Extremists exploit political ‘trigger events’ to recruit people online, says study

Extremists are exploiting political violence on online platforms to recruit new people to their causes and amplify the use of violence for political goals, according to a new report that monitored social platforms after recent attacks.

Researchers at New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights tracked social media feeds for several months this year, including in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

“Violent extremist groups systematically exploit trigger events – high-profile incidents of violence – to recruit supporters, justify their ideologies and call for retaliatory action,” the findings say.

The US is experiencing an increase in political violence and extremism, with high-profile incidents targeting Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, Kirk, an ICE facility, a church, a Jewish museum and more. Donald Trump and his allies have falsely claimed the violence is coming solely from the “radical left” and sought to clamp down on left-leaning groups. Republican members of Congress took testimony in a House subcommittee this week about rising political violence.

In the first six months of 2025, more than 520 plots and acts of terrorism and targeted violence occurred, affecting nearly all US states and causing 96 deaths and 329 injuries. This is a nearly 40% increase over the first six months of 2024, according to data from the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

The NYU report looked across the political spectrum, including far-right, far-left, violent Islamist and nihilistic violent extremists, to examine their tactics and how they at times converged. The researchers monitored online networks from 24 March to 6 June this year, then extended their gathering to include a period following Kirk’s assassination.

“The general takeaway that I had from this report is just how the threat landscape is becoming far more volatile,” said Luke Barnes, senior research scientist at NYU Stern and co-author of the report. “And there is worrying growth of kind of highly specific, bespoke ideologies where there isn’t that kind of traditional left-right categorization that you might have seen historically, and when a lot of the time the performative in-group joke or the performative shock value becomes the objective.”

Violence in recent years has included attacks from nihilistic violent extremists, a new category used by the FBI to label the crop of attackers who don’t fit into standard ideological frames and prioritize violence for its own sake.

Previously, these attackers would try to advocate for some kind of political position, albeit an extreme one, Barnes noted, but now it has “degenerated into that sense of performative shock value for the sake of it”. This can include memes or references to online communities in manifestos or on bullet casings, which then get passed around online.

That evidence then is “fashioned into opportunities for other extremists to exploit and spin off for their own propagandistic value”, which creates a “feedback loop of violence and extremism”, Barnes said.

Groups will use mainstream sites such as X to spread their messages, then funnel people into semi-private or private platforms to coordinate further and share more extreme messages, the authors say.

“Because you have an audience that may be more mainstream, more generic, extremist groups tend to promote their messages there, but in a different tone, or in a different way that would make the appeal more mainstream, and then what they’ll do is include an outlink or hyperlink to another platform,” said Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, a co-author of the report and policy adviser on technology and law at NYU Stern.

Nihilistic violent extremists were difficult to monitor because they reportedly use semi-private platforms, the report said. The shooter at the Annunciation Catholic church in Minneapolis, for instance, seemed to glorify other extremist shooters and used meme-like callouts, which nihilistic violent extremist communities disseminated to “glorify violence generally”, the report said.

With violent acts like the stabbing of Austin Metcalf, a Texas high school student, or Iryna Zarutska, who was killed on a train in North Carolina, far-right groups spread narratives about white victimhood. Far-left networks celebrated a shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum, with pro-Palestine activism dominating their channels.

The report makes recommendations for social platforms and US lawmakers. Online service providers should have clear policies on threats and incitement and enforce those policies. Users should have a way to report violations to the platform, which should be handled quickly. Lawmakers should establish standards for how platforms and law enforcement cooperate, while recognizing the limits of legal remedies.

“The kind of more nihilistic branch of extremism does create opportunity for bipartisanship, which I don’t think is something that’s said often these days,” Barnes said.