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Extremism & Terrorism

The Buffalo Shooter, Stochastic Terrorism, and How to Counter It  (Todd Morley, Small Wars Journal)
On March 15th, 2022, 18-year-old Payton Gendron walked into a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, NY and opened fire on innocent civilians. A calculated and premeditated attack, typical of the shootings that have become tragically routine across the United States. Unlike most, this particular attack was livestreamed on the streaming platform Twitch to a small audience of Gendron’s friends. This is not the first instance of a shooting broadcast for entertainment, but this recent example belies a disturbing trend. Gendron uploaded hundreds of pages of material to the 8chan and 4chan online message boards prior to the attack, including a self-described manifesto outlining the rationale for his attack. These documents show that Gendron drew a significant amount of inspiration from the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand – his manifesto explicitly states that seeing the impact of that attack was what convinced him to begin planning his own.

Japan Terrorist Group Founder Freed After Serving Time  (Yuri Kageyama, AP)
Fusako Shigenobu, who co-founded the terrorist group Japanese Red Army, was released from prison Saturday after serving a 20-year sentence, and apologized for hurting innocent people. “I feel strongly that I have finally come out alive,” she said, welcomed by her daughter and a crowd of reporters and supporters in Tokyo. “I have hurt innocent people I did not know by putting our struggles first. Although those were different times, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize deeply,” said Shigenobu, who wore a black hat and gray suit. Shigenobu was convicted of masterminding the 1974 siege of the French Embassy in the Hague, the Netherlands. She was arrested in 2000 in Osaka in central Japan, where she had been in hiding. The Japanese Red Army, formed in 1971 and linked with Palestinian militants, took responsibility for several attacks including the takeover of the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1975. The group is also believed to have been behind a 1972 machine-gun and grenade attack on the international airport near Tel Aviv, Israel that killed 28 people, including two terrorists, and injured dozens of people. Shigenobu was not physically present in the attacks. A year after her arrest, she declared the group dissolved. Japanese media reports said Shigenobu had undergone surgery for cancer during her incarceration.