HSE625: Domestic Terrorism

The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place Aug 11-12, 2017 in Charlottesville, VA. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and far-right militias.

In the wake of deadly attacks in several American cities, attention paid to right-wing extremism has grown. Much is focused  racist extremism, overlooking other forms of right-wing extremism. This article presents a model of the main forms of right-wing extremism in the United States.

A future trends report from the U. S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence report indicates that terrorist groups will continue to exploit societal fragmentation and weak governance to push their ideologies and gain power through violence.

Antigovernment groups are part of the antidemocratic hard right movement who  believe the federal government is tyrannical and/or illegitimate.

According to the U.S. Intelligence Community, racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists are among the most lethal domestic violent extremists and the most likely to conduct mass-casualty attacks against civilians.

The recent spike in mass shootings, topped by the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas massacre, dubbed the "deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history," has brought newfound urgency and attention to lone wolf violence and terrorism. Although a topic of pressing concern, the phenomenon-which centers on mass violence inflicted by one individual- is underexamined and undertheorized within legal literature. This scholarly neglect facilitates flat understandings of the phenomenon and enables the racial and religious double standards arising from law enforcement investigations and prosecutions of white and Muslim lone wolves. This Essay contributes a timely reconceptualization of the phenomenon, coupled with a typology adopted from social science, for understanding the myriad forms of lone wolf terrorism.

There has been a significant rise in the number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots at demonstrations in the United States, according to new CSIS data. The result is escalating violence in U.S. cities between extremists from opposing sides, a major break from historical trends. In 2021, over half of all domestic terrorist incidents occurred in the context of metropolitan demonstrations. In addition, the most frequent targets of attacks were government, military, and law enforcement agencies, who are increasingly at the center of domestic terrorism by extremists of all ideologies.

The head of America’s counterterrorism enterprise assesses which threats will demand the most attention over the next year, from racially motivated extremists in the homeland to ISIS and al-Qaeda offshoots in Africa.