House lawmakers started investigating terrorists recruiting online on Tuesday, motivated by the apparent self-radicalization of the American-born attacker striking New Orleans on New Year’s Day.
Bipartisan lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee agreed that a terrorist recruitment problem exists online, but Republicans and Democrats differed on what to emphasize and perhaps whom to blame.
Rep. August Pfluger, Texas Republican, expressed concern about the Islamic State’s digital efforts. He said at a committee hearing that ISIS preys on children, such as a 16-year-old in Nevada, to engage in “lone wolf” operations.
“There is no doubt that ISIS actively looks to inspire younger individuals and frequently produces media tailored to juveniles because they think they are more susceptible to terrorist ideologies and more accessible due to their online presence on a range of platforms,” Mr. Pfluger said. “We must acknowledge and confront this urgent threat head on or we risk having another incident like we did in New Orleans.”
ISIS-inspired Texas resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar killed 14 people and injured dozens more in a terrorist attack in New Orleans on Jan. 1. The attacker’s deadly rampage looks to have already inspired others online, as federal prosecutors charged a Minneapolis man who cheered the New Orleans attack on Friday with trying to join Islamic State militants in Somalia.
Democrats on Tuesday shared Republican concerns. They said fear different forms of radicalization. Rep. Seth Magaziner, Rhode Island Democrat, raised alarms on Tuesday about white supremacists and said social media companies must not allow terrorists and criminals to act online.
“To be clear, American citizens have a First Amendment right to hold and espouse extreme ideologies. However, there is no First Amendment right to plot acts of violence,” Mr. Magaziner said. “There is no First Amendment right to recruit others into committing acts of violence and foreign terrorists have no First Amendment rights of any sort.”
Mr. Magaziner said tech platforms should “face consequences” if they allow criminals and terrorists to use their services to incite violence and Congress must act.
Some Democrats sought to blame billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s stewardship of X and his transformation of Twitter into a platform with different censorship rules as exacerbating the terrorist threat to the homeland. Mr. Musk has emerged as a key adviser to President Trump.
Rep. Daniel S. Goldman, New York Democrat, said he has been trying to get the attention of Mr. Musk and Republican lawmakers after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, to no avail.
Mr. Goldman highlighted concerns that a “reduction in content moderation,” also known as censorship, on X and Meta’s platforms had a damaging effect on the online information ecosystem.
“Certainly we’re grappling with the First Amendment, but there’s no possible way to stop the online proliferation of terrorism without some degree of content moderation,” Mr. Goldman said at the hearing.
Bipartisan concern exists about antisemitism online, which has proven a powerful motivator for legislative action on Capitol Hill.
Former Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican, recently noted that the momentum in Congress to force TikTok to separate itself from its Chinese owner or face a ban gained momentum last year because of the conflict in Israel, not tension with China.
“We had a bipartisan consensus, we had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until Oct. 7,” Mr. Gallagher said at a February conference in Munich. “And people started to see a bunch of antisemitic content on the platform and our bill had legs again.”
No similar consensus has yet emerged for combating terrorists enlisting recruits online, but Mr. Pfluger said he hoped the committee hearing on Tuesday would lead to new legislation.
“I also hope that, while we may disagree here in a partisan way on some of the things that have happened in the last couple of years, I hope that we can really focus and limit blame,” Mr. Pfluger said.
