A Clockwork Orange Revival: Terror Without Ideology

In his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, British writer Anthony Burgess sent his protagonist Alex and his Droogs through a society in which “ultraviolence” had become a form of recreation. The young perpetrators need no political objective because violence itself provides them with pleasure, belonging and status.

More than six decades later, European security officials are warning of a very real version of this fiction. European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Bartjan Wegter speaks of “nihilistic violent extremism”, describing predominantly young people who carry out real-world attacks to prove themselves in closed online communities. Violence serves as a means of self-promotion and of gaining status within the group, he told the Associated Press, even when no clear political or religious objective can be identified.

EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Bartjan Wegter. Photo: Bryan Meade/EPA/Profimedia

The best-known part of this milieu is 764, a loose international network within a broader criminal online ecosystem known to its participants simply as The Com, short for community. 764 was founded by Bradley Cadenhead, an American who was only 15 when he formed the group and is now serving an 80-year prison sentence for child pornography offenses. His imprisonment did not bring 764 to an end because it requires neither central leadership nor a permanent organizational structure.

The perpetrators frequently target minors who talk online about depression, self-harm, loneliness or struggles with their sexual identity. They gain their trust, persuade them to send intimate images and then use the material to blackmail them.

According to a US indictment, victims were coerced into increasingly severe self-harm and sexual acts, as well as into abusing animals and other people, all of which they were required to record on video.

The recordings subsequently end up in so-called lorebooks, which function as a form of currency within the network. Those who provide particularly brutal or sensational material gain access to more exclusive groups and rise through the network’s hierarchy.

Excerpt from a criminal complaint. Source: US District Court

Within these groups, Nazi symbols, satanic references, misogyny, pedophilia and the veneration of previous attackers all intermingle. The individual elements often do not add up to a coherent program. Instead, they provide a deliberately repellent aesthetic through which participants try to outdo one another. The act itself serves less to spread an idea than to produce ever more extreme images that can be collected, traded and rewarded.

The Camera Is Part of the Crime

How far this logic can go became clear in Romania in the spring of 2022. Nino Luciano H., a 17-year-old German who went by “Tobbz” in the scene, first attacked an 82-year-old man with a knife and, a few weeks later, killed a 74-year-old woman. He streamed the attacks online and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for murder in August 2023. His case later became a model for other attackers within 764.

In 2024, a 14-year-old attacked several people in Stockholm’s Hässelby district, including a woman and a man over 80 who used a walking aid. The teenager filmed the knife attacks and distributed the footage in chat groups. Swedish broadcaster SVT verified a total of eight filmed assaults in the area, often involving elderly or visibly defenseless victims.

Digital traces linked the teenager to 764 and to a Swedish subgroup called No Lives Matter. A court later found that he had committed the knife attacks, but at 14 he was still below the age of criminal responsibility.

In May 2025, a 16-year-old student at Vähäjärvi School in Pirkkala, Finland, stabbed three female classmates. Shortly beforehand, he had sent out a manifesto announcing that he wanted to do something “significant” and “exciting”, while his mobile phone recorded the attack for Snapchat.

After his arrest, he asked online whether someone could keep the video until his release. The case has not so far been linked to 764. It does, however, show how the same logic can recur even without proven membership once an attack is planned, filmed and preserved for an online audience.

In Italy, authorities also arrested a 15-year-old in 2025 who, according to investigators, was planning a murder to gain notoriety online. On his phone they found videos of assaults, murders and school massacres, as well as material depicting the sexual abuse of children. The attack was thwarted, but the preparations show how closely the glorification of real violence, sexual exploitation and the pursuit of online status are intertwined within this milieu.

Why the Old Terrorism Framework Falls Short

During a joint operation in June and July 2026, investigators from nine European countries identified around 4,340 web addresses linked to The Com. Europol nevertheless does not treat nihilistic violent extremism as a separate statistical category because, depending on the country and individual case, the same conduct may be prosecuted as terrorism, murder, extortion, child abuse or ordinary violent crime.

This makes it harder to identify a milieu that does not fit the familiar boundaries between political extremism, organized crime and sexual sadism.

Traditional terrorist organizations seek to change a political order, impose a religion or force a population to behave in a particular way. The new networks can use similar methods and spread fear without their perpetrators sharing a common objective. For an individual participant, the prospect of recognition from people known only by their usernames may be enough.

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Investigators therefore have to look for different kinds of clues. The perpetrators are often minors, have no previous criminal record and act alone. They leave behind no membership lists, financial trails or clear chains of command, but rather encrypted messages, short-lived groups and files that, by the time an arrest is made, have long since been copied to other servers.

The youth gang Burgess sent roaming the streets has given way to shifting usernames, encrypted groups and individual attackers who need never meet. The only space they share is created when footage of a real-world attack is uploaded, rated and passed on.

Their only motivation is to rise through the ranks of a group whose members spur one another on in a disturbing pursuit of ever more extreme violence.