Home-grown terrorismCharlottesville attack shows homegrown terror on the right is on the rise
Dealing effectively with far-right violence requires that we treat its manifestations as domestic terrorism. I consider domestic terrorism a more significant threat than the foreign-masterminded variety in part because it is more common in terms of the number of attacks on U.S. soil. The number of violent attacks on U.S. soil inspired by far-right ideology has spiked since the beginning of this century, rising from a yearly average of 70 attacks in the 1990s to a yearly average of more than 300 since 2001. This trend reflects a deeper social change in American society. The iceberg model of political extremism can illuminate these dynamics. Murders and other violent attacks perpetrated by U.S. far-right extremists compose the visible tip of an iceberg. The rest of this iceberg is under water and out of sight. It includes hundreds of attacks every year that damage property and intimidate communities. The significant growth in far-right violence in recent years is happening at the base of the iceberg. Changes in societal norms are usually reflected in behavioral changes. It is thus more than reasonable to suspect that extremist individuals engage in such activities because they sense that their views are enjoying growing social legitimacy and acceptance, which is emboldening them to act on their bigotry.
The attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a man named James Alex Fields Jr. used his Dodge Challenger as a weapon against a crowd of protesters, underscores the growing violence of America’s far-right wing.
According to reports, Fields was a active member of an online far-right community. Like many other far-right activists, he believes that he represents a wider ideological community, even though he acted alone.
My fifteen years experience of studying violent extremism in Western societies has taught me that dealing effectively with far-right violence requires treating its manifestations as domestic terrorism.
In the wake of the Charlottesville attack, the Department of Justice announced it would launch a federal investigation: “…that kind of violence, committed for seeming political ends, is the very definition of domestic terrorism.”
This acknowledgment may signal that a growing domestic menace may finally get the attention it deserves. While attacks by outsider Jihadist groups will probably continue, domestic terrorism still deserves more attention than it’s getting.
Domestic terrorism
Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare. Most terrorist groups lack the resources, expertise and manpower to defeat state actors. Instead, they promote their agenda through violence that shapes perceptions of political and social issues.
Fields’ attack, if it was motivated by racist sentiments, should be treated as an act of domestic terrorism. Here I define domestic terrorism as the use of violence in a political and social context that aims to send a message to a broader target audience. Like lynching, cross-burning and vandalizing religious sites, incidents of this kind deliberately aim to terrorize people of color and non-Christians.
I consider domestic terrorism a more significant threat than the foreign-masterminded variety, in part because the number of domestic terror attacks on U.S. soil is greater. For example, my report published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point identified hundreds of domestic terror incidents taking place between 2008 and 2012.
Another report, published in 2014 by New America Foundation on domestic incidents of extremist violence, shows that excluding the Orlando nightclub massacre, between 2002-2016, far-right affiliated perpetrators conducted 18 attacks that killed 48 people in the United States. Meanwhile, terrorists motivated by al-Qaida’s or the Islamic State’s ideology killed 45 people in nine attacks.
The Orlando mass shooting, given its mix of apparent motives, is difficult to categorize.
