Social media influence plays a 'critical role' in radicalisation, says Polish expert

But first to the horrible shooting that shook Poland over the weekend and left six people dead. The killings raise urgent questions about security in Poland and across Europe. The suspected gunman reportedly held a firearms license, while investigators are examining possible far-right extremist influences. Was this a preventable security failure, and does the massacre expose a growing threat from radicalized individuals operating under the radar of intelligence services? To discuss this, I'm now joined by Jacek Szebiera, Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council and the former head of Poland's National Security Council. Good morning, and thanks for coming on. So was this a complete failure of the security system or is it simply impossible to prevent an individual determined to carry out a mass shooting? I would say that it was a great success that for three decades Poland Um, Poland has been a country in which such a situation never happened when we observed all the radicalized and extremely dangerous terrorist attacks in the middle of Paris, Germany, and many other states. In Poland so far we had this privilege and a great amount of professionalism. ...of our services that we detected a lot of potential terrorist attacks, even in last few months. This time, it wasn't the case. I'm sorry, Polish authorities have pointed to possible far-right ideological influences. Are we witnessing a new and increasingly dangerous form of domestic terrorism? The problem with each and every type of radicalism is that it poses a risk of radicalization among the individuals who are unstable in their psychology, in their behavior and may become dangerous for the society. It doesn't matter exactly what kind of ideology it is, every kind of radicalization is dangerous and unfortunately malicious influence of the social media plays a critical role. We've had the cyber attacks on supermarkets, the bomb threats against commercial airliners, and now this. Is Europe entering an era in which authorities can no longer guarantee security for their citizens? It's the obligation of the authorities to guarantee the security. Of course, we are living in a world of increasing risks and threats. This is the reason why in PREPARE.EU we are focusing on changing a bit of paradigm among the European Commission and European states from as it used to be the civil protection of the weather-related and climate-related threats to civil protection of the hybrid warfare and the... Threats also posed by our great opponent from Russian side by the sabotage and terrorism as well from other regions from the world. But it's still up to European authorities, national authorities to prevent such situations and prepare for them in upcoming decades.