Dr. Mansour Al-Shammari Secretary-General of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology – “Etidal”
The history of extremist organizations cannot be separated from the major transformations in communication systems, as they are closely tied to the tools of this system. This is not only in terms of their ability to spread and attract followers, but also in terms of their identity and ideological nature. This is evident in the major transformations in the history of extremist ideologies. In their early stages, extremist ideas were associated with small, secretive groups with armed formations, due to the limitations or absence of communication means. However, once printing emerged and books became available to the public, we transitioned to an era of mobilizing religious groups in particular. With the advent of the press, which followed daily human affairs, extremism shifted to mass forms linked to political ideologies, using the street as a means of pressuring states.
The interactive digital age represented a milestone in shaping what can be called the “networked era of extremism.” Social media and tools provided for communication became a breeding ground for emerging the digital group, which no longer depended on geographical obligations, replacing them with the horizons of the new virtual world. Since these extremist groups discovered these new realms, they have continuously sought to exploit them to the fullest, in order to solidify their ideologies in the minds of their followers and extend their reach to the furthest possible extent. This has made the promotion of extremist concepts organizationally, ideologically, and logistically feasible, after the communication system underwent qualitative leaps in its efficiency and global coverage. This created a form of transcontinental connectivity, free from all forms of traditional censorship. Thus, regional barriers collapsed in front of a discourse that became available with sound, image, and real-time translation, easily propelling it into global circulation.
This rapid transformation in the characteristics of extremist ideology, along with the new recruitment mechanisms developed in parallel with mastery over controlling visual, auditory, and written content, took no more than two decades, while previous transformations took long and slow time spans. The shift from traditional sermons to short, interactive content supported by all forms of attraction and communicative effectiveness was not just a change in the medium of transmission. It was a qualitative leap that brought about a complete transformation in the patterns of extremism. This transformation created new combinations that merged mass viewing with the requirements of secretive organizations, and between narrow violent rhetoric and open polarizing discourse. All on the same platforms, and relying on a graduated approach with content that was crafted in multiple versions—some suitable for organizational members, others aimed at the general public, and even to children through the use of video games to convey messages of extremism.
What has been mentioned above is the impact of the interactive web “0.2,” which has reached a level of radicalism that is difficult to grasp. So, what about today, when we stand on the threshold of a new era that no one can fully comprehend in its actual scope or its potential consequences on human life and its forms, perhaps even on life itself? it is the era of the Semantic Web “0.3” (the third generation based on artificial intelligence), which will take us from the phase of a neutral content carrier—where the current web allowed human interaction with content—to a type of internal interaction within the machine itself with the “meanings” of these contents, and based on this, external interaction between machines themselves within the framework of the Internet of Things. The occurrence of this is no longer just an assumption or a guess; the rapid releases of large language models (LLM) have taken us by surprise, and they have seamlessly become part of daily life, likely representing a new opportunity for extremism to establish a different identity that aligns with this web. It is difficult, of course, to encompass all the questions raised by this digital stage, which lies between what came before and what will come after. However, thinking about it, in our opinion, requires a three-dimensional approach that seeks to understand the new digital shift on its intertwined fronts without separation, isolation, or simplification. These fronts include big data, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality.
As for big data, it has become the essence of the new world. Since the emergence of the interactive web, major digital companies have been accumulating data storage without distinguishing between what pertains to an individual’s personal life and what relates to digital data around the world. Extremist organizations have recognized the importance of this process, and have worked tirelessly to smuggle and digitize their textual, auditory, and visual archives. Thus, they left no small or large detail in their literature without making it accessible to search engine users. The fact is that algorithmic systems, with their precise and powerful processors—which have undergone major leaps since the advent of the interactive web, advancing each year on the “petaflop” scale beyond human comprehension—are still unable to clearly distinguish between valuable knowledge content and criminal content. Naturally, the virus of extremist and violent discourse has found a way to root itself within the data packages available to major search engines, making it nearly accessible to everyone. Extremist messages have become part of people’s daily reading without much caution, as major digital companies focus on the volume of data rather than prioritizing the value or quality of the content.
What has been discussed above leads us to the front of artificial intelligence, which is essentially a qualitative mechanism for processing big data that has been accumulated by the world in just a few years, more than humanity has ever accumulated in history. This is within the framework of striving to achieve the four key requirements for data management, symbolized by four “V” words: velocity, volume, variety, and veracity. However, while artificial intelligence is essentially dependent on the first two requirements, which are purely technical challenges, it faces the last two requirements within a realm where ideologies, legal, and ethical values intersect. There does not seem to be a strong will to adhere to these latter requirements due to their high cost. Here, the use of new artificial intelligence tools, whether through machine learning or deep learning, cannot escape the fragility of data, especially in terms of variety and veracity. Additionally, their technical gains will become accessible to everyone, making extremist organizations exempt from many of the challenges they once faced in areas such as editing, translation, monitoring, prediction, and other costly tasks. This will make them stronger and more widespread in the context of what is called “Weak AI,” the current generation that is still under human supervision. However, what about the possibility of something that has become more than just a hypothesis—the emergence of “Strong AI” (AGI), which would no longer require human intervention and would be self-sufficient? Wouldn’t this dangerous machine consciousness, capable of challenging human centrality, be prone to find within its internal system extremist material that could help shape its extremist identity, if we leave the core material that operates on with such fragility, aggregation, and lack of distinction between what is knowledge-based and what is purely criminal?
The other front is related to augmented reality, which has begun to blur the boundaries between the real world and the virtual world. This will tighten the digital virtual loop that now traps people in their self-isolation and disconnection from real-world belonging, pushing them toward digital identities that are almost detached from reality, especially in the semi-independent world of digital games. This isolation has led an entire generation to replace tangible things with emotions, as augmented reality now generates emotions as if they were real and not virtual. This represents a form of normalization with hallucinations. The fact is, this isolation, the amplification of human emotions, and the creation of a general split within closed groups, are the deep characteristics of the goals of any extremist discourse. Therefore, organizations will find in this upcoming digital shift a dangerous and easy polarizing world that could allow them to generalize and facilitate the experience of violent emotions linked to terrorism, even without their victims leaving their rooms. A young person may enjoy and normalize virtual, highly violent emotions within their digital circle, and, of course, this will open the doors to violence in ways that cannot be predicted in terms of the psychological and ideological consequences for those interacting with it.
What can be said is that it is difficult to address all the questions that arise for those following the digital lives of extremists and their interactions with the unexpected developments on the path toward the semantic web. However, it is certain that they will find dangerous tools within it that will lead them to alter their ideological trajectories. Since the emergence of the digital extremist, many transformations in extremist identity have been recorded, becoming hybrid at the ideological level, and flexible and pragmatic at the operational level. Therefore, it is essential to anticipate these shifts with serious efforts to prevent the immense digital advancement from being used in an ill-considered, high-risk venture.
