UK Extremists Increasingly Use Online Platforms, COVID Conspiracies to Recruit, Radicalise Children

The government watchdogs monitoring extremist activities in the country registered an overall decline in the radicalisation of minors, but links it to the COVID-19 pandemic which prompted the closure of schools and other educational facilities, limiting teachers' ability to notice potentially dangerous behaviour in students.

Extremist groups operating in the UK have changed their approach to radicalising and recruiting minors, increasingly relying on various online platforms and using COVID-related conspiracy theories to appeal to them, British authorities have reported.

A coordinator for the nation's Prevent anti-extremism programme, Sean Arbuthnot, revealed that extremist groups, especially "right-wing" outfits, used gaming platforms (he did not specify which) and social apps like Discord to communicate with and recruit young people. He also said that some groups used YouTube videos for these purposes: they would either post links to encrypted chatrooms or leave signs and symbols in comments under the video that would "tempt" minors to research them.

Arbuthnot additionally described how these extremists spun the anti-vaccination and anti-COVID narrative to their benefit:

"[Some] during the pandemic conducted leafleting campaigns, where they would promote the narrative that COVID is a hoax, that hospital wards are empty, and that you shouldn't get the vaccine. Then they load their leaflets with pseudo-scientific evidence. But at the same time, they drop leaflets purporting that white people are going to be a minority in Britain, which plays into people's fears".

At the same time, the UK Home Office registered a shift in young people's referrals to them in 2020 and 2021. Some 310 people have been referred due to suspected links or radicalisation by "right-wing extremists", while only half as much, 157 individuals, have been tagged over links to Islamic extremists.

Similarly, fewer people with suspected links to Islamists, who had been referred to Prevent, were later handed over to the UK's Channel scheme than those with alleged links to "right-wing extremists". The Channel scheme, which closely monitors suspects for potential engagement in terrorist activities, received cases on less than one in five suspected Islamic extremists, while getting one in three cases related to suspected "right-wing extremists" from Prevent.