Militant groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and its supporter communities are increasingly capitalising on advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) to disseminate propaganda and disinformation more efficiently and at reduced costs. By exploiting generative AI through easy-to-use and accessible Chatbots and image and audio generators, IS supporters are producingContinue Reading
The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice is excited to bring to you its latest innovative training – Understanding and Responding to Hate Crimes. From 11 am-12:30 pm EST Friday, April 5, 2024, the Director of ICSVE, Dr. Anne SpeckhardContinue Reading
Upcoming in ICSVE’s Police Responses to Terrorism and Violent Extremism multi-media training series are six modules delivered virtually in two-hour sessions starting Monday, March 4th continuing daily through Friday March 8th starting at 11 am EST ending at 1 pm EST. ICSVE researchers have spent the last 20 years interviewingContinue Reading
ICSVE is proud to announce the publication of UN Women’s training manual: Women in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, written by Dr. Anne Speckhard! You can access and download the 122 page publication at this link: https://www2.unwomen.org/-/media/field%20office%20eca/attachments/publications/2021/2/pve_trainingmanual-min.pdf?la=en&vs=3547 The manual is a multi-media product with links to many of ICSVE’s BreakingContinue Reading
In the wake of protests against police brutality sweeping the nation, the name Antifa abounds online as the political right’s bogeyman, blamed even by U.S. President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr as the group upon which to pin all of the blame without acknowledging the very real grievances ofContinue Reading
Athens: On October 9th, 2019, with a “nod” from President Trump—given via Twitter — the Turkish military began an all-out aerial bombardment and invasion of Northeastern Syria, purportedly to clear the area to create a terrorist-free safety corridor and resettle over one million of the over four million Syrian refugeesContinue Reading
“We have thousands of ISIS fighters that we want Europe to take, and let’s see if they take them,” President Trump told reporters at the beginning of the month. “If they don’t take them, we’ll probably have to release them to Europe.”[1] By Anne Speckhard & Ardian Shajkovci At aContinue Reading
Of all the love stories from inside the ISIS Caliphate that we have learned about firsthand in the course of interviewing 168 ISIS defectors, returnees and imprisoned ISIS cadres to date, none has been so surreal as that involving the German ex-rapper Denis Cuspert, aka Deso Dogg, and the AmericanContinue Reading
How to Recover the Lost Children and Spouses of ISIS[1] Thirty-two-year-old American Samantha Elhassani, together with her four children—two brought into ISIS and two born there – is now awaiting her fate in a People’s Protection Units (YPG) camp near al-Hasakah, Syria. In 2014, she took her two small AmericanContinue Reading
ICSVE’s new Breaking the ISIS Brand Counter Narrative video, A Poor Man in the Islamic State, is based on the testimony of Syrian ISIS defector Abu Abdullah recorded in Turkey in October 2015 by Anne Speckhard and Ahmet S. Yayla. In this video, Abu Abdullah talks about his work in theContinue Reading