| The recent shootings at high schools in Madison, Wis., and Nashville, Tenn., exemplify what some researchers are calling “nonideological” terrorism. These attacks seem to stem from various antisocial, decentralized online networks that inspire young people to commit violent acts. This identified pattern challenges the traditional categories used by law enforcement and researchers to understand radicalization pathways, such as radical Islamist terrorism and white nationalist terrorism.
➡️ Cody Zoschak, a senior manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, says his team has found that a growing number of school shooting plots are linked to the True Crime Community. TCC is a shared-interest group of people who obsess over mass killings, which have developed on social media platforms.
➡️ There is also a subculture, Saints Culture, which portrays mass killers as almost superhuman figures, and high-casualty attacks are framed as the ultimate legacy worth emulating.
➡️ The reach of violent ideological movements has widened to women. Zoschak says girls tend to find their way to TCC through online eating disorder communities.
➡️ Boys often find TCC through gore forums, where they have been desensitized to violence through videos of torture, injury and death.
Here’s more on the new radicalization pattern experts are warning about. | 
