Terrorism: Children with extreme right-wing ideologies ‘getting substantially younger’ as 19 arrested
Under-18s make up one in eight terrorism-related arrests in UK
Children with extreme right-wing views are “getting substantially younger”, police have warned, after 20 youngsters were arrested last year in connection with terrorism offences, 19 of whom had links to extreme right-wing ideologies.
Matt Jukes, head of Counter Terrorism Policing UK, said there was “real concern” about a shift in the terror threat towards a younger cohort of self-radicalised people with extreme right-wing ideologies who are moving from discussing and sharing terrorist material to actually planning attacks.
The Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner revealed that under-18s now account for around one in eight terrorism-related arrests.
A total of 20 children were arrested in connection with terrorism offences in 2021, he said. The youngest was a 13-year-old boy arrested in Darlington in July, who was later convicted of possessing information useful to a terrorist.
Mr Jukes said the youngsters being arrested were predominantly boys aged 14 or 15, some of whom were being targeted via online gaming messaging and propaganda videos presenting as first-person shooter games.
He added that while some may imagine “this was all aligned to disenfranchised, poorer, disengaged white communities”, the evidence actually showed a “much more complex picture” which included children who were middle class and well educated.
He told a counterterrorism media briefing at New Scotland Yard: “We see the threat from extreme right-wing groups principally being in the space of the inspired radicalised self-initiated terrorists.
“But this is a group which is substantially younger than we have seen in the past, and than we see in other cohorts – people who are spending a great deal of time online, day and night, living their lives in that space, building friendships and relationships in that digital world.”
He added: “We are certainly seeing this is very heavily dominated by the online community, and gaming is present, absolutely, both as a messaging platform and reflected in some of the propaganda.
“The videos produced by some of the extreme right-wing groups very much pick up the tropes and presentation of first-person shooter games. You can see they are presenting something which is very attractive, potentially, to a vulnerable young person, young boy, who spends a lot of time gaming.
“I want to be really clear: there is a picture here of young people who are spending a great deal of time discussing, sharing and exchanging material online, but we are absolutely seeing some of that shift to plans to carry out terrorist attacks.”
In the year up to the end of 2021, just over 40 per cent of arrests by counterterrorism police related to suspected extreme right-wing terrorism, the assistant commissioner said.
Police foiled four late-stage terror plots in that same year, three of which were related to extreme right-wing terrorism.
Mr Jukes said there were currently about 800 live counterterrorism investigations in the UK, about 80 per cent of which are linked to Islamist extremism, which remains the predominant ideological threat.
Since the start of 2017 there have been 11 Islamist extremist attacks.
Over the same period, police foiled 32 late-stage terror plots, 18 of which were linked to that ideology and 12 of which were related to right-wing extremism.