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(New York, N.Y.) — The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) reports weekly on the methods used by extremists and terrorist groups on the Internet to spread propaganda and incite violence. Last week, pro-ISIS online supporters celebrated the June 22 attack on the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus, Syria, despite a different group eventually claiming credit for the attack. Earlier in June, ISIS-K-linked al-Azaim media released issue 46 of the web magazine Voice of Khorasan after a longer-than-usual hiatus. The issue included an article comparing AI chat programs and contained an updated wallet address for donating the privacy cryptocurrency Monero. CEP researchers also located ten accounts on Instagram that posted ISIS and pro-ISIS propaganda.
On June 23, CEP researchers located a new neo-Nazi accelerationist web forum that claimed to follow in the footsteps of prior web forums such as Iron March and Fascist Forge. Also, on June 23, a neo-Nazi accelerationist website connected to former members of the Atomwaffen Division and successor organizations posted advice on purchasing land and preserving anonymity. A chapter of the white supremacist Active Club movement in Tampere, Finland, posted a video on their Telegram channel that showed members removing LGBTQ+ pride flags in the city.
Pro-ISIS Online Supporters Celebrate Damascus Church Attack
Pro-ISIS online supporters celebrated the June 22 attack on the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus, Syria, by an individual armed with a firearm and a suicide vest, in which at least 25 people were killed and 63 were injured. Online ISIS supporters posted publicly available photos on Telegram, RocketChat, and Element. A pro-ISIS Telegram channel noted the alleged disruption of a similar attack on a Shiite site on Monday, June 23. Another Telegram channel stated that the June 22 bombing had embarrassed the administration of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had pledged to fight ISIS and protect religious minority groups.
RocketChat and Element users urged their audiences to wait for official ISIS confirmation that they were responsible. A relatively new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham breakaway group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (SAS), claimed credit for the attack.
Issue 46 of ISIS-K-Linked English Language Web Magazine Released Late
On June 13, ISIS-K-linked al-Azaim Media released issue 46 of their web magazine Voice of Khorasan. Articles condemned the governments of Muslim-majority countries that do not fight on behalf of coreligionists, condemned “false scholars,” and praised the killing of religious clerics in Pakistan who supported the Taliban. One of the main articles contained a comparison of different AI platforms, explaining data and privacy issues for ChatGPT’s GPT-4, Bing AI, Brave Leo, and DeepSeek. In addition to warning readers of potential privacy issues such as leaking IP addresses, the article also noted that AI could be used to create false information or mimic specific speech patterns. The article indicated that Brave Leo was the best chatbot from a privacy perspective. Additional articles condemned the Pakistani military, declared Taliban leaders to be hypocrites who had abandoned their religion, and noted that the removal of the Taliban from the list of Russian terrorist organizations was proof that the former had abandoned the correct religious path.
The web magazine included a new wallet address for donating Bitcoin and the privacy cryptocurrency Monero. The new Monero wallet address in issue 46 is the same one that was shared on RocketChat on June 2.
The web magazine had previously been released almost every month; however, issue 45 was released on March 27. Pro-ISIS communications channels noted in May that a prominent propagandist had been arrested, and on June 1, the Turkish government announced that an alleged senior ISIS operative involved with propaganda and logistics, Ozgur Altun, was arrested after crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan.
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