost.com/national-secur…
Working and researching in this space we need to consider the current iteration of threat actors from a network and systems perspective. This is something I've been discussing with @AlexBNewhouse, @Adnanr23@AmarAmarasingam, and @JordanWildon.
The amorphous nature of threat actors and the crosspollination of ideologies, grievances and narratives -due to the functionality of alt-tech spaces- as well as shifts in the type of threat actors in the pre-radicalization space means we need to take a big picture approach.
Yes fringe threat actors have made the news a but more recently, however there is a spectrum of threat actors and radicalization does not necessarily start on the fringe.
Also, @milleridriss makes a great point that "if we just frame the whole thing as a security and law enforcement problem, with security and law enforcement experts at the helm, we’re just going to get that outcome" this again is an important point to consider.
Therefore there is a need to extend the research and policy approach beyond national security apparatus to include policy objectives and organizations that deal with culture, education, health and sports as to take a holistic approach to the landscape.
Ultimately, it comes down to if the goal is to be proactive or reactive and if this is to be a long term solution.
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Police issue warning over terrorist use of 3D-printed guns as UK neo-Nazi jailed in first terror case involving 3D-printed gun parts in Britain independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…
This is an interesting case as charges are being laid for having made parts of a gun even though it was not functional combine that with the material that he had on him and the channel was running on Telegram the combination is what's concerning
Now I don't think we need to be banning 3D printers and investigating those who owned them but I think it's an interesting indicator of the type of shift we're seeing in the terrorism space as it may provide more vectors for producing individual attacks.
OMG way to fall for an obvious clickbait! Congratulations 👏. 1) you still see the watermarks from the stock photo site. 2) a reverse image search with invid does not return any instance of this image.
3) keywords searches for the price, date, or inauguration does not return this image in QAnon ecosystems. 4) in most cases tickets to events are e-tickets, yet since the venue is the capitol steps there would be tickets 🙄.
5) logic tells us that these type of mass events are usually organized with: accross various social media sites for weeks, posters, propaganda, and influencers talking about it before tickets are ever sold.
QAnon in it's form under Trump may no longer exist. However, I do not think that we can say QAnon or its legacy is finished. This month alone we saw political actors and elected officials speak or attend a QAnon conference.
There are multiple events coming up linked to QAnon or those willing to leverage QAnon.
Is it a fringe conspiracy theory? No. Is "Q" active? No. Are influencers as capable to mobilize people as before? No. However, QAnon and it's conspiracy theories have found a home in the GOP
The deplatforming, the loss of the election for Trump, the absence of Q has impacted the mass movement. Yet the ideology and the adherents haven't gone anyone. Their need behind their adherence to QAnon and their conspiratorial thinking has not disappeared.
This was already stated by @AlexBNewhouse but I'm going to hammer this in: those in the Accelerationist ecosystem never went away after a named group goes belly up. These actors were still present and active. The return to using FKD is in part branding.
The group was recently proscribed by several countries & it's a known brand in IMVE ecosystems & by the media. Falling for the brand is a failure in proper investigation, when those who monitor these spaces regularly would be able to say these actors haven't magically reappeared.
Part of this has come to the surface due to the arrest of the individual from InjektDivision who was arrested last week. Following that event FKD endorsed them as the two networks mutually backed each other. The community grew to 100 after the incident and the media reporting.
Always good to see the neo-nazi edge lords celebrating pride month.
@TikTokCanada@tiktok_us take note of how they are embedding images in the video (2.4 million views) and also the behavioral and communal reinforcing in the chat.
To note, the image is not one that would be hashed, rather they are appropriating the new pride flag, the chart upward emoji 📈 in this context is being used for a nazi salute.
The reason I am highlighting this is because there is no easy way for platforms to keep on top of these new trends and new content, that fall outside of the known hate and violent content that exists. this is why trusted partners with SMEs are important.
This is a great report by @Graphika_NYC "Actors linked to previous Russian information operations continue to target American far-right communities with inflammatory and politically-divisive messaging, leveraging alternative online platforms" graphika.com/reports/posing…
what they found was a sustained effort to target far-right communities on alternative online platforms. The campaign was mostly on patriots[.]win where it utilizes a set of 20 inauthentic accounts as messaging vectors and amplifiers.
accounts on Gab and Parler were also used and were part of the earlier NAEBC operation. On multiple occasions, they posted the same unique content, usually closely after but sometimes before it appeared on patriots[.]win