New Podcast – Return of the Bride of Terrorism, With Bjørn Ihler

We are honoured to welcome back Bjørn Ihler, Director of the Sweden-based Khalifa Ihler Institute, as well as founder and CEO of consulting firm Revontulet in Norway. A survivor of the 2011 Utoya Island massacre, Bjørn is an internationally recognised authority and speaker on the topic of terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC), and has been a major driver of collective efforts to prevent, identify, track, and counteract terrorism both online and in the “real world”.

In this third part of our conversations about terrorism, Bjørn and John touch on freedom of speech, obligations of companies and individuals, how the law handles extremism, and how to support survivors of extremist violence.

See here for part I of this series. Part II is here

Notes and Links:

As always, we haven’t read all of these in their entirety, and the Wikipedia links are provided as-is, and only meant as a starting point for someone interested in more than just casual information.

01:08 Specifically, the US Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
01:10 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
01:40 Germany does not have a “constitution” per se, rather it has the Basic Law (Grundgesetz): https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html
Also, this is incorrect – the ban on such symbology with exceptions for educational and similar constructive uses, is in Strafgesetzbuch (criminal law) section 86a – https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__86a.html (German link). Wikipedia has a whole section on it – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
01:49 Not just nazi symbols, but here’s a list of restrictions on those – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans_on_Nazi_symbols
01:52 Still work in progress as of time of recording – https://yle.fi/a/74-20162044
02:26 The German-language movie “Er Ist Wieder Da” is a great watch, and would be funny if it weren’t so not funny – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4176826/
03:19 Specifically the “paradox of tolerance” in The Open Society and Its Enemies – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies
05:16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
06:18 Pesky civil rights – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
07:36 Along with a whole lot of other factors, but hey, we’re not here for academic rigour – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_German_student_movement
07:41 Mentioned in a previous episode – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_armee_fraktion
07:44 The “Baader-Meinhof Gang” was actually pretty much the same as the RAF
07:50 E.g. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-far-right-extremism-bundeswehr-military-afd/a-72570910
08:26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany – among others
08:36 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_German_federal_election
Interestingly, and we won’t link to the original Twitter post, some other comparisons – https://files.catbox.moe/xw2d0b.mp4
09:18 Also Éric Zemmour, whose far-right “Reconquête” (Reconquest) party placed 4th in the 2022 presidential elections, with ca. 7% of the vote, while Le Pen’s far-right-but-not-quite-as-far-right RN garnered almost 41.5% in the second round of voting – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_presidential_election
15:26 “Doxxing” is a common technique across the entire political spectrum. We won’t go into whether it’s good or bad, but it’s fairly widespread.
16:54 Among a bunch of other things in there – https://facebookpapers.com/
An overview of the Myanmar-specific issue – https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/
John Oliver has done several episodes on the topic, for the short-attention-span crowd, such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf7XHR3EVHo
17:16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
17:48 One of several US concepts around limitations of speech, this one was defined in the case Brandenburg v. Ohio, and is the current measure of what sort of speech can be banned – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
19:46 FAANG – Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google
24:09 DSA – https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=legissum:4625430
DMA – https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=legissum:4622237
Terrorist Content Online Regulation – https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/784/oj/eng
25:37 Not only “formal” moderation, but also paid community “standards” enforcers. Check out our podcast on China’s 50 Cent Army – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBAJ2rBKrMc
37:31 https://stisa.network – good organisation
38:38 “Recht am Eigenen Bild” – https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recht_am_eigenen_Bild (German-language article for multiple countries)

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