This document provides RAND Europe's submission to the Home Affairs Committee's Call for Evidence on Combatting New Forms of Extremism. It discusses the impact of the internet and social media, on extremist's ability to recruit, radicalise, and engage audiences. It also discusses the impact that new technologies, including AI, LLMs and deepfakes have had on extremist's activities and on preventing and countering violent extremism.

Combatting new forms of extremism

Sarah Winder, Maria Chiara Aquilino, Scott Warnier, Pauline Paillé, Emma Zürcher, Dareen Toro

Expert InsightsPublished Jul 16, 2025

This document provides RAND Europe's submission to the Home Affairs Committee's Call for Evidence on Combatting New Forms of Extremism. It discusses the impact of the internet and social media, on extremist's ability to recruit, radicalise, and engage audiences. It also discusses the impact that new technologies, including AI, LLMs and deepfakes have had on extremist's activities and on preventing and countering violent extremism.

Key Findings

Trends evident in the growth of extremism and radicalisation in the UK

  • The internet has transformed the extremism landscape, allowing extremists to exploit a range of online environments, from mainstream platforms to encrypted messaging apps and gaming servers. These online environments are used to recruit, radicalise and engage audiences. Increased engagement with digital platforms enables extremists to exploit crises like COVID-19 and climate change, with climate issues driving the growth of eco-extremism across ideological divides.

Factors contributing to a rise in extremism

  • New technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs) and deepfakes, have diversified the types of methods used for radicalisation, making P/CVE increasingly challenging.

Impact of new technologies on efforts to combat online extremism and radicalisation

  • While new technologies show promise for content moderation, they remain unreliable against the rapidly evolving and increasingly sophisticated extremist content that technological advancements allow.

Topics

Document Details

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Winder, Sarah, Maria Chiara Aquilino, Scott Warnier, Pauline Paillé, Emma Zürcher, and Dareen Toro, Combatting new forms of extremism. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CTA4128-1.html.
BibTeX RIS

Research conducted by

This publication is part of the RAND testimony series. RAND testimonies record testimony presented by RAND associates to federal, state, or local legislative committees; government-appointed commissions and panels; and private review and oversight bodies.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.

RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.