Wrote yesterday about a QAnon influencer with 338k followers has gone full neo-nazi. He is picking these narratives, "arguments", or images from neo-nazi ecosystems. The difference? This individual has more followers than the entire ecosystem I monitor.
The average violent extremist channel on telegram has 100-300 followers. A large channel has 1,000-3,000. This account has 100,000 times that. Long term education and investment in social programs are important. Short term it is hard to say what is a viable option for this scale.
Might be a pessimist. But would be interested in seeing studies or options for large scale prevention strategies for this.
To further hikight it's the ingaement in the comment sections that are disturbing. How there are multiple users both QAnon and now non QAnon engaging in this space.
The QAnon narratives from GE has gone directly from blame the Deep State to blame the "Jew" for xyz
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15-year-old schoolgirl is due to stand trial on six terror charges after she was allegedly caught with a bomb-making video. The teenager, from Derbyshire, is also accused of having instructions on how to build a gun using a 3D printer. bbc.com/news/uk-englan…
Second instance this week where someone is charged for possession 3D-printed gun parts or instructions
This is also the second offence of a teen from Derbyshire this year being charged with a terrorism offence. I would be curious to see if they are networked or not . bbc.com/news/uk-englan…
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.
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.