Crisis Points: Extremism under a state of emergency

Misinformation, crises and natural disasters

In Australia as elsewhere, violent extremist actors have exploited and instrumentalised a contested information environment during concurrent crises in 2020-2021 – including the COVID pandemic and natural disasters like the recent bushfires – to mobilise, plot and commit violent attacks, oppose government emergency responses and challenge or undermine social cohesion. Crises of this nature are likely to persist in one form or another; alongside evidence that natural disasters are on the rise (UN/CRED, 2020), there has been an equally unprecedented spread of misinformation and disinformation and contestation of the cause and origins of these crises (Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., 2020) that will likely persist. Previous research findings have demonstrated that natural disasters like bushfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemics have the potential to act as push factors to violence (Berrebi & Oswald, 2011; Fisher & Dugan, 2019; Kang and Skidmore 2018).

However, little is currently known about how natural disasters can impact violent extremism in the Australian context and in other high GDP countries. The relationship between the potential for conflict and natural disasters and emergencies is largely unaccounted for in disaster and emergency management (DEM) plans within advanced economies and consolidated democracies. Understanding exactly how natural disasters and emergencies can provide fodder for violent extremist groups and contribute to a mobilisation to violence will remain important into the future.

Resources

Presentation at the AVERT Research Symposium 2021

Lydia Khalil and Mark Duckworth Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

This presentation provided the conceptualisation and research design of the Crisis Points Project, which explored these issues, as well as the findings from a policy stocktake and analysis of Australian national, commonwealth and state emergency management, counterterrorism and countering violent extremism policies from 2001-2020 revealing the state of policy responses on the nexus between emergency management and counterterrorism/countering violent extremism policies. We identify gaps that need to be addressed in order to tackle the intersecting issues of violent extremism and disaster management, as well as integration gaps in disaster management and countering violent extremism policies.