By Kristen Rand. Additional research was provided by Kaya van der Horst

Fifty caliber sniper rifles are used by militaries around the world and can penetrate armor plating and shoot down aircraft on take-off and landing, but can be purchased under federal law in the U.S. as easily as a single-shot hunting rifle. The study’s release comes the day before the U.S Supreme Court will hear oral arguments by the government of Mexico in its lawsuit against gunmaker Smith & Wesson, another manufacturer of military bred weaponry utilized by the cartels.

VPC Government Affairs Director Kristen Rand states, “Fifty caliber sniper rifles are the guns most coveted by the cartels and most feared by Mexican law enforcement. The VPC has warned for years about the unique threat these anti-materiel guns present. Now they are being used to inflict maximum harm in Mexico. The U.S.-based manufacturers of these weapons must be held accountable.”

The VPC joined other gun violence prevention organizations in an amicus brief in support of the government of Mexico. The VPC has issued a wide range of studies on the threat posed by 50 caliber sniper rifles, including the risk they pose in the U.S. to infrastructure, civil aviation, and national security.

The study details the history of the Barrett, manufactured in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and the original 50 caliber sniper rifle, the gun’s unmatched combination of firepower and range, and the use of it and other 50 caliber rifles in numerous attacks and assassinations by Mexican cartels. Data contained in the study reveal that from 2010 to February 2023, the majority of 50 caliber sniper rifles (519 of 831) recovered by Mexican authorities were Barretts. Barrett and other 50 caliber sniper rifles have also been obtained by terrorists around the world, including Al Qaeda. In addition, the study:

• Cites numerous reports and research warning of the terror threat posed by the easy accessibility of 50 caliber sniper rifles, including: compromising command and control via assassination; the threat to aircraft (including civilian airliners); and, infrastructure.

• Offers numerous examples of terrorist and other criminal acts, including assassination, involving 50 caliber sniper rifles in Mexico, the U.S., and around the world.

• Details how the use of armor-piercing rifle rounds can further magnify the power – and the threat – of these deadly weapons.

• Includes profiles of companies manufacturing 50 caliber sniper rifles.

The study also puts forth policy recommendations including a federal ban in the United States of these uniquely destructive firearms.

Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, 2025. 34p.

By The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University

Gun violence reduction initiatives that seek to engage individuals involved in violence must effectively identify and manage risk. Risk assessment informs participant recruitment, service provision, and program evaluation. Discussions around risk assessment often center quantitative metrics and researcher-designed assessment tools, deemphasizing the lived and professional experience of frontline professionals who work and often live in the communities they serve. The study outlined here analyzes the perspectives of frontline street outreach and victim services workers in Chicago on how they define, assess, and respond to gun violence risk on the job. The findings are based on a series of semi-structured focus group discussions and a participatory analysis session conducted in early 2021 by researchers at the Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS). These discussions sought to answer the following 1. How do frontline violence prevention workers define risk for gun violence? 2. How do violence prevention workers assess and respond to risk? 3. What role do/should formal assessment tools play in violence prevention? Seasoned staff from both street outreach and victim services programs shared their experience identifying when, where, and who is at risk of shooting or being shot. It also gathers perspectives on strategies to mitigate this risk.

Evanston, IL: The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University, 2022. 28p.

By The Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University

The Peacekeepers Program originally launched in Chicago in the summer of 2018 as the Flatlining Violence Inspires Peace (FLIP) Strategy. FLIP began as a summer-based community violence intervention program and grew to provide services in 16 Chicago community areas (CCAs) that held the lion’s share of violence in the city of Chicago. FLIP combined group violence intervention, violence prevention, and workforce development strategies designed as a street outreach apprenticeship program. Its immediate goal was to reduce gun violence in hotspots—areas with disproportionately high levels of shootings and victimizations. FLIP theorized that if gun violence could be reduced in these spatial pockets within a program community, it would create extended periods of peace across the broader community, ultimately contributing to a citywide decline in gun violence victimizations over time. In January 2023, the Illinois Office of Firearm Violence Prevention (OFVP), housed within the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), supported FLIP’s transition into a year-round initiative, piloting their involvement and investment in the re-branded Peacekeepers Program (the Program). At the conclusion of the pilot period, two critical milestones occurred: the Program was integrated into the Reimagine Public Safety Act (RPSA) portfolio and, for the first time, received public funding to operate year-round. Moreover, with this funding, the Program was required to expand into RPSA priority communities, allowing the intervention to extend beyond Chicago and into surrounding Suburban Cook County  

  The report begins by providing an analysis of the 14 communities that implemented the Program for two consecutive calendar years. This exploration seeks to understand violence trends during the 2023-2024 year-round implementation of the Program compared to 2021-2022 calendar years, when the Program was only implemented during the summer months. Additional analyses will examine violence trends at both the community area and city-wide levels to assess the Program model’s claim that a reduction in hotspots might contribute to broader reductions across Program communities and the City of Chicago. The report also provides a brief overview of the year-over-year violence trends in the 13 Chicago-based Program expansion communities and their respective hotspots, during their launch year, to better understand violence trends following their start dates. This focus on both established and expansion communities highlights the progress made across all program community areas and offers insights into how implementation over consecutive 24-month periods aligns with observed violence trends. This report does not seek to establish causation or correlation between violence trends in program community areas and the implementation of the Program. Instead, it provides an exploratory analysis of gun violence trends in these areas, with a particular focus on program hotspots. Finally, the report concludes with early findings and recommendations on the implementation of the Program.  

Evanston, IL: Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS) at Northwestern University 2025. 34p.

By Naomi Johnson, Austin Segal, Maya Simkin, Stephanie Agnew, Kareem Butler, and Briana Payton

Over the last two decades, the policing, prosecution, incarceration, and surveillance of people who carry guns has increased tremendously. This criminalization has majorly impacted Black communities in the state – especially in Chicago and Cook County – without improving safety. In fact, the criminalization of gun possession and the conflation of gun possession and gun use have made communities less safe by entangling more people in the criminal legal system. Time and time again, Black men, teenagers, and children are targeted, arrested, and criminalized for carrying guns that they feel are necessary for their own protection in areas with high rates of gun violence and low clearance rates by police. The purpose of this report is to analyze the policies, processes, and sociocultural realities that have led to the “War on Guns,” which parallels the historic War on Drugs1 and has similarly devastated Black and Brown communities for decades. In this brief report, we use public information to provide a set of facts that explain how the mounting public pressure to stop gun violence has regressively and ineffectively targeted the victims of violence and their neighbors who carry guns for protection. We detail how this approach has contributed to discriminatory policing, confusing laws, harsh sentencing, over-incarceration, and other unnecessary and long-term entanglements with the criminal legal system.   

Chicago: Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, 2024. 44p.

By Anne K. Mwobobia

This study sought to examine print media framing of gun violence in Kenya with reference to the Nation and Standard newspapers. The objectives of the study are to establish dominant frames in reporting gun violence by the Nation and the Standard newspapers; analyze the diction in framing gun violence by the Nation and the Standard Newspapers; to examine the figures of speech in framing gun violence by the Nation and the Standard Newspapers and; to assess the portrayal of gun violence as a serious societal problem by the Nation and the Standard Newspapers. The study was based on the Framing Theory and Goffman’s Frame Analysis. The study employed the descriptive research design and the mixed methods research approach. Purposive sampling technique was used to select suitable newspaper articles for the study. The study involved the collection of data on gun violence from Nation and Standard Newspapers for the period 1st September 2019 –30th August 2020. Data was collected using a code sheet and interview guide. The target population of the study consisted of 730 articles published by Nation and Standard Newspapers articles on gun violence. Two editors and three reporters experienced in reporting gun violence were also interviewed. Data was collected and analyzed using content analysis. Regarding the dominant frames in reporting gun violence by the Nation and the Standard newspapers, it is evident that most of dominant frame used to portray gun violence in both Nation and the Standard newspapers were fatality, terrorism, crime, citizen participation, cattle rustling, tactical response and accomplice. Cartoons and photos were also used as visual persuasion frames. Diction was also extensively used in the reporting of gun violence stories. In this regard, various catchwords and catchphrases were used in depicting gun violence. These included: silencing the guns, impunity, and proliferation of guns, dead, robbery, shootout and coup attempt. It was also made manifest that various figures of speech were used. These include idioms, similes, metaphors and idiomatic expressions. Lastly, the findings show that some of the major issues of societal concern focused by both newspapers included armed robbery, police brutality, cattle rustling and terrorism. It can thus be concluded that the print media plays a pivotal role in checking gun violence since it is widely viewed as the mirror of society and protective shield against violent gun crimes. The study recommends that the print media should expand the dominant frames used in reporting gun violence so as maximally show the various angles to the deep issue of gun violence. This could be through enhanced research on gun violence in Kenya. The use of diction and figures of speech could also be exploited within the process of enriching the presentation of gun violence stories. The print media should also increase the level to which they offer balanced coverage of gun violence stories in the whole country.

Nairobi: University of Nairobi, 2021. 92p.

By Wesam Charkawi , Kevin Dunn ,  Ana-Maria Bliuc

Since the September 11 attacks, prevention and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) programs have rapidly increased worldwide, garnering significant interest among researchers. This paper is a systematic review focusing on the evaluations of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention programs from 2001 until 2020. The review identified 74 program evaluations that included satisfactory measures and metrics. Only 32% of the studies deemed the intervention successful, 55% described limited success, and 8% deemed the program had failed. Many of the programs evaluated failed to reach their objectives; some generated negative outcomes such as community disdain and an increase in the likelihood of alienation and stigma. Success was largely a self-assessed measure by the facilitators or stakeholders of the programs or the evaluators of the study. Success indicators can be operationalized as the degree of enhanced sense of belonging (connectedness to the community, social connection), trust and willingness to engage in programs, development of critical thinking skills (integrative complexity theory), and a strong sense of worth (quest for significance). Without a generally accepted set of metrics and no cohesive framework for conducting evaluations, this review offers an important addition to the field on the evidence suitable for program evaluations. An important aim of this systematic review was to identify what makes an effective and successful countering violent extremism program. The key findings indicate that enhancing belonging, identity, trust and community engagement, acknowledging perceptions of injustice, religious mentoring, and the promotion of critical thinking/self-reflection are associated with successful programs. The findings press upon policymakers, funders, and researchers the need to consider and support high-quality evaluations of programs.

International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, 2024., 19p.

By By Stephane J. Baele,* Lewys Brace, and Elahe Naserian 

Scholars and practitioners investigating extremist and violent political actors’ online communications face increasingly large information environments containing ever-growing amounts of data to find, collect, organise, and analyse. In this context, this article encourages terrorism and extremism analysts to use computational visual methods, mirroring for images what is now routinely done for text. Specifically, we chart how computer vision methods can be successfully applied to strengthen the study of extremist and violent political actors’ online ecosystems. Deploying two such methods – unsupervised deep clustering and supervised object identification – on an illustrative case (an original corpus containing thousands of images collected from incel platforms) allows us to explain the logic of these tools, to identify their specific advantages (and limitations), and to subsequently propose a research workflow associating computational methods with the other visual analysis approaches traditionally leveraged  

Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume XIX, Issue 1 March 2025  

By Stephane J. Baele and & Lewys Brace

How to best chart and analyse extremist digital ecosystems? This paper proposes to complement standard mapping methods based on URL outlinks, which are typically deployed but present several critical flaws, with socio-semantic network analysis. Adapting bi-nodal socio-semantic network principles to the specificities of extremist and terrorist digital communications, we put forward a simple yet efficient method for generating informative networks based on ideological or thematic proximity rather than URL connections. We use three datasets of various sizes and nature (French far-right websites, British far-right websites, US far-right Telegram channels) to compare traditional URL-based vs. socio-semantic networks, demonstrating how the latter bypasses the flaws of the former and offers significant advantages in multi-methods research designs. This empirical validation of our methodological proposition unfolds several new observations concerning the contemporary Western far-right digital ecosystem, highlighting specificities and commonalities of its French, British, and American variants.

By Luke Baumgartner

On July 22, 2011, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik embarked on a threehour murder spree across Norway, killing seventy-seven in what would become the single largest loss of life in the country since the Second World War. Beginning that morning in central Oslo, Breivik’s terrorist attack claimed its first victims after detonating a van filled with nearly one ton of explosives outside of the Regjeringskvartalet complex, which housed the prime minister’s administrative offices. Disguised as a police officer, Breivik then boarded a ferry for the island of Utøya, where he proceeded to kill sixty-nine students attending a youth worker’s party summer camp in a mass shooting that lasted nearly ninety minutes. An hour before the bombing, Breivik emailed his manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, to more than 1,000 contacts, asking for their assistance in disseminating his magnum opus, which, according to him, took more than three years to complete. The 1,500-page compendium contained a litany of grievances and rails against political correctness, feminists, and “multiculturalist/cultural Marxists,” ultimately accusing them of complicity in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by political elites of the European Union and Arab states to destroy Western civilization through the gradual replacement of white Christian Europeans by way of increased Muslim immigration—in other words, a Great Replacement. Breivik’s actions that day would inspire a cascade of copycat attacks in the United States, New Zealand, and Germany. As part of their attacks, each perpetrator wrote a manifesto to explain the rationale for their actions. In doing so, the manifestos can–and often do–serve multiple purposes: air the personal and societal grievances that led them to kill, provide a blueprint for future attackers, and perhaps, most importantly, gain the public notoriety and infamy they so desperately crave. At its core, terrorism is an act of violence that seeks validation through its very nature as a public spectacle, and thus, manifestos can provide answers to the ever-present question of why an event of this magnitude occurs. While these attacks are separated from one another in both time and space, the ideological glue binding them together is the belief in a racially and culturally homogenous dystopian future, one in which white people gradually cease to comprise demographic majorities in traditionally white dominions such as the United States and Europe. Or, in the most dire circumstances, cease to exist at all. These manifestos contain several common themes central to replacement theory–the conspiracy that motivated their attacks. This paper attempts to build on the current body of academic literature that focuses on the thematic elements of the manifestos and the historical and theoretical foundations upon which the attackers’ justifications for their actions lie. Beginning with a detailed history of replacement sentiment in the United States and Europe, this section seeks to provide the necessary background and context for where replacement theory comes from and how it has motivated actors across time and space. Within the context of the United States, replacement theory finds its ideological roots in late-19th and early-20th century race science, or eugenics, beginning with the works of sociologist Edward A. Ross and anthropologist Madison Grant, both of whom popularized the notion of “race suicide.” Subsequent generations of post-war white supremacists, such as David Duke and David Lane, transformed race suicide into the explicitly anti-semitic conspiracy theory of “white genocide,” laying the groundwork for contemporary militant far-right extremists to coalesce around the idea of replacement theory. Meanwhile, European manifestations of parallel racist conspiracies emerged during an intellectual movement of the 1960s in France known as the Nouvelle Droite, championed by the likes of Jean Raspail. Raspail’s work would influence leading public figures such as Italian author Oriana Fallaci and British Historian Bat Ye’or, who were instrumental in sparking Renaud Camus’ coining of the “Great Replacement.”

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism at George Washington University , 2025. 32p.

By Leland Lazarus and Alexander Gocso

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the Chinese individuals, gangs, and companies engaging in illicit activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our methodology was to research academic literature, news articles, press releases, official statements, and podcasts in Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin and English, as well as conduct off-the-record interviews with U.S. and LAC intelligence and law enforcement officials to ascertain growing trends in Chinese criminal behavior in the region.

Miami: Florida International University, 2023. 33p.

By Phil Williams and Sandra Quincoses

The economic and political environments in Latin America have been advantageous for local, regional, and transnational threat networks. Specifically, technology, increased international trade and economic interdependence, heightened interest in natural resources for profit, synthetic drug production, economic disparities, corruption, impunity, and unstable political conditions have led to a complex web of opportunities that requires new, progressive ways to address criminal activities. The creativity of threat networks along with their entrepreneurial strategies have resulted in increasing power and influence. Despite efforts by the United States and some governments in Latin America to combat these networks, the everchanging global environment has worked in their favor. Indeed, some countries in Central and South America are in danger of transforming into what Jorge Chabat described as “criminally possessed states.” Furthermore, gangs in Central America, especially in Honduras where MS-13 has become more closely linked to drug trafficking, have reduced local extortion, become more aware of their nascent political power and have even engaged in rudimentary social welfare provision. Another major trend identified in this report is the strategic diversification of trafficking routes, activities, and markets. For instance, licitly established transpacific trade between East Asia and Latin America has been exploited by criminal groups involved in wildlife and drug trafficking. This, along with other activities such as illegal logging and mining, have undermined licit trade. Moreover, criminal groups have also conducted cyber-attacks against government agencies to obtain false documentation to illegally conduct logging activities in protected areas of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Such activities illustrate the growing relationship between technology, illicit behavior, and criminal groups’ diverse capabilities. An emerging nexus between state and non-state threat networks is also identified as a key trend in the region. Notable links between criminal groups and malign state actors such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are publicly known with indigenous and under-resourced communities violently confronting illicit organizations that sometimes have the tacit support of government authorities and agencies. Moreover, external state actors’ investments and economic interests in highly corrupt and unstable political environments pave the way for impunity, which enables threat networks to operate without inhibition. The most explicit example pertains to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—FARC)-linked mining operations in Venezuela. Undoubtedly, trends are becoming increasingly complex now that activities have reached a global scale. This is also evident in illicit financial flows into, through, and out of the region. In terms of money laundering, tried and tested methods still seem to be favored, although it is likely that new opportunities, such as those provided by digital currencies, will be increasingly exploited in the future. The paper concludes that, in spite of adverse trends, it is important to avoid worst-case analysis. It also suggests, however, that many of the problems in the region stem fundamentally from poor governance—and that taking steps to deal with this should be a priority.

Miami: Florida International University, Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, 2019. 45p.

By Lea Gerster, Francesca Arcostanzo, Nestor Prieto-Chavana, Dominik Hammer and Christian Schwieter

As part of its project on “Combating Radicalisation in Right-Wing Extremist Online Subcultures”, ISD is investigating smaller platforms to which the German-speaking far-right online scene is retreating. Their aim is to circumvent regulation and moderation on large platforms, for example as required by the German Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG, or 'Facebook Act'). Analyses contained in the report on “Telegram as a Buttress” have already made clear the importance of investigating PeerTube. While writing the previous report, the ISD research team came across multiple video platforms with almost identical layouts and functionalities. It was found that eight out of 19 video platforms identified were set up using the free software PeerTube. PeerTube is an example of a growing socio-technological movement that attempts to turn away from large, centralised platforms towards decentralised and mostly community-managed websites. Instead of a single platform with a monopoly on content, this movement is building a network based on servers that are maintained independently of one another. This is leading to a “hydra effect”: even if connected servers are cut off, the network itself survives, allowing for new servers to be added at will. While far-right extremists are not the ones driving this phenomenon, it does appear that they are exploiting these new-found possibilities. For example, various far-right figureheads have established platforms via PeerTube where users can in some cases create their own accounts. Some of these PeerTube platforms record millions of visits per month. But it is not just its reach but also its structure which makes PeerTube worth investigating. With PeerTube, individuals or organisations can create their own video platforms where they set the rules for content, moderation and user registration. This is essential for far-right and conspiracy groups and individuals who, according to previous ISD research, prefer audiovisual platforms to other types, such as micro-blogging services. PeerTube is a particularly valuable tool since it is more technologically demanding to host and access audiovisual materials than text files. In contrast to centralized platforms such as YouTube, PeerTube content is managed separately by so-called instances - this refers to the small-scale video platforms created with PeerTube software. Different instances can network with each other and form federations. This allows videos that have been uploaded on one instance to be played on another instance without having to change the website. PeerTube belongs to the so-called Fediverse, which will be discussed in more detail below. Another difference to centralized video platforms is that this software uses peer-to-peer technology (P2P), which presumably explains the name. The fact that instances are not managed by large companies, but by individuals or groups at their own expense and with the help of free software, also has implications for their regulation. Key Findings • There is no central moderating authority for managing content. PeerTube offers individuals or groups, whose content has been blocked on centrally managed video platforms for to violating the terms of service, an attractive way of continuing to share their content online. Where it is these groups or individuals who control moderation, content can only be removed from the network by switching off the server. • It is difficult to accurately map the size and connections of the Fediverse. The network is constantly in flux as the relationships between instances can change rapidly due to blocking and follow requests. Instances can also go offline from one day to the next. • The instances used by far-right and conspiracy actors make up only a small fraction of the Fediverse network. They primarily network among themselves. However, some of the instances that were investigated are connected to a wider Fediverse through their own highly networked servers. • The deletion of extremist YouTube channels is not necessarily reflected in the number of account registrations on the corresponding PeerTube instances. PeerTube is rather used as a back-up option for deplatforming. The frequently observed phenomenon that not all users migrate to the new platform can also be observed here. • Instances are often customised in different ways. For example, each instance varies in whether they permit third parties to register for accounts and upload videos. There is no clear correlation between the numbers of accounts, videos and views. However, the most watched videos on relevant instances were mostly created by prominent members of the milieu, which would appear to indicate that persons with a pre-established audience are particularly successful on PeerTube. • The instances selected for the five case studies hosted a lot of content that focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. Another frequent narrative was an alleged conspiracy perpetuated by elites who, according to conspiracy theorists, use events such as the pandemic or Putin's war against Ukraine to further their secret agenda. These findings suggest that PeerTube instances provide safe refuge for disinformation. • Because PeerTube is a piece of software that anyone can access and use in a variety of different ways, state regulation will do little to limit its use by farright extremists. While state agencies can enforce individual aspects of the NetzDG against PeerTube instances, many instances do not have the number of users required to impose reporting obligations or requirements to delete content. Moreover, most content is not hosted with the aim of generating profit, which limits the applicability of both the Facebook Act and the EU's Digital Services Act. • However, PeerTube's community moderation function does allow the community to moderate the use of PeerTube for promoting harmful content. One way of doing this is by isolating extremist instances. Efforts should be undertaken to work with the Fediverse community, i.e. with the server operators and their users, and to develop best practices for identifying and combating extremist activities. This could include further training on how to spot hate speech or setting up a body for reporting extremist instances.

London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2023). 44p.

By Gary LaFree

In recent years, nutrition researchers have found that ice cream may have as many health benefits as low-fat milk or yoghurt for those with diabetes or at risk of diabetes. Nonetheless, they have resisted reporting this finding to the media, the public, or other researchers. This observation got me thinking about how preconceived assumptions and biases affect social science in general and criminology in particular, are affected by the preconceived assumptions and biases of those who produce them. In this essay, I argue that the production of criminology is a cultural enterprise that reflects the attitudes and values of those who produce it. In my address for the Stockholm Prize, I summarize the main thesis of my Losing Legitimacy book and then discuss two recent projects that were influenced by the idea that strong social institutions reduce criminal behavior. The first examines the impact of the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015 on crime and arrest rates. The second examines the impact of globalization on national homicide rates. In both cases, the results were unexpected.

Policy Implications

As scientists, it is critical that we evaluate research based on its theoretical soundness and methodological sophistication rather than whether it fits a currently hot topic or politically popular perspective. Science progresses by the constant process of evaluating theoretical propositions with empirical data—regardless of where those data lead us. Openness about crime and reactions to crime is no less important than honesty about the positive benefits of ice-cream consumption.

Criminology and Public Policy, 2025, 19p.

By Alexander Ritzmann With contributions by Jean-Yves Camus, Joshua Fisher-Birch, Bulcsú Hunyadi, Jacek Purski and Jakub Woroncow  

• This report explores the role of antisemitism in mobilizing extremist and terrorist actors to violence, focusing on trends and patterns across France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and the United States. It discusses antisemitic narratives, key antisemitic actors, transnational connections, dissemination strategies, and provides policy recommendations. • Antisemitic narratives serve as tools to justify violence across ideological lines, framing Jewish communities and individuals as threats or scapegoats. Rightwing extremists propagate conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement,” portraying Jews as orchestrating adverse societal change. Islamist extremists often conflate Jewish identity with global oppression, particularly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Left-wing extremists link Jews to capitalism or imperialism, using antizionism to mask antisemitism. These narratives are adapted to local and geopolitical contexts, reinforcing the targeting of Jewish communities and individuals. • The report documents a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war. Violent antisemitic rhetoric has spiked in demonstrations and online discourses. Islamist extremist networks, left-wing extremist actors and pro-Palestinian extremist groups have particularly amplified violent antisemitic sentiments under the guise of antizionist rhetoric, sometimes overlapping with traditional right-wing antisemitic themes. • Transnational networks facilitate the spread of antisemitic narratives. Right-wing extremist groups connect online and through events and annual marches, while Islamist extremist groups leverage shared ideological or religious frameworks to justify violence. Left-wing extremist and pro-Palestinian extremist groups maintain operations across Europe and in the U.S., amplifying violent antisemitic narratives. Shared slogans, symbols, and coordinated protests underline their interconnectedness. • In some countries, an increase in violent attacks against Jewish or Israeli targets has been documented. • The report emphasizes that the concept of combatting organized antisemitism should be added to strategies that aim at targeting violence-oriented antisemitic actors. Such professional organized antisemitic actors often operate in (transnational) networks, utilizing online platforms and offline activities to propagate hate and justify or conduct violence. • The report also calls attention to the role of states like the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation in fostering violent antisemitism through proxies and propaganda. • Policy recommendations include focusing on identifying and disrupting key antisemitic actors, enhancing data collection and analysis, and fostering international collaboration. The report also stresses the need for tailored preventative and educational initiatives and stricter online content regulation and enforcement to combat the spread of antisemitism and its violent manifestations. 

Counter Extremism Project, 2025. 153p.

By Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Bennett Clifford, Lorenzo Vidino

Executive Summary • Antisemitism is pervasive throughout several categories of American extremist movements, both violent and non-violent. American extremists incorporate antisemitic tropes and narratives in every level of their worldviews, using them to help construct “us/them” dichotomies and wide-sweeping conspiracies that are essential to their movements. • During the past several decades, the American extremist movements that have been among the most violent—specifically, far-right and jihadist groups—have used antisemitism to target Jewish people, Jewish houses of worship, Jewish community institutions, and Americans supporting the Jewish state of Israel. • Antisemitism, as a belief and world-structuring theory, can at times serve as a gateway issue for individuals into further radicalization to violent extremism. Nonviolent and violent iterations of the same extremist milieus often share antisemitic views as central elements of their belief system, and thus antisemitism constitutes a linkage between activist and violent extremist segments of the same movement. • Several case studies of violent American extremists, representing far-right and jihadist movements respectively, demonstrate that antisemitism can be an integral part of American extremists’ progression through the radicalization process and in justifying terrorist attacks. • Based on this report’s finding that antisemitism is foundational to multiple violent extremist movements in the United States, counter-extremism practitioners and scholars may consider incorporating antisemitism as a diagnostic factor for extremist radicalization. o While there is no single profile of an American extremist, antisemitism has long been widespread among American extremist movements of multiple persuasions, acting as a least common denominator between extremist groups. o Antisemitic beliefs often serve as a key entry point for individuals to radicalize, join extremist groups, and progress into violent mobilization. o By using promotion of antisemitism as a factor in identifying key influencers and ideologues in extremist movements, Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programming can isolate key nodes in extremist groups and debunk the narratives they promote without engaging in theological debates. o Studying the role of antisemitism in extremist groups can assist scholars in identifying common themes between different types of extremism, as well as between non-violent and violent strands of the same extremist movements. This can improve analysis on the broader relationships between and within extremist groups.

Washington DC: Program on Extremism, George Washington University, 2020. 27p.

By Mohamed Bin Ali and Ahmad Saiful Rijal Bin Hassan

Far-right extremism based on racial and extremist ideologies is finding resonance among some Singaporean youth, posing a challenge to the country’s counterradicalisation strategies, which had been based on religiously motivated extremism. The Singapore authorities need to review their counter-radicalisation frameworks as they grapple with this emerging threat.

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU 2025. 4p.

By Mathias Bak, Kristoffer Nilaus Tarp, and Christina Schori Liang

During the last few decades, the concept of violent extremism (VE) has played an increasingly prominent role in policies and development programming on a global level. Having gone through several incarnations, the current focus for most actors deals with preventing and countering violent extremism. This terminology was constructed in an effort to repackage the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in a manner that shifted the focus away from the over-militarised responses of the 90s and early 2000s, to methods linked to social support and prevention. Where counterterrorism focuses on countering terrorists through physical means, the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) approach aims to prevent the rise of violent extremist organisations (VEOs) through less militarised methods. P/CVE programs therefore aim at developing resilience among communities that may be prone to violent extremism.

According to the 2015 UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, such interventions aim to address the root causes and drivers of violent extremism, which often include: socio-economic issues; discrimination; marginalization; poor governance; human rights violations; remnants of violent conflict; collective grievances; and other psychological factors. The concept of violent extremism has also become increasingly mainstream in the international community, with both the UN Security Council (UNSC 2014)2 and the UN General Assembly3 (UNGA 2015) calling for member states to address VE.

Geneva Paper 24/19, Geneva, SWIT: Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2019. 40p.

By Zoe Marchment, Caitlin Clemmow, Paul Gill

This is the protocol for a Campbell systematic review. The objectives are as follows. The EGM has three main objectives: (1) Identify the strength (in terms of evidence quality) and depth (in terms of volume of evidence) of evidence base on the efficacy of situational crime prevention measures in preventing terrorist attacks against soft targets and crowded places. (2) Identify the heterogeneity in the effects of situational crime prevention measures against terrorist attacks and link this to issues related to context and implementation. (3) Identify the mechanisms through which situational crime prevention measures have an effect on terrorist attacks. To achieve these objectives, an EGM will seek out reliable quantitative evidence on effect and qualitative evidence on mechanisms, moderators, implementation and economics. Resultingly, it will be possible to identify research gaps and evidence imbalances to facilitate research investment, identify gaps and topics for new research, and provide a foundation for systematic reviews by showing where sufficient evidence exists for aggregation. The underpinning programme of work will result in the presentation of rigorous empirical research on this topic to help researchers and decision-makers understand the available evidence.

Campbell Systematic Reviews, Volume21, Issue2, June 2025, 12p.

By Triana McNeil

  A hate crime occurs nearly every hour in the U.S., based on data reported to the FBI. Investigations of recent hate crimes have suggested that exposure to hate speech on the internet may have contributed to the attackers’ biases against their victims. In 2021, the FBI placed hate crimes at the same national threat priority level as preventing domestic violent extremism. GAO was asked to review information on hate crimes and hate speech on the internet. This report examines (1) the extent to which DOJ collects data on hate crimes that occur on the internet, (2) what company data indicate about steps selected companies have taken to remove hate speech and violent extremist speech from their internet platforms, and (3) what is known about users’ experience with, or expression of, hate speech on the internet, and its relationship to hate crimes and domestic violent extremism. GAO analyzed U.S. hate crime data and interviewed DOJ officials. GAO analyzed data and interviewed officials from six selected companies operating internet platforms with publicly available policies prohibiting hate and violent extremist speech. GAO assessed peer reviewed and nonprofit studies that described hate speech on the internet, hate crimes, and domestic violent extremist incidents. What GAO Recommends GAO recommends that BJS explore options to measure bias-related criminal victimization that occurs on the internet through the National Crime Victimization Survey or in a supplemental survey, as appropriate. BJS agreed with this recommendation.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2024. 87p.

By Alex Goldenberg, Joel Finkelstein,

In the predawn hours of September 12, 2001, on board a helicopter heading from Liberty State Park to State Police Headquarters, I had my first opportunity since the terrorist attacks the previous morning to wonder, “how the hell did they pull this off?” It was inconceivable to me, with the trillions of dollars our nation had spent on a global early warning system to prevent another Pearl Harbor surprise attack, that we were unable to prevent the 9/11 attacks or, with the exception of the heroism of the passengers and crew of United 93, to stop them in progress. The question haunted me for the remainder of my term as New Jersey’s Attorney General and beyond until, as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, I was able to help piece together precisely how the terrorists managed to succeed. At every turn, they hid in plain sight. They traveled openly and freely among the Americans they despised, then disappeared when circumstances warranted. Specifically, on the day of 9/11 itself, the first thing the hijackers did once they secured the cockpits was to turn off the transponders that identified the aircraft to military and civilian controllers. This had the effect of making the planes’ radar signals disappear into the clutter of raw radar data, making it extremely difficult to track the planes. A lot has changed in the years since the 9/11 attacks happened and the 9/11 Commission Report was issued. There were no smart phones then, no Twitter or Instagram, no Google or Snapchat. The revolution in communication technology since has transformed both the way we live and the tactics employed by the extremists who want to kill us. What has remained constant, however, is the extremists’ strategy of using the instrumentalities of freedom recursively in order to destroy it, and the challenge to governments to anticipate the new generations of tactics in order to frustrate their employment. The Report you are about to read, “Cyber Swarming: Memetic Warfare and Viral Insurgency,” represents a breakthrough case study in the capacity to identify cyber swarms and viral insurgencies in nearly real time as they are developing in plain sight. The result of an analysis of over 100 million social media comments, the authors demonstrate how the “boogaloo meme,” “a joke for some, acts as a violent meme that circulates instructions for a violent, viral insurgency for others.” Using it, like turning off the transponders on 9/11, enables the extremists to hide in plain sight, disappearing into the clutter of innocent messages, other data points. It should be of particular concern, the authors note, for the military, for whom “the meme’s emphasis on military language and culture poses a special risk.” Because most of law enforcement and the military remain ignorant of “memetic warfare,” the authors demonstrate, extremists who employ it “possess a distinct advantage over government officials and law enforcement.” As with the 9/11 terrorists, “they already realize that they are at war. Public servants cannot afford to remain ignorant of this subject because as sites, followers, and activists grow in number, memes can reach a critical threshold and tipping point, beyond which they can suddenly saturate and mainstream across entire cultures.” This Report is at once an urgent call to recognize an emerging threat and a prescription for how to counter it. As such, it offers that rarest of opportunities: the chance to stop history from repeating itself.

The Network Contagion Research Institute , 2021. 11p.