Understanding Female Jihadism in Bangladesh: New Trends in "New Normal”?

This study aims to understand Bangladeshi female jihadists' evolving socio-demographic backgrounds, organizational roles, and the driving factors that radicalize them. It is found that besides homemakers and students, female jihadists, who are mainly young, come from various professions, including education, health, business, law, and private jobs. The results indicate that women in higher socioeconomic status, who endorse violent tactics and militant objectives, may be more inclined to participate in jihadism actively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of carrying out violent attacks, they use social media to spread their extremist ideologies, recruit new members, and raise funds. The results show that the Internet played a significant role in the radicalization of women during the pandemic, while family and friends played the leading role in the past. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Asian & African Studies (Sage Publications, Ltd.) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The Trump administration, the far-right and world politics

We contend that the Trump administration mainstreamed far-right politics through its foreign policy on China, the World Health Organization and its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Gramscian-Kautskyian theoretical perspective concentrates on elite power, class, and interconnections between advanced global capitalism and domestic inequality. We show that the administration amplified US far-right Sinophobia even as it deepened connections between US and Chinese corporate elites. Its foreign policy strategy attempted to appease transnational capitalist objectives through 'ultra-imperialism' and draw on far-right ideas to shore up its domestic support base. But the administration, much like previous ones, attempted to make China a subordinate 'responsible stakeholder' through integrating and pressuring it in the Liberal International Order. The Gramscian-Kautskyian approach highlights that Sino–US relations are a mix of security and economic competition and interdependency. Over all, we argue that the Trump administration was not such a threat to the establishment as commonly contended. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Globalizations is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

COVID-19 and the Federal State

After almost two years through the pandemic, COVID-19 has proven to be a considerable and specific challenge for liberal states such as the Federal Republic of Germany. Its constitution requires state actors on all levels to take action to protect its citizens against risks entailed by infectious diseases, but also to respect the rule of law and fundamental rights, data protection legislation and institutional arrangements, particularly the relationship between the central level ("Bund”) and the states ("Länder”). As it turns out, this federalist structure does not provide for an adequate legal framework when it comes to global pandemics such as COVID-19. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Seven years of studying the associations between political polarization and problematic information: a literature review.

This literature review examines the intersection between political polarization and problematic information, two phenomena prominent in recent events like the 2016 Trump election and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed 68 studies out of over 7,000 records using quantitative and qualitative methods. Our review revealed a lack of research on the relationship between political polarization and problematic information and a shortage of theoretical consideration of these phenomena. Additionally, US samples and Twitter and Facebook were frequently analyzed. The review also found that surveys and experiments were commonly used, with polarization significantly predicting problematic information consumption and sharing.

Behavioral extremity moderates the association between certainty in attitudes about COVID and willingness to engage in mitigation-related behaviors

People generally intend to act more on beliefs and attitudes about which they have greater certainty. However, we introduce a boundary condition to the positive association between certainty and behavioral intentions-behavioral extremity. Uncertainty about a threatening issue like COVID-19 can be disconcerting, and we propose that uncertain people cope in part through increased openness to extreme actions like accepting risky medical treatments and aggression toward those defying mitigation policies. Testing this, we compiled and analyzed all the data on certainty about COVID-19 mitigation policies and willingness to engage in mitigation-related behaviors that our lab collected during the pandemic (6 samples, 20 behaviors, Ns up to 1496). External ratings of the behaviors' extremity moderated certainty-willingness associations: whereas greater certainty was associated with increased willingness to engage in moderate behaviors (the typical result), lower certainty was associated with increased willingness to engage in extreme behaviors, especially among those worried about becoming ill.

THREATS TO DEMOCRACY: CAN IT BE SUSTAINED, AND WHAT MIGHT REPLACE IT?

Democracy has increasingly come under pressure as democratic norms are being eroded. This article explores why democratic processes are at risk in Europe and the United States and what might replace them. It reflects the thinking of the Study Group on Democracy convened under the auspices of the International Association for Intelligence Education in 2022. Its deliberations identified a set of underlying key drivers, documented how they manifested, and speculated on what new forms of governance might replace democratic rule. Recent trends cited include the corruption of norms, the disruptive influence of social media, the growing diversity of society, the shift from community-based problem-solving to reliance on identity politics, the emergence of existential threats, and the need for strong leadership. The group concludes that prospects for sustaining democratic institutions can best be understood by viewing future trends along two perspectives: the complexity of society and modes of decision-making.

Thinking Resistance, "Emergency,” and Kismet: A Response to Dylan Rodríguez's Presidential Address

The battles over masking only amplified preexisting culture and race wars in which entrenched libertarianism and neoliberal individualism evaded the economic and existential precarity caused by degraded social welfare and state health care. Counterterrorism projects such as Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) introduced by Barack Obama have relied on recruitment of community members, social service providers, and educators for self-surveillance and self-regulation of political expression and community organizing: a liberal counterterrorism approach for "reformist reform.” 5 Nabeel Abraham and Will Youmans provide important analyses of the "Containment System” in response to the War on Terror, based on "entrepreneurial opportunism” (Rodríguez) by Arab and Muslim American educators, professionals, and community leaders (including in the nonprofit industrial complex), some of whom collaborated with federal and state agencies.6 Academic Containment Reckoning with these critiques from critical Arab American or Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) studies requires grappling with the long history of anti-Arab/Muslim state policies of surveillance, policing, and mass incarceration that preceded 2001. The Zionist lobby and anti-Palestinian organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League have increasingly deployed the language of tolerance and civility to tar critics of Israel with charges of anti-Semitism.7 These liberal strategies, illustrating Rodríguez's argument, can be more damaging than frontal attacks on the Palestine justice movement because the language of racism is harder to challenge

Countering violent extremism in central Asia and South Asia: Islamophobia and cyber-radicalization in the digital era

Widespread political and economic uncertainty following the COVID-19 pandemic, paired with increased access to digital messaging and online social media platforms, has rendered vulnerable populations in Central Asia and South Asia (CASA) even more susceptible to misinformation, radical propaganda, and population targeting by violent extremists. More, studies show that violent extremism is inextricably linked with Islamophobia. Violent extremist recruiters frequently capitalize on publicized Islamophobic events to spread digital misinformation and lure disenfranchised recruits, particularly among youth populations. A debilitated Afghanistan only compounds these issues in CASA. The growing humanitarian crisis in the wake of U.S. military withdrawal, leaves this impoverished nation ripe for the proliferation of violent extremist activity that will reach far beyond its borders. Weaponized cyber-misinformation is a moving target that threatens even rural populations. Effective deterrence calls for novel multilateral efforts between great and local powers, both on and offline, to dispel skewed narratives and reinforce positive counter-narratives. While expanding access to digital communications in CASA presents obvious challenges for countering violent extremism, it likewise affords vital new opportunities for cooperation between global and regional powers to reach previously unreachable, vulnerable populations. © The Author(s), 2022. All rights reserved.

Documents on Democracy

In a country where every ninth person is suffering food shortage, a country where more than one million civilians have fled their homes and villages and have nowhere to live, a country where everyone has lost a family member or a friend to hunger, exposure, war, landmines, arbitrary killings, or the COVID pandemic the military did their utmost to exacerbate, we are all the victims of the military's crimes. There appears to be a parallel trend of an increased number and length of imprisonments occurring through criminal justice processes, suggesting that the focus of deprivation of liberty has shifted towards imprisonment, on purported grounds of counter-terrorism and counter-"extremism." The systems of arbitrary detention and related patterns of abuse in VETC and other detention facilities come against the backdrop of broader discrimination against members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities based on perceived security threats emanating from individual members of these groups. The Government holds the primary duty to ensure that all laws and policies are brought into compliance with international human rights law and to promptly investigate any allegations of human rights violations, to ensure accountability for perpetrators and to provide redress to victims.

Transformation of Terrorist and Extremist Strategies on the Internet (February-April 2022)

The Internet provides ample opportunities for spreading radical ideas and influencing public opinion. The study of information strategies of extremist and terrorist movements and the development of effective countermanipulative mechanisms for society are among the most important scientific problems of our time. The authors, using content analysis and comparative analysis, investigated the information strategy of radicals on the Internet in relation to the conducting of a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of a neighboring state in 2022. Two hundred Internet materials with signs of propaganda of terrorist and extremist ideas were identified during observations in February-April 2022. They became the basis for conducting content analysis on 11 signs and for constructing matrices. Topics of religious extremism, neo-fascism and nationalism predominate in the array of materials under consideration. The preferred style of writing extremist texts is informational (the author, as it were, informs the reader of some kind of " news," while using the actual informational occasion only in a small proportion of publications). The data obtained were compared with the results and information strategies of radicals obtained during a study in 2020 (widespread quarantine measures due to the spread of COVID-19). Similar and different features of the transformation of information strategies of extremists on the Internet were found. Typical features of both periods of crisis are the widespread dissemination of extremist materials, the growth in the number of aggressive comments in relation to state institutions and individual nationalities. The key difference was the sharp increase in the volume of Russophobic texts, the formation of enclaves of extremist communities outside social networks - based on neutral sites (electronic libraries, for example). The content analysis has shown an expansion of aggressive practices among older (40+) people, a formation of a distorted reality through special platforms in such a way that an alternative point of view is excluded from the information agenda of Runet.

Africa's Strategic Pivots: From China's Rise to Tradeoff Between Battling Covid-19 and Violent Extremism

Spurred by the expansive shared prosperity of its Belt and Road Initiative, China was winning the economic component of its Great Power Competition with the United States in Africa. Then Covid-19 spread to Africa in February 2020. By spring Africa's honeymoon with China was over. China's Covid-19 related discrimination against Africa as well as disruption in both the supply chain and the Belt and Road Initiative weakened bilateral ties. While nobody expects China to lose its place as Africa's biggest bilateral lending and trading partner, Sino-African ties are strained. Not surprisingly, Africa turned inward and focused on its fight against the invisible Covid-19 enemy. But Africa soon found itself in a new tradeoff between battling Covid-19 and violent extremism. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

The Great Power Competition Volume 2: Contagion Effect: Strategic Competition in the COVID-19 Era

Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Region faced numerous obstacles to building a stable and prosperous future. The region, which encompasses the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, has been plagued by economic and political uncertainty amidst dramatic shifts in the global power structure. With the pandemic now exacerbating the volatility in this already fragile region, the U.S.‘s strategic objectives are rife for re-examination. A complicated stew of factors such as weakening of established governance systems, the emboldening of extremist individuals and groups through advances in digital technology, the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Syria, and the intensification of the great power competition with China and Russia are creating a fertile environment for the growth of violent extremist organizations (VEOs). Such organizations take advantage of vulnerable, aggrieved, and traumatized populations to fuel radicalization, recruitment, and unrest, which further undermine stability and the potential for peace and prosperity. While it is still early to fully understand how the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact U.S. policy, this book provides a timely analysis of relevant dynamics such as popular radicalization, digital information ecosystems, networks of influence, and new capabilities to recognize and prepare for other such black swan events in the region. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Sheriffs, right-wing extremism, and the limits of U.S. federalism during a crisis

Background: During the COVID-19 crisis, sheriffs across the country vocally refused to implement mask mandates. Objectives: In this note, we argue that resistance to mask mandates emerged out of successful efforts to recruit sheriffs into right-wing extremism (RWE) and its foundations in white supremacy, nativism, and anti-government extremism. Methods: We draw on upon historical analysis and a national survey of sheriffs. Results: We show how RWE movements recruited sheriffs and that a substantial share of sheriffs adopted RWE attitudes. We argue that this radicalization of county sheriffs primes them to resist a core component of federalism: mandates by supra governments. We identify a relationship between sheriffs. RWE attitudes and their resistance to enforcing COVID-19 mask mandates. Conclusion: Our work demonstrates the importance of considering the implications of violent extremism in the United States, particularly as it aligns with local law enforcement. © 2023 The Authors. Social Science Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Southwestern Social Science Association.

THE NARRATIVES OF HATE USED BY ROMANIAN PARTIES LABELLED AS FAR-RIGHT. A COMPARATIVE NARRATIVE ANALYSIS

This article presents a qualitative comparative analysis of the primary hate narratives employed by three political parties: the Iron Guard Party propaganda, the Greater Romania Party (PRM), and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The study focuses on the following variables: 'foreigners,' 'freemasons,' 'Jews,' 'protection of Faith and Nation,' and 'rotten political elites.' The analysis is based on official propaganda materials of each party, including patriotic songs, leaflets, newspapers, programmatic documents, and speeches of the leader for the Iron Guard. In the case of the PRM, the analysis includes the party's official program, ideology, poems, and pamphlets by the leader (Corneliu Vadim Tudor), speeches, interviews, press articles, and extracts from party journals Romania Mare (Greater Romania) and Tricolorul. The AUR's official website, political program and ideology, Facebook posts, pages, press interviews, articles, and speeches of its leaders constitute the object of analysis. The narratives extracted were analyzed using the ATLAS.ti software, revealing striking resemblances among the hate narratives employed by the parties.

Online extremism and Islamophobic language and sentiment when discussing the COVID-19 pandemic and misinformation on Twitter

This paper looks at the profiles of those who engaged in Islamophobic language/extremist behaviour on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. This two-part analysis takes into account factors such as anonymity, membership length and postage frequency on language use, and the differences in sentiment expressed between pro-social and anti-social tweets. Analysis includes comparisons between low, moderate and high levels of anonymity, postage frequency and membership length, allowing for differences in keyword use to be explored. Our findings suggest that increased anonymity is not associated with an increase in Islamophobic language and misinformation. The sentiment analysis indicated that emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, sadness and trust were significantly more associated with pro-social Twitter users whereas sentiments such as anticipation, joy and surprise were significantly more associated with anti-social Twitter users. In some cases, evidence for joy in the suffering of others as a result of the pandemic was expressed.

Examining the correlates of electoral violence in the U.S. using a mixed methods approach: The case of the January 6th, 2021, capitol insurrection

Political conflict is not a new phenomenon. Most political conflict is theoretical and nonviolent;however, when political violence does occur, the consequences can be detrimental to democracies. Recently, in the U.S., political violence in the form of extremism is predominantly rooted in far-right ideologies, such as racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism (REMVE) and anti-government anti-authority violent extremism (AGAAVE). In the last few years, the frequency and intensity of violence perpetrated by groups and individuals who hold these extreme ideologies have increased. The threat of one of the most consequential types of political violence, electoral violence, became real on January 6th, 2021. On the morning of January 6th, then-President Trump held the so-called "Save America" rally, near the U.S. Capitol, and circulated the false notion that the 2020 election was fraudulent. When it was over, and out of approximately 30,000 individuals who attended the rally and exercised their constitutional rights, a group of approximately 1,000 individuals headed to the U.S. Capitol. There, the group of insurrectionists stormed the building, aiming to stop the certification of the 2020 Presidential election. A year and a half later, hundreds of individuals have been charged with violent and nonviolent crimes for their participation in the attack. Of the individuals who chose to storm the U.S. Capitol, why did some commit electoral violence while others did not? The current study aims to better understand the correlates of electoral violence in the January 6th Capitol attack. Using a sample of n = 818 violent and nonviolent insurrectionists charged for their participation in the insurrection, several theoretically relevant correlates (i.e., psychological factors, structural factors, racial animosity, religious affiliation, conspiracy theories, extremist ideologies and ties to extremist groups, the role of the Internet and social media, criminal record, grievances about the COVID-19 pandemic measures, and political rhetoric) were examined using a mixed methods approach. The quantitative results suggested that criminal record and Internet use were significant predictors of engaging in electoral violence. The qualitative results (n = 20) corroborated those findings and highlighted the importance of racial animosity, extreme political ideologies, political rhetoric, and conspiracy theories. The implications of the current project include summarizing the possible correlates of electoral violence in the U.S., informing counter-extremism strategies and policies, and offering an avenue for future research on far-right violent extremism in the country. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Enhancing children's awareness of sexual abuse in Pakistan with video literacy interventional cartoons.

In presence of violent extremism, children in Pakistan are at high risk for child sexual abuse (CSA), especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective approaches for preventing CSA include enhancing resilience resources in violence-affected societies. Previous research suggests that video-based curricula effectively enhances learning in primary schoolchildren. We pilot tested a video literacy program to build awareness in children, creating a 'personal safety and space bubble' as an educational approach for prevention of sexual abuse with an experimental 6 weeks long pre- and post-test design. We conducted qualitative interviews with students, teachers, and parents and identified themes using frequency analyses. Results showed a 96.7% increase in awareness about 'personal safety and space bubble'. The pilot study is valuable for public health researchers and policy makers seeking to curtail sexual abuse in extreme violence affected Pakistan. Primary schools can use such interventional cartoons to enhance awareness about child sexual abuse.

Do pandemics spawn extremism? Spanish flu deaths and the Ku Klux Klan.

Scholars and journalists connect pandemics to a rise in support for radical political movements. In this study, we draw on this insight to investigate the relationship between the 1918-1919 Spanish influenza pandemic and political extremism-here, the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan-in the United States. Specifically, we ask whether U.S. states and cities with higher death rates from the Spanish flu also had stronger Ku Klux Klan organizations in the early 1920s. Our results do not provide evidence of such a connection; in fact, the data suggest greater Klan membership where the pandemic was less severe. This provides initial evidence that pandemic severity, as measured by mortality, is not necessarily a cause of extremism in the United States; power devaluation as a result of social and cultural change, however, does appear to spur such mobilization.

Conspiracies, misinformation and resistance to public health measures during COVID-19 in white nationalist online communication.

Recent studies documented alarming growth in antiscientific discourse among extremist groups online and especially the relatively high anti-vaccine attitudes among White Nationalists (WN). In light of accelerated politization of COVID-19 containment measures and the expansion of containment to lockdowns, masking, and more, we examine current sentiment, themes and argumentation in white nationalist discourse, regarding the COVID-19 vaccines and other containment measures. We use unsupervised machine learning approaches to analyze all conversations posted in the "Coronavirus (Covid-19)" sub-forum on Stormfront between January 2020 and December 2021 (N = 9642 posts). Additionally, we manually analyze sentiment and argumentation in 300 randomly sampled posts. We identified four discursive themes: Science, Conspiracies, Sociopolitical, and Containment. Negative- sentiment was substantially higher than what was found in prior work done before COVID-19 regarding vaccines and other containment measures. The negativity was driven mostly by arguments adapted from the anti-vaccine movement and not by WN ideology.

Viral but Under the Radar: Unmasking the Convergence of Far-Right and Pandemic Articulations on BitChute

The study aims to trace the emerging Canadian online discourse resisting COVID-19 official and public health measures and its relationship to far-right ideologies on the alternative platform of BitChute through the analysis of the top watched videos from eight Canadian channels. Employing articulation theory as an analytical prism, it aims to identify: 1) Which organizational/individual identities are associated with the collected accounts and what is their relationship to the far-right? 2) What are the major themes in the videos? 3) What ideologies are associated with these themes? The analysis reveals six key articulations: pseudo-legal actions and language, political conspiracies, medical and scientific language and expertise, war analogies, activist rhetoric and tactics, and family values. These discursive articulations disclose linkages between concepts that are usually contradictory but are bonded together in the conjecture moment of the pandemic. This convergence points to the sophistication and innovativeness of far-right discourse in responding to COVID-19 and to their continuing invocation of older tropes and metaphors that have characterized their ideologies