When Taylor Swift announced three nights of her Era's tour in Vienna last year, tickets sold out within hours. Nearly 200,000 fans were set to attend, with Swifties flying in from around the world. They'd spent money on their flights, their hotels and outfits. The city was buzzing with excitement. But the day before her first show, they were all cancelled.
Organizers said it was because of a terror threat. I was meant to go to the concert tomorrow, really devastated. I mean, even if they try to destroy our Taylor Swift spirit, they really can't. We were very upset, very disappointed, but we're just really... happy that everyone's safe. Three teenagers, aged 17, 18 and 19, were arrested, accused of plotting an attack which was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State group. Authorities say they were radicalised online.
And this comes at a time when, across Europe, the people behind things like this are getting younger. In 2024, the Global Terrorism Index found that one in five terror suspects was under 18 in several Western countries. In the UK, it was double. So on today's episode, you're going to find out why and how more teenagers are being radicalised in Europe. I'm Hannah Gelbart, and this is What in the World from the BBC World Service.
Before we get into the data, the Global Terrorism Index, which is the report I mentioned earlier, threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation. So with that in mind, let's take a closer look at the report and its findings. Thomas Morgan works at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Australia, and he wrote the report. Hi, Thomas. Hello, thanks for having me.
To start off with, what are the main profiles of people who are carrying out terror attacks in Europe in 2024 from your research? The most striking finding is that terror suspects and those people carrying out terrorist attacks are getting younger. I think if you look at the UK, it's something like over 40% of terrorism suspects are now under the age of 18. If you're looking at Europe more widely, it's around one in five. So the profile of terrorists and suspected terrorists is getting younger.
Why is it that this profile is getting so much younger?
It's a very good question, and there's not one single answer for that. I think you're finding that there's sort of increasing pace of radicalization, particularly amongst young people. So when you go back and look at the speed at which people were radicalized into... terrorist attacks in the early 2000s it was around 16 months if you're looking now that's shorter now to around 10 months on average but can be even shorter in some cases just a few months
or even weeks. So increasing exposure to violent material online and on social media, growing sort of social unrest and general dissatisfaction as well are some of the factors. When we talk about radicalisation, Can you break down what the process involves, how people are radicalised? It's not always clear exactly how it happens from person to person, and it won't necessarily always be the same from person to person. But perhaps one way you can think about the radicalised...
process is kind of by likening it to a bathtub. If you think of the depth of the bathtub as the factors which are protective against... radicalization so that's if if somebody is engaged with their community if they have a job if they have economic security and so on those are the things that are protective against radicalization
And if you think of that bathtub as being filled up by various taps, so that's exposure to violent material, having a strong sense of grievance, feeling a cultural distance from both their society or perhaps from their parents as well. So the speed at which those various inputs come in increases the likelihood of radicalisation happening. In Europe, is it mostly Islamist extremism?
There are those who are connected to jihadist groups or jihadist inspired. And then also there's been an increase in far right terrorism and far right extremism as well. What high profile incidents have there been, whether they were... carried out or foiled? As you mentioned, yes. So the foiled attack on a Taylor Swift concert. In Australia, there was an attack on a priest in an Assyrian church carried out by a 16-year-old, a stabbing by 13.
a year old at a university as well. So there's been a number of different attacks across the West in the past year. Now let's hear from Julian, a counsellor at an NGO called Violence Prevention Network. He works with teenagers in Berlin who have been radicalized by far-right ideology. Most of them are male, but he does also work with women and girls. Julian, hello. Hello, Hannah.
about the backgrounds of some of the people that you work with what kind of things do they have in common we work with a broad variety of people so we work with people from like 14 who are at the risk of radicalization or who have committed at first crimes who showed violent and discriminatory behavior in school up to people who are serving sentences in prison. for murder or terrorist activities. So we have quite a bright variety of people.
There are multiple factors that come together that draw people to far-right beliefs. And it's not easy to point out one thing that they have in common. But what we experience is a very strong sense of the people who have a craving for belonging to something.
bigger than themselves who are looking for a purpose in their life and looking for strength and security and which they find for themselves in such ideologies or groups. Can you help paint a bit more of a picture of what that might look like maybe? give me some examples of some of the profiles of the young people that you've seen? A lot of people grow up in households where they don't feel safe. So they start searching for other groups that provide them with a feeling of...
strength and security. One client, for example, who already experienced with Adif. six seven that his home is not a really a safe place for him he doesn't get the sport that he needed and so at the age of 12 13 he gets in touch with right-wing youngsters and he In this group, the sense of belonging. So they started to organize on a very low level, being together, spending time together. And they start to organize themselves on a higher political level, start organizing demonstrations.
organize fight clubs. What is it that you do to try and change the attitudes and the behaviors of the people that you work with? So what we do is we set up meetings. with, we call them then clients, with the radicalized people. We start a voluntary process that sometimes is more or less voluntarily and consists of 10 to 25 meetings and in those sessions it's kind of a psychosocial training where we speak about their past we talk about their values we talk about their goals in life so we always
work with what the clients give us. We always take a look at what are the needs behind their political positions and beliefs because we see in our work that every political position has a very personal need. hasn't been fulfilled in some way in prisons we do with people at risk who are not highly radicalized we have group sessions we talk every time openly about feelings the participants are making themselves vulnerable
And over this group process, where they also support each other, are critical with each other, a lot of times way more critical than we would or could be because of our position. And that really helps. a lot those people to experience themselves within a group setting in a different positive experience where they can express their fears and can be actually really supported by each other.
How successful, in your experience, are these approaches at cutting re-offending rates? We take it as a success, for example, if we work with people who are imprisoned, if they don't get re-imprisoned afterwards for similar crimes. take it as a success that we see that people are no longer, for example, online, active, trying to recruit others for their groups or ideas.
We take it as a success when the police, for example, is not contacting us anymore, when the school isn't contacting us anymore. And we also, depending who referred this person to us, we have analytical talks afterwards to see okay has the behavior changed can we talk about a success or not and the success rate in this um i don't have concrete numbers but they're quite high we have very few people who after
the participation, they then are still active. Julian, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. You're very welcome. Back to Thomas. We've been talking about terrorism and planned terrorism by young people in Europe. But what's the picture like more generally around the world? There's a lot of focus on potential impact of terrorism in Europe, in the US and Australia and so on. I think it's important to point out that that is a very small percentage.
of the total level of terrorist violence in the world. So if you look at, for example, the three countries in the central Sahel region, so that's Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, just those three countries alone account for over 51% of deaths from terrorism. Just a few weeks ago in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there was a horrific terrorist attack. So 65 people are beheaded by a group that's associated with IS. That's the Islamic State group. And until...
Last year, according to your report, the number of countries recording a terror attack had been going down, but now it's increasing. So what we've seen when we look at trends in terrorism over the past decade, the peak of terrorism both in Europe and globally was in 2017. Between 2017 and 2023, both the total number of attacks, the number of deaths and the number of countries.
experiencing an incident of terrorism was decreasing, but that has increased in 2024, which is a particularly worrying sign. Do we know why this is? There's not, I think, a single reason that we can give for it. One of the properties that you see with terrorism is that it often occurs in bursts. So it might be related to a particular conflict, which means that when you have an increase in that conflict... have an increase in terrorism, which is what's driving the increase.
in terrorism in the central Sahel region, then you'll often find that if there's a single terrorist attack, that can lead to a certain amount of copycat attacks or people taking inspiration or acting in response to that attack. So that's, I think, some of the factors. that were driving the increase people listening to this may be feeling alarmed by the fact that there are an increasing number of attacks going on around the world how can this be addressed
If you look around the world, there are certainly an increase in the level of terrorism, an increase in the number of countries experiencing terrorist attacks. But there are a number of countries where that trend has been reversed. If you're looking in Southeast Asia, countries like the Philippines and Indonesia have been able to...
successfully reduce the level of jihadist terrorism in those countries. So it's not all necessarily a doom and gloom story. In terms of addressing terrorism, the steps can be taken. There's no magic bullet here. There's no single thing that's going
to reduce the threat of terrorism. But if we look at the drivers of radicalization, the drivers of terrorism, we're looking at things like political instability, economic instability. So it's those big picture social issues, economic issues that need to be addressed in order to have the best chance of reducing. terrorism in the long run. How did they manage to do it in places like the Philippines?
The approach taken there was really a whole of society approach, but there's also been a strong focus on peace building at the local level. This is a long term project to try and reduce levels of violence. What about Indonesia? How did they manage? What we've seen in Indonesia is the level of jihadist-inspired terrorism, which peaked in 2017, has dropped away completely. So I think in the last two years in Indonesia, no jihadists inspired.
terrorist attacks. Again, a whole of society approach there. It's not just about... a military response or an intelligence service response. It's really trying to get at the root causes of what's fueling these extremist groups, what avenues they have for recruitment in terms of sort of economic instability and so on. Thomas, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you for joining us. I'm Hannah Gelbart. This is What in the World from the BBC World Service. And we'll be back with another episode soon.