This article examines the use of YouTube by the new generation of Patani 2 Muslim militants in their dissemination of propaganda and radical identity formation. These fighters have now brought their neojihadist war to the 'Virtual'. Videos of Patani shuhada and Buddhist beheadings are regularly posted on YouTube, with the aim of legitimizing their 'defensive jihad'. While most of the efforts in countering virtual terrorist radicalization have focused on jihadist websites, forums and blogs, very little attention has been paid to the relationship between the 'YouTube effect' and neojihadist violence. This article offers an analysis of the use of YouTube by the Patani Muslim insurgency in order to extract the ideological themes which enable us to understand the process of glocal neojihadist radicalization in southern Thailand.This article examines the use of YouTube by the new Southern generation of militants in their dissemination of propaganda and radical identity formation. While the flow and diffusion of information, especially through the Internet, is undermining state sovereignty and traditional religious authorities, 3 it has opened up a new "Muslim public sphere," 4 which has become a privileged space for both neojihadist and neofundamentalist propaganda and radicalization. 5 The participation of the Southern Patani insurgency in this new public sphere has allowed the movement to enter the domain of what Olivier Roy has called a "virtual umma." The locus of this imagined global society that transcends state sovereignty, race, and ethnicity, bonded by a single religious denominator (Islam), finds its normalization in the simplicity of the salafi message. 6 Hence, it is not surprising to find salafi intonations in the concepts used by the militants in their fighting against the Thai state.Although the older generation of Muslim secessionists in Southern Thailand were reluctant to use international concepts (such as umma) or global spheres of influence to enhance their power vis-à-vis the Thai state, this parochialism is now clearly receding. For example, the current insurgency not only replicates the rhetorical flourishes of jihadist movements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Chechnya, but there is now a

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