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S1 Ep. 31 From Online Subcultures to Nihilistic Extremism: Youth Deradicalization with Allizandra Herberhold

 

In today’s digital age, school safety challenges extend far beyond physical security. With the rise of online subcultures, schools are increasingly confronted with youth grappling with nihilism—the belief that life holds no meaning—and finding community in dark online spaces centered around past acts of targeted violence.

In this episode of The Changing Face of School Security, host Paul Timm talks with deradicalization specialist Allizandra Herberhold, a Licensed Master Social Worker and founder of Seeking Safer Pathways, about the rising challenge of nihilistic violent extremism and online true crime subcultures among youth.

 

Read the Q&A below:
 

Paul Timm: Tell us what "nihilism" and "radicalization" means, both in a school sense and what we're experiencing in society.

Allizandra Herberhold: Nihilism is having the strong belief that life has no inherent meaning. Radicalization is engaging with propaganda that feeds an ideology. Violent radicalization is when you are willing or support violence being carried out in the name of your ideology. I work with violent radicalized people.

 

Timm: This is an element of what we're facing in school safety right now. How might we recognize it? How might we intervene?

Herberhold: I think one of the early indicators is changes in behavior with someone, or identifying that someone is at risk—noticing that they're isolated, they're being rejected by their peers, they're withdrawing from school, and they're just not engaging. For intervention, that might look like following up and monitoring with that kid and continuing to check in and expressing concerns to their parents. This is all in relation to pre-threat—I say all the time, all these kids need is one stable adult that continues to show up for them.

 

Timm: I'm guessing that, a lot of times, students in a position like this don't have a trusted adult. What might be some remedies for that?

Herberhold: With the cases that I've worked, some of the people that ended up being trusted adults were the people who were leading after school programs, the people who were coaches. School resource officers can be so vital, but are often underutilized or only used for punitive measures. Schools can put a lot of pressure on the social worker, counselor, or psychologist, but their caseload can be so massive that they can't always give these kids the attention and time that they need. It can also be life-changing for some students to have a male figure in their life that they can go to and talk about things.

 

Timm: TCC is an acronym that stands for True Crime Community. Tell us a little more about that, and the education and training surrounding it.

Herberhold: The true crime community is different than mainstream true crime that you might see on Netflix or A&E. The focus is much stronger, where they're identifying or sympathizing with perpetrators rather than the victims. And the focus is more on school-based attacks and targeted violence. So think school shootings or ideologically motivated violence, or anything like that, at schools or even at houses of worship.

It's more of an online community and subculture where they really get attached to specific cases or perpetrators, almost to the point that they feel like they're a friend. I want to remind people of how lonely you must be to get to the point that you feel like you're friends with a deceased perpetrator that you've never met.

I created a model that you can use with already established threat assessment. For different kinds of things that people use, like the CSTAG, or the Kaiser-Salem model—if you have a specific case that the person is in TCC, people tend to fall into one of three categories for membership type. You can tell a lot based on their online behavior. For example, the content itself is scary, but maybe they want to know what the motivation behind it is. Or are they fixated on the person leading up to the violence, and why and who they are? Or are they focused on violence and the attack itself?

Because that really makes a difference, especially with the number of resources that we put towards one to determine if it's a threat or not. I've had kids that never planned an attack. They never wanted to do those things, but just hearing that they were in the TCC, they got expelled from school. That actually can be a way that you could push someone to want to do something or get revenge, or have a grievance, because they're being rejected and outcasted by the school.

 

Timm: Do you have a preferred method of behavioral threat assessment, or can all of them be used successfully?

Herberhold: I think that all of them can be used successfully, and I do think it comes down to preference. However, each state is going to be the one that's mandating the type of training for schools. For example, Florida has their own mandated training specific to Florida. I don't really have a preference; I think any effort is very good.

 

Timm: If I was a typical school administrator, what would I expect if I was going to be receiving training?

Herberhold: I do a couple of different kinds of training. I'll do some that's specific for an SRO, or something that's going to be more BTAM focused. But I also do trainings specific to teachers or mental health professionals around how to intervene, recognizing signs, how to have those trauma informed conversations with at-risk students, and be able to respond with some confidence and not fear.

 

Timm: Is this occurring mainly in high schools, or are we seeing this at younger ages?

Herberhold: Unfortunately, both are at risk. The 15- to 17-year-old window is typically the most prominent. However, there also has been a rise and change in the TCC, like target preference. For a long time, the fixation was on Columbine and trying to recreate that. So, the focus was on schools. And now, I think because people are getting older and they remember Sandy Hook, wanting to emulate that has been a lot of the cases that I've had recently. And a lot of those kids are in middle school.

 

Timm: What kinds of resources would you suggest to anyone who recognizes this as a growing issue in their school?

Herberhold: I have some stuff on my Substack and things that I've posted on LinkedIn. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue posts a lot about the TCC that's very accurate. GNET is also a website that has articles about TCC.

Not as related to true crime, but if you are having issues with things like The Com, or 764, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a lot of amazing resources for things like sextortion and like how to talk to kids if they're being extorted or groomed. They have age-appropriate things to give them to read for their own understanding. And they also have their own reporting system that's specific to that, and they work hand in hand with the FBI.

 

Timm: Over the last couple of years, what are some of the significant changes you've seen in school safety?

Herberhold: I think that there has been a bigger focus on using new kinds of technology to try and help identify threats, but that's responding when there's a crisis rather than being preventative. I think some of the technology can be kind of a mixed bag depending on what's going on.

I've seen schools that are going phoneless and bookless. For example, with the kids that I work with, if they're being bad online, they don't get access to a Chromebook. They can have pens and paper at school because they can't control themselves and be appropriate at school. And that's a much better, appropriate substitute rather than just expelling a child or a young adult. 

Also, over the last couple of years, there have been some different funding opportunities where an entire state is getting funding to do BTAM training in schools.

 

Timm: As we look out into the future, what are some changes in school safety you expect to see?

Herberhold: I'm starting to see more people really focusing on going back to the basics, like having a lock on the classroom door. And having more proactive conversations about this kind of stuff, and nihilism, and people wanting to learn. I'm from St. Louis, and we had the CVPA shooting and I never thought that would happen here. Everybody thinks it wouldn't happen until it does, and then you have to have those conversations in the aftermath. It's given me hope that more people are willing to have preventative conversations before anything bad happens and trying to understand this new mindset of nihilism and how we can help the kids get off the pathway to violence.

 

*The opinions or views expressed by guests on this podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect or represent those of Allegion or its employees. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for obtaining your own advice.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Understanding Youth Nihilism: How a lack of purpose can leave isolated students vulnerable to violent radicalization.
  • The "True Crime Community" (TCC): Recognizing why lonely students might sympathize with past perpetrators and how to evaluate their online behavior during threat assessments.
  • The Role of Trusted Adults: Why SROs, coaches, and other adult leaders, especially male figures, are essential in reaching isolated students before crises escalate.
  • Smarter Interventions: How different interventions, like support from staff or switching from Chromebooks to pen and paper, can be far more effective than suspension or expulsion.
  • Proactive Prevention: How threat assessment teams (BTAM) and foundational security habits can help derail the pathway to violence.

 

Connect with Allizandra Herberhold

Allizandra Herberhold, LMSW, works directly with radicalized, violent and at-risk youth and young adults. Allizandra is an educator and an expert of the True Crime Community (TCC) and Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) through her company Seeking Safer Pathways. She has conducted undercover research in the community across platforms for 3+ years and is the creator of the TCC Stoplight Model. She has presented her research and findings to law enforcement agencies, schools, and government agencies. She has experience with deradicalization and disengagement across ideologies, ages and backgrounds.  

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