Europe is threatened by the danger of radicalisation on the internet

This phenomenon, dubbed “TikTok Jihad,” has led to a resurgence of jihadist activity targeting Europe. In the last ten months, the continent has witnessed six terrorist attacks, most of them small but some deadly, and over 20 planned attacks foiled by security and intelligence services.

In many cases, the attackers or potential attackers were young people radicalised on the internet. This includes the two Austrian prisoners and a third 15-year-old accomplice who was detained for questioning and then released.

Intelligence experts point out that TikTok’s enormous reach and algorithm make it the preferred platform for recruiting young “lone wolf” or virtual terror cells. Telegram is now used to plan attacks and network agents.

This new recruitment method presents two challenges for law enforcement. Monitoring, searching and identifying virtual meeting points is much more difficult for intelligence agencies than tracking in-person meetings between recruiters and recruits.

In addition, the new channels will require law enforcement and security authorities to work harder to profile “dangerous” people or those likely to join terrorist cells, as they will have to collect information on young people who were not previously considered at risk. It is also a challenge for judicial authorities, as they will have to decide how to prosecute minors in such cases.

In the past, the Internet served as a forest of Islamist propaganda for Muslims in Europe. They needed extremist imams or mosques to bridge the gap between them and the terrorist groups. That bridge has disappeared. Face-to-face meetings are no longer necessary, and the new generation only needs a virtual network to move from radicalization to joining and taking action.

Worse still, in the past the suspects were mostly of Muslim origin or children of Muslim immigrants, but the last few months have shown that radicalization has also reached German and French teenagers with no ties to Islam or a migration background. In addition, there are young people who were born in Europe but grew up in parallel Muslim societies, detached from their place of birth and upbringing, and who mainly get their information from extremists on the Internet or from Al Jazeera.

In May, a 14-year-old girl from Montenegro was arrested in Austria after she bought a knife and an axe in Graz with the intention of carrying out a terrorist attack. Her computer contained propaganda and hate material from the Islamic State. Several French teenagers were also arrested by security forces for planning attacks during the Olympic Games in Paris.

The shift to virtual recruiting is partly due to the territorial defeat and dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2019. The idea lives on in the virtual cloud, prompting recruiters to scour social media for users interested in their cause.

Western intelligence experts warn that recruitment is now harder to detect because recruits are not ideologically aligned with the terror group but fall victim to cynical exploitation by adults who target bored teenagers – especially those on the fringes of society, disillusioned with life and from broken homes.

ISIS recruitment is not portrayed as violent recruitment for political-religious purposes, but as a platform to vent frustrations towards parents, teachers and society, offering them an outlet for their everyday lives and a chance for a dubious “15 minutes of fame”. The recruitment of young people accelerated due to the propaganda efforts of ISIS affiliates in Afghanistan and Central Asia, whose aggressive campaigns have restored the prominence of the Islamic State in discourses and intelligence reports.

The October 7 massacre and the ensuing Gaza war have also fueled activity on social media. Network algorithms, particularly on TikTok, have facilitated the spread of relevant war-related content as well as the radicalization and recruitment of young people. Since October, terrorist activities and attempts have quadrupled compared to the same period last year.

“Allah will make it difficult for you to breathe if you consume Western culture,” warns a Muslim preacher named Abdul Hamid in a video that caught the attention of intelligence services in Düsseldorf. The clip has been viewed 60,000 times, is in German and contains Salafist and Islamist propaganda.

The preachers are often not religious figures, but online influencers who speak to Generation Z in their language. They are the first port of call to lead listeners and viewers into the “Salafism bubble.” There they are bombarded with propaganda and recruitment material disguised as clips offering solutions to everyday problems. They are peppered with constant religious messages and clear rules. They promise to lead young people out of confusion and give them a moral compass.

These portals also promote the identity and empathy of young people by portraying them as outsiders in society and culture, similar to Muslim believers. Islam becomes a platform for counterculture. For many young people, Islamic activists become father figures, someone they can trust.

The plans of the Austrian youths (with a migrant background) arrested for planning the attack on the Taylor Swift concert are terrifying: in addition to IS propaganda leaflets, they collected machetes, fireworks, axes, knives and hammers. The 19-year-old took a job in a metal factory to procure chemicals, while the 17-year-old found work in the stadium where they planned the attack. They even got hold of a police siren to attach to their car so they could get to the venue and carry out a massive suicide attack. Their encrypted text exchange with their handlers was done in coded language, avoiding key words that could alert the security services.

According to a report by terrorism expert Peter Neumann, 38 of the 58 people arrested for IS-related activities since October were between the ages of 13 and 19. Recruiters keep working, only having to recruit one of thousands of virtual candidates. They know that no one would suspect a 15-year-old boy or girl of committing such heinous acts. The Taylor Swift concert attack may have been foiled, but the threat remains.

Franz Ruff, Vienna’s general director of public security, said those arrested in the foiled Taylor Swift concert attack had been radicalized online. He noted that the conspirators’ communication was done via codes to deceive surveillance authorities. “It’s as if they were having conversations,” he told journalists in Vienna.

The German newspaper Bild reported that the main suspect in the Taylor Swift concert plot was influenced by Abdul Barah, a well-known Islamist internet preacher who moved his sermons to the internet after his Berlin mosque was closed and thus gained tens of thousands of followers.