EXTREMISMExtremist-Related Murders Set to Rise in 2025
All extremist-related murders in 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists. Growing concern about a return of violent attacks by homegrown Islamist extremists.
For the third year in a row, murders in the United States connected to extremism have declined, according to new data from ADL (the Anti-Defamation League). Domestic extremists were involved in the killing of at least 13 people in 2024, a significant drop from the 20 extremist-related murders in 2023.
However, this trend will not continue. The ADL Center on Extremism (COE) has already documented 15 extremist-related murders in 2025 so far, 14 of them stemming from the deadly vehicular terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, the first mass killing incident by a domestic Islamist extremist since Sayfullo Saipov’s 2017 bike path rampage.
This New Orleans attack is a troubling development, especially if it marks the beginning of a trend of increased homegrown Islamist violence rather than a one-off event. In 2024, ADL published an article detailing a recent increase in Islamist terrorist incidents in the United States, including several plots to cause mass casualties.
The ADL Center on Extremism’s annual Murder and Extremism report also found that all extremist-related killings of 2024 were connected to right-wing extremism, with eight of the 13 killings involving white supremacists and the remaining five having connections to far-right anti-government extremists. This is the third year in a row that right-wing extremists have been connected to all identified extremist-related killings. Also, unlike in many recent years, no extremist-related mass killing events took place in 2024. Both of these trends have also been interrupted by the New Orleans attack.
“One of the most serious threats that extremists can pose is the brutal taking of human lives,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “Every murder is a tragedy and a decrease in extremist-related killings is always a welcome trend. Unfortunately, we already know this trend will be interrupted in 2025 and we are increasingly concerned by the threat of Islamist terror that seems to have spiked in the past year. Our country needs a whole-of-society, whole-of-government approach to ensure extremism of any sort has no place in our communities.”
Murder and Extremism in 2024: Key Findings
· Domestic extremists killed at least 13 people in the U.S., in 11 separate incidents. These deaths are significantly lower than the 20 people killed by extremists in 2023 or the 28 people killed in 2022. This continues a trend of fewer extremist-related killings after a five-year span of 47-79 extremist-related murders per year (2015-2019).
