The recent arrest of two Austrian teenagers, aged 18 and 19, for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and plotting a terror attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna highlights the growing threat of young people being recruited into Islamist and far-right terrorist organisations via social media, particularly TikTok.
The phenomenon, dubbed “TikTok jihad,” has sparked a resurgence of jihadi activity targeting Europe. In the past 10 months, the continent has seen six terrorist attacks, mostly small but some deadly, and more than 20 planned attacks thwarted by security and intelligence services.
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ISIS fighters in Syria, 2014
(Photo: Associated Press)
The attackers and potential attackers were often young people who had been radicalized online, including the two Austrian detainees and a third, 15-year-old accomplice, who was held for questioning and then released.
Intelligence experts say TikTok, due to its broad reach and algorithms, is a preferred platform for recruiting young “lone wolves” and virtual terrorist cells, while Telegram is used to plan attacks and communicate with operatives.
This new recruiting method poses challenges for law enforcement in two ways: It is much more difficult for intelligence agencies to monitor, search and identify virtual meeting locations than it is to track in-person meetings between recruiters and candidates.
Moreover, the new channels require law enforcement and security agencies to put more effort into profiling “dangerous” individuals and those who may join terrorist organizations, as this involves gathering information on young people who were not previously considered to be at risk. It also poses challenges for law enforcement agencies who must decide how to prosecute minors in such cases.
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Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna
(Photo: Lipskiy / Shutterstock.com)
Once upon a time, the Internet served as a forest of Islamist propaganda for European Muslims, who needed extremist imams and mosques as a bridge between them and terrorist groups. That bridge has disappeared. There is no need for face-to-face meetings anymore, and a new generation needs only virtual networks to move from radicalization to participation and action.
To make matters worse, while in the past the suspects were mainly from Muslim backgrounds or the children of Muslim immigrants, recent months have shown that radicalisation is also spreading among young people in Germany and France who have no connection to Muslim or immigrant backgrounds. This is in addition to young people who were born in Europe but grew up in Muslim communities disconnected from where they were born and who get their information mainly from online extremism and Al Jazeera.
A terrorist group was uncovered in Germany in April, arresting two girls, aged 15 and 16, and one boy, aged 15, from Dusseldorf. Wiretaps of their private chat groups revealed plans to act for the Islamic State by attacking churches and police stations to kill as many people as possible. Investigations revealed that they had been radicalized online, had collected Molotov cocktails and stabbing equipment, and planned to buy firearms to attack Cologne's famous cathedral.
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Zurich attacker arrested after attacking Orthodox Jewish man
In May, a 14-year-old girl from Montenegro was arrested in Austria after buying a knife and an axe in Graz in an attempt to carry out a terror attack – her computer contained Islamic State propaganda and incitement material – and security forces detained several young people in France for plotting attacks during the Paris Olympics.
The shift to virtual recruiting is linked in part to the Islamic State's loss of territory and disintegration in Iraq and Syria in 2019. The idea lives on in the virtual crowd, with recruiters scouring social media for users interested in their cause.
Western intelligence experts warn that recruitment is becoming harder to detect because new recruits are not ideologically aligned with terrorist groups but are victims of cynical exploitation by adults looking for marginalized teenagers who grew up in broken homes and are disillusioned and bored with life.
IS recruitment is portrayed as an outlet for venting frustrations against parents, teachers and society, rather than violent enlistment for political and religious purposes. It is an outlet for their mundane lives and a chance to gain a dubious “15 minutes of fame”. Propaganda efforts by IS affiliates in Afghanistan and Central Asia have accelerated the recruitment of young people. IS's active activities have reinstated its presence in discussions and intelligence reports.
The October 7 massacre and the ensuing Gaza war also fueled increased social media activity. TikTok's network algorithms in particular have facilitated the spread of war-related content, radicalizing and recruiting young people. Since October, terrorist activities and attempts have increased fourfold compared to the same period last year.
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“If you consume Western culture, Allah will make it difficult for you to breathe,” an Islamic preacher named Abdul Hamid warns in a video captured by intelligence agencies in Düsseldorf. The video, which has been viewed 60,000 times, is in German and is packed with Salafist and Islamist propaganda.
Preachers are often not religious leaders but online figures who speak the language of Gen Z. They are the first point of contact that introduces viewers into the “Salafist bubble,” where a flood of propaganda and recruitment materials disguised as videos offering solutions to everyday problems, always interwoven with religious messages and clear rules, promised to guide young people through their confusion and provide them with a moral compass.
These portals foster young people's sense of identity and empathy, portraying them as social and cultural outsiders, just like Muslim believers. Islam becomes a counter-cultural platform. For many young people, Islamic activists become father figures and trusted figures.
The plans of the Austrian young people (with immigrant roots) arrested for planning an attack at a Taylor Swift concert are chilling. They collected machetes, firecrackers, axes, knives and hammers, as well as IS propaganda pamphlets. The 19-year-old got a job in a metal factory to get chemicals, while the 17-year-old secured a job at the stadium where they planned the attack. They even acquired police sirens to install in their cars to carry out a massive suicide attack when they arrived at the venue. Their encrypted text communications with the apprehenders were conducted in a coded language, avoiding any keywords that might alert the security services.
According to a report by terrorism expert Peter Newman, 38 of the 58 people arrested since October for ISIS-related activities were between the ages of 13 and 19. Recruiters continue their efforts because they only need to hire one of thousands of hypothetical candidates. They know that no one would suspect a 15-year-old boy or girl of committing such a heinous act. The attack on the Taylor Swift concert may have been thwarted, but the threat remains.
Vienna's public security chief, Franz Ruff, said those arrested in the foiled attack at the Taylor Swift concert had been radicalised online. Communications between the perpetrators had been coded to fool surveillance agencies. “It was like having a conversation,” he told reporters in Vienna.
German newspaper Bild reported that the mastermind behind the Taylor Swift concert plans was influenced by internet-famous Islamic preacher Abdul Bala, who became an internet preacher after his Berlin mosque was closed down and has gained tens of thousands of followers.
