This Insight was published as part of GIFCT’s Working Group on Addressing Youth Radicalization and Mobilization (AYRM). GIFCT Working Groups bring together experts from diverse stakeholder groups, geographies and disciplines to offer advice in specific thematic areas and deliver on targeted, substantive projects.
In December 2025, Canada designated 764 and Maniac Murder Cult as terrorist entities, amid a growing international concern over what the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have termed Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE). Also in December 2025, New Zealand took similar action as Canada against the Order of Nine Angles and Terrorgram, two networks associated with far-right accelerationism and frequently cited as influential within NVE ecosystems. These designations reflect mounting governmental concern over the rise of ‘violence-focused online communities’, particularly those linked to The Com and its affiliated groups. Since the late 2010s, such communities have proliferated online and spread globally, with arrests reported in at least 29 countries as of September 2025, according to Marc-André Argentino. These communities glorify violence and its perpetrators while engaging in manipulative and coercive practices that draw young people into committing extreme acts of violence against others, animals, or themselves. The behaviours promoted range from self-harm and animal cruelty to the production and distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), assault, murder, and incitement to hate crimes and terrorism. While the full scope of this phenomenon – hereafter referred to as nihilistic violence – remains difficult to determine, the growing number of documented cases and victims underscores the urgent need for targeted and coordinated responses. In line with this observation, this Insight first examines the characteristics and drivers of nihilistic violence, before exploring how existing prevention and intervention strategies might be adapted for greater effectiveness.
Post-Ideological Violence: Defining Nihilistic Violence
Nihilistic violence is a complex phenomenon that has been given many names, reflecting ongoing debates about its ambiguous nature and its relationship to violent extremism. Examples include Nihilistic and Apocalyptic Violent Extremism, Sadistic Online Exploitation, Participatory Memetic Violent Extremism, and online cult communities. While this Insight does not seek to arbitrate these debates, it is important to note that viewing nihilistic violence simply as a subcategory of violent extremism likely obscures its specificities, not least the fact that ideology plays little role. By contrast, the concept of violence-focused online communities, proposed by Leena Malkki and colleagues, situates the phenomenon within a broader ecosystem or continuum of toxic and marginal online subcultures and is therefore adopted in this Insight.
In practice, a significant number of these communities – including some of the most influential, such as 764, No Lives Matter (NLM), and Maniac Murder Cult (MKY) – are affiliated with the decentralised cybercriminal ecosystem known as The Com (short for The Community). It comprises subgroups and networks that vary in structure and scope, ranging from informal group chats to structured organisations. These promote and engage in three main types of illegal activities: cybercrime, sextortion, and offline acts of physical violence. Rather than constituting a fully-fledged organisation, these groups form a fluid network – an ‘ecosystem of semi-autonomous cells’ and splinter groups that both compete and collaborate with one another. For instance, recent criminal cases related to 764 have involved subgroups such as Greggy’s Cult, 764 Inferno, and 8884. Violence-focused communities exhibit several recurring characteristics and dynamics:
- Non-ideological motivations: motivations, goals and justifications are predominantly non-ideological, detached from coherent political or religious narratives, yet anchored in nihilistic and misanthropic discourses.
- Autotelic violence: violence occupies a central and autonomous role as both ‘the medium and the message’; it is neither strategic nor instrumental, but an end in itself, glorified for its own sake.
- Performative markers of belonging: aesthetics, symbols, and performative or memetic practices supplant ideology as markers of membership, with participation driven by grooming, coercion, and peer-led socialisation rather than ideological indoctrination.
- Youth-led participation: communities are youth-led, with young perpetrators and victims often comprising vulnerable minors facing mental health challenges, eating disorders, bullying, and social isolation, and who may shift between the roles of perpetrator and victim.
- Cross-platform dynamics and modus operandi: communities operate across multiple platforms – mainly Discord and Telegram – to identify and target vulnerable users, draw them into private and increasingly transgressive spaces (servers, group chats, channels), and coerce them through grooming, sextortion, or threats. For instance, a victim may be first contacted on a mainstream platform such as TikTok or X and subsequently moved to private spaces on Telegram or Discord.
- Hierarchies and status-seeking: group dynamics are coercive and hierarchical, and status is earned through escalating violent acts, which are systematically documented and archived both as a means of gaining peer recognition and of exerting control over victims.
- Distinctive culture and language: communities cultivate their own folklore and coded language, including terms and practices such as ‘lorebooks’, ‘fansigning’, ‘cut signs’ or ‘blood signs’, alongside other community-specific symbols.
A Hybrid Space: Continuities and Ruptures with Adjacent Phenomena
In the late 2010s, violence-focused communities emerged against the backdrop of increasing hybridisation and ideological cross-pollination within extremist ecosystems. These broader dynamics have produced groups, networks, and ideological profiles shaped by multiple, and sometimes contradictory, influences. As a result, many radicalised individuals, particularly in Europe and North America, no longer exhibit coherent extremist belief systems. Scholars and practitioners have described this phenomenon using concepts such as ‘Mixed, Unclear, and Unstable’ (MUU) ideologies, ‘salad bar’ belief systems, ‘fringe fluidity’, Composite Violent Extremism (CoVE), or Hybridized Prefatory Extremism (HYPE). Irrespective of the terminology used, this phenomenon reflects an escalating trend in extremist violence, increasingly characterised by an ‘amalgamation of disparate beliefs, interests, and grievances’. Nihilistic violence represents one manifestation of this broader paradigm, exhibiting a dual form of hybridisation: within violent extremist ecosystems, and between violent extremism and other forms of online harm, criminality, and violence.
Violence-focused communities are therefore shaped by multiple influences, drawing selectively from adjacent subcultures and extremist ecosystems, including ideologically motivated ones. The primary influences include far-right or ‘militant’ accelerationism (such as Siege Culture, the Order of Nine Angles, Terrorgram, ‘Saints culture’, etc.), the most extreme subsets of the True Crime Community (TCC), and gore and snuff communities (notably ‘hurtcore’). These influences are evident in the aesthetics, symbols, modes of action, and practices of violence-focused communities, as well as in their interactions with extremist ecosystems and related phenomena. Crucially, they function primarily as cultural reservoirs and visual repertoires, rather than as direct ideological drivers.
That said, fragments of ideology, or secondary ideological motivations, can also be observed in some groups, particularly MKY, as well as in individual trajectories. For example, the France-based founder of CVLT, which inspired 764, ran a fascist Discord community called ‘Harsh Reality’, which has since been taken down. Similarly, a MKY leader from Georgia apprehended in 2024 openly adhered to neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology, disseminating a manifesto entitled ‘The Hater’s Handbook’. The production of manuals, guides, and manifestos is a common practice among violent extremists and has also been adopted by NLM (‘Manhunt Guide’ and ‘NLM Kill Guide’) and 764. In November 2025, an individual connected to 764 was arrested in the United States; the FBI discovered writings outlining plans for terrorist attacks, including joining the Islamic State and returning to the US to carry them out. The interplay of continuities and ruptures with ideologically motivated extremism and adjacent phenomena positions nihilistic violence within a hybrid space, situated between violent extremism, marginal online subcultures, and (cyber)criminal networks.
Crisis & Affordances: Explaining the Emergence of Nihilistic Violence
It is important to analyse: why did violence-focused online communities emerge in the late 2010s? The following discussion advances a set of hypotheses across three interlocking levels: societal, structural, and individual. This analytical framework is inspired by the work of Lewis Brace and colleagues on MUU ideologies. In summary, the argument is that nihilistic violence emerges from the interplay of three factors: a conducive socio-cultural context (societal level), the exploitation of enabling technological affordances (structural level), and widespread, youth-related personal vulnerabilities (individual level). This framework is not just analytical; it also has practical implications for prevention and intervention strategies, which should address all three levels simultaneously.
- At the societal level, nihilistic violence emerged in a specific context, characterised by a ‘crisis of meaning’, a deepening youth ‘mental health crisis’, and a ‘global polycrisis’. The impact of major crises and disruptive events on young people, including the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, has created a fertile environment for the development of nihilistic worldviews. In this context, nihilistic violence can be understood as one of the most extreme manifestations of generational anxieties, pessimism, and social disconnection.
- At the structural level, violence-focused online communities have probably benefited from the ‘technological affordances’ of platforms such as Discord and Telegram. Certain features on these platforms may create an environment conducive to grooming, coercion, and violent behaviour. These include closed or invitation-only groups, persistent and archive-like communication, support for sharing multimedia content, and role-based hierarchies on Discord. Together, these features can do more than simply provide a space; they can actively shape communities. Discord, in particular, is perceived by violence-focused communities as ‘multi-purpose’, supporting all stages of the victimisation process within a single environment. Consequently, since becoming aware of 764’s existence in 2021, Discord has been actively trying to disrupt its activities on its services by investing in moderation tools, teams and techniques. In 2023 alone, 34,000 user accounts associated with 764 were taken down. Furthermore, Discord’s relevant safety policies, including the Teen and Child Safety Policy, Suicide and Self-Harm Policy and Violence and Graphic Content Policy, which were last revised in August 2025, explicitly prohibit CSAM, grooming, sextortion, self-harm, depictions of gore and animal cruelty, and the glorification of mass murderers or serial killers. That said, it is not merely the platforms themselves that matter, but the affordances they offer. These groups could theoretically jump to platforms with similar features as Discord and Telegram.
- At an individual level, personal vulnerabilities, including mental health challenges, experiences of bullying and social isolation, are directly exploited by violence-focused communities, especially 764, and during all stages of the victimisation processes. Peer dynamics, personal quests for ‘status’ or ‘significance’, and hierarchical structures reinforce escalation dynamics. Lastly, repeated exposure to graphic and violent content may desensitise some young people to such material and even give them a ‘taste’ for it, laying the ‘groundwork for an identity and social relationships built around the glorification of violence’.
Recommendations: Rethinking Prevention and Intervention
Nihilistic violence is ‘post-ideological‘ and does not stem from indoctrination or coherent belief systems. Consequently, P/CVE approaches focused on ideological disengagement are ill-suited, and mobilisation to violence can occur rapidly, narrowing the window for intervention. This underscores the relevance of a ‘public health approach’ to nihilistic violence, focused on reducing ‘risk factors’ and strengthening ‘protective factors’ at individual and societal levels, rather than on ideology or at-risk groups. It prioritises ‘indicative behaviours’ and social conditions such as isolation, lack of purpose, and weakened belonging, to foster long-term resilience.
Early detection and exit support are critical. Families, teachers, educators, and frontline professionals should be equipped to recognise warning signs – such as ‘obsessive interest in gore, fascination with mass killers, or performative displays of cruelty’ – through targeted training and awareness-raising. The ISD risk assessment framework, covering ‘indicators’, ‘accelerants’, and ‘triggers’, offers a valuable tool for guiding early identification. Given the prevalence of blackmail and coercion, exit pathways must be trauma-informed and supported by specialised services.
Platform-level measures are equally essential. Major platforms have invested in Trust & Safety, including dedicated moderation teams and techniques, automated detection systems, reporting mechanisms, and safety policies, and some, such as Discord, also participate in cross-industry initiatives through their GIFCT membership. However, nihilistic violence reveals gaps in current systems, which are primarily designed to detect content rather than behaviours. Beyond youth safety-by-design measures, tech platforms can reinforce their responses through:
- Cross-platform strategies. Because violence-focused communities exploit multiple platforms and their distinctive features, both affected platforms and at-risk platforms should adopt coordinated cross-platform responses. Platform-specific measures are insufficient to address recruitment, group migration, reconstitution, and hybridisation. Only collaborative approaches can disrupt the full cross-platform victimisation cycle. Concrete measures include data-, information-, and hash-sharing, as well as other joint enforcement mechanisms.
- Adjacent community monitoring. Platforms should extend oversight to adjacent communities that frequently function as gateways or recruitment pools (such as extreme true crime, gore, gaming, and mental health–related spaces). Particular attention should be paid to recruitment tactics and outlinking practices across affected and at-risk online environments.
- Behavioural risk detection. Content moderation should be complemented by behavioural analysis to identify patterns of recruitment, grooming, coercion, and escalation. In this respect, Discord’s use of machine-learning models based on metadata and network dynamics is particularly relevant, as addressing nihilistic violence requires systems that move beyond explicit content violations to detect subtler behavioural signals.
- Targeted capacity-building. To support the identification of grooming dynamics, coded language and coercive group structures, platforms should invest in bespoke training for moderators, supported by long-term partnerships with researchers, NGOs and frontline practitioners.
Finally, societal-level interventions must address the ‘crisis of meaning’ characteristic of our digital age, as well as the existential void exploited by violence-focused online communities. Initiatives that foster digital literacy, social (re)connection, and meaningful offline engagement can likely reduce the appeal of these communities.
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Pierre SIVIGNON is a Project Manager and Analyst working in European security and defence cooperation. He specialises in analysing, preventing, and countering transnational and hybrid threats, including radicalisation and violent extremism (P/CVE), Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), and Transnational Organised Crime (TOC). He manages and coordinates EU projects tackling illegal, violent, and harmful online activities, while also contributing to open-source intelligence (OSINT) studies and investigations. He also contributes to the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation (Thematic Panel “New Technologies and the Online Dimension”).
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