One click away: ADL research shows how online radicalization leads to extremism
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Online interaction with extremist content can be linked to the commission of real-world violent crimes, an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) research project released on Thursday concluded.
The ADL’s Center on Extremism followed the timeline of radicalization that led two teenagers, Natalie (Samantha) Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, to commit school shootings motivated by hatred, rage, and extremism.
The two interacted with online communities that center around violence and bigotry, including gore, antisemitism, racism, and misogyny.
Both followed shockingly similar timelines, carrying out their rampages within two months of each other in late December 2024 and early January 2025. During June of 2023, each created an account on the gore website WatchPeopleDie (WPD), a platform for viewing and sharing real-life footage of extreme, depraved violence. According to the ADL research, this is where their parallel descents began.
The contagious nature of online extremism
Extremist activity on websites like WPD is not limited to depictions of violence, according to the research. The ADL detailed that much of the content posted is tied to white supremacist communities, exposing users to yet another level of abnormal and disturbing influence. The more Rupnow and Henderson interacted with disturbing content, the more they spewed the same ideology.
Rupnow herself followed an account on WPD that celebrated Dylann Roof, a white supremacist convicted of a racially motivated shooting in 2015 at a church in America, and expressed that she wished to commit a copycat crime. In an online diary, Henderson frequently used slurs targeting African Americans, posted memes about the Holocaust, and discussed his admiration of white supremacist symbols.
Content retrieved from: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-865187.
