(Anne-Christine Poujoulat / AFP via Getty Images file) Image: A man looks at flowers laid outside the Bois d'Aulne secondary school outside of Paris in homage to slain history teacher Samuel Paty, who was beheaded by an attacker for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in his civics class. “They have reached a new prominence nationally and internationally.” “With the emergence of Covid-19, lots of existing conspiracy theory networks in the U.K., which already had links to the far-right as well as the far-left, have really been able to capitalize on this moment,” said David Lawrence, a researcher at the British anti-extremist campaign group Hope Not Hate, which tracks the growth of the far-right across Europe. think tank, wrote in an article published May 25, “but its co-opting of Covid skepticism and conspiracy is highly likely to exacerbate this ever-growing threat.”Ĭertainly, the pandemic has allowed conspiracy theories and the groups who espouse them to thrive as never before. “Radical-right extremism was already increasing prior to the pandemic,” the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, a U.K. Potential Islamist plots still make up around 69 percent of the Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism casework, the force said, but right-wing cases account for 30 percent, and their proportion is growing.
government said were “apparently inspired by crackpot conspiracy theories circulating online.” Police fear increased activism by anti-authority, anti-lockdown movements could lead to similar cases, or to incidents like the attacks on 5G cell towers in England in April 2020, which the U.K. The country’s leading virologist and his family are in hiding after he received death threats. A huge manhunt is underway in Belgium after an armed soldier, who made threats against leading public health experts, went missing last week. We may already be seeing the consequences. Image: Protestors clash with Metropolitan Police officers during an anti-vaccine rally at Trafalgar Square in London in 2020. Put all this together, he said, and you have a situation of “real concern.” “And we have seen an increased body of online extremism and hatred, much of which sits below the criminal threshold but which creates a worryingly permissive environment that makes it easier for terrorists to peddle their brand of hatred.” “Covid-19 has driven huge numbers of people to spend increased time online,“ Twist said. Moreover, people seeking explanations for these bewildering circumstances may find them in the flourishing conspiracy theory networks on social media, particularly platforms such as Telegram. According to the Metropolitan Police, 185 people were arrested on terrorism charges since the start of 2020, a 34 percent decline compared to the previous 12 months.īut police are worried that successive lockdowns have created the perfect conditions for terrorism to thrive, fueling long-standing grievances, exacerbating economic inequalities, and stoking distrust of authority. fell to their lowest level in nearly a decade.
(Valery Hache / AFP via Getty Images file)Īs a result of the slowdown in public life due to the pandemic, arrests on terrorism charges in the U.K. Image: French gendarmes secure the area around the Notre-Dame de l'Assomption Basilica in Nice. “While the rest of us have been focused on protecting ourselves and our families from Covid-19, terrorists have not stopped planning attacks or radicalizing vulnerable people online,” deputy assistant constable Matt Twist told journalists earlier this month at the Metropolitan Police’s famous Scotland Yard headquarters. The force declined to release details of those cases but said all four were either inspired by extreme right-wing or violent Islamist ideology. London’s Metropolitan Police, the United Kingdom’s largest force, said this month that it has thwarted at least four late-stage terrorist plots since the start of the pandemic. But the threat, police say, may now be growing again.
Since the defeat of Islamic State forces in the Middle East, terrorist attacks across Western Europe have waned. This November will mark six years since 90 people were killed at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. Last week marked four years since an Islamist bomber killed 22 people outside the singer Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester, England. The threat of ideologically-driven mass murders looms large in Europe.
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