Twenty years after US troops began the war in Afghanistan,
the Taliban are once again in control of the country.
As the Taliban ripped through Afghanistan in August 2021,
the world watched in horror.
This was a country backed by the planet’s leading superpower,
and most thought its government would hold out for months.
But the Taliban’s rapid offensive left the world stunned.
And for extremist groups
with fantasies of overthrowing governments...
We want our country back!
it was a moment of triumph.
The white supremacists and violent anti-government extremists
are now openly, and this is pretty stunning,
identifying with the Taliban.
This is the story of how the Taliban’s victory
and the wider jihadist movement
has inspired the far right.
Some groups going as far as to suggest
that the Taliban should be seen as a model
for executing a civil war here in the United States.
And how extremist groups with seemingly opposing ideologies
have drawn influence from each other in their fight against democracy
and liberalism.
[Decade of Hate]
I raise a glass to the liberators of Afghanistan, the Taliban.
This is the American white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
He’s one of many far-right figures,
from neo-Nazis to QAnon followers,
who’ve praised the Taliban since their victory.
For the far-right extremists, the Taliban represent
what many of them hope to achieve in their own countries
here in the West,
which is basically overthrowing the democratic system
through armed struggle and violence
and to create a quote, unquote pure society
based on their hateful creed.
We invoke your name, amen!
Amen!
It may seem strange,
but the far right and militant Islamists
actually have quite a few shared enemies,
from governments to the Jewish community
to women and minorities.
Their view on minorities and women are incredibly similar.
It is not unusual to see white supremacy extremists
talk about women in an incredibly traditional
and degrading and oppressive way,
just like how women are seen inside the Islamic State
as baby-making, traditional wives.
A very strong connector is anti-Semitic hatred.
You will not replace us!
A general glorification of violence,
of warrior culture,
a culture of self-sacrifice,
and generally widespread violent hatred against Western democracies,
Western concepts of pluralism and liberalism.
But it’s not just the ideological views of these two groups
that are similar.
Experts say the psychology behind their beliefs
also has a lot in common.
Salafi jihadi and far-right movements
function through similar cognitive frameworks.
They both embrace a Manichean perception of the world
that clearly divides humanity between good and evil.
May God punish you. God will punish you.
In both movements, there is a clear group,
clear adversary groups, and nothing in the middle.
Both frameworks basically aim at getting rid of
this annoying constraint that is called nuance.
These black and white perceptions of right and wrong
explain how groups that hate each other
can end up with such similar worldviews.
Both actors have this firm belief that their societies are under siege
and that violence is the only thing that can halt
the quote, unquote invaders.
And for jihadists, this means an assault on Muslims by the West,
and for white supremacists, it means encroachment from multiculturalism,
immigration, and so-called Islamization of society.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown
of Muslims entering the United States.
Disturbingly, none of this is really new.
Far-right groups have been expressing a grudging admiration for Islamists,
and vice versa, for decades.
Today’s neo-Nazis and white supremacists,
they like to go back to the Third Reich, to Nazi Germany,
where the Hitler government
actually tried to establish contacts with Islamic rulers,
Grand Mufti, for example, in Egypt,
to win them over as allies in the Second World War
against the Western forces.
And obviously, they tried to establish a common ground
based on what they believed was a shared anti-Semitic, anti-Jew hatred.
Some of the most violence-oriented far-right organizations
here in America,
they have long veneered figures like Osama bin Laden,
the late leader of al Qaeda.
We've even seen evidence of these groups sharing al Qaeda bomb manuals,
organizing operational cells in a very similar fashion,
using propaganda and recruitment tactics
similar to that of the Islamic State.
My muwahhid brother, today, by Allah’s permission, we will learn
how to make simple explosive substances with common ingredients.
This is an Islamic State bomb-making tutorial
reportedly used by the Manchester Arena bomber,
Salman Abedi,
whose 2017 attack killed 22 victims.
And this is a propaganda poster
by the American neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division
using a screenshot from the very same ISIS film.
There’s no reason for neo-Nazi terrorists
not to use an ISIS explosives manual.
The knowledge,
the practical knowledge of creating explosives and weapons in itself
is beyond ideology.
You use it. You use it for your ideological goals.
From the beginning of ISIS,
they transformed online terror propaganda, basically.
They were trying to make it look cool.
And they introduced this high production value,
they made things look more stylized, like a video game,
like an action film.
Far-right groups have admiration for Salafi jihadi
for the impact they have, for the fear they instigate,
for the way they mobilize their constituencies.
The similarities between some of this propaganda is pretty shocking,
but it’s not just the far right who’ve learned from the jihadists.
One of the main themes that Islamist groups
have learned from far-right groups
is the mileage that can be gained from being a culture warrior
And we really saw this reflected
in the propaganda that was put out by both ISIS and al Qaeda
after the January 6 attack.
There was a lot of admiration for that,
so these terror groups really honed in on
the grievances of the people who are out there storming the Capitol.
With extremist groups from different ends of the spectrum
reveling in the destabilized political order
and fueling each other into greater radicalization,
things are only going to get weirder.
The terrorism landscape of today,
if we compare it to 20 years ago when 9/11 happened,
is that it’s more diverse and it’s more diffused.
And we have both the global Salafi jihadist threat
that we need to keep an eye on
whilst at the same time combating the threat within at home,
the domestic terrorism threat,
which is primarily majority made up of far-right extremists.
So all of a sudden, we have to look abroad and at home,
and that is a momentous task.
I think that these ideological bridges
that exist between different extremist environments
will be used much more in the future.
We will see individuals who have elements from extreme right groups,
from even Orthodox Christian milieus,
from jihadist groups,
and they will almost in their own patchwork
create their own individual overall ideological framework
that in the end, it makes them choose violence,
it makes them pick a certain target.
Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa!
Experts fear that as these groups continue to feed off each other,
their ideological links could spiral to increasingly dangerous
and hard to comprehend depths.
When we study a virus, we pick it apart,
we study its DNA to understand how and why it connects to a host
and why and how it actually creates a certain effect.
And we need to do the exact same thing with extremist violence,
and we need to chart and map
extremist DNAs, basically, extremist environments,
to understand when and how they connect
and form these kind of hybrids.