A Witch’s Brew of Grievances: The Potential Effects of COVID-19 on Radicalization to Violent Extremism

Garth Davies, Edith Wu and Richard Frank

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 2023, vol. 46, issue 11, 2327-2350

Abstract: Historically, pandemics had inevitably produced demonization and scapegoating, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been no exception. Some individuals and groups have attempted to weaponize and exploit the pandemic, to use it as a means of spreading their extremist ideologies and to radicalize others to their causes. Segmented regression analyses of seven online extremist forums revealed that posting behavior on violent right-wing extremist and incel forums increased significantly following the declaration of the pandemic. The same was not true of left-wing or jihadist forums. These unequal effects likely reflect the particular grievance-based and online nature of right-wing and incel extremism.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1057610X.2021.1923188 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uterxx:v:46:y:2023:i:11:p:2327-2350

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uter20

DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2021.1923188

Access Statistics for this article

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism is currently edited by Bruce Hoffman

More articles in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().