When he got the idea of bombing a Taylor Swift concert, Beran Aliji’s young life had completely broken down. In July, amid a self-described mental crisis, the 19-year-old Austrian quit his job as a factory apprentice and isolated himself in his apartment, obsessing about his own death. With no money, prospects or close friends, he began to immerse himself in a virtual world of violent videos and secret chatrooms devoted to the Islamic State. He began looking to the extremist group first for inspiration and then for practical advice about planning an attack, reports the Washington Post. “My operation is to take place at a big concert,” he wrote in a text message to a stranger he believed to be a member of the Islamic State. “I will try to get a gun and bombs. If that doesn’t work, I will use big knives. Or I will kill a police officer and take his rifle.” The planned attack on Taylor Swift’s Aug. 9 concert in Vienna was foiled when police arrested Aliji, whose online messages were monitored by a foreign intelligence agency. Hundreds of text messages and multiple police reports shed light on how the group continues to inspire violence five years after its self-proclaimed caliphate was destroyed.
Aliji's path toward radicalization bears striking similarities to what police have observed in other recent terrorism cases, including the New Year’s Day rampage in New Orleans. Like the Austrian suspect, the man accused of ramming a vehicle through crowds of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street appears to have self-radicalized after a string of personal crises, including divorces, a job loss and financial insolvency. Like Aliji, Houston resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar was described as being “inspired” by the Islamic State and pledged allegiance to the group in a self-made video. The Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, known as ISIS-K, is believed to have orchestrated complex attacks with multiple casualties in Iran and Russia this past year. In recent cases, perpetrators appear to have been driven less by ideology or politics than by rage over personal failings, terrorism experts say. The suspects may have little or no contact with the Islamic State. Yet the group is still a potent source of radicalization — and a convenient excuse, in the attacker’s mind, to justify violence.
Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State has built a thriving online presence and encourages followers to carry out terrorist attacks without waiting for instructions. “These are bitter, angry people,” said Bruce Riedel, a counterterrorism expert and 30-year CIA veteran. “Here’s a classic case of someone who converted to Islam, had two failed marriages, serious financial problems, and he finds now a cause to justify his life and his rage.”
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