...as I was saying...

...just as I was about to power down and begin tackling cleaning the game room... 

EU warns of a chilling new terror menace 25 years after 9/11 as online youths seek violent thrills

 

EU Counter Terrorism Coordinator, Bartjon Wegter - Source: APNews

This is just... disgusting. 

Loren Cook of AP News, in a report this morning outlines the rise of young boys seeking to commit acts of violence. "The exact size of the network behind what is being called nihilistic violent extremism is unclear. But police investigators from nine European countries found about 4,340 URL web addresses linked to “The COM,” as the online community has become known, during a campaign to disrupt it in June and July.

“It’s violence for the sake of violence,” European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Bartjan Wegter told The Associated Press in an interview, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001."

This is beyond INCELs living in a fantasy world inside their parents basement.  

"The kind of violent content, violence inciting content, propaganda, manuals, tactics, everything that is available, is very much amplified by AI,” Wegter said."  

I am of a generation that lived through the political outcry of what violent video games and rap music (thank you, Tipper Gore) were going to do to the morals of the people thriving on them.  Today, thanks to Social Media and AI, we have "street takeovers" with youth on ATV's and tricked out cars, groups of teens throwing people in front of subways and busses as some perverted "rite of passage", and gangs who routinely gang-raid stores and shops. Now let's add a bunch of adolescents who can't distinguish between AI generated slop inciting them to commit acts of violence and reality to the mix. Oh, how much I yearn for the good old days of the "Tide Pod Challenge"! 

The one... slight... upside is... they are boys, and boys are inherently stupid.  Let's just post our manifesto on 4-Chan, "The COM" or, in the some of the cases from the AP News story, TicTok. Sadly, until the platforms and architectures are held to task (if the Meta settlement is any indication, though money has yet to change hands) it will be up to the rest of us to be vigilant and report this bullshit.   

Marc-André Argentino, an independent researcher and expert on violent extremism, on PolitFacts wrote, "The guiding principle is to flood the system with low‑cost, high‑chaos events — school shootings, animal‑cruelty viral clips, swatting campaigns — so that authorities expend resources faster than radicals expend effort. Tactically, NVEs seek maximum systemic shock with minimal organizational footprint.”

In the meanwhile, perhaps we need a refresher on what warning signs to look for in the individuals within our lives.  The Institute for Strategic Dialog (ISD) offers an 18 page report identifying four signs to consider.  "...[The casework offers a summary] of the characteristics and behaviors that may indicate participation in a subculture of nihilistic violence, along with events or conditions that could mobilize an individual to violence. It also provides practical considerations for parents, teachers and frontline practitioners." in the areas of Indicators, Triggers, Accelerants and Intervention Challenges.    

Oren Segal (also in the Argentino / PolitFact article), an Anti-Defamation League extremism expert, said incidents in recent years involved suspects who appeared motivated to sow chaos. "This country is facing a growing threat of heavily armed young men who use too-easily acquirable weapons to commit unspeakable acts of violence. Some of them are extremists; most of them are not. Whatever their motivation, they need to be stopped. For now, that may be the only analysis we can all agree on.” 

My feeling is that mass murder or attempted assault on a population with a firearm or any weapon is terrorism, period. No shades of gray. If these shits don't understand what it is about, it's time for them to get a hard lesson.  This is beyond taking away Juniors smartphone. 

Is this our new future in the age of self-driven, egocentric non-accountability and lack of empathy?  

There is an African saying, "It takes a village to raise a child"; that a child’s upbringing is a communal effort involving many different people and groups, from parents to teachers to neighbors and grandparents. That is is a collective involvement of a community essential in raising a kid. 

Not from home schooling out of fear that your child will learn something you don't like.  

Not from the Internet or in the case of this post, unmonitored, rampant Social Media and AI slop.  

It takes people. Sharing knowledge, guidance, wisdom... and what empathy means.  

I'd like us to return to that. 

Back to my mop. 

Onward,

Rade 

Source: https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Spotting-the-Signs-Guide.pdf 

Source: https://politifact.com/article/2025/oct/13/nihilistic-violent-extremism-FBI-Trump/