EU KNOWLEDGE HUB: PREVENTING RADICALISATION
As part of the European Union’s ongoing initiatives to strengthen strategies for preventing radicalisation, an important working session of the EU Knowledge Hub on “Prevention of Radicalisation” was held in Brussels on 12 November 2025. The meeting gathered experts, institutional officials, and civil society representatives.
Among the guests invited by the European Commission, I participated in my capacity as Chief Operating Officer of the Association “Memoria e Verità per le Vittime del Terrorismo”, an organisation accredited by the United Nations and committed for years to supporting victims of terrorism and promoting European policies to prevent extremist phenomena.
A central focus of the discussion was an emerging trend that is reshaping traditional paradigms of radicalisation: the rise of nihilistic conspiracy narratives, capable of fuelling forms of violent extremism that are not linked to political, religious, or identity-based ideologies.
In the dedicated discussion group, participants examined how conspiracy theories lacking coherent ideological structure, but rooted in the denial of any value, can shape violent behaviours driven exclusively by despair, misanthropy, or deep distrust toward the surrounding world.
The recurring expression “no lives matter” was used to summarise a mindset in which life itself is perceived as irrelevant, and violence becomes a channel for frustration and alienation.
According to experts at the meeting, digital platforms are the primary environment where these dynamics develop. Online spaces are saturated with conspiracy content portraying the world as irreversibly corrupt, manipulated by undefined elites, and inevitably heading toward collapse.
As a consequence, fluid and hard-to-map groups such as “764” and “No Lives Matter” exploit these narratives to legitimise acts of destruction with no ideological project behind them, but rather stemming from a profound existential void.
Radicalisation unfolds rapidly and often invisibly, without the traditional ideological indicators. Several episodes in recent years across Europe have reinforced these concerns.
One frequently cited case was that of Axel Rudakubana, the 17-year-old perpetrator of the 2024 Southport stabbing in the United Kingdom. Although he had been flagged three times to the PREVENT programme, each report was closed due to the absence of identifiable ideological affiliation.
Subsequent investigation revealed that the young man had been heavily exposed to radical conspiratorial content and a worldview marked by a deep sense of meaninglessness.
Indeed, the 2025 PREVENT annual report confirms that most alerts involve vulnerable individuals without a defined ideological orientation, highlighting the inadequacy of criteria developed for ideologically structured threats.
A similar pattern emerged in south-west Finland, where in 2025 a student at Vähäjärvi School in Pirkkala stabbed three classmates. The attacker had written a manifesto, but the text did not reveal a political or religious ideology. Instead, it contained a fragmented set of conspiratorial references, signs of social isolation, and pervasive existential pessimism.
Participants also noted clear analogies with the incidents recorded in Southport and Bournemouth in 2025, suggesting a recurrent model of nihilistic digital radicalisation, where violence arises from an online environment saturated with despair and cognitive distortions.
The Brussels debate revolved around several guiding questions designed to foster critical reflection and shape new prevention policies. Participants discussed whether conspiracy theories must necessarily provide an alternative explanation of reality, or whether— as recent cases suggest— they increasingly replace the search for meaning with the belief that nothing matters.
The group also examined the psychological effects of narratives that deny the value of life, questioning the consequences of constant exposure to nihilistic and apocalyptic content.
Another key question addressed whether recent attacks were directly or indirectly influenced by such narratives— not necessarily as motivational drivers, but as amplifiers of emotional states and cognitive distortions already present in vulnerable individuals.
This led to a broader reflection on how to counter conspiracy content that does not promote an ideology but rather a vacuum, a challenge that is particularly complex for prevention systems designed to detect clear ideological indicators.
In my contribution— also on behalf of the Association “Memoria e Verità per le Vittime del Terrorismo”— I emphasised the need to update analytical and operational tools so that European policies can identify early warning signs of radicalisation expressed through isolation, psychological vulnerability, and immersion in distorted digital ecosystems.
Ultimately, the Brussels meeting highlighted that prevention today must address not only structured ideologies but also forms of extremism driven by disorientation and loss of meaning, within a social and communicative environment dominated by narratives that weaken community bonds and erode the perception of human value.
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