Violent online networks like ‘764’ show how – Latest News
Parents, are you aware what your youngsters are doing online?
If not, the reply might terrify you.
Last month, the FBI issued a warning concerning the growing menace of violent online networks focusing on minors.
Lurking on gaming platforms, social media or self-help boards, members of these networks lavish consideration on their targets.
After the grooming comes the calls for: that victims carve occult symbols or the names of their abusers onto their our bodies (a apply often known as “fansigning”).
That they share sexually express videos or mutilate their pets on digital camera.
That they livestream their own suicides.
When victims disengage, they’re doxed and swatted, threatened with violence, blackmailed or extorted.
Most victims are teenagers.
Some are youthful.
It’s the stuff of nightmares, and dismantling these virulent networks is now a prime national security precedence throughout the United States and Europe.
764 propaganda that was shared on Telegram.
But most mother and father have no concept they exist.
Many of these networks, with names like 764, the Com, No Lives Matter and True Crime Community, belong to a loosely linked subculture referred to as nihilistic violent extremism.
This is influencer tradition at its darkest, the place standing comes from creating the worst-possible content material. Videos of beheadings, dismemberings, torture and youngster pornography freely flow into.
Consuming ultra-violent content material online fuels real-world creation.
Take 17-year-old Solomon Henderson, who shot and killed a scholar at his faculty in Antioch, Tenn., in January, wounding two others earlier than taking his own life.
Bradley Cadenhead, who glided by Felix and Brad764 online, created 764 in 2020 when he was 15 and named it after his zip code. Erath County Jail
He left behind a manifesto, now customary process for online extremists.
No shock his manifesto and social-media footprint are rife with tragedy, self-loathing and rage — together with horrific imagery and references to nihilistic extremism and neo-Nazism
It glorified faculty shooters he idolized — together with Natalie Rupnow, who killed two of her classmates and wounded six more in December 2024 in Madison, Wis., earlier than taking her own life.
She frequented school-shooter-obsessed boards of the True Crime Community and admired prior assaults.
That Henderson was a black self-identified white supremacist and that Rupnow was a uncommon feminine faculty shooter underline the unusual, shape-shifting nature of nihilistic violent extremism.
Tennessee faculty shooter Solomon Henderson, 17, shot and killed a scholar at his high faculty earlier this yr earlier than committing suicide. WSMV by way of Metro Nashville PD
Crackdown underway
Last week, two alleged leaders of 764 had been arrested — one in North Carolina and one in Greece, after an investigation by the FBI, NYPD and companions.
They’re accused of directing minors worldwide to cut symbols into their our bodies, produce express videos and have interaction in self-harm.
These arrests are a breakthrough, however the menace stays.
A 764 member in Kentucky lately pleaded guilty to plotting to kill a minor who refused to proceed making coerced sexual videos.
An Arizona man related to 764 allegedly pressured a 13-year-old lady to carve his alias, satanic symbols and swastikas into “every possible place” on her physique, threatening to leak sexually express pictures of her if she didn’t comply.
Wisconsin faculty shooter Natalie Rupnow killed two of her classmates final December earlier than taking her own life. Natalie Rupnow/X
And in California, minors had been blackmailed into filming themselves performing torture rituals.
Worse nonetheless, immediately’s victims can change into tomorrow’s abusers.
A 15-year-old Eastern European lady who satisfied a Minnesota man to livestream his self-immolation had been terrorized by 764 earlier than she grew to become one of their recruiters.
These aren’t remoted examples.
Since we started investigating this menace three years in the past, we’ve recognized over 500 circumstances — and people are simply those we learn about.
In addition to arrests, the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force has been working to alert law enforcement worldwide to the risks of these networks.
NYPD detectives and FBI brokers have briefed faculty officers and group companions worldwide, flagging indicators: reducing and fansigning, isolation, doxing, swatting and retributive bomb threats seen in colleges because the pandemic.
This work is pressing, important and growing.
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Be looking out
But whereas law enforcement is working aggressively to establish and dismantle these networks, early intervention begins with the people closest to the children, not after a case is opened.
The reality is arrests aren’t enough.
We need awareness.
We need mother and father to know what’s on the market.
We need lecturers to acknowledge the indicators.
We need tech firms to take duty for what’s occurring on their platforms.
And we need survivors to know they’re not alone — that there’s a method back.
The excellent news is, restoration is feasible.
We’ve labored with households who’ve pulled their youngsters out of these networks and helped them begin over — secure and supported.
When that occurs, we don’t simply save one life.
We shield future victims and forestall others from turning into victimizers.
It takes vigilance. It takes early intervention.
And it takes adults who’re paying consideration.
If you’re a dad or mum, ask your youngsters what they’re doing online.
Don’t simply monitor — have interaction.
If you’re a trainer, don’t ignore the unusual symbols or sudden withdrawal.
Ask questions.
If you’re a buddy, converse up.
This is a new type of extremism — grounded within the perception that nothing issues and that inflicting hurt is the one technique to really feel something in any respect.
We can stop it.
But provided that we all know it’s there.
Jessica Tisch is commissioner of the New York City Police Department, the place Rebecca Weiner is deputy commissioner for intel and counterterrorism.
