Online Radicalisation – a Virus That Is Hard to Recognise and Easy to Spread

A short news item once attracted great attention in the country: the Ministry of Interior had arrested seven people who were ISIL fighters. Later the number grew, and in 2023 the media reported that 143 citizens of North Macedonia had, in previous years, travelled or tried to travel to Syria, Iraq or both to join terrorist groups. During that period, the US State Department also noted in its reports that the level of terrorist threat in our country was “average high” or medium, due to the presence of ISIS members and sympathisers in the country. There was also the case of an 18-year-old girl from Kumanovo who was killed on the battlefields of the Middle East.

Security experts analysing the case at the time said that the girl had been recruited through social media. There were also cases of paid individuals from the Balkans recruiting volunteers from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to fight on Russia’s side in the war against Ukraine. For their purposes they used Telegram, where they first recruited fighters and then gave them instructions on how to reach the front without being intercepted by the authorities.

These are just a few examples showing that technological progress has opened new channels for extremist organisations to spread their messages and win support for their goals. Social media have also made it easier for voices of hatred to spread extremist views and strengthen their network of followers.

“The group between 14 and 25 years of age is the most vulnerable to being radicalised,” says our interviewee, Professor Nikola Dujovski from the Faculty of Security in Skopje. He stresses that radicalisation is most present online because that is where there are the most opportunities for uncontrolled access, scrolling, following and opening all kinds of content.

“Today the internet is such a powerful tool that in one second it can take you to the other side of the world, and that is why young people are especially unprotected and a vulnerable group when it comes to the possibility of radicalisation,” Dujovski points out.

Ethno-nationalist extremism is on the rise

The Western Balkans region is also still “running a high temperature” from the consequences of past conflicts. As a result, the internet has become a stage for theatre and for battles that were not fought in the past, when there were no technologies for online organising and radicalisation. In its 2022 analysis entitled “Online radicalisation and P/CVE approaches in the Western Balkans”, the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) warned of a growing security threat in the region from the rise of ethno-nationalist and right-wing extremism, as well as reciprocal radicalisation driven by polarisation, historical revisionism and political narratives.

“Radicalisation almost always begins with accumulated personal frustration – lost dignity, failure, the feeling of not being heard or understood. I think that is the foundation. The ideology itself comes later, as a framework that gives their inner feelings a name, a culprit and a direction,” said Goran Ilioski, a retired army colonel, in our conversation on the topic.

“When I look at the most common motives, I divide them into two layers. The first are people with a sense of injustice, ethnic marginalisation, an identity crisis among young people, disillusionment with politics – both here and more broadly. The second, which I find more interesting, are radical communities that offer belonging, status and a ‘mission’ – the three things that today’s society delivers less and less, especially to young people,” says Ilioski.

Just a decade ago, Macedonia faced two major events that gained mass support through calls on social media: the opposition camp’s Colourful Revolution, and the protests by supporters of the then government, which escalated into a violent storming of Parliament. One of the protests was announced on social media under the slogan “You crossed the red line. Not the red-and-yellow one.” Both events show how quickly the desired messages can travel from those pulling the strings to those who are supposed to take to the streets and show strength and numbers.

The analysis mentioned above points out that at the core of vulnerability to online radicalisation lie the lack of critical assessment of content and the inability to think critically. It also warns that the Western Balkans, to which Macedonia belongs, lacks expertise and a strategic approach to tackling online radicalisation.

That Macedonia is not immune to online radicalisation, with artificial intelligence, social media and the crypto market making it easier to recruit for radical, violent and terrorist activities, was also stated at the conference “Online Radicalisation as a Security Challenge for North Macedonia: Risks, Policies and Legal Solutions”, organised by the Institute of Communication Studies (IKS) in cooperation with the National Committee for Preventing Violent Extremism and Countering Terrorism.

The Committee’s National Coordinator, Pavle Trajanov, said that a Law on Monitoring and Preventing Radicalisation and Violent Extremism is being drafted and should be adopted by the end of the year, and announced the formation of a special unit to deal with the problem.

“In Germany and the Netherlands they use a platform that monitors all content on social media and has a special team that assesses what should be removed. The ministry orders it to be taken down within two hours; otherwise proceedings are launched and there are other legal measures. If this were done here in the same way, it would be seen as stifling human rights. That is why we first need to adopt a law, and a working group has been formed for that purpose. The law will also protect human rights and freedom of expression,” said Trajanov.

Young people are the target

Macedonian institutions have been put to the test several times in their efforts to prevent terrorist acts by individuals or groups radicalised online. As security experts pointed out at the conference, these threats escalated especially when the wars in Syria and Iraq broke out, when a significant number of the country’s citizens went there for ideological reasons, and potential threats have also been observed in the last two years.

What is particularly worrying is that young people are being recruited. Recruitment happens gradually, not through calls for violence, but by spreading conspiracy narratives that create a sense of injustice, isolation or a need to belong. Channels such as Telegram or Discord are most often used, after which physical contact is established, usually with some para-religious venue chosen as the meeting place. But online radicalisation in Macedonia is not limited to religious movements – ethno-nationalist groups that continue to spread ideologically motivated propaganda are also present, security experts say.

In our conversation, Professor Dujovski stressed that conferences and workshops like this are key to prevention.

“We used to be much weaker in terms of our capacity to counter it. Today, not only in Macedonia but more widely, various events are often organised to discuss the issue with different target groups, most often in secondary schools, at universities and in NGOs, opening up topics about the meaning and the danger of radicalisation,” he says.

Our interviewee also emphasises how important it is for families to recognise when their son or daughter is exposed to an online radicalisation campaign.

“We all have a duty to check together what our children, our pupils and our students are doing. Who they are communicating with, whether there is a change in his or her behaviour, whether they have perhaps become more nervous or absent in conversations. These are signs through which we can all recognise young people who have already started down that path. And if we fail to recognise those signs in time, three weeks are quite enough for a young person to go from a perfectly decent and reserved citizen to someone who is considering committing a terrorist act,” Dujovski underlined.

As part of its commitments under the EU-prepared Counter-Terrorism Action Plan, Macedonia has drawn up a Roadmap that foresees several joint activities with the Institute of Communication Studies, on topics such as: online radicalisation, foreign influence through the media and social networks, interference in internal affairs, and foreign financing of radical processes in Macedonia.

When it comes to young people and the online space, as well as subtle recruitment methods, experts also highlight the role of the family and schools, the local community, the media and civil society. Equally important, they say, is the ability to recognise manipulation, develop critical thinking, build trust, and talk about identity, frustration, injustice and belonging before those feelings are appropriated and abused by radical narratives.

Macedonian society, says retired army colonel Goran Ilioski, has all the known “vulnerabilities” that online radicalisation looks for.

“The socio-economic poverty of part of the population creates anger that looks for a culprit; ethnic tensions such as Macedonian-Albanian ones, and religious and historical tensions, can erupt into anger through manipulation. Particularly worth mentioning is the low trust in institutions, which makes every official message seem suspicious,” he believes.

Topics susceptible to radicalisation, our interviewee adds, include Macedonian-Albanian relations, the divide between Christians and Muslims, and historical tensions with Greece and Bulgaria.

“It is particularly interesting that Macedonian and Albanian nationalist narratives function as mirror images – through different identities, but with the same structure of grievance. Both speak of historical injustice, both offer an idea of ‘unification’, and both serve as a gateway to harder content,” Ilioski adds.

Manipulation is the most powerful weapon

Our interviewees point out that manipulation is still the most powerful weapon.

“Manipulation is actually one hundred per cent of radicalisation. It means distracting a young person who, instead of being a good pupil, a good student, a good citizen and using the opportunities of the 21st century, is led to believe that if they commit a terrorist act they will receive some kind of reward. And unfortunately religious principles are used for this,” says Dujovski.

As he points out, there is currently no reason for concern in the country on this issue, but migration flows should be monitored and vigilance increased after the end of the war in the Middle East.

“If before NATO membership we could witness daily young people venturing into the unknown, mostly and most often online, then after NATO membership, and thanks to the information we exchange on a daily basis, we are really a somewhat more resilient country when it comes to the possibilities of online radicalisation,” the professor stressed.

Our interviewees agree that protecting the young population must nevertheless be continuous, because in the race between prevention and online radicalisation, those who sit behind a computer or hold a smartphone and look for victims are faster.

“First they convince the person that they are a victim, then the anger is channelled towards ‘the others’. It is a simple but effective model. What is new is not the message, but the infrastructure through which it is delivered. Social networks rank content according to one key parameter – engagement. And provocative and controversial views almost always get more engagement than normal views. The algorithm registers this, spreads them massively, and so creates a ‘feedback loop’ in which the user sees ever harsher versions of the same idea,” explains Goran Ilioski.

On the other side, Ilioski adds, counter-narratives are playing in an asymmetric “contest”.

“They don’t offer provocation, so they generate less engagement, and the algorithm suppresses them. In addition, when they come from institutional actors, their credibility is reduced even further, because general trust in institutions has already eroded. My conclusion is that manipulation is not a technological problem with a purely technological solution. It requires three things at once: regulation of platforms, technological moderation, and media education,” says Ilioski.

A 2021 study by the Centre for Research and Policy Making entitled “Pathway to Prevention: Using Education to Prevent Online Radicalisation among Youth” showed that more than half of the secondary-school students surveyed very often come across content involving trolling, bullying and insults, accompanied by violent content such as physical assaults, arson and beatings, or hate speech that encourages people to behave violently. More than 20 per cent of respondents said that at least half of their friends share such violent content.

Several recent cases in schools, such as that of the girl who was sadistically abused by her classmates, may be a kind of confirmation that the trend from 2021 has continued upwards – and that online radicalisation takes more forms than the classic ones we know.

Journalist: Sonja Kramarska

This article was translated from Macedonian using artificial intelligence (AI). The original Macedonian version is available here.