groups use the dark web and gaming forums

In the 13 months between January 2022 and January 2023, Brazilian schools suffered 10 attacks with fatalities. It is just under half of everything that has been recorded in the last 22 years: 22 attacks. The survey is contained in Technical Note 15, produced by the Monitor of the Political Debate in the Digital Media of the University of São Paulo (USP).

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And the data is already outdated: in the last few weeks alone, there have been at least four incidents, in São Paulo (SP), Blumenau (SC) with deaths, and in Manaus (AM) and Goiânia (GO) with injuries. In February, in Monte Mor (ES), a teenager had been apprehended after throwing a homemade bomb at the Professor Antonio Sproesser State School. The artifact exploded, but no one was injured. The list goes on.

“There is no doubt that the number of violent actions in schools has increased in recent years. They are orchestrated and frequent attacks, against victims of little capacity to resist. The pain of families, teachers, school administrators and children is impossible to measure”, evaluates Luciene Tognetta, professor at the Faculdade de Ciências e Letras at Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) and doctor in school psychology and human development at the University of São Paulo. São Paulo (USP). “It’s a new phenomenon in Brazil, which has many layers, but it involves grooming boys via the internet.”

The explanation for this phenomenon goes through the dark web (sites that are not indexed and can only be accessed by specialized browsers) and in forums that allow anonymity – there, young people pay homage to perpetrators of massacres in the recent past and freely debate strategies to reach the greatest number of people. people possible. Conversations of this nature are common, especially in forums originally created to discuss video games and online games.

Communication that encourages lethal violence has also migrated to more traditional social networks, but this is only a small part of the problem, the tip of the iceberg. It’s not hard to find posts that use hashtags like #tcc (acronym for true crime community) and include, for example, photos of knives and guns being gathered to carry out attacks. Young people are vulnerable to extremist ideologies, they take the bait and go to forums where attacks are organized. The speeches start with Tik Tok and continue until the enlisted go on to access detailed information on the dark web.

“Although hate speech has always existed, it is currently amplified through social networks”, says lawyer and researcher Cleo Garcia, co-author of the research “Attacks of extreme violence in schools in Brazil”, carried out within the University of Campinas (Unicamp). “There are testimonials from former extremists saying that these groups have become like a family to them. Added to this the lack of regulation of social networks and their responsibility for content, we have the perfect cauldron for an escalation of violence”. They are attacks generated by inspiration and imitation. “This teenager fantasizes that it might also bring him recognition and a moment of glory.”

radicalization hubs

“This episode of violent extremism is related to extremist subcultures that act as online radicalization hubs for violent extremism and that reach an increasingly younger age group (from 10 years old)”, points out the author of Technical Note 15 from USP, the writer and researcher Michele Prado.

In the case of Blumenau, for example, she describes, “the aggressor inhabited a lethal online subculture that glorified terrorist attacks, massacres, mass shootings, suicidal ideation and extreme violence and that disseminated pseudoscientific theses of psychology and evolutionary biology to justify hierarchical social orders. by gender/ethnicity/religion, content with historical revisionism, apology for Nazism, content of extreme right-wing militant accelerationism, instructions for manufacturing weapons and homemade bombs and a profound nihilism and misanthropy”.

The internet connection helps to understand the patterns of actions, which have taken place in all regions of Brazil following similar strategies – including the time, usually in the morning, right at the beginning of the first classes. The pages also include attempts to organize coordinated attacks.

“There is a proven ‘contagion effect’ when inadequate exposure in the media and social networks inspires susceptible young people to also manifest violent behavior. In addition, the police identified that it is in the virtual environment that teenagers plan attacks, when they find people with the same intentions as theirs”, describes Guilherme Derrite, military policeman, federal deputy for São Paulo and Secretary of Public Security for the state.

“Often, these teenagers have contact with content they don’t know how to deal with on social networks, as they are experiencing a moment of transition and do not understand their own conflicts. In this vulnerability, they can be co-opted by adults, who use the virtual environment to commit and plan crimes”.

Guards in schools?

Different instances, national, state and municipal, have reacted. “We are coordinating work with the cybercrime stations of the civil police and, of course, the Federal Police,” announced Minister of Justice Flávio Dino. “We are on another front by continuing the dialogue with technology platforms, mainly third-party content providers”. Prevention work has, for years, been in partnership with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a US security agency that frequently identifies risk situations identified on social media and triggers alerts to authorities.

In reaction to the attack in Blumenau, the governor of Santa Catarina, Jorginho Melo, promised to place at least one armed police officer in each of the schools in the state network – there are 1,053 across the state. The estimated cost is R$ 70 million. “No matter how much it costs, the state government will do it because our children and grandchildren deserve to be safe in school,” he declared.

The school in the neighborhood of Vila Sônia, in São Paulo, where the March 27 attack took place, has reopened with the support of constant patrols by Ronda Escolar. Other São Paulo municipalities, such as São Bernardo do Campo, Osasco and Itapecerica da Serra, also announced that they are reinforcing police rounds around schools.

The city hall of Suzano (SP), a city in Greater São Paulo where five students and two employees were murdered in 2019, recently announced the launch of the Safe School operation, which promises to keep more Municipal Civil Guard agents on permanent watch – since the incident, the city’s public schools gained more than a thousand cameras, in addition to new alarm systems and panic buttons.

In Espírito Santo, since the attacks on two schools in Aracruz (ES), which left four dead and 12 injured, the panic button was installed in all schools in the capital, Vitória. It not only triggers an alert message to the police forces, but also opens an audio channel that allows agents to identify the severity of the risk. In addition, the schools were refurbished, so that the secretariat is located in areas far from the classrooms – after all, it is the place with the greatest access to people outside the educational institution’s routine.

Strengthening security has been the necessary way to deal with possible new attacks. “It is one of the solutions to a problem that is being tackled jointly with the Department of Education of São Paulo. Our police forces will give all the support to avoid these situations, while the Department of Education will provide psychological support so that this reality changes in the classroom”, responds Derrite.

Police forces can also act preventively, to contain groups organized via the internet. It has worked, at least partially: on the 13th, for example, a 14-year-old teenager was apprehended for planning an attack on a school in Maquiné (RS). He will answer for an act analogous to terrorism, apology for Nazism and criminal organization. And he participated in online groups that discussed ways to carry out violent actions. A similar case happened in Londrina, on April 3, when a teenager was apprehended after posting threats on social networks.

“Legislation is needed to regulate social media with accountability, including protocols on disclosing this type of event through the media. There are actions already developed in countries like New Zealand and Germany that have given excellent results”, evaluates Cleo Garcia.

Learn how to identify potential bullies

For family members, guardians, teachers and friends, Michele Prado makes a series of recommendations that help identify risky behavior:

• Beliefs in conspiracy theories that suggest a decline in the white population and/or men and that suggest other minority groups as a factor in this decline;
• production and/or sharing of concepts associated with scientific racism such as racial realism and “human biodiversity”;
• consumption and dissemination of content with extreme violence/terrorist attacks and mass shootings;
• social isolation;
• fixation on themes related to World War II German armaments and blitzkrieg;
• speeches and dissemination of content in which there are conspiracy theories that a hidden group is controlling all of society;
• belief that violence is the only solution to their demands;
• verbal or written threats to carry out extreme violent actions.