December 3, 2025

SHARE |

Nihilistic Violent Extremism in Southeast Asia

AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn

Youth radicalization is becoming an issue of increasing concern in Southeast Asia. Much of the contemporary threat comes from nihilistic violent extremism, notably from adherents to something known as the True Crime Community (TCC), which is a broad online subculture consisting of individuals who become obsessed with real-life crime, investigations, and the motivations of the perpetrators. Over the past two years, youths have launched successful attacks in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. In Singapore, attacks have been disrupted before they could be carried out. In each case, the perpetrators were nihilistic violent extremists (NVEs).

Nihilistic violent extremists actively encourage, promote, and glorify violence for the sake of violence and chaos itself. They are driven to violence by the desire for status and recognition. These extremists eschew a cohesive set of beliefs in favor of ideological sampling, pulling in content from right-wing extremism, neo-Nazi ideas, antisemitic conspiracies, pro-ISIS ideas, misogyny, inceldom, and anti-LGBT themes. This ideological convergence, what some have termed “fluidity of the fringes,” enables individuals and small online groups to adopt foreign extremist content and adapt it to local contexts.

Social media and online gaming are the key mechanisms via which this radicalization to nihilistic violent extremism is taking place. Unlike previous iterations of radicalization in Southeast Asia, this one is not taking place through the family, the school, or study sessions. Instead, in each case, the youth are terminally online. Indeed, each had vulnerabilities. Some were bullied. One was mentally ill. Some experienced the rejection of unrequited love. However, regardless of their vulnerability, each had constructed an online social life and community in lieu of one in their neighborhood or at their school.

Online gaming platforms like Roblox, Discord, and Minecraft, as well as social media platforms like TikTok, Telegram, X, and Instagram, have enabled NVE networks to reach younger audiences. The perpetrators of the attacks and attempted attacks in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand have averaged between 13 and 17 years of age. The Paragon Mall shooter in Bangkok began discussing the possibility of carrying out a school shooting in an Instagram chat at 12 years of age with someone based in Türkiye; their relationship continued online for over a year, while he planned the attack, which he eventually carried out at the Paragon, just down the street from his school. A 14-year-old male student at Bandar Utama School in Selangor, Malaysia, stabbed a 16-year-old female classmate to death in October 2025 after she rejected his romantic overtures. Also in 2025, the Singaporean authorities issued a restriction order for a 14-year-old who had sworn loyalty to ISIS and described himself as an incel. Previously, a 13 or 14-year-old perpetrator would have been exceedingly rare in Southeast Asia; few in-person recruiters would have considered it.

One type of nihilistic violent extremism that is becoming increasingly common in Southeast Asia is the aforementioned TCC. This transnational online network glorifies past school shooters and mass shooters and is popular on Tumblr, Discord, Telegram, X, and TikTok. TCC members dress like past school shooters, make online content inspired by them, and write mass shooter fan fiction. Although many TCC members never escalate to violence, an increasing number are livestreaming their crimes, which they model on the mass shooters they worship.

The influence of the TCC can be seen in the Bandar Utama School stabbing in Selangor, Malaysia, and the bombing of State High School 72 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The manifesto authored by the Bandar Utama stabber referenced four U.S. school shootings and two works of fiction depicting school shootings. The bombing at State High School 72 in North Jakarta, Indonesia, was replete with TCC imagery. The 17-year-old perpetrator adopted the style of Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold on his social media and in the t-shirt he chose to wear to the attack. He wrote the names of Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant, Quebec mosque attacker Alexandre Bissonette, and Luca Traini, the Italian who shot and wounded six African migrants, on an airsoft gun he brought to the attack. According to the Global Project Against Hate and Violent Extremism, the perpetrator had also etched the racist slogan “14 words”; the number 1189, the year the Third Crusades began; the St. Michael’s Cross, a Romanian fascist symbol; and “For Agartha,” a reference to a mythological city.

His social media confirms his place in TCC and his affinity for neo-Nazi and white supremacist content. For example, he was part of a Telegram group that glorified violent attacks by white supremacists, and his TikTok account included a video with the image of a Nazi Sonnenrad. He would often hashtag relevant TikToks with #TCC and #TEECEECEE. Taken together, these symbols on social media, in his chosen manner of dress, and on the airsoft gun he brought to the attack clearly signal TCC and right-wing extremist, neo-Nazi flavored NVE.

There is less information available about the perpetrator of the 2023 Paragon Mall attack in Bangkok, Thailand. Due to his age and the severity of his mental illness, authorities have been circumspect in what they have released to the public. A senior member of the Thai police, however, disclosed the perpetrator of the Paragon Mall attack was active on Discord, Facebook, and Instagram in the year prior to the attack, and importantly, he had chatted with an account in Türkiye, discussing his desire to commit a school shooting.  Sometime between their initial conversations at age 12 and the attack a year later, he shifted the target from his school to the Paragon Mall. On the day of the attack, he adopted a paramilitary aesthetic, dressing in combat fatigues to carry out the shooting. His social media showed an obsession with guns. This youth was especially vulnerable, given that he was mentally ill. He had been hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations; he may have been easy prey for NVE recruiters.

We can draw several conclusions across these cases of nihilistic violent extremism. First, perpetrators are radicalizing, plotting, and carrying out attacks at younger ages than has been typical for Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean extremists. Second, the typical NVE actor is male and terminally online. He is on multiple social media platforms and most likely gaming platforms as well, building relationships across those platforms. Third, Southeast Asian nihilistic violent extremists are adopting foreign points of ideology like Great Replacement Theory, inceldom, glorification of mass shooters, and neo-Nazi symbols, and they are adapting them to their local contexts. Fourth, in Thailand and Indonesia, youth perpetrators leaked their plans to someone — the Indonesian to a classmate and the Thai youth in social media chats. Finally, they kept diaries or manifestos or had social media profiles that revealed admiration of school and mass shooters, right-wing extremist content, misogyny, anti-immigrant conspiracy theories, and Islamophobia. Taken together, there are clear indicators of radicalization present, if one knows what to look for and where to look.

Addressing the issue of nihilistic violent extremism in Southeast Asia requires a whole-of-society approach that brings practitioners, psychologists, social workers, educators, law enforcement, and government stakeholders together to design and implement effective interventions. Malaysia and Indonesia, in particular, are making great strides in this regard and can serve as models for their neighbors, who can adopt elements of Indonesian and Malaysian programmatic interventions, policies, and practices and adapt them to their local contexts.

Julie Chernov Hwang is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Goucher College, a Soufan Center Senior Research Fellow and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar.