Accelerating Hate: October 7 on Terrorism and Political Violence in the West

By CLARA BROEKAERT, COLIN P. CLARKE, MICHAELA MILLENDER, ANNIKA SCHARNAGL, AND JOSEPH SHELZI

The horrific attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, fundamentally shifted the security posture of the Middle East, while also having severe humanitarian consequences and ripple effects in countries throughout the globe, including many in the West. This TSC Special Report, generously sponsored by the Airey Neave Trust, aims to explore how October 7 impacted several Western countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy. While the conflict remains ongoing – and indeed will reverberate long after the fighting actually ends — this report attempts to take the pulse of five Western countries just shy of the one-year anniversary marking the attack.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, and in line with trends that have been unfolding in recent years, there has been a spike in both Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents across all five countries — it is not an either/or phenomena. Still, the data underpinning these incidents remains challenging, limited, and frequently incomplete, often collected by civil society groups or non-profit organizations with different definitions of the terms. Government data varies on how it is collected, if it is recorded at all, across local, state, and federal levels. This makes it exceedingly difficult to compare the data rigorously and make generalizable conclusions with confidence. The data that is available, however, does suggest that extremist groups are leveraging the conflict to promulgate and amplify preexisting antisemitic and Islamophobic narratives. In other words, the terrorist attacks of October 7 and the Israeli response provide an opportunity to promote their hateful narratives and repackage them for the moment, often inciting their followers to wreak havoc and pushing their supporters to engage in violence.

New York: The Soufan Center, 2024.63p.