More young people are viewing a “pick and mix of horror” on the web that pushes them towards violence, a UK counter-terrorism leader has said.
Deputy assistant commissioner Vicki Evans of the Metropolitan police, the senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism, said the nature of radicalisation had changed and warned of a “rapidly increasing fascination with extreme content that we’re seeing throughout our casework”.
Evans said suspects increasingly had no ideology or would scour the internet for material justifying or depicting violence from different sources. She added: “The type of material that we’re encountering, and my officers and staff are encountering in casework, is absolutely staggering and horrific.
“We are seeing search histories which contain violence, misogyny, gore, extreme pornography, racism, fascination with mass violence, school massacres, incel, and sometimes that’s coupled with terrorist material. It is a pick and mix of horror, horrific content.
“These sort of grotesque fascinations with violence and harmful views that we’re seeing are increasingly common.”
Detectives in the counter-terrorism policing network were expending huge amounts of time and resources on digital forensics, uncovering young people seeking extreme material, which was “hugely worrying”, she said.
“We most definitely need to think differently about how we stop that conveyor belt of young people who are seeing and being exposed to this type of material, and unfortunately, sometimes then going on to commit horrific acts,” she said.
On Tuesday, the government announced a package of measures to reform Prevent, the scheme that aims to stop people turning to terrorist violence. Among the plans were special orders for young people to try to turn them away from violence when their behaviour causes concern.
The government is also reviewing the thresholds for entry to Prevent, which currently requires there to be a clear terrorist ideology. Increasingly people referred to Prevent have an alarming interest in violence with no obvious ideological driver.
Evans said the terrorist threat to the UK was “smouldering’, with some “deep, dark, hotspots” that needed 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 extreme rightwing attack.
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Evans said that since then, there had been 43 late-stage terror plots, with some described as “goal-line saves”, thwarted at the very last moment. Three plots, two Islamist and one extreme rightwing, have been thwarted in the past 12 months, with suspects feared to have been aiming to cause mass casualties in their attacks.
Evans voiced concerns shared in Britain’s counter-terrorism community that the upheaval in Syria could create a “void” for terrorism. She said police were on the lookout for those travelling to and from Syria who could pose a danger.
