Radicalization Rising

When Violence Becomes Nihilistic

Mar 22, 2026

TL;DR (The Quick Version)

Political violence in the West is accelerating - but not the way you think. It’s not organized armies of ideologues marching in formation. It’s lone actors, juveniles, people with murky or no ideology at all, attacking whoever is in reach. The deadliest attacks in the US in 2024 weren’t carried out by far-right militias or jihadists. They were carried out by teenagers with no clear political goal - just a desire to hurt people.
93% of fatal terrorist attacks in the West over the last five years: lone wolves. Western terrorist incidents in 2024: 52. Up from 32 in 2023. Up 63% in one year. Threats against US lawmakers: 14,000+ in 2025. Up from 9,474 in 2024. Nihilistic violence (no ideology, just destruction): two-thirds of all deaths and injuries in US attacks/plots in 2024.
This is not political radicalization in the traditional sense. This is cognitive collapse manifesting as violence.
The mechanism is in Signal #26: Simplicity Attractor Acceleration. Read it first if you haven’t. This signal is the evidence that the mechanism is running.

WHAT THE DATA ACTUALLY SHOWS

THE NUMBERS (2024-2025):

LONE WOLF DOMINATION:

93% of fatal terrorist attacks in the West (last 5 years): lone actors (Vision of Humanity / Global Terrorism Index 2025)
Western terrorist incidents 2024: 52 (up from 32 in 2023, a 63% increase)
Seven Western nations now ranked in Global Terrorism Index top 50: Germany (#27), US (#34), France (#40), UK (#41), Australia (#46), Canada (#48), Sweden
“Investigators did not link the attacks to any terrorist group” in the overwhelming majority of 2024 Western incidents

NIHILISTIC VIOLENCE (THE NEW CATEGORY):

ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) 2024 data: deadliest US incidents were NOT tied to defined extremist ideologies
Perpetrators driven by “subcultures of nihilistic violence” - communities that promote destruction for its own sake, not political goals
These nihilistic subcultures accounted for: TWO-THIRDS of all deaths and nearly TWO-THIRDS of all injuries in attacks and plots recorded in 2024
Three juvenile TCC (True Crime Community subculture) perpetrators in 2024 school shootings: 8 deaths, 21 injuries - more than ALL ideologically defined extremist violence combined that year
Many perpetrators and suspects: JUVENILES (historically not a characteristic demographic for extremist violence) (ISD 2024 Year in Review)

THREATS TO OFFICIALS (US, 2025):

US Capitol Police investigating 14,000+ possible threats against lawmakers in 2025 (up from 9,474 in already-elevated 2024)
US Marshals Service: 562 threats against federal judges in FY2025
Princeton BDI: ~300 threats/harassment against local officials in first half of 2025 alone, up 9% year-over-year
Local officials “across the spectrum” targeted - including nonpartisan offices

VIGILANTE VIOLENCE (ACLED 2024):

Vigilante violence grew as a proportion of all recorded incidents in 2024
Frequently accounted for majority of political violence events each month
“Acts of extrajudicial violence by unaffiliated individuals or loosely organized groups in response to perceived crime or social infraction” (ACLED / Princeton BDI)

YOUTH RADICALIZATION:

UK: 1 in 5 terror suspects now under 18
Europe (2024): Nearly two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests involved teenagers
Similar patterns in Australia, Austria, France
Radicalization timeline collapsed: 2002 average = 16 months from exposure to attack. By 2015: down 40%. Now: sometimes weeks. (Global Terrorism Index / Vision of Humanity)

THE PARTISAN SPLIT - WHAT’S REAL AND WHAT’S NOISE

You’ll see arguments: “It’s the right.” “No, it’s the left.”

Both are chasing the wrong signal.

WHAT’S TRUE:

Far-right incidents dominated 2020-2024 (organized group activity)
2025: Left-wing attacks outnumber far-right for first time in 30+ years (largely because right-wing organized group activity dropped after Trump election win)
ACLED: violent acts by far-right militias are on “long-term decline” (”Many groups, but they’re very inactive” - ACLED CEO Cionadh Raleigh)
But lone actor killings and assassinations “have been consistently high in the States now for decades” (Raleigh, CBS News, 2025)

WHAT THIS MEANS:

The partisan framing is chasing the organized group layer - which is declining. The lone actor layer - which is growing - doesn’t fit clean partisan categories.

George Washington University’s Program on Extremism (2025): “The rush to assign blame to the traditional binary of left versus right politically is an exercise in futility - because it’s much more complicated than that a lot of times.”

The 2025 high-profile attacks illustrate this perfectly:

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk: fatally shot, alleged shooter said “some hate can’t be negotiated out”
Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman: killed at home by lone actor
Minnesota lawmakers: shot by man with no clear party affiliation
Pardoned Capitol rioter: arrested for threatening Democratic House leader

Same pattern. Both sides. Lone actors. Murky ideology. Personal cocktail of beliefs that doesn’t map cleanly to left or right.

This is not partisan warfare. This is cognitive collapse.

When PFC (prefrontal cortex) function degrades sufficiently, it doesn’t produce ideologues. It produces nihilists - people who can feel the rage, grab a simple narrative to justify it, but can’t hold a coherent political goal long enough to qualify as “movement violence.”

Signal #26 explains the stages:

Stage 1: Simplicity seeking (grab simple narrative)
Stage 2: Radicalization (simple narrative becomes violent framing)
Stage 3: Nihilistic violence (narrative collapses, only the rage remains)

We are seeing Stage 3 emerge alongside Stage 2.

THE GENDER DIVERGENCE - THIS IS REAL AND DOCUMENTED

THE DATA:

2024 US election: 31-point gap in youth vote by gender. Young women: Harris +17. Young men: Trump +14. (Unprecedented in modern US electoral history)
Gallup: Women aged 18-30 now 30 percentage points MORE LIBERAL than male contemporaries. Gap opened in just 6 years.
2024 European Parliament: Far-right support among young men peaked at 21%+. Young women: ~14%.
Global pattern: South Korea, UK, Germany, France showing same divergence. This is not US-specific.

WHY THIS MAPS TO PBS (PLASTIC BRAIN SYNDROME):

Young men are getting a double hit:

1. High MNP burden (post-2000 cohort, highest contamination from birth)
2. Testosterone suppression (MNPs are endocrine disruptors, suppress T). Low testosterone symptoms: irritability, status anxiety, dysregulation. This is measurable, not speculative. (See Signal #5: Testosterone Collapse)

The cognitive load asymmetry (from Signal #26) then determines direction.

Right offers young men:

Concrete threat (”masculinity under attack”) - low cognitive load
Simple enemy (feminism, “woke”) - requires no abstraction
Status restoration promise - immediate emotional payoff
Tribal identity - you’re not alone

Left offers young men:

Complex systemic analysis - high cognitive load
“Check your privilege” framing - makes degraded status WORSE
Nuance about identity - requires abstraction PFC can’t hold
Delayed gratification - no immediate payoff

Degraded PFC + suppressed testosterone + offered a simple emotional exit: direction is not ideology. It’s thermodynamics. Heat flows to cold.

WHY YOUNG WOMEN DIDN’T SHIFT:

No testosterone disruption (different hormonal system, different MNP effect)
Direct concrete threats from right-wing (abortion, autonomy) - these are immediate, personal, low-abstraction
Both sides offer young women simple narratives; the left’s is more compelling given the threat environment

Result: The gender gap is a PBS signature, not a culture war artifact.

THE TIMELINE - WHERE WE ARE

2015-2020: ACCELERATION BEGINS

Lone wolf incidents increasing
Youth radicalization emerging
Vigilante violence growing
Partisan temperature rising
But: still recognizable as political discourse, just angrier

2020: THRESHOLD CROSSED

COVID stress test reveals degradation
January 6 (normalized political violence)
BLM peak + counter-violence
Violence loses coherent political framing in many incidents

2020-2025: STAGE 2 ACTIVE, STAGE 3 EMERGING

Organized group violence declining (militias going quiet)
Lone actor violence sustained and increasing
Nihilistic violence category EMERGES as dominant in lethality
Juveniles entering perpetrator demographic
Radicalization timeline collapsing (weeks, not months)
Threat environment expanding to ALL political figures, both parties

2025-2030: PROJECTED INTENSIFICATION

Post-2010 cohort (highest MNP burden, childhood contamination) entering late teens / early adulthood
Peak physiological radicalization window
Continued PFC degradation across population
Stage 3 (nihilistic violence) becoming more common relative to Stage 2

2030-2035: CRISIS LEVEL

Post-2010 cohort fully adult (20-25 year olds)
Highest-burden cohort hitting peak violence window
Social coordination increasingly difficult (Signal #26 dynamics)
“Big Event” that wakes people up to PBS threat likely window

THE NEUROSCIENCE CONFIRMATION

This is not speculation. The PFC-radicalization link has direct experimental support from the Grafman Lab (Northwestern University / Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago), using Vietnam War veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injuries - the most controlled natural lesion studies available.

TWO KEY STUDIES:

STUDY 1: Cristofori et al. (2015)

Journal: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Vol. 10(8), pp. 1038-1044

Sample: 102 brain injury patients + 31 healthy controls

Finding: vmPFC lesion patients rated RADICAL POLITICAL STATEMENTS AS MORE MODERATE than both parietal lesion patients and healthy controls - meaning vmPFC damage impairs the ability to even recognize radicalism as extreme.

The specific brain region micro/nanoplastics (MNPs) accumulate in is the SAME region whose damage produces radicalization vulnerability.

STUDY 2: Zhong, Cristofori, Bulbulia, Krueger & Grafman (2017)

Journal: Neuropsychologia, 100:18-25

Sample: 119 Vietnam War veterans with penetrating brain lesions vs. 30 controls

Finding: vmPFC AND dlPFC lesions both produced greater religious fundamentalism.

Mechanism: effect mediated through REDUCED COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY AND OPENNESS.

Translation: damage to PFC removes the cognitive flexibility that allows people to hold nuanced beliefs - exactly the mechanism PBS predicts.

Both studies: real, peer-reviewed, publicly available (PubMed verified).

Both studies: same research group, same patient population, same conclusion.

What the studies confirm:

PFC damage → reduced cognitive flexibility → fundamentalism / radicalism
vmPFC specifically involved in recognizing AND moderating radical beliefs
The pathway from brain damage to radicalization is experimentally documented

The only remaining question: Does environmental MNP accumulation damage PFC function similarly to traumatic lesions?

Given:

MNPs documented in human brain tissue (0.5% by mass)
MNPs confirmed to cross blood-brain barrier
50% increase in brain MNP concentration 2016-2024
All convergence signals pointing to same 2020 threshold

The plausibility is not theoretical. The signal convergence says it’s running.

WHAT YOU’RE WATCHING (FIELD GUIDE)

Signs that your community is in Stage 2:

Political conversations become impossible (nuance rejected instantly)
Simple explanations for complex events feel self-evidently true
Violence against “the other side” feels increasingly justified
Young men in particular showing increased rage, decreased tolerance
“Normal” people expressing support for political violence casually

Signs Stage 3 is emerging nearby:

Violence with no clear political goal (”just doing it”)
Juveniles involved
Manifesto-less attacks (or manifestos expressing only nihilism/misanthropy)
Perpetrators consuming violence-glorification content online
Violence against random targets, not symbolic ones

The shift from Stage 2 to Stage 3 is the loss of the narrative itself.

Stage 2: I’m hurting you for a reason.

Stage 3: I’m hurting you.

WHAT THIS ISN’T

This is NOT:

A partisan argument (both sides losing cognitive function)
Social media’s fault (delivery mechanism, not cause)
A moral failure (you can’t moralize your way out of neurological damage)
A policing problem (you can’t arrest your way out of brain damage)
Temporary (this doesn’t oscillate back - see Signal #26)

This IS:

A public health crisis with a violence signature
Predictable progression: simplicity → radicalization → nihilism
Worst in post-2000 cohort (highest MNP burden)
Accelerating, not stabilizing
Driven by the same mechanism as every other convergence signal

WHAT YOU CAN DO

UNDERSTAND THE MECHANISM:

Read Signal #26 (Simplicity Attractor Acceleration).

Understanding WHY helps you recognize it in yourself and others.

Understanding also reduces the urge to assign partisan blame (which is Stage 2 behavior).

WATCH THE YOUNG MEN IN YOUR LIFE:

Not as threats. As people with a double hit - high MNP burden, testosterone suppression - being offered simple exits by bad actors who understand the vulnerability even if they don’t know why it works.

The pipeline is real. The mechanism is real. But so is the person in it.

RECOGNIZE STAGE 2 RHETORIC WHEN YOU HEAR IT:

“Those people deserve what’s coming.”

“Someone should just...”

“I understand why he did it.”

These are Stage 2 markers. The speaker’s PFC is struggling.

Arguing with them rarely works (damaged PFC can’t update beliefs easily).

What sometimes works: reducing emotional temperature, reducing isolation.

DEMAND GPET (Global Plastic Elimination Treaty):

Every molecule of plastic not made = one less molecule building toward the next attack that gets called senseless when it has a very clear cause.

It just requires understanding the mechanism.

REMEMBER

The reason political violence seems random and senseless isn’t because it’s random. It’s because the perpetrators can no longer hold a coherent narrative. Their brains are damaged.

The reason young men are radicalizing faster isn’t Andrew Tate or social media algorithms. It’s testosterone suppression plus PFC damage plus a simplicity market that sells them an exit from cognitive distress.

The reason it’s not Left vs Right anymore isn’t because everyone became apolitical. It’s because the population-level cognitive decline has progressed past the point where coherent ideology can be sustained.

The reason juveniles are now perpetrators isn’t because schools failed or parents failed or society failed (though all of those too).

It’s because the highest-contaminated cohort is now reaching adolescence - the developmental window where radicalization vulnerability peaks.

And the reason this all started accelerating around 2020?

Population-level threshold was crossed. PFC degradation hit critical mass. The cognitive immune system that stops radicalization in Stage 3 stopped working at scale.

None of this is your fault. You were poisoned. We all were.

But you can still act.

Stop making plastic.

That’s how you stop making the next attacker.

The Nightwatchman's Report

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