European investigators say extremist propaganda is spreading through translation networks that repackage jihadist materials for new audiences on encrypted or little-known platforms
After a year of knife attacks, rammings, and disrupted plots across Europe, investigators say the online machinery behind radicalization has changed shape. European agencies are confronting a familiar message wrapped in new packaging: propaganda that jumps borders not by virality alone but through translation. The most effective chokepoint is no longer a single post or channel, but the translation pipelines that move jihadist propaganda across languages and platforms.
Analysts told The Media Line that semiofficial “translation hubs” and volunteer networks now act as multipliers—finding, subtitling, and repackaging content for new audiences on closed or harder-to-police services. These hubs include al-Azaim (the Islamic State’s primary media foundation), Halummu (a distribution and translation conduit for official statements), and Fursan al-Tarjuma—“Knights of Translation”—which specializes in rendering material into multiple languages. Cutting those pipelines, they argue, can slow recruitment, fundraising, and operational guidance more effectively than chasing single posts.
If translators are the accelerant, volume is the fuel. Terrorism researcher Daniele Garofalo and Lucas Webber, senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, are among the specialists monitoring Islamist online ecosystems who told The Media Line that Europe’s problem in 2025 is not a lack of tools, but a landscape that has become more dispersed, more multilingual, and more embedded inside semi-private infrastructures than most platforms are able—or willing—to police.
Identifying and blocking accounts/handles that translate/adapt content to official media in local languages is an important activity that works, as translators and language hubs act as multipliersGarofalo urges authorities to target language nodes, not just messages. He said one of the most effective steps is to identify and block accounts that adapt extremist material for local audiences. “Identifying and blocking accounts/handles that translate/adapt content to official media in local languages is an important activity that works, as translators and language hubs act as multipliers,” he explained.
He added that removals should be paired with “infrastructural disruption” aimed at bots, servers, distribution channels, and coordinated hub accounts. He also noted that the propaganda stream has diversified across official, semi-official, and supporter outlets—al-Azaim, Halummu, Fursan al-Tarjuma—often parked on “much more secure platforms.”
Webber said the core issue persists even after years of pressure on Telegram, smaller forums, and file-sharing sites. Platforms still fail to consistently detect and remove banned material and moderation systems lag behind adversaries’ tactics. “These groups continuously find and exploit loopholes—such as moving to lesser-known platforms with weaker monitoring capabilities or employing sophisticated obfuscation techniques to disguise their content,” he said.