A new British report is warning that teenagers are being groomed into neo-Nazis by peers their own age, and not as previously assumed by older far right leaders.
The findings put to rest the idea of adult far right leaders being the sole parties targeting children for radicalization, which had largely been taken as accurate, said the study by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization & Political Violence (ICSR) at Kings College London.
The report, which used the term “youth-on-youth radicalization,” examined the expanding size of 10 neo-Nazi youth organizations, discovering that new recruits are groomed by other neo-Nazi teens who act as recruiters and propagandists, some of whom have been convicted of right wing terrorism. These teenage groomers act independently of adult neo-Nazis.
The study also found that young radical groomers were able to find workarounds to not get flagged by social media algorithms removing neo-Nazi content, thereby using social media sites are recruitment tools targeting other teens. The sites mentions in the study were Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram.
The report was jointly published with the Community Security Trust, the organization tasked with providing security to the UK Jewish community.
“With very limited exceptions, all groups in the sample demonstrate anti-Semitic beliefs, demonizing the Jewish community and often depicting them as the root of various problems,” the report noted. “This includes promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and occasionally inciting violence against the Jewish community.”