Main Edition
US
FR
August 9, 2024 - 10:00am
“Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” So Aristotle spoke when asked about the value of childhood education. Aristotle would not have been familiar with the concept of the “teenager,” a term that was not used until the early Sixties. Yet something seems to be going wrong with the current teenage generation — the latter half of Gen Z — in the West. Or, at least some parts of it.
The recently prevented terrorist attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna was planned by three young men, aged 15, 17, and 19. Although two of them are Austrian citizens, they all have a migrant-Muslim background, fitting the profile of a growing demographic that seems to be attracted to Islamist-inspired terrorism.
Terrorism expert Peter R. Neumann is labelling them “TikTok jihadists” and he has collected some revealing (and hugely concerning) data on the phenomenon. They are often young teenagers who have little to no interest in ideology or religion per se but find the social media appearance of terrorist organisations like Isis or al-Qaeda attractive. One could argue that they are the Islamic equivalent of the profile we know from school shooters in the US, such as in Uvalde, Texas or in the Parkland high school shooting in Florida.
They find support for radical views on the internet taking them further down a lethal spiral, with the actual ideology being only of tertiary concern — violence and nihilism taking primacy. Subsequently they either act as lone wolves or as part of virtual groups to carry out terrorist attacks designed to grab a maximum of media attention. Based on Neumann’s research, there are indicators that the number of such individuals is trending upwards, at least in Western Europe: jihadist activity has increased dramatically since October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, with a series of attacks in Western Europe and many more that have been thwarted by counter-terror authorities. Compared to the latest available data from Europol for 2022, Neumann writes, the number of carried out and planned attacks has more than quadrupled.
Of the 58 individuals involved in attacks or their planning, 38 are teenagers. This represents 65.5% and is significantly higher than in previous decades. According to security authorities, even 10-year-olds have been identified as potential perpetrators.
Although more pronounced, this trend is not entirely new. Two out of the four attackers during the 2005 London tube bombings were under the age of 20. What is new, however, is that jihadis in Western cities are more likely to be teenagers that have never lived in Muslim countries. It suggests that some young people of ethnically non-European heritage are losing meaningful connections to the European societies they are living in. Among the terrorists of 9/11, none was under the age of 20. But since then, the Islamist ideology (or the supposed glamour connected to it) has taken over certain parts of the internet and has become all too easily available to young people — and all too appealing to those from migrant backgrounds.
The American psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been claiming for years that young people in the West are going through a mental health crisis that is causally related to the use of social media. He has not yet touched on the topic of TikTok jihadists — let’s hope it doesn’t become the subject of his next book.
Ralph Schoellhammer is assistant professor of International Relations at Webster University, Vienna.
Raphfel
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeDoesn’t multiculturalism, in the sense of a deliberate ‘community of communities’ promote this? So many muslims, like Shamima Begum, went to Syria to join Daesh and ‘do Jihad’. It was almost a teen subculture, like a lethal punk rock, that the wider societies they came from were oblivious to.
Jihadists on TikTok are not mentally ill; they’re filled with religious hatred coming from all directions – Islamist, extreme left, anti everything, and pro autocracy.
I think most young people are angry and increasingly likely to lash out. Jihadism, racism, aggressive Wokism, Andrew Tate-style misogyny, man hating feminism… they’re all just a pick and mix of options for expressing rage. The ideology itself is of secondary importance to the fury and hatred.
The things you list are not the same. No follower of Andrew Tate has plotted mass murder. And the man-hating feminists are now confronting the result of their madness through the trans people. Jihadism stands alone in this realm. There is no amount of “both sides” that can change that.
“Jihadism stands alone in this realm.”
Is that right? Care to add up the dead killed in their classroom in the US by young men.
You apparently chose to ignore Winston’s quote about Islam.
Islam feeds the delusions of these young people. I had been neutral on its dangers to Western society, but now have no doubt. Where Islam flourishes in the West there follows violent jihad.
Why 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants are becoming such a problem is something that needs to be examined much more closely. Besides the effects of social media, the factor of an unstable identity and lack of a firm sense of belonging should be considered.
When you integrate as a first generation immigrant, you do end up being “neither here nor there”, i.e. you don’t fully belong in the host land, but feel foreign when you go home. It’s unsettling, but as an adult you can reflect on it at least. Children born into that situation of “not quite belonging anywhere” lack the objectivity to reflect and stabilise themselves. And some of them end up getting on the wrong side of the tracks.
Saw so many disappointed Swifties meandering around town last night – all dolled up in their Eras t-shirts and glitter with nowhere to go. I felt gutted for them. And so angry at these idiot child-men for ruining their dreams and threatening us in our freedom.
“Besides the effects of social media, the factor of an unstable identity and lack of a firm sense of belonging should be considered.”
And yet right now in Bangladesh Hindus are being attacked by Muslims. I don’t think those Muslims can claim the lack of a sense of belonging.
Was this an “Asian” planned attack – to use the BBC terms. Or was it from a more defined group ?
*Austrian yoofs* butofcourse.
Austrian citizens. Probably born in Cardiff.
You mean we can’t blame this on “far-right” or “right-wing” elements? You mean that the purveyors of potential violence are the one demographic that is most associated with such acts?
When you import the Muslim world, you will become the Muslim world. This is not a secret, no matter how desperately some elected officials want to ignore the reality. Plenty of Europeans have already died as the result of people who refuse to assimilate to Western culture. How many more victims must there be?
Can anything be more obvious and predictable? I loved this line by Ralph, “Among the terrorists of 9/11, none was under the age of 20.” I imagine a 16 year old muslim boy signing up for flying lessons on commercial aircraft wouldn’t tip anyone off. And some of the actual perpetrators were not interested in learning how to land.
They never had such connection to start with. They can’t “lose” what they never had. Their European host societies are providers (of livelihood: welfare / housing etc.), that’s the only form of relation they have with it.
The so called mainstream Muslim leaders leverage jihadism by warning that if politicians oppose privileging Islam that they will not be able to control their young mons violence. It is a regular statement by these leaders. Outwardly they condemn the violence, inwardly they encourage it. Striking fear in the hearts of unbelievers is core to its spread.
Jihadism is a worldwide phenomenon, existing in both Muslim majority countries and wherever there are substantial Muslim minorities. I am not sure how worthwhile it is to try to analyse its attractions for young Muslims in European societies as if that were a completely separate problem specifically to do with the problems of being young in the West. Are the young people of Pakistan going through a social-media induced mental health crisis? Young Muslims in the west may never have lived in Muslim countries, but they have very often visited their parents’ or grandparents’ country, have relatives there, follow the media there, and of course follow international and local media intended for Muslims and (whether or not this is very extreme) cultivating a sense of Muslim identity and often grievance about conflicts – the most obvious is Israel-Palestine – with which most have no family ties or direct personal experience…
In my view Jihadism is a pathology of the whole Muslim world at present, there will not cease to be a recurrent Islamic terrorist problem in the West until Islamism wanes in the Muslim world.
Exactly. I’m done with all the hand-wringing about the existential crisis of immigrants in Europe. There are a large number of Muslim-majority countries in the world; none of them without conflict.
There’s something I don’t understand about immigration. Maybe someone can set me straight.
In the US we have barely any social welfare safety net. Not only are there very few programs but the amount of benefits is so miserly that one can’t possibly have anything like a decent life. Legal immigrants and refugees get the same as citizens. Illegals get nothing. So immigrant adults must work and their kids must go to the free public schools. And assimilation happens very quickly. And I suspect that many other people go back home, disappointed.
In most of Europe, on the other hand, immigrants are provided for like honored guests. So they sit around together, complaining. Assimilation doesn’t happen at all. Am I wrong?
Assimilation of the families will not stop Islamist violence completely. But it might cut down on the number of violent acts. And eventually put an end to those terrible burqas the women wear.
I think there is huge substance in your argument. People who are prepared to make the effort stay in the US otherwise they go home. The lack of a safety net is a filter. In Ireland immigrants get everything immediately. So they come and stay regardless of effort or ability.
Islam is the problem. Islam was the problem. Islam will always be the problem.
It is not a tolerant faith and too many of it’s followers are not tolerant people. Integration to them is a weakness, as if they were ceding ground which was theirs all along, and this is why, as a body, they are such bad immigrants. Unlike, for instance Indians, Poles, West Indians and many others, who inside a generation, pretty soon start to feel British and are happy to say so.
For Islamic countries, far too many of immigrant’s children still see Islam as their world and the country they live in as just a place to be.
It has to be faced up to, but at the moment, with most politicians either too stupid to see the problem or “persuaded” to not rock the boat, a peaceful ending to this horror story looks unlikely.
Indeed. Islamists don’t even prize countries; their aim is a borderless global caliphate.
In Europe we will go the same way of Iran, Lebanon & many other places if we’re not careful. We should heed the lessons of those who have been there. Eg https://youtu.be/Ujt3St6coNM?si=zK5aGjC0w-SFv9hZ
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Because-They-Hate-Survivor-Brigitte/dp/B00F3Y7JNO
About 30-years-ago, I told my husband that the internet would usher in the end of civilization. And that was before social media. I think I was right. Slowly (or maybe a little faster), we are getting there.
Not religious? Seriously? It’s the rise in ME funded and internet-enabled hard line Islam – Deobandi, Salafi, and Wahabbi, and Iranian Shiism- and their clerics in mosques, madrassahs, and front organisations in the UK and Europe which is behind the rise in youth terrorism. TikTok is certainly involved; anything which destabilises, or degrades the political and social fibre of the West, is in China’s interests, and TikTok is a propaganda organisation of the CCP.
Youth terrorism. I’m not sure but I imagine that more children have been killed in US schools by young people than by jihadist youths. So maybe we should keep things in perspective. These young people aren’t born hooked into the internet. Not all young people drift onto these sites you’re thinking of. Something about it interests the ones who do, it answers or addresses something already stirring in them, So something comes before the internet. For Muslims it might be family or friends, but even then a small percentage. But what of the US school shooters? Or the violence of domestic abuse?
There is a curiosity, a will to violence in these people. If breaking it up to religion, ethnicity, ideology, politics or environment gives us some insight, then fine, but I can’t see any answers so far by doing that, just some visceral satisfaction in the hatred returned,
In Sarajevo, the Izetbegovic’s hadn’t lived in Turkey for centuries. In Israel, something weirdly similar. It’s a long term gift, that keeps on giving.
These people are obviously a very real threat with their warped idea of who and what they are. And one bomb can cause a lot of mayhem. But these figures:
”Of the 58 individuals involved in attacks or their planning, 38 are teenagers.”
38 teenagers out of the whole of Europe. Is that a significant figure? Horrible as it is I’m not sure if it’s significant of anything except another figure is the growing violence of the world in general: domestic violence, home invasion, car-jacking, not to mention the US school shootings and an attempt on the life of Trump.
There’s no doubt a real threat from jihadists exists but the violence today can come from anywhere in an unexpected way. The number of deaths from an exploding bomb is probably equal to the number of children killed in their classrooms.
Maybe it’s a mental health crisis, but defining it as that will not give us any answers or assurance, just more fragmented reasons for money poured into public and private institutions with no results. But something’s going on with us. Can the rise in domestic violence and murder be attributed to social media? And maybe it’s not so much violence or mental health but that people just no longer care about others or themselves.
Another not fully developed article on ‘neotoddlers’. Can someone develop it?
Will anyone of national prominence answer this question publicly ? Why is it that Muslim youth want to do these things ? Not Sikh, not Hindu, not Jew, not Christian. Is this question too awful to answer ?