Canadian intelligence and law enforcement officials say they are contending with a new form of violent extremist behaviour that’s mostly targeting youth and young adults online, known as “nihilistic violent extremism.”
The term was identified as a “new threat” within the expanding landscape of ideologically-motivated violent extremism in the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) latest annual report, released this month.
The report said CSIS has noted a growing trend of youth radicalization associated with violent nihilistic online groups like 764 and the Maniac Murder Cult, which have recently been listed as terrorist entities in Canada.
Multiple Canadians have been arrested for allegedly carrying out violence in association with those groups, including a Quebec man detained last month on terrorism charges.
While CSIS said most activity within the nihilistic violent extremism space is considered criminal in nature, “a portion” of it rises to the level of a national security threat. Yet the disparate nature of the movement makes it difficult for investigators and researchers to confront it.
“This is so crazily online in a lot of ways that some more traditional extremist groups aren’t that it’s hard, very hard, to discern what is a formal group or what is a formal space” where individuals can gather, said Mackenzie Hart, the coordinator for the Canadian Network for Research on Security, Extremism and Society at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
In its report, CSIS says nihilistic violent extremism, or NVE, is defined as “serious violence based on the rejection or negation of traditional moral, religious and social values.”
“NVE promotes the belief that life lacks inherent meaning or purpose,” the report says. “The ultimate objective for followers of NVE is to engage in violent chaos.”
Hart says that, while many terrorist or extremist ideologies can have nihilistic views or want to spread chaos, most in the ideologically-motivated violence space have a particular goal in mind for the benefit of a particular group.
Islamist extremists, for example, have carried out violence with goals such as creating a future Islamist state or sphere of power, or attacking individuals and symbols associated with the West.
Many right-wing and white supremacist groups seek a similar ethnostate but for white people.
“For nihilistic violent extremists, what we’re seeing is that there really isn’t a proposed end state,” she said. “It’s this really overwhelming sense of misanthropy, so this hatred of humanity and this idea that actually no one is worthy of inheriting anything.”
Some advocates of NVE have voiced support for “returning humanity to this idea of natural selection and social Darwinism” where only the strongest and fittest survive, Hart added.
NVE followers have aligned with neo-Nazi and even Satanist ideologies, while also showing interest in “gorecore” and promoting or encouraging suicide, officials and researchers say.
Hart traces the ideology’s origins to the COVID-19 pandemic, when young people in particular were pushed online and extremist recruiters took advantage of their isolation during lockdowns.
Ideologies and online communities began to blend during that time on forums like Discord in a way “that hadn’t really happened before,” she said.
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For instance, she said some true crime fans began shifting from showing interest in mass murderers and serial killers to glorifying them and wanting to emulate their tactics.
One of the main NVE groups, 764, was founded in 2020 by then-15-year-old Bradley Cadenhead of Texas, who was arrested a year later and is now serving an 80-year prison sentence. Successive leaders of the group have also been arrested and charged.
The term NVE was used by FBI Director Kash Patel in U.S. Senate testimony last September, who said it accounted for a “large chunk” of 1,700 ongoing domestic terrorism investigations — a 300-per cent increase in opened cases from the year before.
Patel described NVE followers as “those who engage in violent acts motivated by a deep hatred of society, whatever that justification they see it is.”
According to the FBI and CSIS, NVE groups like 764 will coerce young recruits into creating and sharing explicit photos and videos, ranging from depicting acts of violence to nudity or sexual acts, resulting in child pornography material.
The groups will then use that material to blackmail the person into committing additional sexual or violent content, which can also include animal abuse and self-harm.
Other groups like Maniac Murder Cult, an offshoot of 764 created by exiled members in Russia and Ukraine, have sought to plot larger-scale acts of violence against Jewish, Muslim and LGBTQ2 communities, as well as targeting government buildings and public spaces.
Hart said many young people who join these groups are “clout-chasing” and seeking connection and belonging.
“Once you’re in the space, your status and your ability to stay there are also contingent on you producing more of this content,” she said. “So the more content you produce, basically, the more points you get. It’s very gamified.
“You can see that a child who gets involved with this might not necessarily have this larger ideological goal. … (They’re just) wanting to be cool. It becomes a very weird subculture of, ‘The worse I am, the the more important I am to these people.’”
In its report, CSIS noted the arrest last March of a 19-year-old Winnipeg man on terrorism charges due to his alleged links to the Maniac Murder Cult, also known as MKY, as an example of NVE. The man was accused of spray-painting racist and antisemitic graffiti in the city.
Arrests related to 764 include a Halifax youth last October and 26-year-old Quebec City man Jeffrey Roussel in April of this year. Both are accused of publishing and distributing graphic and obscene material online and seeking to radicalize young people.
Hart noted that many people accused of crimes on behalf of groups like 764 may also be victims themselves, as they were recruited or “groomed” in the same way.
“Removing them from these spaces is even harder because of this potential for blackmail, but also this idea that they have done horrible things,” she said.
“Another factor that makes this difficult (for police to combat) is the transnational nature of this, because these communities are online” and often hosted in other countries.
NVE leaders charged by the U.S. have been arrested in countries ranging from Russia to Greece.
In a statement to Global News, the RCMP said it doesn’t separate NVE from the larger movement of ideologically motivated violent extremism, which it defines as encompassing “all violent ideology-based threats to national security, including racially motivated, ethno-nationalist, anti-authority, nihilistic and gender-driven violence.”
“Law enforcement is operating within an ever-evolving threat landscape where we face a constant emergence of new threats and the increasing complexity of existing ones,” the statement said, adding the RCMP is “continuously assessing and adapting” its response.
Researchers and youth mental health advocates say parents should be mindful of how much time their child is spending online, and especially if they become secretive about their online activities.
In a notice about violent groups exploiting children, the RCMP also said to watch for youth covering their skin in unusual ways, or going through more bandages or showing evidence of cuts or carvings on their skin.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has resources for parents whose children may be victims of online extortion or exploitation.
The RCMP pointed to a 2024 bulletin it released on violent extremist behaviour online targeting children and youth, which includes warning signs for parents to watch out for.
Hart said a major sign is youth no longer wanting to go to school and isolating themselves in their rooms — something that Cadenhead, the 764 founder, did.
She added the increased attention by both police and the public can help put a stop to NVE and their recruitment attempts, but that vigilance is key.
“It’s complicated, because all these factors have created a whole new crime terrorism nexus,” she said. “And it’s constantly changing.”
