More young people, including 10-year-olds, are seeing a “mix of horror” on the web that is driving them to violence, a UK counter-terrorism leader has said.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans of the Metropolitan Police, senior national co-ordinator for countering terrorism, said the nature of radicalization had changed and warned of a “growing fascination with the extreme content we are seeing on all our cases”.
Evans said suspects were increasingly ideologically neutral or searching the Internet for material justifying or depicting violence from different sources. He added: “The type of material we are finding, and my officers and staff are finding in social work, is absolutely astonishing and horrifying.
“We are seeing search logs that contain violence, misogyny, blood, extreme pornography, racism, fascination with mass violence, school massacres, incel and sometimes that is combined with terrorist material. It’s a pick and mix of horror and horrible content.
“These kinds of grotesque fascinations with violence and harmful opinions that we’re seeing are becoming more and more common.”
Police counter-terrorism network detectives were spending huge amounts of time and resources on digital forensics, uncovering young people searching for extreme material, which was “hugely worrying”, he said.
“We definitely need to think differently about how to stop that conveyor belt of young people who see and are exposed to this type of material and, unfortunately, sometimes commit horrible acts,” he said.
On Tuesday, the government announced a package of measures to reform Prevent, the plan that aims to prevent people from resorting to terrorist violence. Among the plans were special orders for young people to try to steer them away from violence when their behavior worried them.
The Government is also reviewing the entry thresholds for Prevent, which currently requires there to be a clear terrorist ideology. Increasingly, the people referred to in Prevent have an alarming interest in violence without any obvious ideological motive.
Evans said the terrorist threat to the UK was “latent”, with some “deep, dark hotspots” needing urgent attention. The peak year for terrorism in the UK in recent years was 2017, when people were killed in three Islamist attacks and one far-right attack.
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Evans said that since then, there have been 43 late-stage terrorist plots, some described as “goal-line saves,” foiled at the last moment. Three plots have been foiled in the past 12 months, two Islamist and one far-right, and it is feared the suspects intended to cause mass casualties in their attacks.
Evans expressed concerns shared in the British counter-terrorism community that the turmoil in Syria could create a “vacuum” for terrorism. He said police were looking for those traveling to and from Syria who might pose a danger.