Against a backdrop of escalating political violence and deepening polarization in the
United States, a new HFG-supported report from the NYU Stern Center for Business
and Human Rights  examines how extremist actors across the ideological spectrum are
exploiting digital platforms to respond to, amplify, and glorify violence.

Drawing on open-source intelligence collected between March and September 2025,
the report Digital Aftershocks: Online Mobilization and Violence in the United States
traces how far-right, far-left, violent Islamist, and nihilistic violent extremist
communities use cross-platform strategies to recruit followers, justify violence, and
sustain propaganda networks. 

“This cross-ideological scope hopefully allows us to break through the partisan framing
that tends to derail serious policy discussion, and to make principled, rights-respecting
recommendations grounded in observable behavior” said co-author Mariana Olaizola
Rosenblat, Policy Advisor on Technology and Law at NYU Stern.

The report is part of HFG’s Violence, Politics & Democracy initiative, a multi-year project
examining how these phenomena interact in mature democracies to understand better
and counter political violence and other forces that damage democratic norms and
institutions, imperiling the safety of citizens.

Read or download the report (PDF)