A new report by terrorism experts at the conservative-leaning CSIS thinktank says that the United States faces a growing terrorism problem which will likely worsen over the next year. The most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between 1 January and 8 May 2020. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election.

The coronavirus epidemic has been accompanied by what the WHO described as “infodemic” – an avalanche of conspiracy theories and disinformation which has spread on social networks. As is often the case, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are prominent in this infodemic, and a new report offers an analysis of the phenomenon.

As U.S. politics heat up in advance of the November election, it’s not surprising that extremist groups across the political spectrum are becoming more active and engaged in acts of political violence. A growing number of scholars and policymakers suggest this problem should be dealt with by designating violent groups as “domestic terrorist” organizations. As someone who has studied democracies’ response to domestic terrorism for almost 20 years, I believe that legally designating domestic extremist groups as terrorist organizations will have limited benefits, if any at all.

Six people, including an injured police officer, are in hospital after a Sudanese asylum seeker stabbed them in and around a hotel which houses asylum seekers in Glasgow, Scotland. The incident follows a similar multi-victim knife attack near London last week. The suspect went on a rampage after complaining about the hotel meals served to him during the COVID-19 pandemic. The knifeman had threatened violence against other refugees and complained he was “very hungry” in recent days after being re-housed in the hotel.

Alarmism about nuclear weapons is common coin in the foreign policy establishment, John Mueller writes. He notes that during the course of the Cold War, for example, the chief concern was that the weapons would somehow go off, by accident or by intention, devastating the planet in the process. More recently, the worry has been that terrorists would get their hands on nuclear weapons. Concerns about the dangers inherent in nuclear proliferation and in nuclear terrorism certainly seem overwrought, Mueller writes, concluding: “There may be reason for concern, or at least for interest and watchfulness. But alarm and hysteria (not to mention sleeplessness) are hardly called for.”

In April 2020, the Tony Blair Institute acknowledged that “extremist groups are beginning to recognize the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing opportunities to exploit fears, exacerbate tensions and mobilize supporters while government are occupied with trying to address COVID-19.” Extremists across the ideological spectrum have incorporated the pandemic into their messaging and their operations, though groups have differed on just what COVID-19 means and how to best exploit the pandemic and its resultant unrest.

A U.S. Army soldier, 22, has been charged with plotting a mass attack on his unit by sending sensitive military information to the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a U.K.-based occult-obsessed, neo-Nazi, white supremacist group, the Justice Department announced Monday. O9Ahas affiliates around the world, including the United States, where they are associated with the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.

Saturday knife attack in Reading, U.K., in which three people were killed, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, but investigators say that the 25-year old suspect’s long history of serious mental health issues, exacerbated by heavy drug use, is also being considered. In the last two years, the Libyan national, who was granted asylum in Britain in 2018, was investigated twice for possible ties to Jihadi extremists, but counterterrorism specialists at Prevent and MI5 determined that he had no clear ideology, posed no threat to the public, and required additional mental health care.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said yesterday it was appealing to countries worldwide to do far more to find homes for millions of refugees and others displaced by conflict, persecution or events seriously disturbing public order. This is as a report released today showed that forced displacement is now affecting more than one per cent of humanity – 1 in every 97 people – and with fewer and fewer of those who flee being able to return home.