Suddenly he was everywhere, the ‘nihilistic violent extremist’. Children or young adults, usually men, who commit extreme violence out of pure desire for destruction, bred in online ponds full of cynicism and hatred.
The label is in use for young people who compete against each other online in sadistic violence. Often with online videos, as recently happened between groups of boys in Beverwijk and the surrounding area. Authorities are also concerned about so-called sovereigns, who fall prey to conspiracy fantasies and withdraw from society. In America there is now much more talk of ‘terrorists’ with nihilistic or diffuse motives; the murderer of Charlie Kirk and the attacker of Trump would be among them. The FBI uses a new, controversial perpetrator profile: the ‘nihilistic extremist’, who is guilty of “criminal behavior that pursues political, social or religious goals that essentially arise from hatred of society and the desire to collapse it.”
The alarm is also sounding in the Netherlands. From meme to murdera recent report from The Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS), warns of “a new generation of violence” among young people, cultivated online and across clear political or ideological divides. Such online extremism is no longer a marginal phenomenon, according to the HCSS, but at the same time “important knowledge about online extremist ecosystems is lacking in the Netherlands.”
The latter is confirmed by three experts from science and practice who want to jointly call for more research into the online culture of extreme violence and for greater care in the debate about it. “A term has been launched, nihilistic extremism, which can be applied at any time to young people who do things online that are not allowed,” says Bram Sizoo. He is a special professor of clinical psychology of radicalization at the University of Amsterdam. His concern is that too much is being lumped together in the social commotion.
The Castor College in Beverwijk. Schools in that city had to close for safety reasons in September due to threats on social media.
Photo ANP
Grooming and blackmail
Sizoo: “We still know far too little about it. We are indeed seeing a new type of very worrying behavior online. Young people who share ultra-violent videos with each other. But that does not all automatically lead to dangerous extremism. All kinds of motives can play a role, including the adolescent need to test boundaries or to shock. Generalizations with labels can be stigmatizing for such young people or give them a kind of higher status. That’s what you want too. not.”
This is about a “nihilistic glorification of violence,” he said From meme to murder. With grooming and blackmail, “young people are driven to murder, child sexual abuse or suicide.” Like American researchers, the HCSS notes that ideology does not play a clear role in this, but is “hybridized”. Online extremism is a colorful and branched network that runs from far-right ‘eco-fascism’ and the ‘manosphere’ to groups for incels (involuntarily celibate men) or Islamic extremists. In that tangle of discontent, hatred and sensation, “salad bar extremism” arises, a “erratic and difficult to predict mix of radical sentiments,” according to the report. Such as the seemingly bizarre right-wing racist combination White Jihad.
But what is the connection with violent extremism in the offline world? Sizoo receives support from researcher Elanie Rodermond. She is a criminologist at the Vrije Universiteit and a member of a counterterrorism expert group of the NCTV. She says: “You hear a lot about it now gamification of terrorthe role that online gaming is said to play in radicalization and extremism. We see that there are all kinds of connections between that culture and extreme right-wing online communities, but we simply don’t know how that works exactly, or whether there is a causal relationship.”
People have to cross a considerable hurdle just to hit someone
Right-wing extremists probably recruit in online groups, among young people who have been depressed by long-term exposure to extreme violence. Rodermond: “But we cannot see how the lines run. We know from criminology that it is not easy to do violence to someone. People have to cross a considerable threshold just to hit someone, let alone extreme violence. So you really don’t have to deal with every young person who has ever seen a picture of Pepe the Frog immediately tells the AIVD to call. Radicalization requires many more steps, we need to gain insight into this.”
Together with Rosalind van der Lem, psychiatrist and director of the psychiatric institution Fivoor Ambulant, the two are preparing a scientific article on the subject. Van der Lem is also a participant in the Poliplatform for providers of outpatient forensic care, and has noticed broad interest in the subject. “We don’t see much of this type of radicalism in practice,” she says, “but that is also because we were not focused on it. The publicity about it can stir up social fear, but it also helps us to focus.”
And what about “nihilism,” the belief that nothing in life has any value? A recent Canadian government report identifies in extreme online groups “a deep misanthropy, hatred of humanity in general, and a desire not just to disrupt but to destroy.” Mentioned are the extreme right-wing ‘No Lives Matter’ and the network of ‘accelerationists’, who want to overthrow ‘the system’ by provoking violence or even civil war. Belief in white supremacy is often the ideology, the goal is to create chaos.
Vengeful fantasies of doom
That has precedents in the offline world. The two American perpetrators who committed a massacre at Columbine High School near Denver in 1999, a still infamous school shootinghad previously immersed themselves in vengeful fantasies of doom. That possibility has been endlessly expanded by the online labyrinth of extreme and occult speculation and sinister conspiracies.
At the same time, the role of ‘nihilism’ can be exaggerated or abused. It already surfaced in the US in the then controversial lawsuit of the wealthy sons Leopold and Loeb in 1924, the boy murderers who had ‘just like that’ murdered a 14-year-old boyfriend. According to their lawyer, they were inspired by reading Nietzsche, the European philosopher with only “contempt and sarcasm for everything that is valuable in life.” In the early twentieth century, anarchists and socialists in the US were branded as nihilists that threatened the state, a trend that seems to be repeating itself in the Trump era.
Rodermond wants to nuance this: “The link to terrorism ignores important differences. Terrorists want to sow social fear with a concrete political or social goal. But such a motive is usually missing in the extremely violent behavior you find online. Fear in society is the result, but not necessarily the intention.” The new FBI perpetrator profile that is now being used in the US is also contradictory: nihilists do not pursue political or social goals, after all, they have no value.
For all these reasons, greater clarity about the online culture of violence is also urgently needed in the Netherlands, the three say. They argue for multidisciplinary research that should help professionals – teachers, healthcare providers, police personnel – to recognize signals. With the security services because, Sizoo believes, “they see more than we encounter in the consultation rooms.” Young people themselves should play the leading role in that research. “We are elderly, we don’t understand that world,” says Sizoo. Psychiatrist Van der Lem: “We need to be able to explain to parents how they can pay better attention to their children, but also teach the children themselves how to stay out of it and how to protect each other. That’s what it’s all about.”
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