At the start of the new school year, Belgium's Coordination Unit for Threat Assessment (CUTA) is sounding the alarm about nihilistic extremism, a relatively new phenomenon that develops mainly online and targets vulnerable children, teenagers and young adults.
A teenager who withdraws from those around them, who barely leaves their bedroom, who uses obscure symbols or has taken to wearing nothing but black? On their own, none of these mean much.
Together, they can be early signs of something Belgium's Coordination Unit for Threat Assessment (OCAD) is now flagging at the start of the school year: nihilistic extremism, a phenomenon that has taken root almost entirely online, and one that is disproportionately targeting children – even those as young as eight.
It combines misanthropy and a sense of emptiness with horror and violence: young people mutilating themselves, or persuading others to do the same, or to commit acts of violence against others. What sets it apart from every other form of extremism is that the violence is not in service of anything.
"That is the crucial difference with religious or far-right or far-left extremism," Christophe Busch, a radicalisation expert and director of the Hannah Arendt Institute, told The Brussels Times. "There is no ideological component here. It stems from a radical emptiness and a hatred of humanity and society. The violence is not a means to an end. It is the end in itself."
Why now?
Busch linked the trend to the wider mood of the moment, underlining that it is not surprising that this phenomenon is surfacing now. "We are living through a difficult, challenging period: the climate crisis, geopolitical tensions."
"The old faith in progress, the belief that we'd have it better than the generation before us, has largely evaporated," he said. "Some young people feel the world has gone to the dogs. The only thing they feel they can do is speed that up: create even more chaos and uncertainty."
That despair finds its easiest targets among children, teenagers and young adults who are, developmentally, searching for an identity and a group to belong to.
"That is entirely typical of that stage of life," Busch said. "We saw the same thing with young people who converted to the the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organsiation. They find meaning in an extreme way of living."
What is new, he argued, is the age range.
"Internationally, we are talking about ages eight to 17. That is not the case with religious or ideological extremism. Genuinely young children do not have the capacity to tell right from wrong yet. That is exactly what is being exploited," he said. "There are sometimes manuals out there for grooming very young victims and steering them towards extreme acts."
Where it happens and how it works
Recruitment takes place on the platforms young people already exist on: Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox, Fortnite.
CUTA pointed specifically to self-help communities for conditions like anorexia or depression, where already-vulnerable teenagers are easiest to approach. "That is where classic grooming tactics are used to build a relationship," Busch said.
What distinguishes this from older forms of grooming is the game mechanic layered on top. "There is a gamification of violence. You can rack up points by persuading people to engage in problematic behaviour and film it."
That might mean cybercrime, like doxxing, swatting, or hacking. It might mean leaving slogans or symbols in public places, torturing animals, or inciting self-harm.
In the most disturbing cases, victims are pushed to recruit the next victim, collapsing the line between the harmed and the harmful.
A small number, and a real fear of under-detection
In Belgium, CUTA is currently monitoring six individuals in connection with the phenomenon. A genuinely marginal number. But the organisation is treating it as a priority regardless.
"We have to allow for the possibility of significant under-detection," said CUTA director Gert Vercauteren, and Busch points to the reason why: this kind of extremism does not announce itself as extremism.
"People think: 'Is this actually a problem? No, this is just a boy who has done something involving animal cruelty, so we will deal with it under animal welfare law.' Or: 'that's someone who has committed a cybercrime.' What often goes unrecognised is the criminal, extremist undercurrent underneath it," he explained.
The consequences of that blind spot can be severe: Busch noted cases where parents only discovered the digital world their child had been drawn into after a suicide.
What to watch for
CUTA's response is a brochure, released to coincide with the new school year, aimed at parents, teachers and youth workers. It is intended to help adults recognise warning signs earlier and respond appropriately without overreacting to any single one.
Busch is careful to frame these as puzzle pieces rather than proof: a child joining a closed-off new group is not necessarily cause for alarm, but it is worth keeping an eye on. A gore video surfacing in their online circles tells you they are on an unmoderated platform. That is worth asking about. Certain aesthetics recur too: skulls, masks, inverted crosses, disguised forms of self-harm, and occasionally something stranger.
"We have seen an apple turnover with slits cut into the top of the pastry so the filling underneath looks like something else entirely," Busch said. "Someone not in the know would not recognise it for what it is."
Closing the gap
Vercauteren framed the response as necessarily collective: prevention, awareness, digital resilience, and cooperation between platforms, schools, support services and local authorities, coordinated through local radicalisation-prevention units. Busch's hope is less procedural and more cultural – that the brochure opens up conversation rather than just distributing a checklist.
"Youth and outreach workers used to be out on the streets, in the physical town squares, the same places where IS once did its recruiting. Now we need to shift and invest in digital outreach work," he said. "Our children spend far more time in the digital public square than the physical one."
The infrastructure to respond already exists, he noted – Child Focus, the suicide helpline, centres for victims of sexual violence, care centres. The task now is turning it toward this new front.
