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The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) reports weekly on the methods used by extremists to exploit the Internet and social media platforms to recruit followers and incite violence. CEP researchers found that white supremacist accelerationists and neo-Nazis have been celebrating violence between Minneapolis police and protesters on several Telegram channels and chan imageboards. In addition, last week CEP researchers located a new website dedicated to glorifying and spreading the work of neo-Nazi James Mason .

This week, former Northern Virginia resident and FBI most-wanted terrorist Liban Haji Mohamed, was indicted in federal court on charges of conspiring to provide material support to the Somalia-based terrorist group, al-Shabab. The complaint alleges that after fleeing the United States in 2012, Mohamed reportedly planned to join al-Shabab upon his departure to East Africa and use his media skills to promote online propaganda for the terrorist organization.

Many terrorist offenders imprisoned in the European Union and the United States will be released in the coming years. The significant increase in convictions of Foreign Terrorist Fighters since 2014 has created a larger than ever terrorism-related prison population in the United States as well as in several European states. Therefore, governments, prison authorities, as well as rehabilitation professionals are confronted with growing challenges to ensure that the reintegration of released terrorist offenders is successful and that the recidivism rate stabilizes at acceptable levels.

Extremist groups spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have moved away from popular social media platforms to other sites to sow discord and disperse their radical ideologies. Extremists are increasingly favoring alternatives such as Google Drive and Internet Archive over major social media platforms in order to avoid detection and takedowns of their violent propaganda and misinformation campaigns. This shift in tactics calls into question the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) efficacy, which was created by the tech industry to prevent extremists from misusing sites across the Internet.