My year-in-review thread: This year I've been working a fairly unified theme, developing a framework for studying extremism and radicalization.
The most important piece of this was Extremist Construction of Identity, a paper published by the Counter Terrorism Strategic Communications program at @ICCT_TheHagueicct.nl/publication/ex…
The framework was derived from a detailed analysis of the ideology that spawned Christian Identity, a violent white nationalist belief system. In two follow-up papers, I applied the framework to the ideology of ISIS.
The second, published by @ICCT_TheHague, looked at a more recent piece of ISIS propaganda, suggesting messaging strategies in light of its disastrous loss of territory icct.nl/publication/co…
All of this raises the question of what policy makers mean when they say they're going to "defeat the extremist ideology" icct.nl/publication/de…
Back to the extremist identity research, which also informed a piece for @TheAtlantic about the cycle of radicalization between the far-right and jihadists theatlantic.com/international/…
In a talk at @IEAdeParis I discussed the link between extremist identity construction and uncertainty, to be further developed in my next book (fall 2018)
Most of this work was pretty focused on a singular goal of developing and fleshing out an evidence-based framework for studying extremism across different ideologies.
That research will be an even bigger focus in the year to come, including through the new book, another book in the works, some exciting projects in the alt-right space, and some major research projects I hope to announce soon. Thanks for following, and stay tuned!
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What this report says is the GRU is associated with the name Cybercaliphate, which isn't quite the same thing as the Russians being behind it. That they aided and amplified it, I have no doubt, but there's substantial evidence that most CC activity was ISIS linked. 1/x
CC activity was clearly linked to social networks on Twitter linked to Junaid Hussein, a verifiable ISIS hacker. But those social networks were different from most ISIS social networks in that they followed other hackers, rather than following mainly ISIS adherents. 2/x
Hackers tend to communicate and collaborate across ideological lines, even when the hackers were ideological. Thus CC-linked networks had connections to the Syrian Electronic Army, Iranian hackers, Russian hackers and more. 3/x
So if people laughing at Trump during the correspondent's dinner goaded him into running for president, getting laughed out of the UN should be good for...
Extremism, my new book with @mitpress, is out today on Kindle and other ebook formats. Print coming this month. A few words on what it covers.
First and foremost, the purpose of the book is to offer a framework for understanding and analyzing extremist movements, including most importantly the question of definition.
The term extremism is not clearly defined, either in normal discourse, nor in academic literature, nor in policy circles. The book presents and explains a definition that helps reduce (but not completely eliminate) gray areas in understanding whether a movement is extremist.