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Rajan Basra
1,213 posts
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Rajan Basra
@rajanbasra
Researching how terrorists think and act. PhD and postdoc @WarStudies / @CSNS_UK / @XCEPT_Research
King's College London
csns.uk
Joined October 2014
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  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    On October 30th, a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later he killed himself. Three days on, the attack has been largely forgotten. But it's worth taking a closer look at what he posted online, and what it says about radicalisation:
    The moment Andrew Leak threw a petrol bomb out of his car window. Photo by Peter Nicholls from Reuters (@pbanicholls)
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Jul 3, 2020
    Today Saffiya Shaikh, a 36-year-old jihadist convert, was sentenced to life for trying to blow up St. Paul's Cathedral. Last year I came across her YouTube profile. So what do her browsing habits reveal about her radicalisation? Turns out, quite a lot:
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    As a thought experiment, let's imagine if the perpetrator had, say, brown skin. That he made negative comments online about the government. And then threw petrol bombs at an army recruitment centre, before killing himself. Would there be a delay in classifying it as terrorism?
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    So far the police haven’t decided if it meets the “threshold for terrorism”, instead saying it was “likely to be driven by some form of hate-filled grievance”. What is that threshold? Can it be publicly stated? bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    The next day the Home Secretary said: “The British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our Southern coast...” What followed was debate over the word "invasion", but next to nothing about how this rhetoric relates to an attack like this.
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    His response was, ironically, exactly what ISIS wanted: to (further) polarise European societies, provoke a backlash, and force Muslims to decide “us or them”. ISIS wanted to destroy, in their words, "the grey zone" and reduce the world to black and white choices.
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    The earliest posts online are from a 2014 twitter account, with just 4 tweets. His first message was “I love the world”. A day later: “It’s time to intern all radical Muslims”. That’s quite the one-two. The remaining tweets were about jihadists and grooming gangs.
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    He was following 59 accounts. 58 were mainstream; the type twitter suggests you follow when you sign up. The remaining account he followed was the BNP. So it seems he held far-right views since at least 2014.
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    The "is this terrorism?" debate can obscure the insightful things Andy Leak's case shows us. There's much more to say about this, but I'll stop here. You can amplify this thread to your audience, if you've found it interesting. Thanks for reading. /END
    user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    On October 30th, a man threw petrol bombs at an immigration centre in Dover, injuring two. Minutes later he killed himself. Three days on, the attack has been largely forgotten. But it's worth taking a closer look at what he posted online, and what it says about radicalisation:
    The moment Andrew Leak threw a petrol bomb out of his car window. Photo by Peter Nicholls from Reuters (@pbanicholls)
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2020
    We now know the #ViennaAttack was carried out by a convicted terrorist, released early from prison. He tricked the authorities by falsely complying, like other attackers: 2016 Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray 🇫🇷 2016 Osny prison 🇫🇷 2019 London Bridge 🇬🇧 Some thoughts in this thread:
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    All of this makes me ask: What separates Andy Leak from everyone else that makes threats online but never acts on them? So many others consume the same racist and xenophobic material as him - why was he the one to act on it? He'd held these views for years - so why attack now?
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    He next popped up on Twitter in November 2015. After the ISIS attacks in Paris that month, he posted: "We're an island and we've been attacked before. It's time to close the borders, sink all these boats, let's sort out the strong from the weak"
    00:00
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Nov 3, 2022
    Replying to @rajanbasra
    Those questions are tough to answer. But when you put all of this together, we can see a complex mix of racism and xenophobia, conspiratorial thinking, and what appear to be mental health issues. I wouldn't be surprised if there was drug/alcohol misuse too.
  • user avatar
    Rajan Basra
    @rajanbasra
    Sep 12, 2022
    Exactly 30 years ago today, the leader of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) was arrested in Lima. Called the "capture of the century", it is one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of counterterrorism. Here's how Abimael Guzmán was taken down. THREAD/