In February 2012, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released “Zachary Chesser: A Case Study in Online Radicalization and Its Meaning for the Threat of Homegrown Terrorism.” Chesser is serving a 25-year prison sentence for providing “material support” to al Shabaab and encouraging violence against Americans. After graduating from high school, he played on a soccer team organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political organization. Around the same time, Chesser converted to Islam. Over the next two years, he became increasingly extreme in his beliefs, founding the website, themujahidblog.com. After being investigated by the FBI, Chesser had some correspondence with the Senate committee, in which he said that any Muslim who learns about Islam finds “jihad as viable and preferable at some point.” The Senate report notes:

“Chesser represents a growing breed of young Americans who have such comfort and facility with social media that they can adeptly use it to facilitate radicalization and recruitment to violent Islamist extremism that is accelerated as compared to traditional avenues of recruitment.”

To be sure, sharing information online can give an individual fodder for their beliefs. However, consider the context in which Chesser was first introduced to a new belief system. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political organization whose goal is to establish a caliphate governed by Shariah law. The group rejects democracy as un-Islamic and would ideally remove any influence of “western” nations in the idealized caliphate. While Hizb ut-Tahrir does not endorse terrorism or violence, the group’s views and goals can certainly be classified as extreme. Given that, is it reasonable to think that Chesser’s extremist views stemmed from online materials? Or is it more likely that he went looking for extremist opinions after he had what was obviously an impressionable encounter with Hizb ut-Tahrir, given his conversion to Islam at that time?

Inspire may have offered bomb-making instructions, and the amateurish English-language publication may have provided some legitimizing messages for the Tsarnaevs, but caution should be exercised over making too much of the magazine’s role in the Boston attacks. Not only does it reinforce al Qaeda’s messaging, it could also diminish the counterterrorism focus on real-world factors driving radicalization.

Online materials can feed the fire of radicalization, but the root of extremist belief and action might be better identified in real-world situations. While the threat from online literature cannot be discounted, putting too much stock in it can also play into the hands of terrorist groups seeking legitimacy.

 

Opportunists in Yemen

Inspire does not hold a monopoly on bomb-making information. There are myriad documents available online describing simple and sophisticated explosive devices. The Anarchist’s Cookbook, for example, contains many more devious instructions than a simple pressure-cooker bomb and has been available online for years, long before AQAP decided to try their hand at digital publishing. The Tsarnaevs had no shortage of sources for constructing their bombs; however, that has not stopped the authors of Inspire from capitalizing on the attack.

The latest edition of AQAP’s magazine contains an article titled, “Inspired by Inspire,” by Yahya Ibrahim, which reads:

“In the past few weeks, the expression ‘Inspired by Inspire’ has been tweeted and retweeted. Not only by our friends, but by our enemies also…Yes, the [Tsarnaev] brothers have been inspired by Inspire. This is not only because Inspire offers bomb recipes, but also because of the contents of the magazine as a whole.”