by Rise to Peace US

The Liminal Agent: A New Model of Online Radicalisation?

In his recent essay, online extremism researcher Joshua Citarella sketches one of the new psycho-political cartographies of our time: a theory of how the internet no longer merely hosts extremism but actively incubates, mutates, and weaponizes it. His model of online radicalisation, one that emerges from self-directed isolation, deep cognitive immersion, and ideological bricolage, resonates profoundly with what Rise to Peace has identified as the domain of Liminal Warfare: the weaponization of thresholds, ambiguity, and incomplete identity in modern conflict spaces.

Increasingly, the traditional models of threat assessment borne from old threat matrix’s which privilege hierarchical organizations, clear ideological movements, and structured recruitment are inadequate to describe the contemporary threat landscape. In Citarella’s vision, the world of online radicalisation has irreparably changed. Radicalisation today is decentralized, asynchronous, memetic, and most importantly, liminal. It primarily happens in the unstable interzones between identity, ideology, and action.

Citarella’s Model

Citarella proposes that radicalisation, at least in the West, often begins not from prior ideological conviction, but from the condition of existential boredom, social/economic alienation, and exploration. A young person, often socially isolated and politically disenchanted, stumbles into online subcultures while seeking meaning, excitement, or community. They begin to scroll; into gaming forums, irony-poisoned meme pages, “political compass” esoterica, survivalist groups, and ideological echo chambers.

What matters is not a coherent doctrine, but the immersive ritual of searching itself. Platforms that favour algorithmic serendipity (TikTok, YouTube, Reddit) reinforce a pattern of escalating extremity, either through exposure to increasingly niche ideologies or by creating a pseudo-gamified environment where ideological commitment becomes performative currency. Politics becomes the hobby to end all hobbies. In this schema, most individuals never stabilize, instead drifting aimlessly and incoherently from one ideology to the next. They collage incompatible belief systems – eco-fascism one month, anarcho-primitivism the next, post-left accelerationism shortly after, creating an identity formation that is non-linear, recursive, and radically unstable. It is a process that could aptly be described as ‘liminal radicalisation’; the process of radicalisation itself is continuous and disaggregated, with no clear destination in mind.

The Political Economy of Alienation

What Joshua Citarella names as online radicalisation is, in fact, better understood as an emergent symptom of the wider economic decomposition and austerity that has driven radicalisation from the USA to Europe. Beneath the memetic ironies and aesthetic subcultures, beneath even the performative hatred, what one finds is a generation economically stranded and structurally abandoned. These are not natural ideologues – rather, they are young people who feel the burden of a collapsing horizon, where the prospect of an attainable middle-class life has disappeared as material circumstances decline.

In this sense, the online radicalisation pipeline is not ideological in its origins, but material. The typical subject is downwardly mobile, debt-strapped, and shut out of every traditional rite of social mobility: property, partnership, stability, meaning. Where civic institutions, societal inclusion and careers once were, they are confronted instead with deindustrialisation, economic alienation and precarity. Their beliefs are downstream from their estrangement. Liberal democracies, unable or unwilling to address the foundational material crises of our time in housing shortages, wage stagnation, job insecurity and the erosion of public life, have instead left a vacuum into which this new ecology has rushed. It is precisely this vacuum that provides such fertile ground for the blossoming of new, discordant political radicalisation amongst the disaffected online.

Radicalisation as Ritual, Not Recruitment

What Citarella outlines aligns precisely with what we at Rise to Peace conceptualize as the liminal domain of contemporary conflict. Liminality describes the in-between state: the adolescent undergoing a rite of passage, the refugee severed from homeland, the online user between algorithms and reality. In warfare, the liminal is where traditional rules of engagement dissolve, replaced by new architectures of influence, disorientation, and emotional capture. Crucially, Liminal Warfare weaponizes affect before ideology. It seeks to keep populations in a suspended state of insecurity, overstimulation, and yearning, thus rendering them perpetually vulnerable to new vectors of control, recruitment, or activation. Radicalization, under these conditions, is no longer a matter of persuasive argument or charismatic leadership, but rather the ambient result of prolonged cognitive dislocation.

The Liminal Agent

How can we position this new pipeline of online radicalisation?  Doing so requires designating a new actor in the matrix of terror and radicalisation: The Liminal Agent. These are individuals or small cells who do not adhere to conventional organizational structures, but whose radicalization journey makes them latent nodes of potential disruption.

They often exhibit the following features:

  • Non-linear ideological trajectories (far-right to eco-terrorism to esoteric nihilism within months).
  • Memetic accelerationism (using memes not merely as propaganda but as a form of psychological conditioning).
  • Fluid affiliations (no loyalty to any single group, cause, or doctrine).
  • Stochastic violence potential (low predictability of timing, targets, or methods).

Citarella’s model gives empirical substance to this theory. The emerging radical does not require recruitment, as they radicalize through participation. They do not need ideological discipline, as they need only the internet and its ideological input. This is a battlefield of perpetual pre-recruitment, where being “in play” is more important than belonging.

Implications for Counter-Radicalization

The classic counterterrorism model – disrupt leadership nodes, monitor recruitment pipelines, disrupt communication channels – struggles to address this reality. How do you intercept a process without a recruiter? How do you “deradicalize” someone who has never fully radicalized to begin with, but exists in a permanent state of cognitive threshold-crossing?

Such implications require three necessary shifts:

  1. Intervention at the Affective Level: Programs must target emotional needs (belonging, agency, recognition) rather than merely correcting disinformation or promoting tolerance.
  2. Narrative Counter-Liminality: Instead of offering fixed counter-narratives, interventions must provide adaptive narrative scaffolding; ways to help individuals navigate uncertainty without collapsing into extremism.
  3. Liminal Early Warning Systems: Indicators of drift (increased engagement with irony-laden extremist memes, withdrawal from non-digital communities, pattern acceleration) must be mapped and monitored, not just explicit pledges of allegiance.

This, however, represents only an intervention at the level of symptoms. The frameworks proposed here; narrative scaffolding, affective early warning systems, memetic analysis, can only help us insofar as they map the terrain of liminal radicalisation, but they cannot on their own treat its cause. What Citarella’s model ultimately reveals, and what we must refuse to obscure, is that online extremism today is less a question of ideology than of material infrastructure – social, economic, and psychological. It is not born from belief but from absence: the absence of economic security, of community, of a shared future. This absence collapses the very ideological architectures that once made radicalisation intelligible and coherent, and much more is required to be done and researched about this new pipeline of radicalisation that has emerged online if governments and civil society have any hope to limit the spread of its contagion.

Etienne Darcas, Counter-Terror Research Fellow and Media & Terror Program Lead, Rise to Peace

Rise to Peace US
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Capitol
 by Rise to Peace

One Year After January 6: Who Attacked the Capitol?

Just over one year ago, Americans across the nation watched in stunned disbelief as one of the most powerful and sacred symbols of their democracy was attacked by a seething mob of their fellow country men and women. Through their televisions, laptops, and mobile devices they witnessed the furious crowd tear through barricades and police lines, smashing windows, breaking doors, and invading the Senate floor. They watched as armed guards drew their weapons to defend the House Chamber, as rioters erected gallows at the front of the building, and the incensed mob chanted for the execution of elected officials.

For many Americans, the Capitol riot represented the violent intrusion of domestic extremism into mainstream politics. After the September 11 attacks, the United States’ political leaders and national security establishment swore to defend the country from violent extremists who would do it harm. They launched a two-decades-long campaign to combat global jihadist terrorism, pouring trillions of dollars into defense spending, engaging in counter-terrorism missions across 80 countries, and authorizing the creation of an entirely new agency dedicated to homeland security.

Given this extraordinary focus on combating global jihadist terrorism, it is perhaps unsurprising that the rapid expansion of domestic right-wing extremism was missed. Today, intelligence reports warn that the most lethal threat to American security comes from the country’s own citizens. This threat now outstrips that posed from U.S.-based jihadists; a recent report by the New America thinktank in Washington D.C. concluded that in the two decades since September 11, far-right extremists have killed more people on American soil than domestic Islamist extremists.

Who Stormed the Capitol?

January 6 represented the eruption of this domestic security threat onto the mainstage of American culture and political life. As Americans tried to make sense of how 2,500 of their fellow citizens could storm the Capitol, people quickly jumped to conclusions as to who organized the attack. The various flags, banners, and symbols displayed throughout the crowd led many to the assumption that the riot was largely orchestrated by far-right extremist groups.

However, whilst these groups were certainly present throughout the attack, and likely played a pivotal role in its incitement, analyses have revealed that the vast majority of those involved in the storming were normal, everyday Trump supporters. This reality suggests a different and possibly much more menacing threat than that posed by far-right groups alone; indeed far-right extremists fall into categories familiar to law enforcement, who have established frameworks for addressing the threat they pose. The riotous storming of the Capitol represents the emergence of a new violent mass movement wherein average Trump supporters, with no obvious ties to the far-right, unite with extremists to forcibly enact their political goals.

Research conducted by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats concluded that the overwhelming motivation for the Capitol attack was President Trump’s injunction to his supporters that they prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election. The attack, according to the authors of the research, was “not merely an exercise in vandalism or trespassing amid a disorderly protest that had spiraled out of control”, it was “unmistakably an act of political violence.”

Moreover, whilst right-wing extremists belonging to militia-like groups received substantial mainstream news coverage, 89% of those arrested in relation to the attack had no affiliation with any known militant organization. Indeed, the demographic profile of the Capitol rioters significantly diverges from the typical right-wing extremist. Whereas 26% of far-right extremists arrested between 2015 and 2020 belonged to a white-nationalist gang, this was true for just 1% of those arrested in relation to January 6. Those who marched on the Capitol were significantly older and wealthier than the typical far-right actor, 40% were business owners or held white-collar jobs. They worked as CEOs, accountants, doctors, lawyers, and IT specialists, indeed less than 1 in 10 were unemployed.

Mainstreaming Right-Wing Extremism

According to Cythia Miller-Idriss, the director of the Polarization and Extremist Research and Innovation Lab at the American University, the Capitol riot represents the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism. “The majority of the rioters were hitherto ordinary Americans who had only recently embraced radical ideas. Their pathways to political violence did not involve a clearly defined ideology or an affiliation with particular groups but instead were shaped by a propaganda campaign that engulfed the full spectrum of right-wing politics.”

This kind of extremism is challenging for security experts and counter-terrorism officials. Violent mass movements are often unorganized and difficult to categorize, indeed the coalition of extremists on display during the Capitol attack included an array of strange bedfellows. According to Miller-Idress, the January 6 mob included not just traditional far-right extremists, pro-Trump activists, and QAnon conspiracy theorists, but also “‘wellness’ advocates opposed to vaccines, libertarians opposed to mask mandates, gun-rights proponents protesting perceiving threats to the Second Amendment, and ‘accelerationists’ seeking the violent collapse of political, economic, and social systems.”

Adapting to the Threat

In the United States, domestic extremist groups were once motivated by relatively coherent ideological beliefs. Security, intelligence, and law enforcement officials developed strategies, frameworks, and fields of expertise to counter these groups. However, these specialized approaches do not apply to the kind of violent mass movement embodied at the Capitol riot.

“Tactics such as monitoring, surveillance, and infiltration are harder to apply in an environment that is more spontaneous, fragmented, and characterized by rapid evolution and surprising coalitions” says Miller-Idress. “Simply put, the tools that authorities use to combat extremists become less useful when the line between the fringe and the center starts to blur. The federal government urgently needs to adapt to this new reality. Extremism has gone mainstream; so must the interventions needed to address it.”

Counter-extremism efforts designed to tackle threats from the fringe are no longer viable. The threat now comes from the mainstream and counter-terrorism strategies must be adapted accordingly. The U.S. needs to stop conceptualizing the risk of political violence as belonging exclusively to the domain of national security. It must adopt a broadscale response focused on addressing the various grievances and vulnerabilities that fuel extremist ideology. The U.S. has the ability to prevent this extremism, to rebuild public trust, and to restore a sense of civic unity. But to do so, it must first accept its new reality.

 

Oliver Alexander Crisp, Counter-Terrorism Research Fellow

Rise to Peace
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 by Sydney Neuman

Women’s Roles in Right-Wing Extremism in the United States

All around the world, local law enforcement’s failure to understand the gender dynamics of terrorist organizations has led to many vulnerabilities in people’s safety and security. In the United States, there continues to be more and more evidence being discovered that women are playing key roles in right-wing extremist movements. Fortunately, in recent years, our understanding of female terrorists has improved as more people study this reality and officials stop assuming that women lack the ability to carry out these attacks.

In research conducted by sociologists, Mehr Latif and Kathleen Blee, a list was compiled of the typical roles designated for women in white supremacist groups. The main role for them is to do the “mothering” of the group, both literally and figuratively. If women do not have a “mother” role for the group, another common role women have is as a “sex symbol” for the men. The least common role of the women in these groups is as actual fighters for the cause. Latif and Blee described their role as both providing sexual gratification to male members and participating in violence themselves. However, these roles were designated by far-rightist men. As a result, women’s roles in these groups today are evolving into new ones.

Domestic terror organizations, like many organizations around the world, understand that the best way to appeal to women is by exploiting their inherent altruism and desire to protect children. One of the ways that women are recruited to these far-right groups is through social media “influencers” who distribute propaganda and recruit new members to extremist causes. They often create “mom groups” or lifestyle blogs to reach people who might not otherwise be exposed to political or extremist rhetoric.

The most recent example of women playing roles in domestic acts of terror is from the January 6th insurrection. There was a large array of groups participating in this attack, women were engaged in all aspects and many engaging directly in the violence. One woman directly participating was Rachel Powell aka the “Pink Hat Lady” or “Bullhorn Lady.” She was caught smashing a window of the Capitol with a pipe and yelled instructions to other insurrectionists through a bullhorn. The FBI later raided her home and car only to find numerous “go bags” loaded with ammunition for her registered AK-47, shooting targets with written slogans like “guns don’t kill people, I do,” throwing stars, knives, lighters, zip ties, duct tape, rope, and a tarp. 

Two other women were arrested and charged, Dawn Bancroft and Diana Santos-Smith, after the FBI investigated a selfie video taken of the two inside the Capitol on Jan. 6. They claimed they were there “looking” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “to shoot her in the friggin’ brain.”

Despite all of this, law enforcement officials seem to be paying little attention to the unique role of women in advancing right-wing extremist ideas and has led to a situation in which we refuse to treat female terrorists with the same seriousness and concern with which we treat men. So far, just over 10 percent of federal charges related to the Capitol siege have been brought against women. 

However, after many studies and observations have been done about why women chose to join terrorist organizations, it seems officials still show little desire to learn about how different a women’s path to domestic terrorism is different from most men.

While more research is needed in regards to the ideological and gendered differences of radicalization, evidence shows that the motivation and process of radicalization looks very different for a 40-year-old American-born mother of eight than an isolated 18-year-old boy who feels like he has nothing to live for in the United States. 

For example, some women who committed acts of violence in the last year in the name of Q-Anon, have explicitly said they were motivated by a desire to protect children from supposed pedophiles. Research on why women join international terrorist groups shows they believe that participating in terrorism could be a way to acquire rights and status, especially in societies and cultures where they are otherwise denied equal treatment.

Scholars Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein found that “radicalized American women tend to commit the same types of crimes and have about the same success rate as radicalized men, yet they are less likely to be arrested and convicted for terrorism-related crimes, highlighting a discrepancy in treatment and leaving a security threat unaddressed.”

The U.S. government continues to underestimate the important roles women can play as perpetrators, mitigators, or targets of violent extremism. This means there will need to be continued research on the roles of these women, better ways to prevent recruitment, and how to spot the signs of a female perpetrator.  

 

Sydney Neuman
risetopeace.org
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Mourners leave flowers at the site of domestic terrorism attack at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
 by Rise to Peace

Recent Domestic Terrorism Attacks In The United States

Nearly a week after tragedy struck in Atlanta, flags in the United States were briefly raised. Less than two days later they returned to half-staff following yet another mass shootings. The US has seen at least 34 mass shootings over the last five years, with 365 people killed and many more injured. The nation saw a brief reprieve from mass shootings as states went into 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns. However, these attacks remind Americans that this type of violence is disturbingly common. With domestic terrorism on the rise in the United States, it is important that legislation targets the perpetrators of these attacks.

These crimes represent a unique phenomenon that stymies policymakers who try to legislate and prepare for these unpredictable events. Ideologically driven crimes which endanger human life in the United States are defined as domestic terrorism. Despite the United States’ history of domestic terrorism attacks, there are no specific federal statutes in place to prosecute it.

Recent Impact

Mass shootings are becoming more frequent and more deadly. 20% of mass killings that have occurred in the last 50 years, have taken place in the last 5 years. 2017 and 2018 were the deadliest years on record for the US. Following a single mass shooting, there is a 15% increase in the number of gun control bills introduced into legislation. However, gun control bills lack bipartisan support to actually enact change.

Racial motivations behind the recent killings in Atlanta are under review. On March 16th Robert Long, a 21-year-old white man, bought a handgun hours before his attack on three different Asian-owned spas in Atlanta, Georgia. The deadly rampage took eight victims, six of whom were of Asian descent. The attack has not yet been classified as a hate crime by the officials investigating. However, attacks on Asian-Americans are on the rise, particularly since the beginning of 2020 and the rise of Covid-19.

On March 22nd 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa opened fire on unsuspecting grocery shoppers at King Sooper’s supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. 10 victims lost their lives during the violent assault. Alissa bought the assault-style weapon on March 16th. Alissa’s motive for the attack has not yet been identified.

United States’ Extremism

Research has identified hundreds of extremist groups categorised as white nationalists, within the United States. In 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported an increase in white nationalist groups for the second year in a row, with a 55% increase since 2017. With domestic terrorism on the rise, there are many examples of these deadly attacks. In 2015, Dylann Roof murdered 9 Black parishioners inside an African Episcopal church in South Carolina. Patrick Wood Crusius killed 23 people in a deadly anti-Latino hate crime in 2019. Violent extremism is a significant threat in 2021, and the pandemic has only stressed an increasing number of anti-government attitudes. Growing racial tensions and political demonstrations have only increased the United States’ susceptibility to radicalisation.

Domestic Terrorism Laws

Following the insurrection at the Capitol, it has come to light that there are no federal domestic terrorism laws in the United States. The lack of consensus on the topic and the unwilling to regulate weapons in the United States impacts new legislation. Those identified as terrorists are another point of contention preventing bipartisan support. Numerous countries have taken the step to write clear statutes that allow prosecutors to charge perpetrators with domestic terrorism. For instance, in Canada Statute 83.18(1) identifies anyone who is participating in the activity of a terrorist group. To better target and prosecute individuals and groups with these murderous intentions, the US needs to come to a consensus on what is and isn’t terrorism within its borders.

Recommendations

Domestic terrorism, mass killings, and ideological extremism have proliferated the landscape of the U.S. Commenting on the killings in Boulder, a Chicago-area teen told CNN, “I’m horrified to tell you I feel nothing, […] This kind of trauma feels so normal.” Unlike the United States, countries around the world have implemented aggressive gun control legislation following similar attacks. In 2019, two attacks took place in New Zealand both were mass shootings at mosques. Prime Minister Ardern announced a ban on assault style weapons 5 days after the terrorist attack.

In order to address extremism, swift action must be taken by legislators. Gun control measures implemented around the world have shown a decrease in domestic violence. Legislative impasse is not a foregone conclusion. Common-sense solutions exist and have support from the American electorate. Policymakers need to measure their tolerance for normalized violence, listen to American voters, and begin the process of codifying solutions to prevent the next mass shooting or act of domestic terror. 

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 by Ahmad Shah Mohibi

Domestic Terrorism Discussion with Michael Sherwin, Acting U.S. Attorney for D.C.

On Thursday 25th February, Mr. Sherwin joined Ahmad Mohibi, President of Rise to Peace, for an insightful discussion concerning domestic terrorism and explored the legal repercussions for the January 6th rioters, who stormed the U.S. Capitol. 

The discussion centered around what steps The Attorney’s Office for D.C. can take to prosecute these individuals, while also highlighting the structural limitations given U.S. laws. As of February 25th, over 330 people have been charged for their actions during the riot, with 290 of those cases being federal. Sherwin repeatedly addressed that regardless of who is President, a “crime is a crime” within his office and those who can be charged, will be.

The important factor in play is that there are no domestic terrorism laws within the U.S. Despite there being no specific law relating to domestic terrorism, there is a full arsenal of criminal charges including: trespassing, obstruction of justice, and destruction of Government property to name a few. Sherwin reassured the audience that “despite what label you want to put on these people… if there is a crime they will be charged”. His faith in the Justice System to uphold the equal application of justice regardless of race, gender, or sexuality was refreshing, particularly during these trying times in American history. 

Due to the rising levels of hatred and discontent in the U.S., the Biden administration has made it the top priority to fight domestic terrorism. Despite domestic terrorism becoming a growing concern across the U.S., there is no one clear consensus on how to properly approach what has become a new societal norm. Sherwin argued that we need to revaluate how we look at these cases and “remove the walls of domestic or international terrorism but focus on extremism” which is the root cause of these ills. Terrorism has no boundaries and is grounded in extremist ideology. This is where the United States needs to start in order to dismantle the growing extremist ideology on all sides and spectrums. 

This is where Rise to Peace comes in. We are looking around the U.S., using the information provided to us by Sherwin, and planning the best route to tackle the issue of extremism in the U.S. within a digital realm. Our upcoming project hopes to look at what we can do concerning this rising concern and how we can digitally counter extremists across the U.S. before further damage can be done.

Image Credit: Tampa Bay Times

Ahmad Shah Mohibi
Ahmad Shah Mohibi, Founder of Rise to Peace and Director of Counterterrorism, served as a U.S. advisor in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and later supported national security initiatives in Washington, D.C.
www.ahmadshahmohibi.com/
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