(JNi.media) While not as large as in many other Western countries, ISIS-related mobilization in the US has been unprecedented, claims a study titled “ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa,” issued this week by Lorenzo Vidino and Seamus Hughes of the Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security (CCHS) at George Washington University. The study found that as of the fall of 2015, US authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria/Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states.
Here are a few key paragraphs from the study. The full text (PDF) is available here.
According to the executive summary of the new study, “seventy-one individuals have been charged with ISIS-related activities since March 2014. 56 have been arrested in 2015 alone, a record number of terrorism-related arrests for any year since 9/11. Of those charged, the average age is 26. 86% are male. Their activities were located in 21 states. 51% traveled or attempted to travel abroad. 27% were involved in plots to carry out attacks on US soil. 55% were arrested in an operation involving an informant and/or an undercover agent. However, only a small number of Americans have been killed in ISIS-related activities: three inside the US, at least a dozen abroad.”
It turns out the individuals involved in ISIS-related activities in the US differ widely in race, age, social class, education, and family background, and, likewise, their motivations are defy simple analysis. However, the study confirms the commonly held notion that social media plays a crucial role in the radicalization and even mobilization of US-based ISIS wannabes. The Program on Extremism has identified some 300 American and/or US-based ISIS sympathizers active on social media, spreading propaganda, and interacting with like-minded individuals. “Some members of this online echo chamber eventually make the leap from keyboard warriors to actual militancy,” claims the report. These American ISIS sympathizers are particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game. Some accounts (the “nodes”) are the generators of primary content, some (the “amplifiers”) just retweet material, others (the “shout-outs”) promote newly created accounts of suspended users.
ISIS-related radicalization is by no means limited to social media, and the report suggests that in most cases online and offline dynamics complement one another. While instances of purely web-driven, individual radicalization are numerous, in several cases US-based individuals initially cultivated and later strengthened their interest in ISIS’s narrative through face-to-face relationships. In that respect, the study found that the spectrum of US-based sympathizers’ actual involvement with ISIS varies significantly, ranging from those who are merely inspired by its message to those few who reached mid-level leadership positions within the group.
According to the study, by 2011 the jihadist threat on both sides of the Atlantic appeared to have somewhat plateaued. To be sure, the problem of homegrown radicalization clearly still existed. But the somewhat stagnant level of the threat, better law enforcement and intelligence practices, and the enthusiasm generated in the West by the promise of the Arab Spring suggested that jihadism was a manageable and potentially even subsiding problem. But in the last four years, jihadism in the West has received a boost triggered by staggering events on the ground in the Middle East. In particular, the conflict in Syria, the successes achieved on the ground by ISIS and other jihadist groups, and ISIS’s formation of a self-proclaimed caliphate have had a magnetic draw for many young Western Muslims.