Veterans or active members of the US army and police account for about 13 percent of those accused of crimes in connection with the events at the Capitol. This continues a trend that, according to CSIS, could already be observed in 2020, when active soldiers and reservists were responsible for 6.4 per cent of all domestic terrorist attacks. The development is particularly worrying because members of the military and security agency have valuable skills for extremist networks. Extremists thus have reason to recruit active and retired soldiers and police officers as well as to join and infiltrate the military and law enforcement themselves – a challenge for security agencies.

US authorities are also increasingly targeted by extremists from all sides of the ideological spectrum. The data analysis of the Washington-based think tank shows that, in 2020, government, military and especially police personnel and facilities were the target of 38 per cent of attacks, the most of any category. In the same year, the number of all terrorist attacks combined reached its highest point since 1994, despite a relatively low number of fatalities. Furthermore, the motivations for terrorism have shifted dramatically over the past two decades – from religious extremists inspired by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to right-wing extremists, anarchists and others today. Far-right extremists perpetrated two-thirds of the attacks and plots in 2020. Left-wing extremists were responsible for 23 per cent of the incidents, while Salafi-jihadists were involved in a mere 5 percent – their lowest share since 2008.

Read more in the CSIS Brief „The Military, Police, and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States“ by Seth G. Jones, Catrine Doxsee, Grace Hwang and Jared Thompson from 12 April 2021.

The study examines how Facebook has dealt with the members of the “World Doctors Alliance” (WDA), an international group of medical professionals who spread pseudo-scientific disinformation. The London-based institute shows that WDA members have seen a dramatic increase in interactions and followers since early 2020, despite violating Facebook’s policies by disseminating false and misleading information. According to the ISD analysis, Facebook’s fact-checking programme failed to sufficiently flag posts that contained misinformation, especially for content in languages other than English. Only 13 per cent of the 50 most popular English-language posts that mentioned the WDA contained a fact-check label, a figure that was even lower for other languages. The average interaction rate of flagged posts was also higher than that of unlabelled posts, despite Facebook’s claim that it reduces the reach of content containing false information.

ISD concludes that Facebook fails to detect and flag posts deemed false by its fact-checking partners in most cases. The effectiveness of the programme thus needs to be re-examined. A weakness of Facebook’s content-driven approach, according to the authors, is that accounts and pages that produce and disseminate large amounts of disinformation are not deactivated. As the Wall Street Journal’s analysis of the internal documents disclosed by Frances Haugen has shown, the company is well aware that much of the problematic content on vaccines originates from a small number of users.

Read more in the study “Ill Advice: A Case Study in Facebook’s Failure to Tackle COVID-19 Disinformation,”, published in October 2021.

The ISD‘s Gaming and Extremism Series explores the role online gaming plays in the strategy of far-right extremists, examining four gaming platforms: Steam, a video game digital distribution service which also provides a platform for community groups, Discord, a chat application originally designed for gamers, DLive and Twitch, two livestreaming platforms used by gamers.

The researchers conclude that there is little evidence that extremists are using online gaming as part of a targeted radicalisation strategy. Instead, the platforms are predominantly used by extremists as a means of bonding with their peers over a shared hobby. However, on Steam in particular, there is an active, well-established and long-standing network of extremists, including violent groups. The authors attribute the fact that this is less the case on the other platforms in part to stricter policies and better content moderation.

An overview and links to the studies can be found in the series’ introduction “Gamers Who Hate” from August 2021.

Georgia’s politics are marked by a bitter rivalry between its two main parties, the ruling Georgian Dream and the United National Movement. Although the ideological differences between the two conservative, pro-Western parties are not great, divisive rhetoric and abusive language is omnipresent in the country’s political discourse, observe authors Archil Gegeshidze and Thomas de Waal. The conflict must therefore rather be understood as a power struggle within the elite, which fuels social polarisation for the purpose of mobilising voters and weakening third political forces. The experts of the Brussels-based think tank trace the historical development of political polarisation in the former Soviet republic and outline what needs to change to escape its vicious cycle.

Read more in the working paper “Divided Georgia: A Hostage to Polarization” from December 2021.

A large number of Germans believe that there is little or no cohesion in society. The issues that drive polarisation the most, according to the respondents, are economic inequality, migration and climate policy. However, one of the results of the study by the social scientist Jochen Roose is that a clear majority of respondents continue to hold moderate positions on political issues, even though a significant minority supports other opinions on climate and migration policy.

Over the long term, political polarisation in Germany has increased. The number of Germans who reject political opinions other than their own has grown over the past two decades. The mutual rejection is particularly strong between supporters of the AfD on the one hand and the Greens and Die Linke on the other. In terms of the overall social acceptance of the parties, the AfD in particular stands out: 62 per cent of all respondents do not want to have anything to do with AfD voters – compared to 13 per cent for Green voters and 9 per cent for CDU voters.

Has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated political divisions? Perhaps surprisingly, the study finds that half a year into the pandemic polarisation has not increased.

For more details, read the study “Polarisierung in Deutschland” published in November 2021 (in German).