Teenagers and young adults commit murders for online fame, apparently driven by hatred of society. The EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator urgently calls for measures. Is this right-wing terrorism?
In September 2024, a 14-year-old in Stockholm stabbed an octogenarian to death, filmed the act and circulated it on Telegram. Just a few months earlier, he had already stabbed a woman. The court could not punish him – at the time of the offence, he was not yet 15 years old. In January 2025, a boy of the same age attacked a 55-year-old woman with a knife in Borås, Sweden. “Go back to him and do it more”, commented a spectator during the live broadcast of the act on the internet gaming platform Discord. In February, Italian police in Bolzano arrested a 15-year-old who had built explosive devices, hoarded weapons and planned a murder to gain status in his online community. In Helsinki in May, a 16-year-old stabbed three female classmates, filmed the attack with Snapchat and explained in his “manifesto” that he wanted to do something “significant” and “exciting” – a political motivation is completely absent.
Experts, including the Berlin-based Centre for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (Cemas), describe this spreading phenomenon as “nihilistic”, or “all-rejecting”, extremist violence. The selection of victims often follows the path of least effort. A screenshot of a Signal group published by Cemas shows the cynical logic: an attack on a synagogue would bring more recognition, but a mass murder at a school would be easier, it says as an explanation to the membership link also posted in the group.
Now the EU’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator is weighing in: in a paper dated on 19 November 2025, Dutchman Bartjan Wegter warns of nihilistic violence as a “rapidly expanding” threat. Unlike Cemas, which sees a “fluid boundary with right-wing terrorism” in the acts, Wegter speaks only of “violent extremism”. Because, unlike classical terrorism, this does not pursue a coherent ideological goal. Instead, violence itself is the goal – as a means of self-affirmation and gaining recognition in online networks.
In his paper, the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator lists further cases: In Poland, police arrested four 19-year-olds in the spring and autumn of 2025 who were planning attacks on schools. According to investigators, they had trained at shooting ranges, completed military tactical exercises, and collected weapons and explosives. In Germany, a 20-year-old from Hamburg was accused of being a leading figure in the notorious “764” network – named after a US postal code and infamous for crimes against sexual self-determination. Its founder, Bradley Cadenhead, was sentenced to 80 years in prison in 2023. His network subsequently splintered into subgroups and continues to operate.
“The Com”, an informal, decentralised community, functions as the umbrella structure for many of these groups and networks. Its members, mostly male minors and young adults, compete for fame through documented acts of violence – the more brutal, the higher the status, Cemas recently reported in a study. An international dimension was shown in a case against the 20-year-old “White Tiger” in Hamburg in June 2025: The young Shahriar J. is alleged to have forced children into self-harm and sexual violence for years. According to the investigation, a 13-year-old American was driven to suicide on live camera, and a 14-year-old Canadian attempted suicide. The accused is charged with over 120 offences, including murder by indirect perpetration. According to Cemas, the FBI is conducting over 250 investigations into such cases in the US alone.
“The Com” is said to be divided into three areas: “Extortion Com” uses grooming and blackmail for the sexual exploitation of minors. “Cyber Com” focuses on hacking, publishing private personal data with the aim of harassment and intimidation (doxxing) and so-called swatting – the deliberate triggering of police operations against victims under false pretences. “Offline Com” encourages real acts of violence up to and including mass murder. To become a member, one must provide evidence of violent acts – such as forced self-harm of minors.
The groups use detailed guides that adopt tactics from organisations designated as terrorist, such as the “Islamic State”, and adapt them for a young audience. Manuals from the group “No Lives Matter” (NLM), for example, provide instructions for arson, knife attacks, shootings and building explosive devices. They also give tips on victim selection and emphasise the importance of recording and publishing the acts – as a performance for the community.
These are the groups and networks that Cemas sees as “on the boundary of right-wing terrorism”. Through the influence of right-wing extremist ideologies, the violence is very deliberately directed towards specific target groups, Thilo Manemann from Cemas told “nd”. This particularly affects groups like “No Lives Matter” as well as “Maniac Murder Cult” (MKY) from Ukraine. The latter is designated as a terrorist organisation in the UK and is said to have significantly shaped this development.
Neo-Nazi aesthetics and antisemitic and racist statements are also observed, but according to the Cemas study they do not constitute the primary motivation for the acts. However, according to Manemann, “points of contact for right-wing terrorism” also arise because “nihilistic extremism” systematically adopts strategies of “accelerationism”. This refers to a political-philosophical idea that accelerating capitalist, technological or social processes will cause the systems to collapse.
Wegter is now calling for urgent measures from the EU: The 27 member states must consistently apply existing legal instruments such as the Terrorist Content Regulation and the Digital Services Act to nihilistic extremism. Tech companies bear responsibility for algorithms that spread this violent content. Platforms that tolerate such content or even live streams of murders should therefore be publicly named. Previous radicalisation models have failed with “ideology-free violence”, writes the counter-terrorism coordinator, and warns: nihilistic violence could be instrumentalised by other terrorist organisations or states – as a tool to covertly sow violence.
The German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) attests to “nihilistic extremist violence” having an “increased potential for danger”, which could also spread to Germany. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is only slowly reaching German police forces. There is not yet a separate category for it in their nationwide reporting service at the BKA. “The background is that there is no nationwide terminology for criminal offences in this context or with this specific motivational situation,” a spokesperson told “nd”. However, within the framework of the Criminal Police Reporting Service from the federal states, they can be classified as politically motivated crimes and assigned to the usual thematic areas.
Published in German in „nd“.
Image: Documentation about the case “White Tiger” (ARD Mediathek/Hamburg Journal NDR/ Screenshot).
