The Threat Podcast

The Enemy Within: How Extremists Go From Hashtags to Terrorism

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali Season 1 Episode 9

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0:00 | 38:26

An upstate New York mother of two is arrested for allegedly raising $30,000 for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. American activists travel to Tehran and chant "death to America" on Iranian state TV. A pop-up extremist group called Dample appears online almost overnight — and just as quickly goes dark. How does radicalization move so fast, and who's pulling the strings from abroad?

Jay Solomon and Hagar Chemali sit down with Lara Burns — former FBI special agent with over 20 years in counterterrorism, now head of terrorism research at George Washington University's Program on Extremism. She led the DOJ's largest-ever terrorism financing case, the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation.

They discuss how propaganda escalates into material support and violence, why "pop-up" groups no longer need hierarchy or headquarters to mobilize, the unprecedented role of foreign adversaries like Iran and China in sowing discord online, and a chilling historical parallel: how the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran united far-left and Islamist factions to topple a modernizing state. Burns calls it "radicalization by applause" — and argues that defeating it can't fall on law enforcement alone.

Find Lara Burns's work at GW's Program on Extremism, and on her podcasts Intifada: Hamas in the US, Then and Now and Echoes of Terrorism.