Information Networks and Manipulative Technologies in the Arsenal of Extremists

1.1 Extremism, Terrorism and Xenophobia in the Information Society

The realities of today’s post-industrial world are such that the global processes virtually erased the boundaries between criminal associations, various branches of international crime, and terrorist structures. Crime succeeds in pretending to be something harmless, adapts itself painlessly to continuous crises, revolutions, wars, reforms, to any crucial points in history. We can find many pieces of evidence of how criminal elements get integrated into legal spheres of life, interacting intensively with each other, with corrupt officials, and with the mass media. Moreover, extremism at the beginning of the 21st century demonstrated its amazing vitality; it aggressively and quite successfully opposed (and is still opposing) multiculturalism, liberal ideas of tolerance, and universal equality. Extremism is subject to ongoing evolution; it moves continuously into new, more technically advanced levels, expanding the arsenal of its destructive techniques, and manipulative strategies [1,2,3,4].

The highly negative and destructive prejudices, the so-called radical views backed up by a low level of culture, education, and distorted legal consciousness are the main underlying factors for extremism. Apart from proclaiming hatred, aggression, and cruelty, extremism is overtly and directly associated with terrorism [5, 6]. These phenomena (being closely related to each other) are not equivalent, since the range of extremist activity is extremely diverse (e.g. we can find it at very different levels, such as historical, every-day life, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, legal, etc.). The essence of terrorism is intimidation and violence, expressed in the form of armed actions or threats to commit such actions, while the goals of the terrorist criminals are normally related to politics. Still, it is the civilians far away from politics, who normally become the main victims of terrorist acts [7,8,9].

The so-called structural sources of destructive aggression and violence in the society, which are fairly well-studied and well-known, are considered to be the criminological determinants of the extremism and terrorism. At the same time we have to look for the earliest (the original) predictors of these phenomena at the general population level in the form of the special socio-biological (more precisely, neurotransmitter) mechanisms, which function in the deviant mode. Such mechanisms are largely responsible for cruelty, impulsivity, rigidity, affective instability, anxiety, suggestibility, narcissism, pathological drives (e.g. homicidomania), and behavioural disorders. Next, we have to mention the social and economic contradictions and inequality. The extremist tendencies are most pronounced when the system of stratification (strata) estimates is imbalanced (the lack of social, managerial, etc. lifts being a clear manifestation of such disbalance). Political corruption (including lobbyism, favouritism, nepotism, and protectionism) can escalate such social contradictions to a critical level. Some external forces (e.g. international terrorist organizations, or hostile governments) are in some cases the most powerful factors of destabilization.

When considering the phenomenon of extremism, the researchers will inevitably come to the analysis of personalities and personal qualities of criminal leaders, who head various radical movements, as well as those, who use information and communication technologies. The main problem is that they all have very different psychological characteristics, different inner worlds, and self-esteems, different perception of the reality, different needs, and different ideas of goals and means of their struggle (and even of morality and justice). Which means that we can hardly draw up successfully a generalized portrait of the organizers and ideological inspirers of the extremist underground. Although, for people of this category we can find some common specific features, like the motivational complex of a radical warrior, the craving for power, and the tendency to taking risks. At the same time, it is obvious that the leaders of radical groups with all their motives for the ideological confrontation would never forget their mercantile interests. Most extremists with manipulative abilities are accentuated individuals and those with psychopathic tendencies driven by some overvalued idea. These people certainly have some mental disorders (or are on the verge of normality), but in no case, they can be considered insane. They are all able to achieve certain success in ordinary life and solve their problems; however, an asocial psychopath tends to choose the criminal career [10, 11]. As we mentioned earlier, radical ideas and day-to-day subcultural chauvinism play a significant role in the marginal environment. An experienced manipulator will never resort to mere reproduction of prejudices, fears, customs, panic moods, etc. in the semantic field of consciousness; instead, he will join his addressee to digest the extremely negative context with him, and have him absorbed by such context; thus making his recipient deny anything that contradicts the extremist hang-ups. With appropriate psycho-technics, the coach achieves full submission of the recipient; he talks to him to create a certain artificial psychophysiological background, onto which the recipient’s expectations, dreams, aspirations, etc. will be projected.

The next question that is worth discussing relates to social phobia (social fears). Specific features of personality, social conditions, cultural and historical stereotypes, as well as the past experience of a person are the factors that can lead to xenophobia, prejudice, ambivalence and dichotomous mindset (which means a simplified, dual, black-and-white assessment of what is happening around with no shades or compromises). The dichotomous mindset, in turn, is responsible for xenophobia (as a phenomenon). Officially, the term Xenophobia means the fear of the alien. Such fear is normally associated with an evident rejection of people, who were singled out by some special signs (e.g., migrants, Muslims, representatives of the LGBT community, HIV-infected/AIDS patients, cancer patients, etc.). Any xenophobe is characterized by the lack of critical mindset, logic, and social responsibilities; such persons are always anxious, distrustful, suspicious, and aggressive; in any circumstances, they tend to see the hostility, conspiracies, intrigues of ill-wishers, and evil intent. It is such a distorted perception that is affecting the semantic apparatus of the extremists, and their system of values [12,13,14].

Certain groups of the modern democratic society population steadily absorb some discriminatory ideologemes (main premises), racist views, socially dangerous prejudices and stereotypes, which many authors consider to be the attempts of the marginalized young people (i.e. radical-minded representatives of various social, ethnic, etc. groups) to aggressively manifest themselves, rise and maintain their (allegedly) preferential status in the society, and realize their significance in the political space. Extremists, in masse, belong to the juvenile population strata; normally, they are poorly educated, have problems with alcohol and drugs, and are highly marginalized [15, 16].

Most extremist groups with an extensive criminal history are backed up by experienced political strategists, shadow financiers, bosses of criminal business structures, small-time entrepreneurs, and (quite often) intelligence agencies. Their number ranges from 2–3 persons to several thousand (the most numerous being football fans and nationalists).

The most active members of extremist organizations joined the movement voluntarily and quite consciously. Normally they use violent psychological impacts against hesitant members of extremist structures (and the members of their families), witnesses, police officers, experts, and, of course, against victims. Moreover, there is a lot of reliable evidence proving that strictly hierarchical extremist structures can incite hostility and hatred among individual population groups (strata), and (under certain conditions, e.g. exacerbated crisis, poverty, unemployment, total corruption) take hundreds of thousands to the street (riots in Egypt in 2011–2013 being a striking example) with blackmail, intimidation, manipulation of public opinion, with disinformation, bribing individual officials, and forcing them to be collaborative. It is the crowd’s ire thoroughly provoked and duly guided that allows criminals to keep committing atrocities, robbing, killing, raping, committing arsons, and to claim ultimately their leadership as the commanders of a popular opposition community, as the iconic personalities of a protest movement [17,18,19].

Thus, the world community, the responsible national politicians, the religious figures, the security officials, and the public organizations are still facing the burning questions of how to ensure the equal rights for all citizens of the country, how to efficiently and comprehensively protect them all against hate crimes.

1.2 Extremist Activity - Information and Manipulative Constituents

Web sites that overtly promote formal and informal participation in an extremist movement, its symbols, and paraphernalia are quickly identified and blocked by the authorities. However, we know that apart from readily available Internet resources, there is the so-called Deep Web, the resources that cannot be directly indexed by conventional search engines. Such unified/ramified (albeit hidden) information space, which is anonymous, comprises in turn highly concealed autonomous networks, collectively called the Dark Web (e.g. darknet market, black crypto market, TOR networks, etc.), which can be accessed only with special software. It is these resources that the criminals (including the terrorists) resort to, seeking to maintain complete confidentiality. However, we have to note that the vast majority of radical-minded people, and the ordinary extremists, tend to use only readily available (publicly accessible) Internet services.

Extremists are actively penetrating the communities, where they can find a loyal young audience with a high percentage of individuals, dissatisfied with their position, disappointed with the activities of public authorities, where the struggle for political leadership is in full swing (especially when national radicals are involved); provocative rants about allegedly insoluble interethnic contradictions and conflicts, the benefits of separatism, and imaginary or mythologized historical offences/grievances being the usual characteristic hallmark of the extremists.

Many moderately radical-minded politicians seem to feel for the extremists and openly flirt with them. In the blogosphere, such public figures try to show up (quite often not unsuccessfully): 1) their demagogic rants about weakness and incompetence of the government and management bodies; 2) their alleged knowledge in the field of any matter (e.g. economic reforms, raising the living standards of the population, etc.); 3) the evidence of their significance, uniqueness, etc., demonstrating how close to common people/easy to communicate they are.

Relatively speaking today’s extremists operate in two directions in the information field.

1. 1.

   To disseminate prohibited information, the perpetrators use electronic media and illegal printed materials; they organize regular meetings for the preparation of their criminal acts, and (what matters) participate in joint leisure and recreation activities. We also have to note that extremists have succeeded in using the images of ethnically and politically motivated violence found in the media as a short-term, indirect and/or long-term impact on the human psyche. Thus, the author of the Article found out that young neo-Nazi supporters from Moscow and St. Petersburg organized the show of anti-fascist movies (mainly documentaries), abundant in scenes of mass killings, executions, and military parades, to groups of their supporters, accompanying such scenes with their relevant comments.

2. 2.

   In attempts to boost their presence on social networks on a continuous basis, criminals create their allegedly independent blogs, where both true information (based on real facts) and totally far-fetched, false, fake news can be found. An addressee is presented with information in a highly biased way, in a coordinate system typical of extremism, i.e. it is WE, entitled to execute reprisals on the one hand, and the THEY (the strangers, who must leave the country, and even die, but forgetting their rights in any case) on the other.

Extremists under the guise of social and political associations, movements, initiative groups, etc., integrate into political networks, claiming to represent popular actors or pretending to be engaged into a dialogue with the state; they try to seize more resources, set up a bridgehead for more decisive actions, demonstrate their flexibility, determination, and potential for further development, recruiting more and more adherents – all these facts are the matters of the greatest concern.

The global criminal situation related to intolerance, chauvinism, xenophobia, etc. is rather unstable, but at the same time is the matter of a continuously exacerbating potential, i.e. a hotbed of discontent or violence can arise at any moment in any region leading to riots provoked by the actions of extremists.

There is no doubt that no statistical data represent truly the real state of affairs, or the state of crime (note, that apart from the registered crime, there is also a latent one). At the same time, in the context of our study, we think it expedient to show some criminological information related to the Russian Federation. Over the past two years, the number of crimes, referred to extremism, went down in the country (by 16.8% in 2018, and 53.8% in 2019). We have to mention here that it is rather hard to find a trace of extremism in criminal acts of some kind, therefore, in such cases; attackers are prosecuted for crimes against life, health, property, or public safety. Nevertheless, every year Russian law enforcement authorities block on the average over a thousand websites that provoke ethnic conflicts, incite hostility, and proclaim xenophobia. Quite alarming is the growth in the number of crimes against foreign citizens (by 5–6% every year on the average) together with the annual increase in the number of officially registered crimes committed with digital technologies (over the years, the rate of some cyber-crimes went up by 50% to 90%) [20,21,22].

Street battles, fights between groups of fans, hooliganism, vandalism, and murders of foreigners contribute to the destabilization of public relations, but not to the extent that it can be achieved with flexible, and well-thought strategies, carefully chosen to meet the real challenges of the reality, and correspond to the threats to the existing world order, etc., being implemented in digital format, with the limitless possibilities of network communications.

The leaders of extremist structures succeeded in parasitizing the most important function of society, i.e. its communicative function. All of a sudden, deviant teenagers, assigned to risk groups by their teachers and law enforcement authorities, young people not fully integrated into social life with an extreme deficit of empathy (emotions), individuals released from the places of detention, turn out to be in great demand; every one of them being personally approached by similar outcasts with a proposal to look for those, who (in their opinion) are guilty of the unfair distribution of wealth, or public privileges, and punish the responsible [23, 24]. The pursuit of the marginal to communicate on hot topical issues consolidates this specific audience on criminogenic, conditionally extremist, moderately radical and problematic Internet resources [25,26,27]. Although, the scientific literature describes some cases, when young people from quite wealthy families, students of prestigious colleges, universities, etc. (motivated by the curiosity, the pursuit of new experience, or the mere youthful exuberance) joined the extremist activities (e.g., in destructive religious and pseudo-public associations). Moreover, quite often such individuals become the victims of deception or brainwashing, performed by experienced radical manipulators [28].

Unfortunately, many works on extremist issues (especially those devoted to common, day-to-day phenomena of intolerance, and the analysis of persistent historically established public-mind stereotypes and prejudices that form an ultra-radical worldview) are not properly substantiated by solid methodological frameworks (setting) and were carried out from a common-sense standpoint, i.e. from the point of the researcher’s experience, redirecting the reader to purely special cases. Quite often, such works are lacking complexity, interdisciplinary. All the foregoing leads us to the conclusion that as of today, the issue being studied here has not received proper comprehensive, scientific understanding, especially when considering the information manipulative component of the extremist activity.

The author of this article had the following objectives: study and review of the scientific ideas on extremism together with the informational constituent of the extremist activity; discussion of the determinants for the extremist occurrences together with the reasons for the dissemination of radical views, such as racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, etc.; disclosure of the nature of motivations, that drive the activity of extremists. The Author also specified leading motives of extremists; analyzed specific criminal cases of persons prosecuted for extremist offences, and revealed some factors that ensure high efficiency of criminal information manipulative techniques.

The purpose of this study is the comprehensive analysis of the extremism inherent nature, as well as the analysis of the extremist information manipulative content.

5.1 Methodological Settings for This Study

The scientific works of well-known experts in the field of philosophy, criminology, information law, cultural studies, political science, general and social psychology formed the methodological settings of this study. For this work, the Author applied some general scientific learning methods, in particular, the analysis and synthesis, as well as the induction and deduction. The program-targeted and integrated approaches were also used as special learning tools.

Moreover, the Author applied the systematic approach to reveal the essence of extremist activity, as well as to assess the personal characteristics of criminals (criminal leaders, organizers, etc.) who actively use information manipulative technologies.

5.2 Criminal Cases Brought in Connection with the Commission of Extremist Crimes. Methods of Study

The consistent, complementary combination of such methods as finger-pointing (finding), collection of facts, researches, and evaluations, constituted the major content to study the judicial and investigative practice materials. In this study, the formal-logical approach, together with the statistical and comparative legal method played a significant role to identify the criminological significant phenomena and patterns and to analyze the results obtained.

Extremism is quite multifaceted. Its history goes back to a very distant past. Thus, some references to hatred and intolerance can be found on clay tablets of Mesopotamia, on the walls of Egyptian temples, and in the text of the Old Testament. It is information that has always been the main weapon of extremism. No politician of the 21st century can predict the whole complex of negative consequences that the humane race will face in the post-industrial era, e.g. information virus of extremism, which pathogenicity is getting more and more harmful due to information manipulative technologies, struck the public consciousness. Extremism enslaves people, ruins their dignity, erases memory, and destroys their mind.

The extremists declare their commitment to the ideas of justice, inciting at the same time hatred and resorting to violence. The manipulative methods of extremists normally come down to attracting the attention of the target audience to various historical grievances, or problems of coexisting with other ethnic groups, to finding the causes of poverty, etc.; while the information is presented through the prism of radicalism, false accusations, or stigmatization of entire peoples, social and religious groups. In social networks, the extremists often use so-called demotivators, aimed at discrediting their adversaries and ideological opponents (e.g., they post some highly biased, far-fetched stories about meanness and inferiority of potential victims). Those who spread false, slanderous information have the goal to inspire as many recipients as possible to participate in the extremist movement, to make them further disseminate such slanderous content.

The motivation of extremists is based on the three whales, they are: 1) the pursuit to dominate (being outside the legitimate frameworks); 2) the invention of marginal myths, proclaiming false, far-fetched ideas of happiness, decent life, or freedom; 3) the highly brutal and aggressive ideology full of hatred, and hostility towards specific communities, population groups, strata, as well as towards imaginary adversaries, traitors, or political opponents.

The motivation for the antisocial activity of extremists is quite polymorphic with the predominance of the situationally impulsive motives, that can cause an affected state of mind, as well as the needs associated with the pursuit of the destructive self-actualization.

The majority of young people held responsible of criminal extremist actions (over 70%) in the North-Western region of the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2019 were characterized as premorbid personalities having evident flaws in upbringing and education (pedagogical neglect), evident consequences of family disharmony, and some mental disorders (psychopathic mindset). Furthermore, a significant number of convicted extremists and terrorists were the ones with various accentuations of character. Still, it is the external conditions that undoubtedly play a leading role in the formation of the criminal activity; the criminal environment (such as poverty, unemployment, criminal traditions, deviant attitudes), being the major breeding ground for the ideas of malice and hatred.

The factors that make extremist manipulative technologies highly efficient (victimization factors) are as follows: the frustrating environment with an obvious gap between wishes and opportunities, the stigmatization, the sense of inferiority and forced isolation, the lack of critical thinking skills, the inability of self-control, constructive analysis of current events, or recognition of criminal psychological effects, the marginalized outward conditions, proclaiming racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, and intolerance.

The problems related to countering extremism are highly topical in a wide range of issues affecting the prospects for the development of the information society. Very often, the radicalization phenomena, such as intolerance, xenophobia, etc. are manifested in our day-to-day life, e.g. when a person is being employed, at workplaces, or during mass riots. The extremists always tried (and are still trying) to reinforce their positions among loyal citizens, to mark their presence in political and non-political processes. In recent years, under the guise of citizen participation, the leaders of radical movements created their social-political networks, their volunteer, military, and sports organizations. The data presented in the Article lead us to the conclusion that extremist tendencies to a large extent are caused by social (sociocultural, etc.), psychological and psychopathological phenomena that must be studied in more detail.

Information and manipulative content of an extremist orientation primarily addresses a poorly cultured, insufficiently educated, and socially inept part of the population. With the methods of criminal psychological impact, demagogy, and misinformation, the manipulative criminals recruit a significant number of young marginalized people who have problems with job, alcohol and drugs, and are prone to petty crimes and/or violence. Due to the growth of the social tension, extremist ideology turns out to be in demand for some part of the radical intelligentsia, as well as for some students (predominantly radical nationalists). In addition, sometimes extremists are overtly sympathized by quite a few media persons (marginalized journalists, writers, etc.), as well as radical politicians, who provide them with their information support.

Our study reveals that the regular, well-targeted brainwashing of the youth audience has a very negative and antisocial effect on the personality of young people. Firstly, the motivation of most recipients quite quickly becomes much more destructive; they evidently become more intolerant, vicious and cruel. Secondly, their individual, personal space disappears; a person becomes a part of a pack, subject to the will of the criminal leader.

The participants of an extremist group have the following features in common: 1) dichotomous and mythological mindset; 2) speculative confidence of criminals in their rightness; 3) so-called Groupthink, and commitment to steady patterns of group criminal activity; 4) lack of any compassion for the victims; 5) strict adherence to the requirements of a criminal (extremist) subculture, the hallmarks of which are radical ideas, elaboration of their own rules, and principles of stratification, as well as their specific goals and objectives.

The ideologists of hatred are trying to transform xenophobia, overt and covert domestic problems, cultural and religious contradictions, deeply rooted biased worldviews, historical prejudices, which can always be found at the general population level, into the total social aggression, into the war of everyone against everyone.

We think it expedient to have the activities of government officials and scientists duly redirected to create a network model of the Open Government, to form qualitatively new administrative mechanisms that would make the authorities (together with the civil society institutions) able to prevent early extremism, to respond efficiently to interethnic, interreligious, etc. conflicts, to analyze and meet information requirements of the citizens, their spiritual and material needs, to fight corruption, to overcome social instability and uncertainty, to stimulate the growth of economic activity, to facilitate political initiatives, and to continue reforming the legal system.