With the Southport Inquiry resuming this week, Britain has been forced to confront a new kind of threat. Axel Rudakubana, the then 17-year-old who murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class last July, doesn’t fit the mould of most extremists. He wasn’t part of a terrorist network, nor did he follow a coherent political or religious cause. Investigators described his fascination with online violence, his emotional detachment, and his misanthropic mindset. Yet this very profile exposes a profound flaw in how Britain understands radicalisation.

Evidence from Tuesday shows that the Youth Justice Board was working within frameworks designed for either safeguarding or criminal risk, which aren’t set up to recognise the sort of danger posed by Rudakubana and others like him. Similar issues are faced by Britain’s Prevent counter-extremism programme, which is built on the assumption that violence stems from ideology.

Whether Islamist, far-Right or far-Left, the belief has been that if we detect and disrupt belief systems, we can stop attacks. But as the Southport case shows, not all who kill are believers in a particular cause. Some are simply drawn to destruction itself. That means Britain’s entire approach – from Prevent to legal definitions – may no longer match this emerging threat. Data published yesterday shows that referrals to Prevent have risen sharply, with over half involving individuals with “no clear ideology”. This surge underscores how urgently the programme must evolve to recognise and respond to this new, non-ideological form of radicalisation.

Earlier this year, the FBI formally adopted the term “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” to describe individuals whose violence is “primarily motivated by misanthropy, apocalyptic fantasy and a desire to destabilise society”. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has identified the same trend: alienated young men radicalised online in “nihilistic digital subcultures”, where conspiratorial language, gaming and gore converge into a new language of hatred. It is defined in the negative, a rejection of social order and norms rather than the adoption of an ideology.

These are people with vaguely constructed political outlooks that are full of contradictions. In fringe corners of the internet, users may mimic jihadist or neo-Nazi aesthetics, but the ideology is hollow. What binds them isn’t belief, but rage and contempt: for women, for elites, for minorities and for society itself.  Their one commonality is that they want to cause harm — or, better yet, bring social collapse.

This new reality poses a serious problem for Prevent, which depends on spotting ideological markers to identify those at risk. But what happens when the next attacker doesn’t read manifestos, doesn’t join chat rooms for a cause, and isn’t trying to advance anything at all? When the motive is not belief but a void of belief? This may explain why Rudakubana was referred to Prevent three times only for his case to be repeatedly closed. They could not identify an extremist ideology and, therefore, the risk.

In order to protect itself, Britain must rewire how it identifies and responds to this threat. Frameworks like those used by the Youth Justice Board and Prevent need to look beyond ideology to behavioural and psychological signs: fascination with or glorification of violence and destruction, immersion in nihilistic subcultures, and expressions of misanthropy or ruin. These may not show political radicalisation, but they can still mark a path to mass violence.

That will also mean rethinking the definition of terrorism itself. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, an act must aim to advance a political, religious, racial or ideological cause. Nihilistic Violent Extremists may fall outside that. Updating the law to cover violence intended simply to cause mass harm or destabilise society would allow agencies to recognise and stop such threats earlier.

Prevent was designed to stop people killing for a cause. But the next terrorist may not want to kill for anything — only to cause harm for harm’s sake. That is a harder kind of darkness to predict, and a far harder one to stop.

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Dr Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer and researcher focusing on antisemitism, extremism and defence.

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