Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Antoine Brimbal. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Antoine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

In order to understand where my determination to create The Modern Insurgent comes from, we need to go all the way back to November 2020. At the time, I lived in Vienna, Austria, and I was the primary witness of the November 2nd terrorist attack, where an armed gunman killed 4 people in the name of the Islamic State (ISIS). Everything unfolded right under the window of my apartment, and I saw the gunman committing this atrocity. In the moment, I remember the hopelessness that I felt as I couldn’t intervene. There was virtually nothing I could do.

As a Parisian, I have always wanted to fight terrorism in all the ways that I could, especially with the Paris attacks in 2015 and 2017. However, following the Vienna terrorist attack — I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to fight terrorism. Initially, I wanted to join the military but my academic performances were too high and I also wanted to attend university. For this reason, the initial inspiration behind The Modern Insurgent was to create a channel of information which would raise awareness on unknown terrorist groups. I always criticise the mainstream media (in the context of conflict reporting) for always focusing on the ‘bigger picture’ and never actually analysing specific groups thoroughly.

For this reason, I created an Instagram account in June 2022, called The Modern Insurgent, and I would post about under-reported insurgent groups. My content included very thorough research and often brought up pieces of information that were neglected in the mainstream media. Over time, however, the project started gaining a lot of traction (as many people were interested in this new approach to conflict reporting) and I realised that there was potential for an expansion.

Instead of just focusing on terrorist groups, per se, I began reporting and researching on any under-reported political movements from around the world (both armed and unarmed groups). The Modern Insurgent, in a way, became a database of modern insurgency and contemporary political struggle. The project has developed immensely since, but the initial idea came from my determination to fight evil through impartial information and truth.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Of course! My name is Antoine Brimbal, I’m from France and Serbia, and I’m a 19 year-old student of International Relations at IE University in Spain. My parents were always involved in politics (as my father was a UN Peacekeeper and my mother worked for the United Nations) and, in a way, I was born ‘thanks’ to politics and war. My parents met in Kosovo during the Yugoslav wars in the late 1990s and married in the early 2000s, after months apart as my father was deployed to the peacekeeping mission in Iraq. I like to mention this story as I believe it’s central to who I am today — I grew up in a political environment and I’ve been raised to discuss controversial topics since a very young age.

For this reason, I always knew that my professional life was going to be submerged in the political world. I will grow up to be a politician or a journalist, and The Modern Insurgent seems to suggest the latter thus far. I am captivated by the study of peace, conflict, and security, and hope to be able to report on global conflicts for much longer.

As a summary, The Modern Insurgent is a database of political struggle. Our current team of 33 writers produces academic and scholarly articles which analyse political movements from all around the world; while some of these groups are very violent and armed, others are more peaceful and focus more on protests. We also conduct interviews with contemporary actors in wars. Recently, for instance, I had the opportunity to interview Aiden Aslin, a British-Ukrainian dual citizen who became a prisoner of war after being captured by Russian forces in Mariupol. This interview was one of my biggest achievements with The Modern Insurgent so far.

In addition to the interview with Aiden, I am extremely proud of having connected with Jake Hanrahan, the founder of Popular Front. Popular Front is a grassroots media organisation which has revolutionised contemporary conflict reporting. I used to watch Popular Front documentaries in my living room with my roommates, and we’d joke about filming documentaries with them. 6 months later, I find myself still watching their documentaries but now also collaborating on some projects with them! This is sort of a dream come true and it still feels unreal to be able to say that!

In a way, the success of The Modern Insurgent finds its roots in our unique approach to reporting. Our academic articles on under-reported insurgencies are truly original, and they help our readers become significantly more educated and informed on the current state of global affairs. I was the only one behind the project until the month of October 2022, where I called for volunteers and expanded the team to hold 16 writers. I did this again in late November, and we are now 33! In addition to having our own sublime website, we now also produce content on YouTube and even have a few Patreon subscribers that pay monthly subscriptions for exclusive content! The Modern Insurgent has developed into a community and I’m super proud that I’ve managed to develop all of this from the ground-up.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Absolutely! In complete honesty, The Modern Insurgent brings along some of the most nerve-racking experiences in my life. Firstly, Instagram and Meta tend to delete content which mentions political extremism. Even though our content is purely informational and classifies as news/education, we’ve had numerous posts deleted as they mention radical groups. This is a shame, and it is especially nerve-racking as — if Meta continues to delete our posts — our account as a whole could eventually be taken down. Numerous times, I’ve tried reaching out to explain the nature of our content, although admittedly this has not achieved much. Other political pages on Instagram have the same experiences, and this is often reducing the freedom to report news on such platforms.

Evidently, I completely understand why such content is taken down (and I do esteem that posts glorifying extremist organisations should be taken down), but it requires a lot of resilience to keep going and having to over-analyse whether a post is ‘safe’ or not for the platform. One of the main benefits of our website is that we can post analyses on any group, entirely unfiltered. It is important to keep social media safe and clean for everyone, but it’s a shame that the algorithms do not allow for completely flexible news reporting.

Moreover, I am the Editor in Chief of the organisation. I take the time to read, review, and provide feedback on every single article that we publish. This is a mountain of work, as I end up reviewing around 2-3 reports a day, all while having to produce content for our Instagram page, interacting with our community, and managing our website. I have to balance all of this with my social and university life, so I barely have free time. However, I’m more than happy with the sacrifices I have made — my strong dedication to The Modern Insurgent has proven to be one of the best decisions of my life! Resilience has been at the centre of my management journey!

Any advice for managing a team?

Managing our team is one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had. I’m entertained by challenges and I’m satisfied with very busy schedules, so managing a team feels relatively natural to me. Although I wouldn’t consider myself to be in a position high enough to provide incredibly valuable advice, I must emphasise that successful management comes from being human. In order to increase the productivity of the team, I check-up individually with every single writer on the team, and frequently have conversations with them (both professional and casual ones). It must be noted that our writers are all volunteers and we all work remotely from all corners of the world, so I do the most that I can to be a friend, as well as a manager.

Essentially, I set a solid number of expectations and rules, but I am always very flexible to accommodate for my writers’ needs. All of us are extremely busy with work or university, and I’ve noticed that much higher productivity has come after allowing the writers to ‘breathe’ and prioritise more important things in their lives. The very high morale in our team is reinforced through the involvement of our community as our work platform is Discord, and it is easily accessible to our non-staff followers. Anyone who follows us on Instagram can join our Discord, so our workplace has become intertwined with our community. Every day, countless discussions are held and this exchange really boosts morale as well as enthusiasm for the project. Furthermore, I always advertise and credit the work of our writers, so this helps them build their own professional portfolio. Recently, for instance, I reached out to 7 of our writers who had demonstrated excellence and overwhelming commitment, in order to invite and involve them in our upcoming collaboration with Popular Front.

If I had to summarise my advice in one sentence, it would be the following — make the workplace fun, engaging, and interesting to an extent where your team members fall in love with the objectives and principles of the project.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moderninsurgent.org
• Instagram: @moderninsurgent (https://www.instagram.com/moderninsurgent)
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/moderninsurgent
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@themoderninsurgent
• Other: Patreon: patreon.com/moderninsurgent