#Amarnath Amarasingam

[gettothestabbing]

In Canada, El Bahnasawy was portrayed as something of a victim. His lawyer Sabrina Shroff told the CBC he was young and “vulnerable,” adding, “It’s a very difficult situation undoubtedly — not just for him but also for his entire family.”

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada told Global News that El Bahnasawy’s views could be found at some mosques but that anti-Islamic sentiment in Canada could make Muslims more likely to support a terrorist organization. “Islamophobia helps others to be radicalized,” Soharwardy explained, and until the Islamophobia “which is going on in our communities” stops, the radicalization is “going to continue.”

On the other hand, Amarnath Amarasingam of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told Global News: “We have a young man from Canada receiving bomb making instructions from operatives linked to ISIS’s Khurasan province and financial assistance from ISIS networks in the Philippines. This has huge implications for how we approach ISIS’s loss of territory in Iraq and Syria, since it’s clear that their networks elsewhere could pose an equally serious threat in terms of attack planning in Western countries.”

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

“How do we stop these people?” the president says, referring to immigrants and refugees crossing the southern U.S. border. “Shoot them,” a voice calls from the crowd. And the president chuckles.

Elsewhere, a man watches as a website he built becomes a bastion of fringe movements with violent rhetoric — a cheering section for mass shootings, where murderers are lionized as heroes.

And in Texas, a lone-wolf shooter posts an anti-immigrant screed online before opening fire at a Walmart.

Did the first two things directly lead to the third? It’s impossible to say. But social scientists say there is evidence to suggest that they’re all linked. As research into terrorism and rare types of violent crimes has become more data-driven, it’s begun to show that the people we call “lone wolves” aren’t. Like the El Paso shooter, they may be isolated in their schools or physical communities, and they don’t have networks of co-conspirators helping to plan attacks. But behind these apparent loners is a sense of community and of participating in a movement. They’ve adopted new norms. They’ve had those norms reinforced. And then they act.

The criminology and terrorism studies communities used to be focused on identifying individuals who were likely to become violent, said Amarnath Amarasingam, professor of religion at Ontario’s Queen’s University and a senior research fellow at the anti-extremism think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Researchers would try and figure out a “type” of person or personality that was likely to become a terrorist or commit acts of violence. “Some of the ways we thought we could identify them were upbringing, poverty, their refugee or immigrant experience, attachment to conflicts back home,” Amarasingam said. But studies comparing these variables have largely failed to turn up any signs of a consistent profile for violent extremism.

“We’ve done some projects looking at communities out of which people travel to Syria” to fight alongside ISIS, he said. “You have all the factors the same. They’re all refugee communities. All come from conflict zones. All characterized by trauma. They’re the same ethnicity, same religion, same age group, same gender. But one person goes to law school and the other goes to Syria.”

Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College who has studied white supremacists in the U.S. for decades, said her research has found essentially the same thing. There is no profile that can tell you who will pick up a gun, she told me.

But, she said, when people who feel marginalized hear violent rhetoric that tells them another group of people is to blame and deserves punishment, we know someone will.

History suggests as much. “You can go back and look in this country at statistics around lynching. When there is rhetoric in the newspaper about blacks stealing jobs from white people then there is violence that follows it.”

That applies to so-called lone wolves, too. Participation in spaces where violent rhetoric is supported and welcome fosters a sense of community. And that community can be critical to what comes next.

For instance, in 2013, researchers published an analysis of lone-actor terrorism that was based on coding of the characteristics and behaviors of 119 individual terrorists. It’s easy to look at the stats and describe these people as loners — 40 percent were unemployed at the time of their attack; 50 percent were single and had never married; 54 percent were described as angry by family members and people who knew them in real life.

But the analysis also showed that these same people were often involved in ideological communities — communities built online and offline, where future terrorists sought (and often found) support and validation for their ideas. Thirty-four percent had recently joined a movement or organization centered around their extremist ideologies. Forty-eight percent were interacting in-person with extremist activists and 35 percent were doing the same online. In 68 percent of the cases, there’s evidence the “lone wolf” was consuming literature and propaganda produced by other people that helped to shore up their beliefs.

More than half the time, someone knew about the terrorist’s plan before it was carried out. (A fact that also turns up in research on school shootings in the United States.)

There’s been very little empirical research on lone actor terrorists. But what does exist has been enough to convince some researchers that “lone wolf” is a moniker that never should have existed. The ties to communities of extremist thought and social pressure are too strong to ever say someone was truly acting alone.

And that, experts told me, is why the internet has changed the way violent extremism works. In the 1930s, the public rhetoric of someone like the racist, anti-immigrant radio star Father Coughlin could (and did) create a community of violence. In the 1970s, Daniels said, white supremacists published newsletters that fostered community for subscribers.

But the internet has created new ways for those communities to recruit and build. And it’s happening faster than it did before. Daniels began to notice this in the 1990s, when she saw white supremacists launching websites that appeared to be tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., but linked people to documents designed to undermine King’s legacy and build suspicion about the civil rights movement. Today, the same kind of “idea laundering” happens on Twitter, where extremists use trending hashtags to link their ideas to mainstream ones.

And once a person does a search on those ideas, algorithms can very quickly silo them into a reality where extremism is all they see. “If you search for ISIS or neo-Nazis, you’ll get more,” Amarasingam said. “We’ve created brand new YouTube accounts and within a day or two all your recommendations are neo nazi content, just from a couple of searches.”

Meanwhile, the internet has given us more ways to foster friendships outside our physical spaces. Amarasingam is currently studying the communities that form around gaming platforms and how those can become incubators for extremism. These spaces are important, he told me, because they’re exactly the kind of thing that fits into what we know about lone actors. A person can be a white supremacist living in some liberal bastion city. They might have few friends or close relationships physically. They look around, and feel like an oppressed minority. But online, they have friends around the world. They can feel like part of a transnational movement. And when they commit violence, Amarasingam and Daniels said, these people are often saying they did it for that movement, for that community.

“That’s the power of the online space,” Amarasingam said. “People are so obsessed with the content [of video games] that they miss the human aspect. It’s not simply about tweets and Facebook videos. They’re actually becoming friends. They’re helping each other and counseling each other. That connection is quite powerful.”

[merrikstryfe]

The argument that external experts made to Motherboard aligns with what the Twitter employee aired: Society as a whole uncontroversially and unequivocally demanded that Twitter take action against ISIS in the wake of beheading videos spreading far and wide on the platform. The automated approach that Twitter took to eradicating ISIS was successful: “I haven’t seen a legit ISIS supporter on Twitter who lasts longer than 15 seconds for two-and-a-half years,” Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told Motherboard in a phone call. Society and politicians were willing to accept that some accounts were mistakenly suspended by Twitter during that process (for example, accounts belonging to the hacktivist group Anonymous that were reporting ISIS accounts to Twitter as part of an operation called #OpISIS were themselves banned).

That same eradicate-everything approach, applied to white supremacy, is much more controversial.

“Most people can agree a beheading video or some kind of ISIS content should be proactively removed, but when we try to talk about the alt-right or white nationalism, we get into dangerous territory, where we’re talking about [Iowa Rep.] Steve King or maybe even some of Trump’s tweets, so it becomes hard for social media companies to say all of this ‘this content should be removed,’” Amarasingam said.

[mbti-sorted]

Amarnath Amarasingam

Anonymous said to mbti-sorted:

Amarnath Amarasingam - infp?

[hereistheend]

Tweet from Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam)

Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) Tweeted:

Peterson does not look well. https://twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam/status/1508630799008075778?s=20&t=iC7QjuqGjlt1rkObZJx4Kg

[northernresistance]

Tweet from Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam)

Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) Tweeted:

This is beautiful because it's so hard to do. A meticulous documenting of how misinformation spreads on here. We all see it happen but rarely have the screenshots to make the case properly. Nicely done, @mypoortiredsoul. https://twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam/status/1495274131415306240?s=20&t=qh82yf1m8w-FaVSHEj48cw

[shirlleycoyle]

The Far Right Looks to Small Cells and Lone Wolves After Capitol Fiasco

America has a problem. Due to increased law enforcement pressure and attention, the far right appears to be adopting the offline and off-grid model to evade surveillance.

While groups like Atomwaffen Division, the Base, and the Oath Keepers have made headlines as domestic terrorism threats, experts say that in the wake of federal crackdowns and the Capitol Hill insurrection, the far right is increasingly discussing organizational structures similar to that used by Timothy McVeigh, the mastermind behind the devastating Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Inside chat rooms and on Telegram channels frequented by accelerationist neo-Nazis, who believe acts of terror will hasten the collapse of the U.S. government, many proclaim the “anti-group” era has arrived, where public-facing organizations with symbols and propaganda are no longer viable, being too easily monitored and disrupted by the FBI. Instead, they say, local cells of no more than a half-dozen or so people organizing in person and planning attacks outside of traditional intelligence nets is the only way forward.

A move to more underground methods would starkly contrast the way the invasion of Capitol Hill was largely planned out in the open on Facebook and other social media platforms—something that made it very easy for the FBI to identify suspects. Offline terror cells present a major challenge for authorities trying to disrupt attacks before it's too late.

“We want lone wolves, we want local cells without online recruitment,” one Telegram post from a well-followed accelerationist account recently preached, before pointing out that law enforcement, hot on the trail of domestic terrorists, is eager to infiltrate groups. “Without spending extensive resources, agencies like the DHS or FBI can’t trifle or sabotage. It doesn’t matter if you are organizing a cell via Steam, they can’t do ANYTHING if you know and trust each member personally.

“Oh and don’t forget, if you never actually take meaningful action none of this matters, you will fade away just like every failed movement before you.”

Another Telegram account known among accelerationists urged followers not to join militias akin to the Oath Keepers or III%ers. 

“Forget about political solutions and forget about joining militias that allow themselves to be seen online,” said one of its posts. “I still don’t understand recruiters who promote their groups on Telegram and use email as a means for quick recruitment.”

The same account highlighted how terror groups like the Atomwaffen Division and the Base used social media and email accounts to recruit new members—some of them anti-fascist infiltrators out to expose internal communications, and, in the case of the Base, one an undercover FBI agent—and subsequently had several members arrested on terrorism-related charges.

Mollie Saltskog, an intelligence analyst at the Soufan Center, a private counterterrorism agency, said it was important to remember the historical precedents for the small-cell structure.

“Just because a cell is small doesn’t mean it cannot carry out extremely lethal acts of terrorism,” she said. “The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing is a case in point. Similar to McVeigh, these groups are also often inspired by and adhere to an ideology that not only justifies the use of violence against the government and innocent civilians, but also views it as desirable.”

McVeigh, a decorated veteran of Operation Desert Storm, planned and executed the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people with two accomplices—both of whom, Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, served in the military and had the tradecraft to help with what the FBI describes as "the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history." The attack completely blindsided the intelligence community, which initially ran with the theory that it was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists. Since the bombing, McVeigh has become a much-celebrated figure for the far-right. The Base and Atomwaffen Division both considered his attack the model to strive for.

Saltskog said the rise of the decentralized cell is a clear indication of the evolution of far-right terror networks and their reaction to increased law enforcement attention.

“This is a dangerous development that can increase the threat these types of groups pose. If organization and planning happens in small cells completely offline, it becomes harder for law enforcement to monitor and thwart any planned attacks,” she said. “In addition, even if one cell is infiltrated or distrusted, this type of organizational structure still would not yield information about what another cell may be planning.”

According to Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, he detected an uptick in the promotion of the “unnamed org” and the decentralized cell model as early as last year, when the FBI began dismantling the Base, and as recently as last week, after the inauguration of the Biden administration.

“Two recent events that have led to increases in Telegram chatter advocating for creating small groups or networks have been the January 2020 arrests of members of the Base, and, more recently, the Biden administration’s prioritization of fighting white supremacist extremism,” he said. “While small unnamed groups are usually promoted in the belief that they are more secure from infiltration by law enforcement or anti-fascist activists, it also means that it is harder to track their activities, and makes it easier for propagandists to make unconfirmable claims regarding their size and effectiveness.”

A COLLAGE OF TRAINING PHOTOS POSTED BY MEMBERS OF THE BASE.

The concept of the leaderless resistance and the focus on the autonomous group have long been a feature of the white nationalist terror movement. The Turner Diaries and Siege, books that are near holy writ among neo-Nazis, preach the value of small cells and unclaimed assassinations and bombings. Despite that doctrine of stealthiness, the rise of groups like Atomwaffen Division and the Base in the late aughts reflected the influence of jihadist terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and their use of flashy, widely-shared propaganda videos as a means of recruitment.

Amarnath Amarasingam, an assistant professor of religion at Queen’s University who researches terrorism, said he isn’t surprised the far right is discussing shifting to the anti-group model, but that this wouldn't necessarily work in the movement’s favor.

“The notion of leaderless resistance is almost four decades old in the far right,” he said. “But the main weakness is that even if you are operationally anti-group, you still need to be ideologically coherent as a broader social movement, probably have some sort of charismatic leadership and so on. Otherwise, the ideological coherence could start to factionalize and go adrift along with operational cells.”

Rinaldo Nazzaro, the founder of the Base, who is living in Russia and still attempting to foment an American insurgency from abroad, has argued that secretive and smaller groups aren’t effective. (Neither, he says, is publicly posting in Telegram chats, which he sees as “fedposting”—online behavior that will result in criminal prosecution—and yet does all the time.)

“If you don't have a public group, few if any outside of it will know it even exists (by design, of course) which makes successfully networking fundamentally problematic if not flat-out impossible,” he wrote in a message to his followers viewed by VICE News.

In the last year alone, though, the Base has seen nine of its members picked up by FBI agents in raids across the country, largely due to infiltration of the group and its online communications network.

Accelerationist neo-Nazis are well aware that law enforcement has the ability to spy on them online. Operational security (“OPSEC,” for short), is at least in theory top of mind, and one well-known neo-Nazi channel offering advice on how to evade authorities advised that it was time to burn all social media accounts.

“If you are involved in any form of resistance to this anti-White System, then you needed to get your OPSEC on point yesterday,” said a post from the day of President Biden’s inauguration. “Purge your social media accounts. Get rid of any normie Google, Facebook, Twitter accounts etc. The first place your enemies will look is social media to find your face, occupation, and family.”

With files from Mack Lamoureux.

Follow Ben on Twitter.

The Far Right Looks to Small Cells and Lone Wolves After Capitol Fiasco syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[malangtoday-blog]

Analisis Pakar soal Nasib ISIS Setelah al-Baghdadi Tewas, Bakal Ada Masalah Serius

jpnn.com – Kematian Abu Bakar al-Baghdadi diyakini bakal menimbulkan masalah serius di internal ISIS. Faksi-faksi di dalam organisasi teroris tersebut diyakini bakal bersaing memperbutkan kursi nomor satu.

“Perpecahan tidak bisa dihindari, itu selalu terjadi ketika sebuah grup radikal kehilangan pemimpin kharismatik,” terang pengamat terorisme asal Irak Hisham al-Hasemi seperti dikutip Reuters, Senin (28/10).

Situasi diperburuk dengan ikut tewasnya tangan kanan Baghdadi, Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir. Juru bicara ISIS itu dibunuh milisi Kurdi di Jarablus, Suriah, pada hari yang sama dengan Baghdadi.

Abu Hasan sejak lama diprediksi jadi penerus Baghdadi. Sejauh ini, belum ada lagi tokoh lain yang terpantau memiliki potensi memimpin ISIS.

“Yang pasti, penerus Baghdadi adalah orang yang cocok dengan kebutuhan ISIS saat ini, seorang pemimpin militer dengan pengalaman jihad yang cukup kuat menangani transisi,” ujar Amarnath Amarasingam, ujar asisten profesor di Queens University, London.

Meski mengalami perpecahan, ISIS diprediksi akan tetap jadi organisasi teror yang berbahaya. Terutama di wilayah-wilayah yang selama ini jadi basis mereka.

Baghdadi tewas dengan cara meledakkan diri setelah tempat persembunyiannya di Idlib diserbu pasukan khusus Amerika Serikat, Minggu (27/10). (reuters/dil/jpnn)

Source : https://malangtoday.net/flash/nasional/analisis-pakar-soal-nasib-isis-setelah-al-baghdadi-tewas-bakal-ada-masalah-serius/

MalangTODAY

[plainhuman]

Holy smokes. Australian journalist provides one of the most brutal takedowns of Trump I've heard in a while. 👏🏽 http://pic.twitter.com/MPoDJXATlM— Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) July 8, 2017

http://twitter.com/AmarAmarasingam

[funnynewsheadlines]

A Scholar of Extremism on How Religious Conflict Shapes Sri Lanka

Isaac Chotiner interviews Amarnath Amarasingam about the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka that killed nearly three hundred people. from Humor, Satire, and Cartoons http://bit.ly/2Ix31ql from Blogger http://bit.ly/2VZVlzZ

[osobypostacieludzie]

Amarnath Amarasingam - kanadyjski badacz ekstremizmu. Amarasingam studiował religię i kulturę na Uniwersytecie Wilfrid Laurier w latach 2007-2011. Od września 2011 roku wykłada na Uniwersytecie Wilfrid Laurier, od stycznia 2012 r. dodatkowo na University of Waterloo. W 2013 roku otrzymał doktorat z pracy magisterskiej na temat aktywizmu społecznego, jego doradcą doktora był Lorne L. Dawson. Od maja 2014 r. do maja 2016 r. prowadził badania dzięki grantowi z Wydziału Nauk Społecznych i Nauk Humanistycznych jako doktor habilitowany na Dalhousie University. Jest starszym pracownikiem naukowym w Londyńskim Instytucie Strategicznego Dialogu, członkiem programu ekstremistów Cyber ​​i Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego Uniwersytetu George Washington University, a od stycznia 2017 r. kieruje badaniem na temat zachodnich bojowników zagranicznych na University of Waterloo. Amarasingam napisał dla The New York Times, Politico, The Atlantic, VICE News, The Daily Beast, Foreign Affairs, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera i "War on the Rocks".  2016 r. brał udział w telewizyjnej dokumentacji "ISIS : Rise of Terror".