27 Comments
User's avatar
Daas Yochid's avatar

Honestly, the radicalization of kids is a real issue. It stems from the same source as school shootings. But it isn't the FBI that should deal with it.

We need a real mental health revolution in our country, gun control, and a commission to figure out what the heck is going on.

Maybe we should just ban the Internet for kids.

Ken Klippenstein's avatar

It is absolutely real and horrifying. But national security is not the right tool here

michael's avatar

Maybe we as a society, culture, or political/ideological movement should provide the youth with a hopeful and transformative vision of the future. I don't blame them for being self-interested narcissists. That's what our culture rewards. And I don't blame them for being nihilists. The future is bleak.

JennyStokes's avatar

When YOUR President speaks the way he does.......what do you expect?

Are their any adults in the West?

Palindrome3777's avatar

So curious as to where you lean on what the kids are being radicalized about...please share.

Ak's avatar

Red pill and incel culture. Many of the mass shooters are involved with these.

Daas Yochid's avatar

School shootings, racism, hate, antisemitism. Probably more stuff.

Lori's avatar
7hEdited

This government has an obsession with children but does literally zero to improve their everyday lives.

Susan Skinner's avatar

Indeed. "The government" is enticing these children to get involved in their plotting.

Clif Brown's avatar

I know what this is going to result it - SHUT DOWN THE IRANIAN LEGO VIDEOS!

JennyStokes's avatar

When your President speaks the way he does.............what do you expect?

Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

Better still, let's organize a competition to out do the Iranians at the lego-trash talk! That's one war we can win, and no bodies to bury!

RealNoDeuces's avatar

The only solution is to sell discord, roblox, and minecraft to Israel.

kathleen quinn's avatar

Ken, please write the movie script fast before someone steals the idea.

“a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos, destruction, and social instability.” Sounds like me at 13, or at least my mother thought so.

Susan Skinner's avatar

Gee, points 1-4 sound just like what Trump Inc does, every minute of every day. Isn't that always the way it is with this gang of criminals?

These gangsters stir the pot and catch these young boys after talking them into plots. Very disturbing.

Wolf's avatar

This is nuts. The thugs are going after easier and easier targets because the are cowards.

Ak's avatar

As if they actually care about the real problem of red pill and incel radicalization. This makes me scared for the kids like my peers in the 90's with their anarchy symbols, thinking Rage Against the Machine was everything, and who are now just normally contributing to society.

Bob Martin's avatar

The Nihilistic Violent Extremists I worry about occupy the White House, Congress, Pentagon, DHS, CIA, and FBI!

Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

If you had been around some of the toddlers I have, then you wouldn't ..., but really, If only there were a way for kids to live in a decent society, they might learn a different way to live, but surrounded by the societies that psychopaths have created, we ought to consider ourselves very lucky that not every child harbors antisocial tendencies, and/or will ever act on them.

Tara's avatar

I can understand the reflex to dismiss these online networks, because they're just kids, how much of a threat do they really pose? Unfortunately the reality is pretty grim.

You mention 764 in the article but downplay what they're actually about. They're a neo-Nazi sextortion group involved in sexual, physical, and psychological abuse of minors—they specifically target victims in the 9 to 17 age range, preferring kids with mental health issues or marginalized backgrounds. They solicit and distribute material of child sexual abuse, self harm, torture, animal cruelty, gore, and other horrific stuff, and have been linked to a number of suicides. That group was started by a 15 year old.

A few years back a pedophile forum on the dark web notorious for distributing "hurtcore" content including the sexual torture of infants was taken down in a global operation, and the primary webmaster was an Australian guy who was in his early twenties and had started the forum in his teens.

Incel and manosphere content is being actively targeted at young boys, and that has led to at least two public attacks that I can think of off the top of my head (the Toronto van attack and a school shooting in California). There have certainly been more since, but (if I'm remembering correctly) those were the two incidents that introduced incel ideology to greater public discourse. In the ensuing years that whole movement has only grown in strength.

Terrorism isn't just religious extremism, and what it looks like has evolved since 9/11. I'm not a fan of the modern FBI and national security apparatus by any stretch but I don't think they're wrong in targeting this specific threat. Given these groups are ideologically motivated worldwide networks, they certainly fall under the umbrella of modern terrorism and federal jurisdiction.

Downplaying the harm they cause and the threat they pose is not a great look.

Ken Klippenstein's avatar

I'm not downplaying the harm or the role of law enforcement - I'm criticizing approaching it as terrorism

Tara's avatar

Approaching it as terrorism might not be the best way to deal with this, but I'm not sure how else you even begin to address problems on such a global scale. I mean I just opened up Reddit and the fourth post on my homepage is an International Business Times article "TikTok Trend Shows Men Training To Attack Women Who Reject Them, One Woman Already Stabbed 50 Times: 'Red Pill' culture promotes violence against women, with Brazilian YouTube channels reaching 23 million subscribers and spreading hate." Is that not terrorism?

The reality is that what modern terrorism looks like is constantly evolving. We're not dealing with the same kind of religious-based groups that dominated the headlines in the late 20th and early 21st century; the internet has spawned a very different kind of beast with influences and impacts that are perhaps more subtle, but equally (if not more) dangerous.

Personally I'm just glad this is even being recognized as an issue, even if it's late to the party. For those of us that have been chronically online for the past twenty+ years it's not new. Sadly the current powers either fail to recognize or conveniently ignore the political affiliations of the vast majority of these groups—it's almost never the left wing of society, even if that's where the current admin wants to pretend the biggest threat exists. But society at large can only ignore the obvious for so long.

Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

You make some valid points, however, the solution cannot be more of the same governmental criminalizing everything. We like in a vicious society that actively dehumanizes the majority of life on this planet. The role models from hell are the ones that need to be taken down. We live in a Pathocracy. Dealing with that ought to be the business of everyone, who is not a psychopath.

Ak's avatar

The Trump administration, made up of people like Stephen Miller and the Epstein class, are not going to help the very real problems you describe.